How Can I Continue to Navigate Seasonal Depression and Build the Highway Towards Authentic Self Worth and Self Empowerment?
These past three weeks, I have been experiencing the symptoms of seasonal depression that come with the change of weather. Technically, it has been winter for longer than that, but due to some stroke of luck, we haven’t been experiencing much of the cold that comes with it. I’ve been facing a particular depression due to the sun going down earlier. It makes me feel as if I’m being put into jail, and that the room or place I am in is now a prison and not a source of comfort.
I feel depressed that the weather is no longer warm, sunny, and comforting. It is something that one has to protect oneself from, rather than approach and embrace. I feel depressed knowing that there aren’t many things that I can do to change the climate around me, except wear warmer clothing. I also feel alone in the feeling of seasonal depression, knowing that it doesn’t affect absolutely everyone. I see the photos of people in the winter months, enjoying their warm drinks, watching movies, and absorbing the warmth from their sweaters and blankets. It makes me feel depressed, angry, and envious of their stable mood.
I feel depressed at the darkness, the cold weather, and the lack of things to do to change the weather.
I feel depressed in the darkness of this winter weather because it means that the day is shorter. The things I get to do during the day are also lesser, and that the number of activities I can do with others, or outside, in the neighborhood, or elsewhere, are also lesser. I end up feeling more bored, isolated, and lethargic. I feel like my life is at a pure standstill during such weather, and I am incapable of doing anything useful or meaningful during these months. I feel like my life in every aspect is negatively affected by seasonal depression.
I feel isolated, lethargic, and bored during these months, and it feels like my life is at a standstill during these months.
I feel like my mood is then harder to stabilize, and then continues to drop at a random occurrence. It is also harder for me to become more energetic when my mood is low. My social interactions then lessen, and the entire experience then becomes one of depression, with negative emotions leading to immobility, and that then creates negative issues in my life in different ways.
I feel like someone who doesn’t have anything to offer to others and cannot function during these months. It makes me feel utterly humiliated, worthless, hopeless, and helpless. I feel like a person who is utterly incapable of doing anything useful. I hate being utterly incapable of doing things. It makes me feel utterly disgusted with myself, my self-worth disappears, and I feel profoundly useless and purposeless in life.
I feel purposeless and useless when I am unable to work, and it makes me feel helpless, hopeless, and worthless.
I feel like my life is not worth anything when I cannot deliver. My understanding of it declines and so does my understanding of what I’m supposed to be doing. I feel as if my sense of loss in myself increases. My sense of misguidedness increases. I don’t want to feel like I lack a purpose, and that is the feeling that comes up.
My sense of purpose in part is tied to my ability to contribute to things in my life. When I don’t have a sense of contribution, I feel purposeless.
My sense of purpose is in part, rooted in this desire or interest in doing things. But perhaps, it becomes misguided because of my feelings of depression. It is then blocked entirely when this feeling takes over. I hope that with the changes that are incoming in my life during this academic year, I am able to continue taking back my ability to do from just this period.