Statistics suggest that I am far from alone in finding day-to-day day life more of a struggle at this time of year. Certainly, ideas for blogs are not tripping from my fingertips onto the keyboard and there is a bleakness to the days that goes beyond the weather. By February, our new year’s resolutions have already mostly been cast into the dustbin of missed opportunities; the Christmas lights have long gone out, but the world outside is still dark and cold. In a kind of reverse pathetic fallacy, it’s a time when many of us commonly feel stuck, seemingly as frozen in time as nature, unable or unwilling to move forward.
According to the UK’s NHS website, winter blues or seasonal affective disorder (of the self-diagnosed variety) is very common with around 1 in 3 of us experiencing low mood in the winter and about 8% of the UK population (the figures are very similar in the USA) reporting more serious symptoms of depression and anxiety. A recent Glasgow University study reaffirmed the common view that women are much more likely to suffer from symptoms of SAD then men – although of course it might just be that women are much better at talking about their symptoms and obtaining a correct diagnosis. No studies have yet got to the bottom of the gender difference.
So, what to do? Solutions are traditionally offered at the physical level: blast yourself with UV light and exercise more. Which advice ignores the problem that if you are a bit low the last thing you feel like is donning some lycra and heading out into the cold, wet and windy outdoors, no matter how much you tell yourself you’ll feel better afterwards. As for light therapy, the UK’s Centre for Clinical Excellence (NICE) is not sure that this is a very effective approach either. It advocates talking therapies instead.
Some of the most popular solutions for the mind are grounded in positive psychology– a theory that focuses on achieving hope and optimism for the future by harnessing our best traits, encouraging us to flourish. Seligman (the father of positive psychology) suggests we develop our “capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent and wisdom.” I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll have honed all of those by lunchtime. Some great ideas have emerged from positive psychology - in my professional field, our understanding of good mentoring relationships has been transformed by paying attention to positive relational dynamics. But, like many initially attractive psychological theories, this particular good idea has spawned a thousand fads. These include the “wellness” movement which advocates that most ills can be overcome by meditation or mindfulness, a super juice and a recipe from the self-appointed guru of wellness Gwyneth Paltrow (she of no relevant qualifications but with a radiant complexion). Which is taking positive psychology a lot further than I think even Seligman intended.
The problem for proponents of faddy movements is that the pesky evidence-based debunkers are quick to arrive on the scene. Plenty of research shows that too much focus on happiness or mindfulness can be counterproductive and that positive thinking has little impact on longevity or mortality. Tina Gilbertson wrote in Psychology Today in 2017 that the pressure of trying to be happy makes us feel worse than acknowledging negative feelings, trying to accept them and being kind to ourselves. Positive psychology has also been criticised for attributing responsibility entirely to individuals for their ills (thereby exonerating government, employers or society more generally): if you had only eaten more kale or worked out more, or thought nicer thoughts you would never have become over-weight/depressed/sick and so on. There is little or no evidence to support this pseudo-science of happiness and longevity. Between the wellness gurus and the debunkers it’s difficult for the public at large to know which way to turn, although if the purported value of the wellness industry is to be believed (it’s massive) then clearly most of us are more swayed by a wellness supermodel offering seemingly simple (but actually often expensive and unachievable) solutions than we are by an academic who may be aesthetically less pleasing, but knows stuff.
Another option is gaining more interest, and it has the added attraction of a bit of science behind it. Hibernation: I think it might catch on. Rather than fighting our inner winter-time sloth we could instead learn from research on our close relatives those well-known hibernating primates - squirrels. From them, scientists have established that hibernation in animals increases longevity whilst preserving muscle mass and bone density, with the added benefit for hibernators of sleeping through all those dreary winter days. The process seems quite simple; it involves gorging on high fat foods, which together with the body’s cooling processes, induce a state of “torpor” (which has to be the absolute antidote to the enforced zest of positive psychology) followed by a long sleep until spring. For the “wellness” conscious, hibernation also burns a lot of calories, whilst saving on heating bills, so you can emerge ready to slip back into your spring wardrobe without a single visit to the gym. Win – win. Unfortunately, scientists are yet to discover the key to achieving hibernation in humans, but as a kind of half-way house we could retire to our cool, dark bedrooms with a large box of left over Christmas Lindor for a few weeks of wellness-related torpor until the sun comes out again and we feel ready to face the world. I, for one, am ready to give that a go.
On the other hand, we could just pay attention to NICE and, if we can’t eat, torporise, exercise or laugh our way out of our despondency, turn to the tried and tested solution of talking therapies. It’s always good to talk.