Seasonal Deficit Disorder - Summer

[Puce Moment]

Does anyone else really struggle in the summer with depression and anxiety? In other words, I am aware that people naturally get SDD issues in Winter because of the weather, and continual Blade Runner rain that we now seem to have. But does anyone get unnecessarily and irrationaly unhappy in the summer months?

It is something we have to deal with in our marriage because I plummet so dramatically. It makes sense and it doesn't make sense.

SENSE:
- I'm a ginger Irish with shite parents so there was usually at least one serious sunburn incident every year growing up. Blood blisters - the lot.
- I'm a tad over weight so get really hot and sweaty in the summer. I don't understand how those people on packed trains in London going to work aren't soaked and honking by the time they get to their offices in that height of summer morning heat.
- For many years I worked casually and from contract to contract in Higher Education. This was a good earner for me, but the worked dried up in the summer unless I could get an admissions gig. This always meant that my summers were an anxious hotbed of poverty and half-arsed job hunting.
- As a kid, school was a bit of sanctuary from home and the estate I grew up on. Trying to persuade my Mum that spending the summer watching explicit video nasties in the front room with the curtains drawn was a good idea was always quite the fight.

NONSENSE:
- Nice weather - stick on your shorts and flip-flops and chill out Daddio.
- I now work PERMANENTLY in Higher Education which means that my summers are actually the quietest time of the year. I barely ever go into work and it should be this giant siesta of happiness and frolicking. Instead, I end up off my nut on whatever is to hand and I have to have counselling. What are you talking about Willis?
- I've lost a lot of weight recently and am less sweaty and anxious, helped by Prozac and Valium. Surely the summer should be a time to savour the outdoors?
- I own a house with a really fucking lovely garden that everyone comments on and should be out there, but instead I am inside watching The Expanse and hoping that the weather will change.
- I am now feeling a lot better because the weather changed and the nights are drawing in, but this also means that the Uni term is about to start which is hellish and I'm not keen on my job and so I should be feeling all sorts of panic like my colleagues. Instead I just feel serene and positive because the trees will shed their leaves and the dark and cold will validate my constant desire to be inside and away from everyone.

Anyone? No?

[solidified gruel merchant]

I think your third 'sense' point explains it.
I spent a few winters in grotty houses booting up heroin and smoking crack, then wandering the streets trying to make money and feeling generally out of sorts. I still get those flashbacks on damp grey winter days looking at miserable concrete and litter and graffiti and industrial estates. That feeling like you'll never get warm. The summer never seems to bring flashbacks even though I must have been doing it then too!

[Blue Jam]

- I'm a ginger Irish with shite parents so there was usually at least one serious sunburn incident every year growing up. Blood blisters - the lot.

I'm not ginge but I'm one quarter Irish and one eighth Danish so my skin is translucent blue and I only avoid burning it by hiding under a layer of SPF 50 for four months of the year. Even then I don't tan, but I do get loads of freckles that make me look like I've been sunbathing under a sieve. It would be better if they all just joined up and looked like something approaching a tan...

Anyway, this stuff is an absolute godsend- infinitely less greasy and shiny than even the posh expensive sunscreens I've tried, and it's only six quid at Sainsbury's:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nivea-Face-Shine-Control-Moisturizer/dp/B07BCTT9BS

Still, I hate the feeling of having a shower and then feeling fresh and clean for all of five minutes before you have to cover yourself in sunscreen again, necessitating another shower before bedtime. In July I went to Berlin figuring it would be a nice time for a holiday, not too hot and sunny... ha. I think it'll be Reykjavik again next year...

[Sebastian Cobb]

Got aggy when it was bastard hot and bastard busy trying to get around Edinburgh fringe.

[NJ Uncut]

No mate that's for aliens

Love summer. Me and my pal Mr Sun meet up whenever he is free. End up darker, happier, unfatigable.

I mean, for SADS winter you can get these massive lights that supposedly give you what Mr Sun provides gratis.

What's the summer equivalent? A fan and big black curtains? A hat?

[Ham Bap]

I hate the summer and generally any hot sunny days.
I'm at my happiest when it's windy/raining sideways and winter.
Snow is a godsend too.

I've often dreamt about becoming, instead of a storm chaser, but a winter chaser and just travelling around the world and living wherever it's the worst of winter.

One of the issues with hot weather is that we generally live where it's very cold so houses are built to keep it as hot as fucking possible, also with no air conditioning. Summer therefore becomes fucking unbearable.

I always feel a pressure to do stuff outdoors too when it's sunny. I'd rather just sit at home, thanks.

Anyway it's coming up to the next 6 months of the year, praying for a harsh winter.

[imitationleather]

I find summer is depressing, autumn worse, winter's bleak and don't even get me started on spring...

[Jumblegraws]

I hate the summer and generally any hot sunny days.
I'm at my happiest when it's windy/raining sideways and winter.
Snow is a godsend too.

I've often dreamt about becoming, instead of a storm chaser, but a winter chaser and just travelling around the world and living wherever it's the worst of winter.

One of the issues with hot weather is that we generally live where it's very cold so houses are built to keep it as hot as fucking possible, also with no air conditioning. Summer therefore becomes fucking unbearable.

I always feel a pressure to do stuff outdoors too when it's sunny. I'd rather just sit at home, thanks.

Anyway it's coming up to the next 6 months of the year, praying for a harsh winter.

This is pretty much me, with the exception that I love the outdoors and especially so in autumn. I live in Fife and currently still sleeping with the window opening as it's still a bit too warm for me.

I'll add that I also love waking up to it still being dark. So much easier on the eyes.

