Do You Suffer With SAD?

Call me daft but I suspect SAD is actually related to a human hibernation response - it might once have been a perfectly natural thing to 'close down for the winter'. I was reading yesterday about a Russian town where they used to deliberately sleep through the winter waking only to have a basic dry meal once a day and then go back to sleep.

There's one thing to keep in mind here - get professional diagnosis by a doctor. Buying your own anti-SAD lamps is an expensive business and if you go doing this as an experiment to test whether or not you're a sufferer of SAD you'll probably waste a lot of money and still be masking the cause.

I've put some resources at the bottom of the post but before you go buying anything I'd go see your doctor - according to the article below even if you are a sufferer you can still end up over-dosing on the treatment.

Causes Of Seasonal Affective Disorder

By Gabriel Adams

Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD is a condition that is brought on by lack of adequate sunlight. Individuals who suffer from this condition experience major depressive episodes during the fall and winter months, when the daylight hours are shorter. These acute symptoms abate in during the spring and summer months when the days are longer. Geographical location, age and genetics are all contributory factors to the onset of seasonal affective disorder in an individual.

Symptoms of Season Affective Disorder

Some of the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder include memory loss, lack of energy, sleep disturbances, inability to concentrate, change in appetite, body aches and pain, change in weight, low self-esteem, diminishing sex drive, suicidal thoughts and lack of interest in any activity.

How Light Therapy helps

The hormone melatonin, which is produced in the hypothalamus of the brain during the hours of darkness, plays a vital role in SAD. Extra hours of darkness during fall and winter cause the production of excessive amounts of melatonin, leading to the onset of severe depression symptoms. Exposure to a source of bright light, such as that emitted from a light box can help reduce the melatonin production, thus alleviating the severe symptoms.

How the Light Box works

The light box is a specially designed box that provides a precise amount of balanced spectrum light that is of the same intensity and quality as the light an individual would normally receive by spending time outdoors in the sun. This light from the box helps regulate the production of melatonin in the brain and normalizes the internal body clock functions.

How a Light Box is used

The individual is required to sit directly in front of the light box facing the source of light. The eyes have to be kept open as UV rays are known to enter the body through the eyes and not the skin or any other part of the body. However care should be taken to keep the face averted as looking directly into the source of light could cause damage to the eyes.

The recommended distance for each individual is different and depends upon the desired intensity for that particular person. The duration of each individual’s session is also different.

Light therapy is most effective if it is done at the same time and for the same duration every day, at least till the symptoms disappear. After that, the doctor could decide to reduce the duration of sessions or sometimes even split the session into two sessions of shorter duration each.

Individuals who suffer from seasonal disruptive disorders should commence their light therapy treatment as soon as the symptoms are obvious and begin to get distressing. Light therapy sessions can be discontinued with the onset of spring, when individuals are likely to receive adequate amount of natural sunlight. Seasonal disruptive disorder symptoms are also aggravated during cloudy and rainy weather and could necessitate the use of light therapy.

Excessive use of light therapy could cause adverse side effects and it should only be resorted to on the advice and recommendation of a qualified doctor.

Source: www.isnare.com

Seasonal Affective Disorder Light Therapy

www.cure-your-depression.com Merri Ellen's demo on her seasonal affective disorder light therapy box which she loves for light therapy for sad. Depression and light are connected.

Are you or is someone you know a SAD sufferer? Please add any comments or advice below.

Regards - Carl

Depression Resources

Depression is a normal condition - it's about as desirable as a broken leg but just like a broken leg it is 'normal' and a lot of people have had and recovered from the condition.  There's a useful article below with a link at the bottom to some low cost resources.

Get Rid Of Depression Once And For All

By John Maxford

Depression is something that will occur in many people's lives, for various reasons. But the "normal" occurrence of a plunge in mood due to stressful events in your life, usually doesn't last very long, before a person's natural resilience responds to the environment of friends and family.

Treatment for depression and anxiety may be needed if you experience persistent, multiple symptoms for more than two weeks. These may include a combination of half or more of the following:

* Sleeplessness, insomnia

* Ongoing negative moods for no reason

* Lack of energy or ambition

* Feeling helpless or worthless

* Believing nobody cares

* Hyper states like edginess or nervousness

* Inability to make decisions or concentrate on things

* Physical aches and pains that don't go away

* Suicidal thoughts

Depending on the condition of a depressed person, they may require admission to a depression treatment center, where they can be monitored while receiving psychological counseling and medication therapy.

Depression is an emotional disorder, and nothing to be ashamed of. But often, people who are depressed are suffering from negative thoughts about themselves, and the illness can feed on that.

If you recognize five or more of the above symptoms in someone you love, talk to them about how they feel. If they won't talk to you, go to their family, friends, or even their doctor.

Treatment may be as simple as counseling and medication that can be undertaken while in their own environment, or the doctor may recommend a short stay in a depression treatment facility to get them back on an even keel.

The medications available have redefined the treatment for depression and anxiety, giving patients a break from the emotional state that is weighing them down, while they receive therapy to resolve the issues that caused their illness.

About the Author: John Maxford is a software developer who spent many years
suffering from depression. In his quest to find a cure, he
socured the internet and medical publications learning all
he could about depression. He discovered how to help
himself, and has now written a series of article to pass
that information on to others.

Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=3070&ca=Self+Help

Do you know of any useful resources for people suffering with depression or of those supporting them?  Please leave details in the comments box.



Regards - Carl

Depression - Retreating Towards the Enemy

So when about five years ago I was diagnosed with a complex form of OCD (that came as no surprise) I was also told I was suffering with severe depression (that was a surprise).  I remember telling my psychiatrist I couldn't have depression because I'd always been 'positive minded'.

