Seasonal Depression: It's a Thing..

Seasonal depression: it's a thing... a thing that many people, particularly in the midwest, struggle with. It is something I have struggled with for several years now, and each year I recognize a little more how it effects me. Last year (2013) was a hard year, for a variety of reasons, but during the particular winter season it was challenging because of my headache issues. My life was masked by headaches.

However, this year was quite different. My prayer life had been very consistent and very fruitful. There are plenty of good, healthy, encouraging, supportive female relationships in my life. I am blessed with a job that I love, an opportunity to get an education, and a wonderful, wonderful small group of women to meet with regularly and share life with. Yet, I feel down in the dumps. I catch myself isolating. Going out of the house is absolutely exhausting. Running errands would simply drain me. I notice myself lacking a desire to eat. I just want to lay in the warmth of my bed and spend hours watching netflix.

My desire to isolate, my exhaustion from social encounters, and my lack of desire for food were all major triggers for me.. they were kind of like NEWS FLASH: SEASONAL DEPRESSION... I mean, not exactly, but they were my red flags that something was up. And then today, there was also an anxiety component to it. You see, depression manifests itself in a variety of ways, and I could feel my exhaustion, and my brain was just lost because I hadn't read the chapter before my lecture today (because I didn't know what chapter to read because we didn't have a syllabus yet) and I didn't recognize some of the stuff in the lecture that I felt I should know, so I started to panic and feel anxious.

So seasonal depression, it happens for a variety of reasons, and in order to address you have to know what triggers it and how it manifests itself for you. Like I said, I knew it was here when my red flags came up. And I know now that it's partially triggered by the cold. My body does not respond well to cold. I tense up and thus get my headaches. I enjoy running, but it's really hard to run in snow and in cold temperatures. It's darker more hours of the year, and I often feel trapped inside a house, where there is only so much I can do.

To combat this I do a couple of things. I go to events, and see people. I do social things because I need those interactions, but I might leave early, or come late, or refrain from doing something else earlier in the day. I pray. Pray, pray pray pray pray. Satan does use this as an attack on us, to tempt us to turn from God. He tempts me into dwelling in my loneliness. I often don't want to be with people, but at the same time feel extremely lonely - now talk about contradictory! So pray.. that's what got me started on this whole post anyway. Today, I came home after feeling very anxious from my class, and I knew my prayer had been off for over a month now. I try to keep a gratitude list. Throughout last semester I sought to keep a gratitude list, I tried to write every day in my gratitude journal something that I was grateful for... I wasn't perfect in this obviously, but every couple days I'd sit down and come up with a list of a ton of things that I was thankful for, and write them in my journal. Over my break I really lapsed in my prayer.. well I was praying, but it just wasn't how I normally pray, and I skipped out on my gratitude list (oops)... So today, when I came home I got snack and immediately got out my gratitude journal ( i keep a special notebook for my gratitude list) and started praying and started writing out things I am grateful for from the past month. Almost instantly I started to experience so much peace. There is something so profound about writing down our gratitude list. I kept one in my head, and would often think of the awesome things that happened over break, but it wasn't the same as physically writing it and concretely naming it.

To close this jumbled post I want to quote something from The Imitation of Mary - no one has ever become a saint without vigilance and struggle.

When we are struggling, we are on a good path... we are well on our way towards the narrow path, if not already on it. If we are struggling it means we are recognizing our sins and our temptations and fighting to resist them. We are fighting to live a life of virtue, by the grace of God. Pope Francis is always calling us on to be a people of joy, yet this struggle of seasonal depression directly opposes living a life of joy, it to some extent acts as a spiritual attack, in addition to the physiological and psychological discrepancies.

Therefore, I encourage you to join me in being vigilant in our struggles. Choose joy. Choose gratitude. Eucharisteo. Struggle and fight to live the life of virtue and grace. 

God bless.