Is there really such a thing as “Seasonal Depression”?

Y-E-S, YES! 

It is real, and it is true. 

But what is it? 

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Mayo describes seasonal depression to be a type of depression that’s related to the changes of the season. Seasonal depression is also known as “seasonal affection disorder” (SAD). (What an abbreviation, right?) 

SAD symptoms comes either during late fall/early winter through to late spring/early summer (winter depression); or late spring/early summer through late fall/early winter (summer depression). The most common symptoms are: feeling hopeless, worthless, or guilty; having frequent thoughts of death or suicide; feel sluggish and agitated; problems with adequate sleeping; losing interests in activities you once enjoyed. 

According to Mayo, specific symptoms are as followed, and they are quite usual during those depression seasons: 

Winter Depression	Summer Depression
– Oversleeping – Weight gain -Tiredness/low energy – Changes in appetite; especially craving for foods high in carbohydrates	– Trouble sleeping – Poor appetite – Weight loss – Agitation or anxiety

Depression in general is never easy to handle. The way people deal with it may be different—healthy and unhealthy hobbies are generally used to release the levels of depression. Sometimes, it can become deadly. 

Help is there for people that needs it. The first step to getting help is acknowledging what you are feeling. It is so important to understand why you are feeling the way you are! Life is full of ups and downs, but if we realize that we have been feeling down way more than we normally do, maybe it is time to get professional help.

There is this lamp that is supposed to help elevate your mood and improve concentration for when you are feeling SAD. In the reviews, this lamp has shown to help a customer “cope with the winter blues at home” (Maggie, 2019). The light coming from the lamp help releases the depression weight. This lamp is portable and easy to use. The person can carry it with them and use it when SAD suddenly crawls up on them.

I personally didn’t know about seasonal depression until I realized my own patterns during the winter months. It comes and go in the spring. And living in Minnesota where it’s snowy, cold, and it gets dark sooner because of setting the clocks back, it just seems to make it worse. I just ordered this lamp and is very excited to use it!

-KCY, 2

The Problem with Graduating…

My whole life I’ve been waiting for the day I would walk across the stage, in my cap and gown, and receive my degree. I would wave to my family in the crowd and feel like I made my parents proud; but as graduation approaches I’ve been feeling a bit uneasy. Why am I fearing something I’ve always looked forward to? Is it because I’ll finally be an adult who can’t blame their lack of finances on being a “broke college student” or is it because I now have to be 100% accountable for my status in life?

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Being in college has been somewhat of a crutch for me. While all my friends moved on after undergrad in pursuit of their long-term career goals, I decided to start over and pick another major. For four years I had college as an excuse for all my social and career set backs – but recently I’ve realized that I’ve help myself back.

Post-graduate depression is a real thing. Although it might not have an official term, many grads are feeling the effects of this type of depression and I’m scared I might become one too. In 2017 The Washington Post published an article by Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez titled There’s such a thing as post-graduation depression. I know: I had it. Rochaun shares her struggles, the effects of post-grad depression, and not knowing she wasn’t alone in this adventure.

“And that first week at home felt great. By Week 3, though, something changed. I had a pervasive feeling of loss and, with a knot in my stomach, I stopped eating regularly. Within two months, I was so depressed, I had trouble getting out of bed in the morning. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t believe anyone would understand. What I also didn’t know was that my post-graduation emotional distress was not uncommon.”
– Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez, The Washington Post

Some of the signs of post-grad depression are “an abnormally negative perspective, decreased motivation to get out of bed, a general sense of hopelessness and, occasionally, substance abuse.” Rochaun mentions that studies on young adults post-grad depression experiences aren’t easily available and most studies on young adult depression isn’t centered on this specific issue.

As a Twitter user I come across many posts daily that cover a range of topics including college student woes. The coursework, the debt, the pressure from society to get a degree in a field that you most likely won’t work in; you can’t deny the immense stress young adults are experiencing daily. So if students are carrying tons of stress for at least four years straight, why wouldn’t they have detachment and identity issues once they graduate.

College is the addiction in this situation and graduates are suffering from the withdrawals of stress and staying up late nights. My fear of graduation stems from the extreme shift my lifestyle will experience. Although there are some struggles I will face, I need to get comfortable with failure and practice separating my life’s value from societies “one size fits all” standards. Students and graduates aren’t all the same; we think, process emotions, and value different things in our lives. It is a shame we let these standards effect us negatively and break us down; but I say enough is enough. I refuse to let this next chapter in my life be ruined by other peoples opinion on my life and if you’re a recent graduate or will be soon, try your best to reject the hate. And finally, seek help from a medically trained professional; therapy does wonders for the mind and body so take a chance.

It’s Time to Save the World

“Is my English OK? Is the microphone on?” asked Greta Thunberg, in one of her most recent addresses. “Because I’m beginning to wonder.”