Depression had been with me so long I just couldn't see it - to heal it I had to re-visit various experiences in my past and the idea of that terrified me.  Could I risk getting into the same emotional state again that had led to my attempted suicide when I was 19?

I agreed with my psychiatrist to go onto a low dose of Prozac for a year (I had a very 'funny turn' about two weeks into the drug where I suddenly felt connected up to an absolutely agonising emotional response that had me running round the house looking for 'a child in danger' - the illusion was so strong I phoned NHS Direct for advice).  That episode disappeared within days and I carried on with the drug for the remainder of the year without anything similar happening.

At the same time I also continued with my self-designed 'exposure therapy' programme - it was this that actually led to my healing, with support mostly from a Person-Centred Counsellor and my GP.  I can't say whether the Prozac helped but I can say seeing the psychiatrist to discuss whether or not the Prozac was helping did!

I also did quite a bit of 'research on the research'.  Between the psychiatrist, the counsellor, my doctor and my personal self-work I was able to put together a simple picture of what 'depression' is about (I'm not suggesting depression is a simple thing - just that my model of it is - I like things simple).

At first I thought depression was about about feeling very sad; a sense of loss; a feeling of helplessness; because those were the symptoms I could readily see.  Drawing on what the professionals I saw told me, and my experience of other people with depression, I now see depression as more of an attempt at physical retraction by the brain.   My personal take is that:

Depression is :

• a normal reaction of the brain to an overwhelmingly painful emotional response


• a physical attempt to withdraw and disconnect which affects the physical location of our brain patterns and the chemical connections in our brain


• caused by an error of perception that tells us by doing this withdrawing and disconnecting  we  are protecting ourselves when in fact we are retreating into the arms of the enemy (ie the emotional responses we're trying to avoid)


• healed by setting up a 'healing cycle' in which the sufferer transitions backwards and forwards between feeling and releasing the emotional pain within and also building new, exciting life options in the world without.

Depression as a Protective Response that Goes Too Far

If you put your hand in boiling water and you retract your hand quickly due to the pain; would you call that 'abnormal'?  Initially depression works the same way.

Brain scans show that during depression cognitive electrical brain activity (ie our thinking) in our upper brains pulls back into the limbic or mammalian mid-brain.  The functioning of these upper minds, which work mostly in developing our possible futures and how we see the patterns of our external lives, is cut off.  I have often come across people who are angry at depressed people because they only 'think about themselves' - well, they don't have an immediate choice.  They just pulled back into a living nightmare and are trying to figure out how to escape it.

When our withdrawn thinking process stays stuck in the new, lower brain position we achieve a state of severe on-going mental isolation; refusing to bring ourselves out of it for fear of making things worse.  We do this, paradoxically, because our perception tells us there's still danger 'outside' whilst at the same time pulling our thinking down into the painful feelings we are trying to avoid.  We get stuck.



I have friends who live with the threat of deeper depression always dictating what they can do - a few years ago I was in the same situation.  A  person in this position can still live a worthwhile and productive life - but it's a restricted one.  Not everyone 'should' make the effort to get out of this trap but they should get themselves to a 'safe state' and use professional support where available; it's a personal choice that  depends on your situation.  If you live in a 'safe' place now emotionally you may not want to take the risk of doing the hard emotional self-work required to remove the threat of further depression altogether.  But if you do want to eradicate it, I believe you can.

How do you see your internal emotional responses and process?

Emotional responses, regardless of how intense they are, are designed to be felt and released - usually not all at once.  If you go through a life event that runs its course over a long period of time (eg a marriage) and acquire a set of emotional responses linked to important memories and value systems held in your brain,  suddenly losing the situation to which those emotional responses are attached is naturally going to mean you're going to grieve; get angry; want things back the way they were.  Unfortunately you have to feel the feelings involved, sometimes for months, until they're gone.

If, when these feelings come up for attention, you back away from them you then risk becoming depressed - unwittingly backing even further into them because your perception tells you they're 'outside', when in fact they're inside.  You are the only person having these responses, but they appear to colour the entire external world for you.

If instead of doing this wholesale withdrawal you deliberately go into your painful feelings with the intention of accepting, feeling and releasing them over a given period of time this undermines the depression process. You may still get depressed, but it will eventually be relieved and you can come back out of it.

How do you see your external world?  It's All About Options



I had an 'aha!' moment when reading Susan Jeffers' book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway: How to Turn Your Fear and Indecision into Confidence and Action in which she tells us we need to have at least nine areas of our lives under development at any one time so if one area comes to an end (albeit temporarily) we have other options to work on.

When my marriage came to an end in 1993 I only had two life areas I was focused on: home (my children) and work.  I had an identity crisis that lasted almost five years after the divorce.  I went to work but no longer knew why. I had married at 19 and to me outside of my marriage was 'nothing'.  In the years preceding the split I tried frantically to make the marriage work because I could see no options outside of it, it was the marriage - or nothing.  If you think this is an admirable and morally right position to be in, it's actually a very dangerous, potentially suicidally depressing approach to life.

I've read books by many respected authors who reinforce this message.  In order to reduce your chance of serious depression you must provide yourself with more external life options and to do this you must take repeated measured risks.  If instead of working on creating external options you are solely focused on avoiding external stimulation because it may lead to internal emotional pain you're just reinforcing the depressed state.

In order to get the thinking minds to return to our higher level brains we've got to take them out for experiential walks - we've got to show them experiential options are available other than the ones we've had so far.  We have to coax our minds out from their painful positions into the outside world.

By setting up a rhythmic approach that allows us some time to experience and release our trapped emotions and then move into new external options we can gradually eradicate the frozen state of depression from our lives.

Psychologist Steve Ilardi believes his approach can naturally heal depression:

Anti-Depression "Stone Age" Remedy