6 Tips to Help Summer Depression

The kids are out of school. Your neighbors are whistling on their way to work, greeting you with an enthusiasm peculiar to warm weather. And if you hear one more person ask you about your summer vacation plans, you will throw a US map and atlas at them.

You don’t mean to be grumpy. But darn it, you are miserable in the oppressive heat, your kids are home for 90 consecutive days, and you are don’t have the stamina to pretend you are giddy that summer has arrived.

Sound familiar?

You’re not alone. After publishing a piece recently about the trigger of Memorial Day for me — reminding me that most of my relapses have happened in the summer months — I’ve heard from so many readers that fear this time of year for the same reason: summer depression.

Ian A. Cook, MD, the director of the Depression Research Program at UCLA names five causes of summer depression in an article published by our friends over at WebMD.

Therese Borchard writes the Beyond Blue blog on Beliefnet.

Replace the triggers

In their book, Extinguishing Anxiety, authors Catherine Pittman and Elizabeth Karle explain that in order to retrain the brain from associating a negative event to a trigger that creates anxiety, we must generate new connections by exposure. So, for me, I need to replace memories of relapses in the summer (which trigger anxiety for me during the summer) with positive events during the summer. I mentioned in a recent piece, that one way I’m doing this is by getting involved in my kids’ swim team because that generates feelings of peace and happiness. And in so doing, being around the pool won’t remind me as much of the days when I sat slumped over in the baby pool section, unable to carry out a conversation with anyone.