Laughter from the audience.

It wasn’t a joke. No one seems to be listening.

Nine years ago, when I was Greta’s age, I wasn’t aware. I wasn’t politically, globally, socially, environmentally aware. I wasn’t aware of what our biggest problems were–or that I, as a kid, could do anything about it, even if I did know what was happening in the world.

Nine years ago, I was LARPing (live-action role playing). For those who don’t know, LARP is a game wherein you create a character for yourself, dress up in costume, and run around in the woods at night, fighting faux villains with foam sticks. It’s like playing make-believe in the backyard when you were little, but on a larger scale, with maybe a better production value.

LARP comes in a number of forms, but the game I played was mostly like Dungeons & Dragons. It was a fantasy game. Swords and sorcery. Lightning bolts. Storming the castle. All of that.

While I knew that the events in the game weren’t “real” and that the character I played wasn’t “real,” they always felt important. They felt bigger than the small “reality” I actually lived in. I often felt that my character was better than me. She was stronger, prettier, freer. She had more goodness in her; more to give. I wanted to be like her in real life.

This disconnect–the idea that my character was false and somehow separate from me–affected my growth in a number of ways. I could write a book on it. There’s a lot to unpack. But the point here is that even after I managed to quit the game, I had a hard time developing an idea of who I was without that character.

Recently, with the changing of the seasons, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia. It would be the start of LARP season now, if I was still playing.

I’m still sorting through it, but one of the things that finally occurred to me was that I could be like the heroic character I used to play. I already was like her. She came from me.

But there were still situational differences, systematic differences between that character’s world and mine, dragging me down.

I posted this on Facebook:

And, only days later, the sentiment was echoed by somebody else:

I’ve been flailing for a solution. Something I could do to help the environment, and reconcile the reality of my apparent helplessness with the idea of once having played at being someone courageous and able to create change.

In this video, Jane Goodall advises people to act locally. “Quite honestly,” she says, “if you think globally, you get depressed.” Break it down, then. Start with what you know you can do. Do something. Even if it might seem small. “We’re all interconnected.”

I’ve been worrying myself sick. I woke up today with a sore throat, and a headache, presumably from my newfangled teeth grinding habit. In an anxious, somewhat dissociated haze, I drove to the store for some groceries, just to get out of the house. Everywhere, meat and dairy. Things packaged in plastic. Delicious things that I only felt bad about craving. I bought one of those chocolate bars that claims to help endangered species, and felt doubtful about its impact, but I hoped.

On my way home, it seemed like all I could see was trash. Scattered along the side of the road, accumulating in the ditches, washed up along the curb. Plastic bags blowing in the wind and caught up in bushes.

Enough is enough.

I found a metal stick–one of those garden hooks for hanging bird feeders or little candle pots–and I filed the end to a point on my dad’s bench grinder. I walked across the street to the park outside my house, and I attacked the garbage in the rain garden. I chased it through the foliage, piercing it with my makeshift rapier, collecting its remains.

Maybe this will help.

Photo by Robert Stuart Lowden

I’m an adventurer. It’s my job.

And for all the shitheads out there who consume without thinking, and leave their trash lying around; for the people who continue to make a mess of the world, I have just one message:

Social media depression

Is social media depression a real thing?

This weeks reading helped me come up with the theme to my next three blog posts that all stem from the power of social media. My goal for this posting would be to shine some light on the darker side of social media. The audience for my postings would be anyone who uses social media, students in this class and the teachers.

The first topic I would like to define and discuss is a term called “social media depression.” According to howstuffworks.com, social media depression can be defined as “depressive thoughts associated with using social media.”

I first started using social media as a time filler until it grew into a daily habit and from there to an almost obsession that I didn’t even realize I had. Before I knew there was an actual term for this I started to notice that the more time I spent using social that I felt an almost sad or anxious feeling after, yet I still couldn’t stop using social media and the vicious cycle continued. I subconsciously started comparing my life to the picture perfect lives that I saw on social media because I assumed that people were posting these images of their ‘real’ lives. Now I’m not sure how many real or genuine posts come from social media. Mendelson says “Social media is not a game played from the sidelines. Those who participate will succeed—everyone else will either have to catch up or miss the game.” I came to find out that a lot of those accounts were coming from people who were so busy trying to prove their happiness to their followers that they weren’t actually happy themselves. There is this pressure to post the ‘perfect’ image for followers that most of us don’t even know.

The good news is that if you have ever felt “social media depression” you are not alone. What I have come to find out in talking to my peers is that many of them also felt this way. If we are all feeling the same way then why can’t we come together and stop? I think a solution for this could be to take a step back from social media. Limit the amount of time spent looking at other people’s lives and being more present in our own. Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay to post picture of you being happy on social media but I do think there is a strong difference behind the motives of social media postings. Remember that your social media accounts should be for you.