Getting out of a winter funk
How do we wipe the veil from our helm?
I thought it would be useful for me to talk about emotional slumps and some ideas on how to get out of them. If I’m going through one then surely someone else must be as well.
What am I talking about? I think you know what I mean. It’s the blues, the funk, the downs. It’s when for some reason you just feel bad. You feel tired all the time and your workouts suck and you don’t feel like doing any work. You stare at the blank page and the normal creativity doesn’t pop up. You are grumpy and grouchy. Your family and coworkers and the random people you interact with go turn from normal people into annoying creeps.
Some people might even want to call it depression of some sort or seasonal disorder – but I think I’m going to stay away from that. I don’t like the risk of disease-a-fying a normal human emotional-biorhythmic cycle. I think you cross the line when this becomes the persistent state of your life. Then you might need to seek professional help.
I think the long dark days of winter are certainly a trigger for the blues, but really just one of many triggers and shouldn’t be seen as a de facto prescription – like it’s winter so I’m going to be sad. That makes no sense. Don’t create reasons to be sad.
When I was young these visits of the Blue Dog, as Mr. Churchill used to say, were much stronger. Through my twenties I used to get, without warning these intense days of painful emotional funk. As I’ve gotten older I still run into these down cycles not as often and certainly not as intense.
Another annoying thing about these ‘episodes’ is that they may appear with really bad timing. You may be in the middle of or preparing for something really important that needs your emotional energy and your emotional, physical ‘A’ game and the blue dog will slink in and weigh you down. It can make you a bit desperate and panicked. You have those “I don’t have time for this crap now!” moments.
I suppose my emotional edges have been sanded down as I’ve aged but I’ve also learned to recognize these emotional cycles and do what I have to do to make them less intense and pull out of them more quickly. In other words I’ve learned how to deal with them.
With the disclaimer that I am not a medical professional of any sort- I mean it’s entirely questionable whether I’m a fully functional adult – and have been known to give really bad and sometimes dangerous advice – especially if I think it’s funny – so caveat emptor my friends – here are some thoughts on how to get the hell out of your funk and get back on track.
Recognition:
First and foremost, the biggest thing you, as a mature adult, need to do is to learn to recognize these slumps. Like everything else emotional you need to move them out of your dinosaur brain and up into the big brain, the cognitive center. You do this by recognizing them when they show up. Sometimes this will allow you to shake them off at the onset before the cycle starts.
You’ll start to recognize seasonal patterns and situations and triggers that precipitate or are concordant with the cycle. Yeah, that’s right, your big old pattern matching machine will start to discern patterns and you can use this knowledge to grab yourself by the lapels, give a couple slaps and move on. By recognizing the onset of the cycle you remove a lot of the emotional impact and energy out of it. Our brains get frightened when they can’t label something, but when they can, when they can say “oh, ok, that’s what this is!” then much of the panic and desperation is removed.
Understand Triggers
It is totally normal for people to have high and low cycles, but there are events that can trigger the low cycles. If you understand these triggers it helps your big brain figure out what’s going on and lets you be prepared.
For me I tend to get a bit more stressed out when I have too much stuff going on, or I have a big, critical project that is coming due, or if I take a series of negative hits. What’s a negative hit? For example your boss gives you a bad review or your spouse does something awful to or your car drops its transmission or your hard drive fails when you’re in between backups – typically one or series of these events will beat you down and may be the triggers that precipitate your slide into a down cycle.
Therefore, when you feel the blues coming on look at your life and what’s going on and you may be able to tease out cause and effect. There may be nothing you can do about it but just by knowing the cause you can suck the emotional impact out of the cycle.
Don’t reinforce
When you start sliding down the slippery slope into a blue cycle take the age old advice of how to get out of a hole -> “Stop digging”. Don’t reinforce the triggers. Don’t start wallowing in the blues and asking bad, negative reinforcing questions like “why do bad things always happen to me?”
I’ll find my emotional brain just loves to ride the “Woe is me” roller coaster when I fall into one of these slumps. It may somehow feel self justifying wallowing in how shitty everything feels but there’s no profit in it and it’s not going to make your slump better or shorter. Do your best to replace this negative self talk with something better, something with a positive reinforcing power.
Be wary of behaviors that seem on the surface to be a helpful reaction to the emotional down period but really aren’t. Examples of these are binge eating because it makes you feel better, skipping your workout because you’re tired, sleeping in because you’re tired or watching a Law and Order marathon on Netflix all day from the couch, or, worst solution, getting hammered on your favorite recreational mind altering substance just to get a quick burst of serotonin into the system.
