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Join certified trauma professional Dr. Amy Hoyt and licensed therapist Leina Hoyt, MFT at https://www.mendingtrauma.com as they teach you how to recover from trauma and cPTSD. Trauma shows up in our everyday reactions and sensations and recovering requires a multi-prong approach that considers the mind, body and spirit. Dr. Amy and Leina will teach you the most emerging research and skills to empower you to overcome your past traumas. They address nervous system health, somatic therapy, trauma, cPTSD, EMDR, Neurofeedback, IFS (Internal Family Systems therapy), and many other modes of recovering from trauma. As mental health experts, sisters and trauma survivors, they teach you the tools that actually helped them recover, are backed by research and have helped thousands of their clients. Each episode is packed with clinically effective methods as well as scientific findings to guide you through your own trauma healing journey. Whether discussing cPTSD, PTSD, medical trauma, somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, EMDR or neurofeedback, Amy and Leina will help you recover from trauma so that you can reconnect to yourself and others.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (02:12)
Hi everyone, welcome back. We are in November, can you believe it? It is insane how fast time goes the older you get. man. So of course, you know, we're well into fall now and we thought this would be the perfect time to do another episode on seasonal affective disorder, otherwise known as SAD. So Leina what is seasonal affective disorder?
Leina (02:18)
I cannot, no, it's crazy.
Yep.
Seasonal affective disorder is something that typically comes on during fall or early winter. It has a discrete set of symptoms and it usually will go away during the sunnier days of spring and summer. So it's really about a constellation of symptoms.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (03:04)
Okay. So, you know, right before we pushed record, I was saying, I feel like it's so subtle sometimes. I mean, I, it took me 40 plus years to realize that every fall I got depressed. And so I think just giving yourself grace, if you're just noticing this as a pattern, or if you're listening to this and realizing, yeah, every fall, I do feel a little low.
Leina (03:18)
Right.
Yes, and we're going to employ that ninja skill of noticing without judgment.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (03:36)
Yes. Like, it's so curiously interesting that I'm yet again not able to get out of bed and here it is fall. we are with you people.
Leina (03:40)
So, so curious.
I love it. Yes, we are.
I'm surprised that it took so long for you to be aware of your seasonal affective disorder because I was diagnosed with it early on shortly after my depression diagnosis.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:02)
Yeah, I don't know. I think, I don't know why it took me so long to realize it. You know, I think truly dissociation was such a part of my life and that disconnection from mind and body that, you know, I would be well into a depressive state before realizing, I'm depressed. Cause my first sign of depression is anger.
Leina (04:20)
Yes.
Right. You're all, I'm angry.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:32)
So it shows up really different for me. Yeah, I just saw I'm pissed off again. Yeah. So, you know, now I understand that that, you know, is a symptom of my depression and that's my warning sign. But yeah, it took me a long time to put all the clues together. So what are some of the things to look for the symptoms that are most prevalent?
Leina (04:47)
Right. Right.
Sure. Well, like other depressive disorders, what we're looking for is we're looking for change in like sleep schedule, energy, motivation, that kind of thing. And I'm looking at a website from the Mayo Clinic and they have a list of symptoms that I think is great. They say that signs and symptoms of SAD may include feeling listless, sad or down most of the day, nearly every day.
Losing interest in activities you once enjoyed. Having low energy and feeling sluggish. Having problems with sleeping too much. Sorry, I just realized this one is like ding ding ding me me me me. Experiencing carbohydrate cravings. Overeating and weight gain. Having difficulty concentrating. Feeling hopeless, worthless, or guilty. Having thoughts of not wanting to live. And...
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:39)
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so you don't have to have all of those symptoms. It's just, this is a list of different symptoms you can have. So what we want to do is start paying attention and noticing how we feel. You know, I'm also aware that there is this concept called wintering. And it's this idea that as we go from fall to winter, we start to slow down.
Leina (05:54)
excuse me.
Absolutely.
uh-huh. Yeah.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:24)
Nature slows down. It's not a time of growth and expansion. It's a time of kind of retreat and conservation of energy and resources. And, so I just want to make a distinction that there is a slowing down in this season that is really healthy. We're not. Thank you. So we're not talking about that. We're not talking about a rhythmic slowing where we're
Leina (06:44)
I love that you're bringing this up.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:53)
purposefully conserving energy, you know, it's snowy or it's rainy outside. We're going to stay in. We're going to sit by the fire. We're going to have some hot cocoa. We're not talking about that. That's very important and healthy. We're talking about I feel almost no energy. I don't want to people. Can't handle people.
Leina (07:06)
Mm-hmm.
Yep. I have no motivation. Yeah, I don't, no motivation to do things.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (07:23)
Yes, all I want to do is sit and eat bread. Right. I mean, we jest but you you so that that's the difference. We're not talking about this holistic, beautiful concept of conserving energy because of the season, we're talking about a sense of being off balance and being too low.
