The Changing Year: Seasons, Psychology and the Pressure to Stay the Same

By September, the changes around us are hard to miss. In Britain, the light starts changing, temperatures drop and the colour, growth and behaviour of the world around us changes. However, the vast majority of the structures around our lives remain as rigid as ever. Work hours, school schedules, appointments, social obligations and ideas about productivity continue according to the clock and the calendar, regardless of the world-changing impact of nature around us.

We have become masters of making the environment around us resistant to the seasonal changes. Artificial light makes the day longer, heating stabilises the temperature and activities such as work, recreation and eating remain available all year round. Biologically, however, we have not become completely independent of the changing world around us.

Sometimes it seems like we have invented season-independent lives without becoming season-independent ourselves.

Human beings are sensitive to light

One of the most obvious connections between human biology and the changing of the seasons is light. According to chronobiology research, light does not just allow us to see; it is one of the most important signals with which our circadian rhythms synchronise with the environment. Through the eye-brain system, patterns of light and darkness affect the production of melatonin, sleep, alertness, body temperature and other biological processes. With changing patterns of natural light, the biological input to this system changes as well.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is one of the best-known examples of seasonal variations affecting the mental state, and the work of Norman Rosenthal and his colleagues led to the establishment of this disorder and the therapeutic value of bright light. Nevertheless, the research also suggests that there are non-clinical variations in sleep, activity, appetite, energy and mood during the changing seasons, although their nature and importance vary greatly.

In other words, the changing seasons do not mean becoming depressed in winter. But, more broadly, they mean recognising the fact that the brain and the body remain sensitive to the environmental information changing during the year.

Seasons are psychological experiences too

Of course, it is not all about biology. We do not experience autumn, winter or summer in the same way we did for the first time. By adulthood, each of these seasons has already passed many times and accumulated various associations with school, holidays, relationships, family traditions, celebrations, separations, anniversaries and losses.

It means that a specific pattern of afternoon light, the first crisp morning, the smell of damp leaves or the appearance of Christmas decorations can provoke an emotion before we even consciously understand what caused this reaction. Because we do not only react to the present environment, but to the environment we encountered before.

This idea fits perfectly into the general understanding of neurobiology as a science about the brain interpreting the environment in relation to previous experience. In this sense, the concept of "remembered present" of Gerald Edelman feels especially appropriate: the perception of the present moment is inseparably related to processes of memory, categorisation and learning.

So, a season is not only the change in temperature or in number of daylight hours. It is also history.

The pressure of staying the same

What interests me the most in therapeutic practice is what happens when these biological and psychological fluctuations come into contact with the culture where the emphasis on consistency seems so high. Modern life usually implies stable expectations about consistent attendance, productivity, sociability and motivation throughout the year. However, our inner resources are not the same: sleep, stress, physical health, relationships, workload, light exposure and environment affect our capacity for activity and focus.

Nevertheless, quite ordinary changes in mood and functioning quickly gain psychological meaning. For example, tiredness becomes the thought: I should not need this much sleep. Lack of motivation turns into: I am lazy. Difficult weeks turn into: I am going backwards again. The experience itself gets entangled with an interpretation of it.

Carl Rogers' theories are especially useful to reflect on. According to his work, the problem is not only the experience itself, but also the fact that it does not match the person we think we should be: incongruence between our direct experience and the self-concept, the concept of "the conditions of worth" and the fact that some ways of feeling or behaving become more acceptable than others.

It seems the problem may be not only the experience itself, but what follows after it; the judgements we make because of it. There is a psychological difference between the awareness of a change and its immediate interpretation as the proof of personal failing.

This does not mean ignoring the fact that changes in mood or functioning may indicate a serious problem that needs to be treated. Low mood, isolation, changes in sleep and other serious problems deserve attention, particularly if they make it difficult to maintain daily activities. Curiosity is not the same as dismissiveness.

However, before trying to answer the question of how to go back to normal state, there may be some value in answering the questions: what has changed and what might cause it?

Rest, isolation and the capacity to be alone

Changes in the environment through the seasons can affect our approach to activity and rest. Shortened daylight changes the structure of the day, and the colder weather increases the time people spend at home. Psychologically, however, lack of activity or desire for solitude is not always the same thing as isolation.

I think the theory of Donald Winnicott's "capacity to be alone" is very useful here. He explored how healthy solitude is not just physical isolation, but the capacity to be connected with oneself without the presence of another person. So, clinically, the more important question is what this isolation does: whether it helps recovery and reflection or whether it gradually narrows the person's world and makes it harder to connect with the world. The activity itself is meaningless without the knowledge of its purpose.

When biology, memory and culture intersect

Our perception of seasons occurs because of the work of several systems together: biological effects of the changing light and circadian timing; psychological effects of memories and learning; and the cultural meanings of particular time of the year.

Christmas, summer holidays, September or the arrival of spring are not events of psychologically neutral nature. These events carry certain expectations about our feelings and activities. So, if our actual experience contradicts the expectations, the very fact of contradiction becomes another reason for distress.

This may explain why loneliness often feels especially noticeable during periods of the year when there is an expectation of togetherness, or why low mood is felt especially oddly during spring, when the world becomes brighter. The environment has changed, but the internal state does not always change on the same timeline. Our psychological responses to the seasons occur at the intersection of physiology, memories, learning, current situation and expectations.

Much of the language of wellbeing implies the stable result. We want to become regulated, motivated, connected, productive and coping, and once we achieve some kind of these goals, we naturally want to maintain this state. But human functioning is far more dynamic. Our resources change depending on our sleep, stress, relationships, physical state, losses, workload and environment. Seasonal change is one of many variables of this big system.

I personally believe that psychological flexibility is a more reasonable goal than psychological sameness: development of the ability to pay attention to the variability, consider the causes of these changes and respond kindly to ourselves, rather than demanding a return to the preferred state. Sometimes tiredness requires rest; sometimes fatigue needs investigation. Sometimes solitude is restorative; sometimes isolation maintains depression. The differentiation comes from paying attention to the patterns, duration, context and function, not from the preconceptions about the experience.

We have built our modern life effectively around the clock instead of the sun, and around the continuity instead of seasonality. However, the physiology that regulates sleep and wakefulness continues to receive the information from light; the brain continues to perceive the present through the history of its previous learning; and our psychology remains sensitive to the changes in the internal and external environment.

Psychological wellbeing does not require us to remain the same. Our energy, mood and capacities fluctuate, as does the world we live in.

Further reading

Anna Wirz-Justice (2018), "Seasonality in Affective Disorders: A Tale of Two Temperatures" Exploration of seasonality, biological rhythms and environmental influences on affective disorders.

Norman E. Rosenthal et al. (1984), "Seasonal Affective Disorder: A Description of the Syndrome and Preliminary Findings With Light Therapy" The landmark paper describing Seasonal Affective Disorder and early findings about bright-light treatment.

Carl R. Rogers (1961), On Becoming a Person Relevant to the relationship between direct experience, incongruence and the expectations or conditions we place upon ourselves.

D. W. Winnicott (1958), "The Capacity to Be Alone" Winnicott's account of solitude as a developmental and relational capacity.

Gerald M. Edelman (1989), The Remembered Present Theoretical account of consciousness, categorisation and the role of previous experience in present perception.