How to Create Emotional Anchors as Life Speeds Back Up
Winter anxiety is an informal way to describe the anxiety brought on by Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD brings on winter anxiety as the fall days grow shorter, and the sunlight’s rays become more oblique. Together, these seasonal changes make people anxious. SAD may include depression as well as anxiety.
Winter anxiety may start as a psychological reaction to outside stimuli. Still, winter anxiety is the body’s physical reaction to the impact on serotonin and melatonin levels in the brain. Low levels of serotonin increase feelings of sadness, and changes in sleep cycle and appetite, while higher levels of melatonin bring on sleepiness and fatigue. Yet, there are ways to sustain emotional resilience throughout the seasons. The following paragraphs discuss a few techniques you may find useful.
Managing Anxiety in Winter
As is true for several mental health issues, self-care is an important duty for SAD sufferers who want to manage winter anxiety. Getting regular exercise (indoors or outdoors), eating regular, healthy meals, making sure to get enough rest and restorative sleep, and limiting alcohol and caffeine are critical techniques to staying ahead of the anxiety roller coaster. A walk outdoors in the sunshine may help; if not, treatment with high-intensity light rays from a light box each day may be an answer. Though it is the exercise itself that helps lift mood and reduce stress and anxiety.
Many SAD sufferers find it helpful to employ stress-relieving techniques, such as deep breathing exercises. Deep breathing naturally keeps attention on the breaths coming in and out of your body. The idea is to slow the breathing in and out of your body to bring the body under control and to lower the anxiety level. This technique dates to Viking days in the 9th to 11th centuries when deep breathing was used to calm battle-weary warriors. Deep breathing is also a principle of the ancient Chinese martial art of Tai Chi, which originated in the 12th century.
Mindfulness for anxiety is another technique. Mindfulness means paying attention to your emotions, physical sensations, and thoughts in real time, as they happen. Mindfulness makes no judgment in awareness. When you practice mindfulness for anxiety, you focus on what is happening at that time. For example, when going for a walk in the woods, you focus your immediate attention on what you sense during the walk:
- Animals you see,
- Birds you hear,
- Flowers you can smell,
- Breezes you feel.
You can also practice mindfulness for anxiety with respect to the different parts of your body. The technique consists of mentally recording any sensations you feel in those body parts without judgment. For example, mindfulness during eating focuses attention on the tastes, smells, and textures of the food and the physical sensations involving the tongue, teeth, and mouth.
Guided imagery is another mindfulness for anxiety technique in which practitioners visualize scenes that have a calming effect. For example, a person might close their eyes to imagine rising stars in an ever-darkening night sky as those stars move into constellations. Combined with deep breathing and a focus on releasing tension in isolated parts of the body, guided imagery relaxes both the mind and the body.
The benefits of mindfulness include the effects of:
- Improving memory
- Stimulating focus
- Improving sleep
- Helping individuals to respond with intention, rather than on compulsion. These types of techniques help individuals cope with overwhelming feelings.
Winter Season Means Sensory Overload
The holiday celebrations and intensity of light displays are wonderful enhancements to the drabness of winter. To someone with sensory overload, however, the same bright lights, loud music and singing, and applause at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony may spell heightened anxiety.
Sensory overload symptoms include:
- Dizziness
- Sweating
- Flushed appearance
- Flushed appearance
- Shaking or trembling
- Rapid heartbeat
- Tightness in the chest
Sensory overload may cause anxiety, but anxiety itself may result in increased sensitivity to sensory triggers. Those triggers then cause a reaction in the body or the mind. Anxiety and sensory overload are linked and together cause an excess of one or the other.
Managing sensory overload requires the sufferer to identify their personal sensory triggers. Identifying personal triggers allows a sufferer to proactively manage the sensory overload by:
- Reducing the stimuli through noise-cancelling headphones,
- Wearing shades to reduce the effect of bright lights,
- Wrapping the body in a weighted blanket,
- Limiting the amount of time spent exposed to the stimulating activity, or
- Finding a quiet space with low lights, little to no noise, and pleasant textures to help soothe sensory overload.
