Don't be SAD

Every winter, I write a column about seasonal affective disorder. If you haven’t heard of it, SAD is a diagnosable phenomenon in which cloudier months, colder weather and generally dreary precipitation evoke depression and sometimes leave you bed-ridden, lazy and, well, sad.

Even in the mildest cases, it is something that 10 to 20 percent of people struggle with during this time of year. Students who stay up late and sleep in frequently will find themselves easy targets to this type of depression, as I have for as long as I’ve been a stressed-out student.

My final, cumulative analysis with absolutely no medical or clinical background is as perfect as I can get it right now, learning two things during the years
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1. Aiding mental health is not a matter of “fixing,” because we are not something that is broken. We are humans, with trials and errors, who constantly seek to do things in a different way.

2. There is no magic word, nor impacting statement I can make to absolve the sadness one feels. I cannot render your mind transparent and dissect your struggle on an individual basis. It is something you have to assess and work through because everyone feels pain in different ways.

My favorite advice columnist, “Dear Sugar,” once wrote back to a dad whose son had been hit by a drunk driver.

Around Christmas, the father was expectantly overrun with grief, and Sugar writes that “allowing such small things into your consciousness will not keep you from your suffering, but it will help you survive the next day.”

She understands that sadness is not resolved in one sweeping motion, but in tiny reminders that your life is a-OK.

Things like birds outside your window, waking up to sunlight, a tree ornament a relative gave you or a letter you’ve kept from a friend, are all examples of these “tiny, beautiful things.”

Depression is impermeable. I mean that quite literally. You cannot poke a hole through it. But sometimes if you hold it against a light, or press a finger at it, discerningly, you can understand what forms the sadness felt.

The nothingness that gets you through January and February comes from a pit — as in a peach — that responds with sad emotions because it seeks to get better.
To be depressed is to work against something, and in each specific case, one must prod to find out what it’s working against and run to strengthen the opposition. Your psyche is working. That’s a good thing.

Sugar said the word obliterate comes from the Latin obliterare. “Ob” means against and “literare” means letter or script. A literal translation is being against the letters.
When we feel a part of ourselves obliterated, rarely can we put it into words. Perhaps you can’t really articulate some things you feel because they have dissipated. Rebuilding is the hardest thing.

People will reach out and console you, and sometimes because they think they’ve reached out — because they’ve gotten to know a version of you — they expect your grief to be absolved. And that’s stupid, but sometimes the easiest thing to do is smile and nod, saying, “OK, thank you so much,” because how can you articulate any of this vague, distant inner mess?

I’ve already used my two free CAPS sessions, and so can you. No one has to know, and sometimes two is just enough to help.

Bundle up tight. Hug yourself. Be hugged. Silly advice, but humans crave intimate compression. Autistic animal science professor Temple Grandin constructed a “squeeze machine” that would hug the sides of her body for 15 minutes a day to apply steady, comforting pressure that she couldn’t get from others. Let yourself be held, as cheesy as that sounds.

Think to yourself, sadness is a temporary feeling.

If you are in grief, think, “Death is a facet of life I will soon understand. Death is just a sugar skull in some cultures.”

When you feel lonely, know that you are not alone.

I hope you seek further advice, help, comfort and squeezing from anyone who will listen, just as I have.

­— ftirado@indiana.ed