How to Cope With Seasonal Depression When the Clocks Fall Back

It's 5:40 on a weeknight and I've just walked in the door from work. A month ago, this was the best part of the day. Shoes on, kids out, straight to the park while the light held and nobody needed a jacket.

Now it's half dark and 46 degrees, and the slide is wet. We're not going to the park.

It's about to get darker. Daylight saving time ends this Sunday, Nov. 1, and by next week the sun will set before a lot of us leave work.

I'm a therapist, and every fall, right around now, I hear the same things in sessions. Clients show up tired and a little flat. They're short with their partners and unmotivated in a way they can't quite explain. Most of them don't connect it to the calendar. Colleagues see it too. It's as predictable as the leaves.

The internet has a name for it: seasonal depression. Google searches for the term have roughly doubled since late summer, and they usually peak in the third week of November. Plenty of people are typing some version of the same question: how to cope with seasonal depression.

I'd like to offer a different way to look at this stretch of the year. I think most of us have it backwards.

What people mean by "seasonal depression"

When most people say they have seasonal depression, they aren't describing a diagnosis. They mean the blah. The 5 p.m. darkness, the coat you don't want to zip, the feeling that Thanksgiving is still a month off and the holidays are even farther.

Clinical depression is a different animal, and so is seasonal affective disorder, a form of depression that follows the seasons. A therapist treats those very differently from a seasonal slump. If you're struggling to get out of bed, to function at work or to care for your kids, or the heaviness simply won't lift, that's more than a mood. Start with our depression resources, including Why Am I Feeling Depressed?.

For everyone else, read on.

You said you wanted routine

Think back to late August and September. Everyone was saying the same thing: I just want to get back into a routine. We will say it again in January, after the holidays. We crave structure when we don't have it.

Well, it's here. School is humming. Work is steady. There are no barbecues to plan and no flights to catch.

And what do we do with it? We start counting down to the next break.

The weeks between Columbus day and Thanksgiving are the least glamorous part of the year and the most consistent. Consistency is where everything meaningful and successful gets built: a marriage, a healthier body, a skill, a business.

Nothing changes overnight. Small gains add up, though. Get 1% better at something each day from Nov. 1 to New Year's, and on paper you'd finish about 80% ahead of where you started. Real life is messier than a percentage, but you get the idea.

The working mom's extra hour

For working moms, this stretch matters even more. A Pew Research Center survey of working parents, released in June, found that 62% of moms who work full time say balancing work and family is difficult, compared with 47% of dads. About half or more of full-time working parents told Pew they don't have enough time for hobbies, friends, exercise or simply relaxing.

Then there's the mental load: the running list of permission slips, doctor appointments and who-needs-new-boots-this-year. It never clocks out, and working mom burnout is often less about the job than about that list.

But the dark months hand us a great opportunity. Kids tend to go down earlier when it's pitch black at 5:30. The evening gets longer. For a lot of moms, there's an hour or two at the end of the day that didn't exist in July.

The question is what happens to it.

Don't hand the night to your phone

The kids are finally asleep, you sink into the couch, and the phone comes out. Ninety minutes later you've watched a stranger renovate her kitchen in Arizona and you feel worse than when you sat down.

Scrolling feels like rest. Most nights, it isn't. It's the fastest way to turn a free evening into a lost one, and it's a big reason this season ( or any) feels like a grind.

I'm not anti-phone. Just decide what the evening is for before you sit down, and give the phone a smaller piece of it.

Your marriage is waiting

If I could pick one place for working moms to put that time, it would be their relationship.

Summer is busy and social. The holidays bring family, travel and the delicate diplomacy of who's hosting what. November is quiet. For many couples, it's a stretch of the year when both of them are home at night with nowhere to be.

Use it. Eat dinner together after bedtime, even if it's leftovers standing at the counter. Take a walk. Talk about something other than logistics.

Couples who wait for a vacation to reconnect often wait a long time.

Or build something of your own

Not every evening has to be about someone else. Some moms I know have used exactly this window to start a side business. Others went back to a hobby they dropped when the first baby came.

Some go the physical route. Join the gym. Sign up for the 6 a.m. class. Or put on a coat after dinner and walk around the block. Yes, it's cold. You'll survive. Getting outside, even for 15 minutes, does much for your mood.

There's no right answer, and what works for one person won't work for another. Pick something, put it on the calendar and do it, even on the days you don't feel like it. Those are the days that count.

Enjoy it while it's quiet

We spend a lot of energy wishing the ordinary stretches away. Then the holidays arrive, the schedule blows up, and we're back to wishing for normal.

This is normal. It's here now, and it won't last long.

Six weeks from now, nobody will have a free evening. Right now, you do.

For couples who see themselves here

Maybe you read this and recognized your house. The short tempers after dinner. The evenings that vanish into separate screens. The sense that you're roommates running a household instead of partners. You don't have to wait for it to get worse to talk to someone.

At Bluebird Therapy Center, we work with couples across New Jersey by telehealth, so you can meet from home. If you've been looking for a therapist in New Jersey, book a free 15-minute call. Tell us what's going on, and we'll confirm your insurance. Prefer to talk first? Call or text (201) 431-0434.