Living with SAD

Seasonal Affective Disorder, frequently referred to as ‘SAD’, is a condition of low mood, low energy, low motivation and difficulty socialising which recurs seasonally. Often individuals who experience SAD report a desire to hibernate throughout the winter.

While the exact causes of SAD are unclear, one of the most significant factors is sunlight. The vast majority of people who experience SAD are affected during the winter months, when the light is weakest and the days are shortest. But feelings of anxiety and trepidation about SAD experiences can start as early as midsummer.

Over the winter of 2022-2023, researchers from the University of Glasgow and University of Edinburgh led a series of creative workshops for individuals affected by SAD living in the Glasgow area. The workshops were designed to encourage experiments in re-engaging with the season and developing routines of self-care.

This exhibition presents a series of photos and SAD stories produced over the course of the workshop series by participants and members of the research team. Each photo is captioned with a quote from participant interviews and workshop discussions. The SAD stories draw together quotes and details from different participants’ accounts to focus on key aspects of SAD experience.

When it’s Autumn time I start to have thoughts of ‘ugh’. Here we go again. My thoughts immediately go to how the clocks will be changing in two weeks, then one week, kind of counting down. Anticipating it. I get apprehensive. It’s not a fear or anything. I’m not afraid of the darkness or anything. But I think it’s just your mood. I think it’s just the lack of light. Because you know it’s coming. It’s bang on: the clocks go back, the first dark dark night. And then I know it’s going to get grey, just that long trundle of grey.

Winter just feels like a bleached out, grey room for me.  

I’m very aware of when the clocks change. In years gone by, my mood has been a bit lower, my activity has just basically become zero. I work full-time, so I wake up in the morning, it’s dark. Come home, it’s dark. So, I sit, have a bite to eat, watch tv, go to bed. That’s it. There’s less energy. Less thinking ‘oh, I’ll do something’. You assume it’s going to be wet and miserable. And often it is, you know? It’s not an assumption: often it is wet and miserable. I know people use the term loosely, but I have this urge to hibernate. Batten down the hatches. Shut down. Everything feels like wading through treacle.

Just the weirdest, most horrible thing.  

I have been looking for things that will help for a few years now. It’s hard because there’s no easy fix. Good company, talking, walking – these all ease it, but they don’t take it away completely and I can wake up feeling rubbish, absolutely rubbish. I do absolutely love the sunlight in winter. I think it makes me feel a bit more expansive, like on those very light and dry days. But the problem is, well, there’s not really a lot, is there? So, it’s not easy getting winter light and it’s not easy planning things, I mean even little things like ‘oh after work I’ll go to the park’ when I’ve got no energy and it will be dark by then anyway. But I don’t want to just be inside every week night and weekend.

It’s so easy just to think, ‘Oh, it’s a grey miserable day’, and bury my head and wait until it’s over. That dark, grey sky feels so oppressive, the low clouds. I have my collar up, head down. That low sky can be such a weight on your shoulders, your eyes, your brain. The sky feels like a lead roof right on your head. I can kind of hide from it inside, you know, just trying to shut it out. I live in a rural area, so everything feels a lot darker and people tend to stay inside. There’s less light, and less colour. The landscape gets so bare. And I just find my response to things changes.

Everything just gets a little bit harder.

I’ve been trying to change this by, you know, just getting outside more, especially when we get one of those crisp, bright days. It doesn’t always last very long, but it lifts my mood. What I’ve found really helpful is this exercise of actively looking up at the sky. There’s such a difference between what you think is up there and what is really up there. It’s very rare that you actually get a uniform grey sky, even though that’s how they show it on the forecast. For me it’s been about shifting my focus to the sky, you know, the colours, just being really mindful about how the winter changes visually.

I’ve found this really helpful.

It’s not that I didn’t look at the sky before, but I get this different appreciation for it now. Like when I was driving home the other day, there was this incredible sunset. And I would have noticed it before, but now there’s a part of my brain that’s like, ‘You’re looking at the sky. That’s what you’re doing’. It’s made me very conscious of the passage of the light. I think just getting outdoors is the biggest thing for me and not running away from winter.

I find structure so important during the winter, because otherwise it’s too difficult to get the drive to go out to do things. I get overwhelmed easily in the winter, and it just feels like there’s more hassle with everything. You have to put on so many layers, and it’s raining, and then the buses are disrupted, you know? Just stepping out the door gets difficult, so I find it really helpful to have something to give me that extra push to get off the sofa and over the threshold. I’ve been looking for events or groups that I can sign up for next winter to help with that.

