The winter can bring about many emotions for all of us, especially the negative ones. When it gets cold and the days are significantly shorter, it is very easy to feel depressed and anxious about various things in life. Many of us start to feel lonely and left out all of a sudden the minute Fall passes and winter rolls in. This may lead to us reaching out to the corners of our minds and overthinking mistakes, or worse, creating fake scenarios that only make us more anxious.
Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD, can impact all of us since we need a healthy dose of sunlight to stay bright and positive, much like plants or trees. So how do you deal with seasonal anxiety naturally? We’ve got your back! Read the five tips below to mitigate your symptoms and find healing at your fingertips.
- Improve Your Diet: Once we step into the winter season, SAD can take over due to a lack of sunlight. This instead creates a vicious loop of Vitamin D deprivation, which in turn kicks up our anxiety and depression up a few notches. Add a mix of holiday season where there are various pressures to show up a certain way, and this becomes a recipe for disaster. In such a case, adding more yellow, orange and red veggies along with dopamine or serotonin boosting foods will help you improve your mood.
- Tune Your Sleep Cycle: Can’t sleep when anxious or sleeping too much? It is a common problem to have insomnia or hypersomnia at such times. Try to tune your sleep cycle and get a solid 8 hours of sleep each day. Waking up with the sunrise gives you more time in the light, and a healthy routine. If you need help balancing your sleep cycle, try adding a natural anxiety supplement to help you calm down racing thoughts before bedtime.
- Practice Grounding Techniques: There are many ways to ground and center your energy while feeling anxious. Since anxiety arises from being stuck in past experiences while anticipating the unknown, grounding techniques like EFT and acupressure or deep belly breathing will help you channel these emotions in a healthy way rather than letting you simmer in stress like a ticking time bomb.
- Participate in Mindfulness: Anxiety keeps us stuck in either the past or worry about the future. Mindfulness is the act of simply immersing yourself in the present though mundane tasks; it can be something as simple as washing the dishes or folding your laundry. What this does is help a person step outside their anxiety and focus on the present, thereby taking the power away from the destructive emotion.
- Take Walks in Nature: One of the easiest ways to ease the tightness in your chest and the pressure in your head while experiencing anxiety is to take a stroll in nature. Be it a park or a forest trail, walk in the daytime to experience the full benefits. You’ll feel much more positive and rejuvenated.
Wrapping Up:
The feeling of anxiety is universal, and having Seasonal Affective Disorder blues is even more common than you think. However, these are just passing phases that can he helped using the methods above if you don’t wish to dive into therapy instantly.