To feel depressed by it getting dark so early

[Poetrypatty]

... And only going to get worse. I think that Boris press conference today didn't help. Feel miserable going into another winter of all this crap and the effort of keep trying to keep mine and dcs mood up.

SAD lamps do make it more bearable - nowhere near as good as the lovely long hours of sunlight, but definitely better. I’d recommend one to anyone else who hates Autumn and Winter.

@LukeEvansWife

It goes quickly too though.

I am okay til about October usually - once the Christmas things go up in the shops, I want to put my head down until January

Same here.

I love being cosy at home and not having to hurry outside in the dark. Drinking hot chocolate, or a cup of tea 🍵 dog to curl up with... Love my living room curtains shut early at night.

Yanbu op last couple of weeks I have been saying I am finding getting up for work in the dark really hard. Definitely seems to have come around quicker this year
I think I might have SAD too I love the long light days and really do not like winter I never get the cosy thing just cold and dark all the time

Oh yes to the soups! I make loads of soups over autumn and winter. Love it🤗

@Burtknowsbest

I think I have the opposite of SAD - I don’t like summer but love Autumn and Winter and like that it gets dark early, but I’m sorry that you’re struggling OP.

Ha, me too. I’m not sure if I’ve ever met anyone in real life who holds the same opinion.

I am thrilled when the evenings get darker; it’s so cosy. I much prefer winter clothes too.

We're not even at the equinox yet. There is still more daylight than twilight at the moment - just!

Well the OP doesn't see the attraction of cosy.

I agree with her.

Yep, I’m with you. I usually adore Christmas, which gets me through that far, and have a ticket booked to my home country (Australia) for Easter so I have the promise of sun and warmth at the end of the winter.

Instead, the airline just cancelled our plane tickets home for Christmas today (we knew it was almost certain but a tiny bit of me was holding out for a miracle. It poured raining all day. It’s getting darker earlier. Looking at another set of birthdays and Christmas without seeing my wider family, my brother and his wife will have had two kids since we saw them last in 2019. I don’t mind so much the booster shots and working from home or whatever else, it’s just that this tunnel doesn’t seem to have an end in sight.

I shouldn’t have been surprised at all by the flights. I was already debating with myself when it would be sensible to cancel them. But it’s knocked me quite badly.

I suffer from SAD and dread every winter. I so wish I could encompass the ‘twinkly lights and hot chocolate’ mindset. I have a SAD lamp and a SAD alarm clock that makes the mornings easier. I also take a huge dose of vitamin D that helps. I count down the days until the shortest day in December as I know the nights will get very slowly light again.

I don't get the cosy thing more like feel hemmed in by the dark, it feels oppressive. Like pp I tend to be happier when it gets to at least January and we have turned the corner.

Hard to know if it's a chemical imbalance or just being very worn out from and fed up with the pandemic as well, as we all are.

@ilovesooty

Well the OP doesn't see the attraction of cosy.

I agree with her.

Cosy is stifling - it means stuck indoors in artificial light with lots of layers.

My advice is take up running if you can, take strong, vitamin D, one of those effervescent multivitamins, magnesium and iron and try St John’s wort if you’re not on the pill. If you feel like it’s serious enough to warrant medication then 100% go to your Dr now. Sertraline is changing my life already!

By all means do the cosy, snuggly, hot chocolate thing but only in the evenings, don’t spend all day sitting around or you’ll feel so much worse. Oh, and get a dog!

Sorry about your flights being cancelled JassyRadlett that must be really hard.

@Burtknowsbest

I think I have the opposite of SAD - I don’t like summer but love Autumn and Winter and like that it gets dark early, but I’m sorry that you’re struggling OP.

Me too! Love the long nights and cold weather, but I was a December baby.

don’t spend all day sitting around or you’ll feel so much worse

You do realise that some of us have to ‘sit around all day’ because we work in offices, in front of computers? With 30 minutes of a lunch break and torrential rain, sleet or snow outside it’s hard to get out for a walk in winter - and even harder to bring a dog to work.

I agree that the whole cosy thing is always trotted out by people on these threads who don’t have SAD and for me is terrible advice unless (as I said upthread) you only do it in the evenings.

I hate the ber months.

Actually feel relieved come January that things can only start to get better again and by February with the snowdrops and crocuses in bloom I feel as right as rain again.

I'm a December birthday too, right on top of Christmas and I detest the bastarding lot of it. You are not alone.

Thanks @Poetrypatty. This is the third lot so you’d think I’d be used to it by now!

I was so optimistic when I booked them in February.

I love winter, cool weather, short dark days, love it. Love to walk in the rain.

Cosy evenings in watching movies
Snuggling on the couch with a good book
Comforting stews with dumplings
Chilly and muddy dog walks, all bundled up
Soft lighting
Halloween, Bonfire night & Christmas
Root veg soups

God, these all sound so dull.

I'd much rather be lying in the garden with a book, sitting in the sun in a beer garden, going for an early morning run when it's light at 6am... anything but stews, soups and snuggling.

I don't mind it getting dark earlier (although I am worrying a little about my 12yo walking back from the bus step as it gets darker).

What I don't like is the darker mornings. I have got too used to jumping out of bed at 6.30 to bright sunshine and now I'm waking in the dark and getting blinded by the big light 😂

I loathe winter. It makes me want to run about screaming because I can't stand it, I just can't do it again... all the fucking horror of the relentless calendarised events - Halloween bonfire night, the endless windup of consumerism then Xmas oh god it gives me a genuine shudder to think about it, then new year shite ... by February I feel I can breathe again and start to have hope that I will make it through another year.

Anyone who talks to me about cosy and hot chocolate and movie nights will get a conker where the sun don't shine.

Yeah I’m with all the autumn winter haters, I hate the cold and dark. I don’t want to snuggle indoors, I want to be outside and for it to be warm!

@Burtknowsbest

I think I have the opposite of SAD - I don’t like summer but love Autumn and Winter and like that it gets dark early, but I’m sorry that you’re struggling OP.

I’m the same I love Autumn and Winter, I do love summer when the sun shines, but this summer all we have had bar a few days is that relentless still grey that ‘nothing’ type of weather, week after week really gets me down so I get how you feel OP though mine is a different season.