I’ve gotten interested in habits too and how to build better ones.

During the winter I have this habit of kind of wallowing on the sofa not really doing anything, just dwelling on things in my mind. I think to myself, ‘You could just get up’. And then I’m like, ‘But no, I don’t want to’. And those are sort of like trigger moments for me, when I realise I’m veering into a not great space. When I catch myself wallowing on the sofa, then I’m like, ‘Oh no. We’re here’. Sometimes I’ve been really hard on myself about it too. Not too nice to myself. I think it’s sort of a cycle, the more I blame myself, the more I wallow on the sofa. 

So, I’ve started to focus on building better habits as a way to feel better.

It wasn’t easy at first, but I’ve started going for a short walk pretty much everyday. It’s nice when I can manage a walk during the day, if I’m working from home, or sometimes I can get out just at sunset and then I’ll sit on a bench and watch the sky change. But I’ll still try to go for a walk on my street if it’s dark. Just seeing people up to things in their windows can help my mood. I like the feeling of being outside walking in the street and feeling like there’s all these lives going on around me. So I think the last few winters have gone better than before because I’ve been able to be more of an active participant helping myself through the winter step-by-step.

Usually in the winter, the way I feel about myself can get really bad. I don’t even feel like me. I lose the drive to go out and do anything and I struggle to be interested in things I normally enjoy. Normally, I’m switched on and active and busy doing things, so I find it frightening to see myself so switched off. I’m quite a crafty person, but in the winter it’s hard for me to even look forward to making something. I just spend massive amounts of time watching telly. Basic self-care starts to be a chore and I feel disconnected from my body.

It’s like I’m just existing and my life has kind of disappeared. 

I get in this cycle and it makes me feel worse about everything. When the summer comes around, I feel better. I feel motivated to do the things I care about. But then I know it’s going to happen again. Winter feels right around the corner, and I can start to get down as early as Autumn sometimes. I have to be quite careful, but recognising this cycle has been a big help. It’s helped me focus on things I can actually change and to dwell less on what’s already happened. I think I’ve been able to be easier on myself.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been one small step at a time.

It’s been really important for me to find creative strategies, you know, to look for new things to try. Just trying new things has been comforting to me and it’s made me less frustrated about the things that don’t work for me. I like to make seasonal playlists now. And I’ve been working on creating a kind of morning ritual. I set up a spot at a window in my kitchen to knit or just to have a cup of tea. No phone. So, there’s kind of a glimmer of hope about winter instead of just the dark parts. I feel a little bit more… Maybe. Maybe there’s a different way to do this thing.

What happens is I just start to withdraw. I find it really hard to reach out when I’m not doing very well, so it’s hard to maintain social connections. You know that thing when your mood sort of lowers and you think nobody wants to talk to you? I know I’m not the most fun to be around when I’m not doing very well mentally, so I just tend to retreat. Some days I just feel wrong. I feel like a burden. And then I turn into a bit of a liar. I start saying, ‘Oh no, things are fine, I’m okay’. And I start to feel really guilty about that. With my family, it’s kind of my responsibility to make everything good even when I’m actually miserable. So that makes it really hard to talk about.

I don’t want to burden them with how I’m feeling. SAD can feel so isolating.

The last few winters I’ve tried forcing myself to go out and meet people, but then sometimes I have this terrible feeling of being inauthentic. I think I put a lot of pressure on myself. I blame myself for not feeling social. So, now, instead, I’m focused on finding a balance, between giving myself space and trying to spend time with the people I care about. I’ve been more intentional about how I spend my time with others. I’ve been walking with my friends a lot. Well, I thought I would try meeting them every week, but that was maybe too much. Balance. So now we meet every couple of weeks just for a walk in the park or we might drive out to the Campsie hills.

Just something small and a way to get outside. 

This past winter I even joined a series of creative workshops for people experiencing SAD. The workshops were great because otherwise it can be hard to find people who understand. Meeting together was kind of a way to mark the passage through winter together. And one thing I didn’t expect was that the workshops actually led me to talk to people about SAD more. Friends are like, ‘What is this thing you’re going to?’ So, I tell them about it, not in a complaining way, but just so I can explain a bit about my experience.