- Techniques like those addressing winter anxiety also apply to sensory overload:
- Deep breathing exercises
- Guided imagery to relax muscles
- Good sleep habits because sleep deprivation can increase sensory overload and anxiety symptoms.
Please note: Seeking professional help from a licensed mental health therapist or other healthcare provider is critical when sensory overload interferes with the functioning of daily life activities. A mental health professional can collaborate with you to determine if you have an anxiety disorder, SAD, sensory overload, Sensory Processing Disorder, or a combination of them.
More about Sensory Processing Disorder
Sensory Processing Disorder (also referred to as SPD) refers to the different way the brain interprets, understands, and responds to sensory input from the senses or from physical movement. Some people with SPD have other conditions, such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or they fall on the autism spectrum. It is important to remember that people may suffer from SPD without other health conditions.
SPD is an unofficial or informal recognition of the condition’s existence, not a medical diagnosis. Therapists recognize the importance of identifying the existence of SPD for a patient so they may try to manage it. That is especially true if the SPD impacts the functioning of the patient’s daily activities of living.
Therapists recognize several types of SPD:
· Sensory Over-Responsivity (SOR) – you may respond too soon, too much, or too long to sensory stimuli that most other people tolerate.
· Sensory Under-Responsivity (SUR) – You need more than the usual sensory activity to feel an impact.
· Sensory Craving (SC) – You want and seek sensory information as stimulation, however, seeking that stimulation results in disorganization and does not satisfy the craving.
· Sensory Discrimination Disorder (SDD) – You may have trouble interpreting certain sensory information, such as what you are hearing.
· Postural Disorder – You may have trouble stabilizing your body during movement, such as knowing your body’s position in space.
· Dyspraxia – You may have trouble with gross or fine motor skills, or both, when it comes to movement.
How to Recognize Symptoms of Sensory Processing Disorder
The following are the more common symptoms of SPD:
- Clumsiness (bumping into things)
- Irritation when touching certain fabrics
- Aversion to certain food textures
- Difficulty identifying personal space
- Distress reaction to bright lights, loud noises, sudden moves, or touch
- Wanting to constantly touch things.
Learning how to manage the symptoms of SPD makes life easier for sufferers.
Choosing the Best Mental Health Professional For You
Self-diagnosis is not the best way forward. Choosing the best mental health professional for your needs, your lifestyle, and your goals is crucial to managing mental health symptoms.
A mental health professional that you trust has an education and years of clinical experience that allow them to recommend the best treatment for you. That treatment may include medicines, psychotherapy, or other interventional treatment. With the right support for your condition, you can manage the symptoms and lead a more normal life.
Deciding If Refinery Counseling Services Is Best for You
We invite you to take the next step in your mental healthcare journey. Contact us today to schedule a free, initial consultation with one of our licensed, experienced clinical therapists. Your therapist will talk to you about your background and your symptoms. The therapist will assess your current condition and then recommend a treatment plan that fits your needs.
The first appointment also provides the opportunity for you to become comfortable with our firm’s mission, our various services, and the clinical experience of your therapist. We want you to feel secure that our practice provides a safe space where you can discuss your sensitive thoughts and feelings without judgment.
Refinery Counseling Services (RCS) promises to tailor your proposed treatment plan to your goals for success in your mental health journey. We will tailor your treatment plan to include a faith foundation if that is important to you. You decide what role your faith plays in your recovery. You and your therapist will decide if group therapy or individual therapy is appropriate out of the wide range of services that the firm provides. We provide compassionate care with an emphasis on community engagement.
RCS therapists believe that every person can grow and heal as they achieve their mental health goals. We promise to provide the guidance and resources necessary for each client to succeed.
We look forward to hearing from you soon. In the meantime, you may want to read some of the articles on various mental health topics that are in our blog, Refined by Grace.