Leina (07:26)
Yeah, spaghetti or donuts or cookies.
Yes. And you know, talking about the carbohydrate cravings, it makes perfect sense that when we are having low mood, that we might crave carbohydrates because we get a little bit of energy and then we get some feel good emotions happening. But really what we're looking for during seasonal affective weather is we're looking for
Dr. Amy Hoyt (08:09)
Mm-hmm.
Leina (08:20)
particularly oversleeping, appetite changes with an increased craving in foods high in carbohydrates, weight gain and the low energy.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (08:33)
And I love that you're bringing up that it's tied to weather, because it's not just a season, but it's also tied to weather. And a lot of times we don't have as much sunlight during this season. I know our dad used a special light when they lived in Finland. And they found, I mean,
Leina (08:55)
Right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (08:59)
dad and mom and a lot of other people all found a lot of efficacy using a light that mimics the sun, essentially.
Leina (09:07)
Right, it's called phototherapy or light therapy. you can get these on any major website. You can get them from Amazon. And they tend to be really helpful because the angle of the sun and the way it hits the earth is totally different in the fall and winter. And so we actually do have less sunlight, literally less sunlight.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:32)
Yeah. Okay. what else can, I mean, obviously we can order a light. We can notice without judgment. What else can our listeners do in order to kind of help their nervous system go from this state of conservation and collapse, if you will
Leina (09:59)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (10:00)
to a state of regulation or at least a little bit more regulated.
Leina (10:05)
Right. There is a great book. So I was diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder in the mid 90s. And this book is called Winter Blues and it's on its fourth edition now. The subtitle is everything you need to know to beat seasonal affective disorder. So I think I read this in 94 or 95. It's by Norman E. Rosenthal and
I can still remember some of the suggestions that he made in his book. One of the ones was that you just know that this is a cyclical process and that when fall and winter come, you accept this fact that you're gonna have less energy. And when you do have energy, you get done what you can. So it was this combination without saying it out loud or obviously that you notice without judgment
and you do what you can when you can.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (11:04)
I love that. You know, I'm thinking of the autoimmune spoons, the spoon framework that we use that we each have a certain amount of spoons each day. And that every time we do something, we use at least one, maybe more of these spoons. And I'm thinking in the seasonal affective disorder framework, it's
Leina (11:08)
Spoons.
Theory.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (11:30)
It might be helpful to think about that we have less spoons this season.
Leina (11:36)
I think that's a great idea because it takes kind of the moral judgment out of it. Like what's wrong with me? Why can't I get it together? That kind of thing. And instead we're just accepting that during this time of year we have less spoons.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (11:51)
Mm hmm. Yep. So what we could get done, you know, in the spring is not, it's not really going to happen in that same timeframe for us. And so it might take two days to get through whatever, you know, usually takes us one day to do and that's okay.
Leina (12:02)
Right.
Right. And I have to say that, I don't know if any of you have had a chance to listen to the podcast we did on clean pain and dirty pain, but this is a really valuable concept. I think with seasonal affective disorder, there is the clean pain, like the actual situation where you have less energy, you are more fatigued, you have less motivation, but there is a tremendous amount of what I call dirty pain, which is all the thoughts you tell yourself
about how you have less energy, how you want more carbs, how you are more tired and want more sleep. And that, yes, exactly. And that dirty pain, which is the judgment around the situation, is absolutely exhausting. So one of the best tools to use when you're dealing with seasonal affective disorder is to figure out how to accept
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:46)
Yes, the judgment around all of that.
Leina (13:06)
radically accept and to notice without judgment and then you have way less dirty pain or judgmental pain because that takes so much energy.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (13:16)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great distinction. Any other words of wisdom, thoughts for our listeners who suffer from SAD?
Leina (13:32)
Sure, I think it's really important to get sunlight in the morning as much as possible during this time of year. It can even be like five minutes. So we talk a lot in our program about mini habits and micro steps and getting some sunlight can be helpful. Don't hesitate to order a light therapy lamp. You use it for maybe an hour a day, you prop it up. In fact, I have one in one of my baskets here.
You prop it up and then you do your work while you're facing the light. You don't stare directly into the light. And also there are some situations which require psychiatric intervention where because the serotonin level drops during this time of year, some people need the additional benefit of some medication that will allow the serotonin levels to remain more even
Dr. Amy Hoyt (14:06)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Leina (14:29)
in their brains. And so all of those things are acceptable and fine and good. And they don't mean anything about you as a person or about your capacity or your willingness or your work ethic.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (14:43)
I think that's wonderful. Well, thank you so much for tuning in and we'd love to hear from you. If you have any episode ideas, hello at MendingTrauma.com and we look forward to being with you next week.
Leina (14:58)
Take care, everyone.