Zander's Inside Voice

Seasonal affective disorder has me living the life of GoT Stark House:

Last night felt bad for some reason. It was like my emotions were all mixed up in a sad way. I have noticed as I heal that I am not very knowledgeable about my emotions. I always thought I was good at emotions before but I really wasn’t. I know happy and angry. I get all mixed up with all the rest of them. Like I can’t process sad very well at all. I feel myself wanting to go numb when I am sad. I will cry just fine because it hurts badly. But once that passes I can’t seem to get at the actual feeling to process it. I think I used to just numb the sad away, force happy to go over it and hide it from me, or push it out as anger.

I think I spent a lot of time the past two years being stuck in sad, but not processing it much as its own emotion. I also think I spent so much time processing a lot of pain and trauma, but not really thinking about how sadness just kind of comes out randomly at any time. It doesn’t mean that it’s from trauma. It could be from something going wrong, something bad happening, or just having a bad day. For me, seasonal affective disorder seems to put unprocessable sad on the surface for these darker months as a default. I have to work to not feel sad for no apparent reason. I don’t mind sad, but I like to know there’s a reason for it.

I have so much to look forward to in these darker months. I love the holidays especially, so I can usually push through until after Christmas with no issues. There’s other amazing plans like going to the theatre for our regular shows and then for Hamilton in December. I do like snow and cold weather as well. I am hoping to go skiing and maybe snowboarding too. All of these plans sound so fun to me.

I’m just hopeful that I can manage myself this winter a little better than I have in the past. Those cold months just drag on and on sometimes, with no end in sight. Sometimes I give up the fight and just let myself be sad. I don’t want to give up this year; I want to stay ahead of it.