My Winter Blues Coping Strategies

I am a victim of the winter blues. Pretty much every year from around Dec/Jan to Mar I get sad, paranoid, anti-social and lose any kind of focus I have ever had.  There I said it out loud.  Here are my winter blues coping strategies!

This has been happening ever since I can remember in my adult life. Some times it hits me hard and other times I get through it. Last year was one of the worst times. I went into a deep spiral of negativity, I was working full time and hated my job. I was being bullied and undermined by a senior to me person at work and felt like I was failing at pretty much everything from work, to being a mum to being a friend and a wife. And I got fat. Basically everything that could have gone wrong was going wrong.

I did all I could to bury myself; worked from home and did what I could to get by at work without attracting too much attention. I missed the work Christmas parties though. Christmas and New Year went by in a bit of a non event. I hid from the bully at work, avoided every possible meeting with her. This of course impacted on my job and I was seen to be under-performing. I took as much holiday as I could over the Christmas period in the hope that I could go back to work feeling better in January. I didnt. It’s funny when you go through this you think its obvious to everyone, but it isn’t. No one comes to your help, maybe they have too many of their own problems?

I got through to February, god knows how, and my wishes were granted. The redundancy carrot had been dangled in front of me in Dec, but then withdrawn (??!!) but was offered again in February. I remember the feeling when I got the email. I was sat in a huge meeting full of very important work people. The redundancy terms and offer popped up..I could have screamed, there was my way out. As I have learnt over the years when it comes to fight or flight..I often take flight. I work out is the battle worth fighting, in this situation after 6 months of hating job, bullying it was so much easier to flight. SO I did.

Suddenly life got alot better 🙂

So now its December I can feel the SADness coming on again. I have lost focus. I have started eating more. I’m feeling like its an awful hassle to go out for drinks and socialise. I don’t even know why it happens, but I know it is happening and I need to engage coping strategies.

My winter blues coping Strategies

1. 3 Positives each day – I will reflect every day on 3 big positives from each day and record them.  Todays would be – I took Jack out to Playgroup Christmas Party, we had a lovely party and I had good chats to some lovely mummy friends. I have reached out and written a blog post about my dark times, hopefully it will make others feel like they are not the only ones. And I reached out to one of oldest friends offering her help in a really difficult situation.
2. I have reached out to another good friend to help me. She knows how to offer practical help in this situation. And she has offered to do some life coaching with me.
3. Get out to social events because when I get there I have a great time. I am going to arrange lots for January, one thing is the organisation of a charity event in Knebworth, which will keep me very busy.
4. Make creative and caring things for people who are important and I care for as Christmas Pressies, giving is good.
5. Spreading the love and the positivity by doing a good deed each day. The deeds could be a gift or a genuine compliment or the organisation of a social event or just a nice whatsapp message.

If you are reading this and thinking yes I can see some of myself here and I cope by doing this and that, please do write a comment and let me know. It would be nice to see that I am not the only one feeling like this.

MMPxx