The Changing Seasons of Our Emotions
Fall officially arrived on September 22 this year. With most schools starting right after Labor Day many people felt that was the day that fall started for them. But if you didn’t have any school age children you might have been able to stay in denial that summer was officially over because of the heat and humidity that seemed to stick around for awhile.
And now, (sigh), it’s October already, can you believe it? Where in the world did my summer go? Now let me ask you a question. Do you think there are people out there that ever lament, “Where did my winter go, I’m not ready for spring!” Personally, I find it hard to believe they are out there —especially those that live in any northern states! But, maybe there are, who knows? I just know, I am NOT one of them!
I will say though, I am VERY grateful for the extra long season of warm weather we were able to enjoy so I guess I should keep the complaining to a bare minimum— especially since my last blog was on turning the negative into positive. Okay, I guess I better go grab a sweater and read that again!
So, when fall comes around what emotions do you feel? Do you approach it with a giddy anticipation of exciting things to come? Or do you have a sense of doom and gloom? I’m sure that you have observed how differently people approach this season with vastly different views.
There are those that as soon as Sept 1 comes around, their house is plastered with pumpkins and fall decor everywhere. They can’t get enough pumpkin lattes, candles, desserts, you name it, if it’s pumpkin — they’ve got it. Others start kicking and screaming at the first sign of “back to school” supplies. They feel like they need to hang black drapes over the windows to indicate their sense of mourning until May comes around again. Okay, that’s probably an over exaggeration, at least I hope so, but you get the idea right?
But seriously, have you ever taken notice of how you feel at different times of the year? And have you noticed if those same feelings come around at the same time every year? “What’s going on you might say“.
A leading Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. John Sharp who wrote a book called, “The Emotional Calendar,” believes he has some answers. In his practice of over 20 years he has seen many patients who have specific and deep emotional reactions tied to the calendar. In his book he reveals how our emotional lives are profoundly shaped by the seasons.
We all have our own personal experiences that have conditioned our emotional responses and we might not even realize it. We just know that at particular months, holidays or seasons our mood changes in a way that sometimes we don’t understand and can’t quite pinpoint as to the reason.
It can be quite troublesome when certain times of the year come around and especially at holidays when you realize that your emotions do not coincide with what you think you should be feeling. These connections are often tied to memories of significant events in our lives (such as the loss of a loved one, parental divorce, personal struggles, or holiday-related family gatherings). Or, it might have been a pattern that played out over a period of many years and if those years were early in life it was especially bound to have left an impact. These emotions then seep from the past into the present.
Dr. Sharp explains that everyone has “emotional hotspots” in time that are indelibly tied to their past. That what is happening is a form of pattern recognition. Your mind is making sense of your experiences without you really thinking about it. For adults, memories both positive and negative become “triggers” that causes feelings from the past to emerge.
Some emotions lay dormant until your senses stir up the memories. It might be a certain smell, a song that you hear, or walking outside and feeling the chill in the air. Whatever it is, we all have these experiences that are unique to us. Throughout my childhood I always enjoyed going to Vacation Bible School in the summer. To this day if I smell burlap instantly my mind is transported back to being a kid sitting at a table excited about making some craft that I would be so proud of. But I have also had where when a certain “oldie” starts playing on the radio a feeling of loneliness can come over me bringing me back to being a teenager with a broken heart. It’s amazing how our brain encodes our unique memories, catalogs those collections and cross references those events.
It’s a great feeling when the memories are pleasant. But what do we do when the memories are not so pleasant? While we cannot change the events that are in our past we can change our response to those memories. Each one of us have all lived through emotionally hard and trying times. And to be honest, some people have had more than their fair share. But our brains do not need to be chained to those memories keeping us a prisoner to the circumstances of the past.
I would like to share with you an example of how a family that is close to me took a sad situation and took a deliberate action ahead of time so that it would not become an “emotional hotspot” for them. My friends sister fell ill with cancer and when it became apparent that nothing was going to be able to cure her, my friend took the sister into her home and cared for her until she passed away. As you can imagine the whole family went though months of emotional turmoil leading up to her eventually passing away in the fall.
Thanksgiving was going to be the first holiday without the sister. My friend knew it would be too emotionally hard on the family to sit in the same living room and celebrate the holiday where their loved one had just died weeks before. Her solution was to find a place they could rent that provided a place to cook a meal, play games and go on a hayride. She had made a decision to start a new tradition. By allowing the family to continue to share memories of their loved one and laugh with each other about the good times of the past, they were also making new memories. Thereby helping them all to cope with the loss. That was 10 years ago and this Thanksgiving will be the 11th year they have kept the “new” tradition up. Something that was born out of sorrow has now turned into a special time for the family.
Recognizing how your mood is affected by personal, cultural and environmental changes throughout the year, the better you will be able to deal with them. A negative mindset does not need to be set in stone. Create new traditions and new memories. Start a new ritual that feels right and good for you thereby creating a process whereby you can enjoy the season that is at hand.
