Is it the Seasonal Depression, or...?

Dear readers,

I’m taking a bit of a break this week from posting on my Blooming Beyond Betrayal series, so that I can make a public post! I haven’t done this in a minute, and I felt the need to free-write, rather than dig deep into a specific subtopic. I always feel more inspired to write with whatever is at the surface, anyways.

I woke up on Sunday morning in the crankiest, most foul mood. I was irriated beyond belief, I snapped at my loved ones more than a few times, and I just could not get out of it. I’ve been noticing this happening a lot in the past month or so. I have previously always ascribed my gloomy moods at this time of year to the weather outside. It’s no secret that those who live in the Pacific Northwest like myself, can suffer from some level of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, and I am one of those lucky bunch who feels it deeply. So from October-April, whenever I find myself to be in a ‘funk’, I have usually just assumed it is my annual bitterness about the lack of sunshine. While this is certainly part of the equation in my experience, the revelations of a breathwork class I went to on Sunday evening helped to shed some much needed light (hehe) to what may else be laying underneath the obvious seasonal depression, and presenting itself in similar ways.

The book ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Bessel Van Der Kolk helps us understand that our bodies often keep track of trauma in ways that we may consciously not quite understand. So while I can notice that I wake up in a horrible, irritated mood and ascribe this to the weather and maybe some additional annoyances in life, if I keep peeling the onion so to speak, I can recognize that there is something my body is going through that is likely related to trauma of some kind, and it is processing that in a way that is creating my mood to be irritable, irrational, angry, cranky, and the like. Of course, this may not always be the case. We are strange, complex little beings and I’m sure there are a plethora of reasons why we may wake up on the wrong side of the bed. But, our bodies have so many miraculous, mystical abilities that (in my opinion) we have only just scratched the surface about. And to be feeling so tired, so cranky, so irritable for over a month? I think it is safe to say that it is probably a mixture of several things. One of them being, a processing of trauma on a somatic level that I have needed to bring to my consciousness.

When I gaze into my past, it takes about .2 seconds for me to put the pieces together. In November of 2018, my mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast Cancer. Almost 1 year to the day of that diagnosis, she died in my arms. So for the last 7 weeks of every calendar year, I find myself to be very tender. And it is not just on the anniversary of those days, but it seems to be for an extended period of time. To be able to validate this yearly processing for my physical body but also to bring this to my conscious mind, has been so helpful in contextualizing what I had felt to be utter confusion. I am able to put language to this feeling. I am able to express “hey, I need more support during this time” or “I need to be extra mindful with what I do and who I’m around during these weeks.” And to gift this understanding to myself has been game changing. While it may not solve any of the ways in which my body is ‘keeping the score’, it is giving my “trio” (my mind, body, and spirit) a clearer lens into what is really going on for me and why. Our conscious minds always want order and to be able to make sense of things. It does feel like a bit of a reprieve to put more puzzle pieces together which forms a fuller picture of how yes, it is everyday annoyances, but it is also this deeper thing that needs awareness to be brought to it.

I believe it to be very naive of us to think it possible to separate our mind, our bodies, and our spirits. To imagine these as separate is to imagine the scent of a flower be unrelated from its roots. So when one part is remembering a trauma from the same time of year, but many years ago, it can affect all of the other parts of us and how we are doing day-to-day. All of these parts of us, even the ones we may not know exist, even the ones we might not be able to see or touch, are connected. And to become curious about all of these various parts, some physical, some intangible, and how they communicate with one another, is to bring an awareness to our lives as a whole. And when we do this, we are actively participating in our own healing.

Always,
Annabelle