Sometimes you need a break, and that’s fine. But, take the break in a positive way, not in a way that reinforces your funk. Take a couple hours off and spend some time with a friend or a loved one. If you just can’t go on go ahead and take a personal day but really make the goal rest and recovery not wallowing in misery.
Recharge, don’t reinforce.
Exercise
You know I love to run. It is my favorite antidepressant. This past week as I was feeling funky we also got another foot of snow at my house. That meant that I couldn’t go for a trail run. Going for a trail run with my dog is a guaranteed mood changer.
There is an exercise double-edged sword here for me. I’m currently in the middle of a marathon training campaign and have a number of long and difficult workouts on the calendar. These are not stress relievers. These are in fact stress triggers for me. When I have a couple bad workouts or my fitness isn’t progressing as I would like it makes me sad. Having to worry about an upcoming 20 mile pace run makes me squirrelly.
Therefore if you’re looking to use exercise to relieve stress or alter your mood, it needs to be a exercise of a certain characteristic. If you can get out of doors into the sunshine for this exercise that would be great. Do something that isn’t stressful. This might be a 5-mile easy trail run with the dog for me, and it might just be walking the dog. It might be an easy ride on the trainer. It might be a good sweaty core workout.
Whatever it is, make sure it is something that you can successfully complete and be successful at. That will get the good chemicals pumping and lift your spirits. Having to bail out on a crushing workout isn’t going to do that. We know there is a mind-body connection. Your physical state is going to drop a but in a mental slump so don’t expect to be on your ‘A’ game.
Accomplish small things
One of the things that is a trigger for me is when I get overloaded with stuff to do. Especially a whole bunch of unrelated projects and tasks that I have to juggle in my brain. I switch into procrastination mode and don’t get any of them done. It’s deflating to see this big pile of stuff I have to deliver and more coming every second but yet at the end of the day I haven’t bailed any water and the ship is sinking.
To counter this you can try a couple of tactics. First turn down the distraction volume a bit so you can focus. Don’t open twitter and facebook and Dailymile and yahoo news etc. try to step away from that video game or all the hundreds of things you can do to avoid actual work.
Do some small things that you can accomplish, check-off and put in the ’out’ box so you get some momentum built back up and some positive reinforcement. Those big projects may seem diheartneing when you’re in a funk so just try to do something, anything that will move your progress ahead.
Put good stuff into your head
There are certain books and music and audio that I can use almost like a curative pill when I’m in a slump. Certain inspirational speeches or books have the ability to remind me of why I’m here and what I’m supposed to be doing and can turn the slump around. For example, I have found “the Energy Bus” by Jon Gordon well worth the hour it takes to read to remind me of the power of positive living.
If you know what these are for you can have them ready to go and when you drop into your funk you can queue up the mental medicine you need to ameliorate it.
Take a step back and think about any and all things that you have seen or read or heard that have positively changed your frame of mind. Have them close at hand and use them to counter the funk.
Take stock of all the wonderful things that you have in your life and all the wonderful things you have accomplished. Take time to dwell on the stuff that’s going right and make a list of all those positive reasons to carpe your diem.
As the old story goes… There was a man who complained that he felt like he had two dogs fighting in his head. One was a negative dog that constantly tore him down and one was a positive dog. The advice given? “Feed the positive dog.”
Change something
There’s a reason we schedule vacations in February up here. That week of a change in scenery, maybe a little sunshine in a warmer clime, maybe some time alone with no work and the people you love – that’s a welcome change in the doldrums of a dark New England or Canadian winter.
Maybe you can’t get on a plane to Florida. But, you can change things. You can rearrange your office. You can hang a travel poster from the Caribbean on your door. You can change the sheets on your bed. There are lots of things you can change in your life that are simple and easy and might just change your attitude.
The psychobabble theory here is that when you are in a funk you are in a self-reinforcing pattern and if you want to get out of it you need to break it. By changing things you change the course of the cycle. You can simply break your mental frame and exit the funk to a better frame. It’s worth a try. At least it will give you something different to think about and do.
Summary
The last couple weeks were a low patch for me. The weather was awful. We went through the spring forward sleep deprivation time change. My workouts were crappy. My computer crashed. The organized yearly theft program from my Uncle Sam is making my bills hard to pay.
I figured if I have these low cycles you do too. If by framing this for you and putting it in context helps a single one of you then I’m super happy to have helped. (By the way helping people is one of my positive reinforcements)
Don’t get trapped in a corner by the blue dog. Use your given powers to get over and through these low spots.
Now let’s go! Because the sun is out and I’ve got work to do and mile to run!