[kittens]

christ almighty the cold and darkness makes me want to die. how can you dislike bright sunny hot days. they are the best days. no one likes the rain or winter. if it wasn't for christmas in the middle of the shit bit literally everybody in the uk would have leapt off some tall local landmark by now.

[EOLAN]

Am generally a night winter guy but am able to survive summer.

Don't have a convertible so I find the worse most uncomfortable car journeys are those on hot sunny days. Always made me nauseous as a child.

Summer is also when most of the sporting calendar closes down; especially in the odd years although I am quite happy with cricket to get me by. Need more 5 day matches than this the 100 and 20 over stuff though. Get most of my bugs and flus in summer but mainly I am just  a contrarian. 

[Sebastian Cobb]

Isn't this one of those Jimmy Hill diseases like being allergic to radio waves or a case of the Chinny Reckons.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I like the Summer, but it can be difficult to enjoy the hot weather without thoughts of global warming intruding on the fun.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I enjoy the summer and also on a primal level love any prospect of a grim hard winter, bring it the fuck on. Awesome. Cheers.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I bet cab loves winter as jumpers conceal unironed shirts and hats conceal baldness.

[Buelligan]

I hate the British climate.  It's all shit except about three days a year when it's proper cold with sun and snow or proper warm and stays that way.  When I lived there I used to feel like it was good when it wasn't raining and over 10c.  Shit climate but you get good trees and plants with that, which is a good thing.

Sometimes I wonder what will happen post-brexit, if I have to return there, then I remember the climate and I know I will not return there, whatever happens.  Life is simply too short.

[shiftwork2]

Sort of inevitable that this thread would veer off into winter woes but it's not mentioned often enough that it's a season of two halves.  December's fun and cosy and joyous, January onwards and the murk and chill makes me want to get put into a cardboard box like a Blue Peter tortoise.

I've grown to like summer, and warm weather in general.  I hated it as a pale indoorsy kid.  I can remember obsessively keeping the living room curtains closed on hot days.  Dunno, perhaps it was because I stopped getting hayfever.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

STOP being afraid
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Re: Seasonal Deficit Disorder - Summer
« Reply #14 on: Today at 04:01:36 PM »
Quote
I hate the British climate.  It's all shit except about three days a year when it's proper cold with sun and snow or proper warm and stays that way

Certainly in the South they have very decent weather these days, as evidenced by the increasing standard of white wine being produced.

Anecdotally, back in the 1990s I remember Northern France being spectacularly grey and bleak from about mid September onwards.

As for the South of France, the metronomic afternoon thunderstorms in the summer must be a pain in the arse.

[bgmnts]

I got so badly burnt this summer in Morocco I had yellow blisters all over my belly and tits and moving even an inch was agony. This was thew case for a full week.

Anyway yeah summer sucks balls, everyone is happier for some reason but its just really hot and annoying.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I got so badly burnt this summer in Morocco I had yellow blisters all over my belly and tits and moving even an inch was agony. This was thew case for a full week.

Anyway yeah summer sucks balls, everyone is happier for some reason but its just really hot and annoying.

Some geezer at work fell asleep in Dubai and got burns that may well scar.

[bgmnts]

Usually i'd laugh at that because thats funny but now its happened to me its fucking horrible and not funny.

[Sebastian Cobb]

He basically deserves it for holidaying in Dubai.

[imitationleather]

Anyone remember the poster off here who fell asleep on the beach during his honeymoon in Jamaica and burnt himself something horrible? Posted photos of the damage as well.

[buttgammon]

A big realisation I've had recently is that I have seasonal affective disorder in the summer. It's not that I don't like a nice sunny day (although it's better if it's not blazing hot), but there's something about summer that I really struggle with. I was really depressed over the summer and it's only really lifted now we've started to move into autumn.

[Emma Raducanu]

I used to love September. The summer just passed, now a hazy memory of love and sex and ice cold beer; of breakfast in the garden, music and the smell of freshly mowed lawns. The nights now drawing in earlier and a full winter to look forward to. I loved it going back to university and going for looong walks in the lakes, the crisp bite in the air, des lynam in his wooly sweater and Christmas round the corner.

[H-O-W-L]

I pretty much always collapse into an emotional black hole at the peak of July (around my birthday) and have to spend August and September recovering emotionally and mentally. This year is no exception.

[Lordofthefiles]

Mid-November slump every year.
The cruel darkness and perpetually wet pavements reflecting all the streetlights and headlamps. It's like living in a bleak montage from Midnight Cowboy.

Come summer, can't sleep when there's even the slightest chink of light in the sky. End up exhausted and coffee riddled from May to September.


My solution in autumn/winter is to fire up the SAD lamp and meditate for half an hour every day.
My solution in the summer is to take drugs, drink, sweat and get ever closer to psychosis, hoping that autumn arrives before the screaming ab-dabs do.

Life eh? Cuh!

[poo]

Climate in Southern Britain is perfect. I love it.

[Noonling]

I am utterly indifferent to the seasons.

Hope this helps :)

[Buelligan]

As for the South of France, the metronomic afternoon thunderstorms in the summer must be a pain in the arse.

Yep, we get them about once a year, it's a nightmare.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I hate the British climate.  It's all shit except about three days a year when it's proper cold with sun and snow or proper warm and stays that way.  When I lived there I used to feel like it was good when it wasn't raining and over 10c.  Shit climate but you get good trees and plants with that, which is a good thing.

Sometimes I wonder what will happen post-brexit, if I have to return there, then I remember the climate and I know I will not return there, whatever happens.  Life is simply too short.

Yeah, but you miss the good old British BANTZ though, hence why you keep coming here to get your fix. You simply don't get banter of this calibre from the French.