Welcome back! As we’ve explored in our previous posts, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) can affect anyone, at any age, and causes significant disruption to daily life. We’ve looked into things you can do during the winter months to take care of yourself, but we’d now like to look at what you can do all year round to help build resiliency. Take a look below for some tips on long-term care for yourself.
Resilience is Power
You may hear the term resilience or resiliency often, but what does it actually mean? In short, it is our ability to bounce back quickly from a difficulty, or our ability to endure a tough time. It is a skill that can be worked on and improved over time. Being resilient in the face of SAD, will help you decrease the disruption it causes in your life and greatly improves your ability to recover much more quickly than previous years.
How do we go about building resiliency? It’s a great question, and one that we get often. There is an endless list of things we can all do to build a more resilient mindset, but here are a few of our favorites.
- Develop a Growth Mindset – Rather than spending time focusing on perceived failures or challenges, and lamenting on how difficult they are, the growth mindset has us see these times as opportunity to learn and grow.
- Work on Gratitude – Deliberately choosing to focus on what is going well for us and appreciating the positive aspects of our lives.
- Work on Problem Solving Skills – Work to sharpen your skills on identifying the actual problem, brainstorm all possible solutions, evaluate your options, implement a plan, and evaluate the results.
Holistic Self-Care
Self-care is a term we hear practically daily and it is easy to get lost in all the advice we get for the best self-care. In its simplest term, self-care is any activity we do that focuses on improving our health, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. Self-care is an incredibly important part of our overall well-being, yet it is frequently the most overlooked. When we make a goal to take care of ourselves long-term, we need to develop a plan to make sure self-care isn’t being overlooked.
Start by spending time focusing on what you do to take care of yourself everyday. Did you brush your teeth today? Did you take a shower? The smallest and most mundane part of our routine can be great forms of self-care. Although social media can portray self-care are lavish getaways to exotic locations, that is rarely the type of self-care a person engages in. Start by focusing on small things in your control. Make sure you eat, drink water, sleep, spend time with loved ones, do something you enjoy, and engage in gratitude. Making self-care a daily habit, greatly improves our resilience SAD.
Create a Community of Support
We are meant to connect socially with others. Who we choose to spend time with, is a great influence on our mental health. Take time to look at your relationships and ensure you are creating a community that will support you. Do you feel comfortable sharing your struggles with friends and family? Do you feel they will help you to the best of their ability? Would you do the same for them? Reflecting on these questions often helps us make sure our tribe is a healthy and supportive one.
Conclusion
There is no easy answer for addressing SAD or any struggle really. Taking the time to understand what SAD is, when it starts to affect us, and engaging in things that help us bounce back quicker. Professional support is always a great option if you find yourself, or someone you love, struggling with SAD or struggling to implement any of the tips discussed above.
We hope you enjoyed our look into SAD and we hope you have a wonderful winter season!