Can writing about summer help with winter depression?

I hesitated before posting this here because depression is serious stuff, and I do not feel qualified to write about it. However, I have found something that helps me, and someone else might also find it helpful. Be warned - this post is about my personal experience and is utterly unscientific.

What I mean by “winter depression”

I have never been officially diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Judge for yourself if I fit the diagnostic criteria.

I live in a country with long, cold, dark winters. The older I get, the more I realize how much my mood declines in winter compared to summer.

It usually starts in October when the Indian summer is over, and the weather becomes cold, rainy, and bleak. I begin to feel anxious. I know from experience I feel worse in the winter, so it’s logical that I feel tense in anticipation of that worsening. But my experience seems more profound than that. It feels like a premonition of death. It is perfectly clear to me how the old Greeks came up with the story of Demeter and Persephone.

After a few weeks, I usually get used to it. The initial anxiety subsides. It never goes away completely, but I can live with it. The problem is I begin to feel like I’m just doing chores. There’s very little joy in anything.

It’s not necessarily because there’s something wrong with my brain. It can be explained simply by the fact that most things that give me joy in life require sun and warmth. Like cycling. Or reading on a park bench. Going for a walk. Sure, I can go for a walk in winter too. But there’s no joy in the darkness, sub-zero temperatures, and wind that literally hurts.

There is a difference between satisfaction and joy. In winter, I can cycle on an indoor trainer. My fitness improves, it makes me feel good about myself, it’s satisfying. I like it. But it’s not the same as the joy of riding outside, feeling the exhilaration of descending from a hill into the warm sunset.

One needs both joy and satisfaction to feel good about life. In winter, I am starving for joy. And I believe it’s like real malnutrition in that it gets progressively worse. After a few months, I painfully miss the sun and warmth. I rarely miss people (is that weird?), but I think I miss the sun like my extroverted friends missed people during Covid lockdowns.

At the end of winter, it’s getting pretty bad. Where I live, sometimes weeks go by without seeing the sun. And I am begging in my mind for the sun to return. I get emotional. What is striking about this is the strength of this reaction. I was almost in tears a few times when the sun came out after a particularly dark week. That’s not me. I am a restrained middle-aged man. To imagine my typical emotional range, think of an English gentleman as he is stereotypically portrayed in old movies.

What I find helpful

Last winter I spent a lot of time writing a long article about my summer adventures in Spain. I didn’t do it to alleviate my winter depression. I simply love Spain, have been there many times, walked several routes of the Way of St. James, and thought it would be interesting to share my experience. I enjoyed writing about it and wanted to write more articles like that.

But all spring and summer, I never got around to it… not until the winter. I don’t have any more time than in the summer - rather less - and yet I spend the whole winter writing a very long and winding article about what it was like to walk the Camino del Salvador.

Is it possible that writing about summer is some form of subconscious self-medication?

It takes a long time to write such an article. I write slowly, two or three paragraphs every day, which I rewrite over and over again. That’s a lot of time dwelling on summer memories. For me, my trips to Spain were intense experiences, and the memories are exceptionally vivid.

For each article, I go through dozens of photos like this one…

… and when I look at them, I am there again. I smell the sea, the sweat is running down my back, and the burning intensity of sunlight makes me want to purr like a cat. Is this a way of tricking my brain into thinking it’s summer when I am sitting in my room and writing while it’s snowing outside?

I’ve gotten into the habit of writing these articles at night before bed, and sometimes I even dream about being in Spain. Then I usually wake up well-rested and in a good mood.

Of course, it would not be a good idea to neglect the usual methods of coping with winter depression. But maybe you can try another way to give your brain a little summer.