Help me cope with shorter days
From everyday questions to more complex problems, we’re asking the experts to lend us a hand. Throughout the series "Professional Help," we’ll hear some direct advice, for us not-so-direct Minnesotans.
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Audio transcript
NINA MOINI: The sun came up at 6:59 this morning in St. Paul. And it'll go down around 4:54 this afternoon. If that brings you down at all, this next installment of Professional Help might be for you. In this series, we take everyday questions, big life transitions, and whatever's in between. And we ask the experts to lend us a hand. Here's producer Alanna Elder.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ALANNA ELDER: Sometimes I have a bad attitude about the post.daylight savings slide into winter. Like, if the sun goes down before I've stepped outside, I take it personally. Last weekend, our clocks jumped backward an hour. And now my bus in the morning is flooded with light. The sky is fully blue by the time I'm crossing the Mississippi River. But the whole time in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, we're going to pay for this later when it gets dark before 5 o'clock .
That's obviously a negative way of looking at a change in seasons. I know winter is not a personal attack. It's not a bill coming due. And it's not a shock. It happens every year. But it is an adjustment. I recently talked with someone who experienced that in a big way.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: Now, I grew up in a place that there's no variations throughout the year. So being in a place that now you can have just a few hours in a day when you can get daylight, was kind of a big surprise to me.
ALANNA ELDER: In 2008, Cecilia Bloomquist moved from Brazil to Cook County. It's the northernmost corner of Minnesota's North Shore.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: I am a winter fanatic. I love winter. So I wanted to understand what could I do to stay energized and being able to do the things that I love about winter. I was noticing more cravings for carbs, more sugary things. I felt more sleepy throughout the day. And all that now has to do with the changes on our exposure to the sunlight.
ALANNA ELDER: Sunlight affects a part of our brain. It's called the hypothalamus. It controls our body's internal clocks, partly by releasing chemicals that can rev up our energy or wind it down.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: When it's day time, it kind of helps us to build up some serotonin, which keeps us up and going. And then when we have more lack of sunlight, then we create more melatonin, which helps us to be more sleepy and being able to rest at night. So I needed to find a way to get that sunlight exposure when it was available to me.
ALANNA ELDER: Getting outside helped Cecilia. But she's a therapist, so she was also learning how to help others. That includes clients who can't get out in the sun as much, or who feel the lack of it more severely.
The winter blues can range from feeling off to a type of depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. Maybe you've heard of a sad lamp. That's one way Cecilia says you can boost your mood.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: There are some research on light therapy. And the research seems really promising. It needs to be the right one, so it needs to be like another one that is at least 10,000 long or more. It seems like the better results now if someone has that exposure early in the morning for about 30 minutes in the day, that can really boost up your serotonin production and minimize the melatonin piece.
Light therapy is not something you can do a once and done. It's something that it would give you a result as you do it for that day that you did. So you get it in a consistent basis.
ALANNA ELDER: She contrasts that with psychotherapy or talk therapy, where results take longer to show. But they also last longer. That too, she says, can be helpful for dealing with seasonal depression.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: If there is any listeners that are really struggling with depression, this is a good time to go and get help before it gets worse. Don't wait too long. Another thing that I would suggest is talking with your primary care provider.
So when you're going to do your annual exams, bringing this up. Primary care is very comfortable talking through any type of mood-related issues. And they have great resources that they can support you with.
ALANNA ELDER: There are also simple things that can make a difference, like the daily steps of caring for yourself. Cecilia says not to skip out on those.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: Having a good sleep routine, you change your clothes. So it's telling your body that it's time to be up, or it's time to sleep. And it doesn't need to be fancy clothes, but you're putting something different, just to show that shift.
All those things that are our daily self-care habits we have a tendency to want to skip when our mood is down, those are really important things to stick to. I suggest having an accountability partner. I know sometimes it's hard to find the right person, but one person that you can check in once in a while or talk about how you were doing, how you took care of yourself during the day.
ALANNA ELDER: In general, she says, spending time with others, even when you feel tired, is important. At the same time, having more quiet and more stillness is part of what winter's all about, whether you're a tree, or a squirrel, or a stressed out human. And embracing that can help, too.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: I am fortunate now of living in an area that is full of artists. They talk about how much they like the winter season, just for the introspective portion of that and how pretty it can look.
I always suggest now to clients to look at the window when it's snowing and just watch that snowing as a meditative practice without judging what they're seeing and just really kind of watching the snow fall down and just being in that moment.
[SIMON AND GARFUNKEL, "THE SOUND OF SILENCE] Hello, darkness, my old friend
ALANNA ELDER: For Professional Help, I'm Alanna Elder.
(SINGING) I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
ANNOUNCER: Support comes from Breck School, an Episcopal, independent college-preparatory school focused on intellectual curiosity, self-knowledge, and social responsibility for students pre-K through 12. Breck is holding an open house on Saturday, November 8. More information at breckschools.org.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ALANNA ELDER: Sometimes I have a bad attitude about the post.daylight savings slide into winter. Like, if the sun goes down before I've stepped outside, I take it personally. Last weekend, our clocks jumped backward an hour. And now my bus in the morning is flooded with light. The sky is fully blue by the time I'm crossing the Mississippi River. But the whole time in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, we're going to pay for this later when it gets dark before 5 o'clock .
That's obviously a negative way of looking at a change in seasons. I know winter is not a personal attack. It's not a bill coming due. And it's not a shock. It happens every year. But it is an adjustment. I recently talked with someone who experienced that in a big way.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: Now, I grew up in a place that there's no variations throughout the year. So being in a place that now you can have just a few hours in a day when you can get daylight, was kind of a big surprise to me.
ALANNA ELDER: In 2008, Cecilia Bloomquist moved from Brazil to Cook County. It's the northernmost corner of Minnesota's North Shore.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: I am a winter fanatic. I love winter. So I wanted to understand what could I do to stay energized and being able to do the things that I love about winter. I was noticing more cravings for carbs, more sugary things. I felt more sleepy throughout the day. And all that now has to do with the changes on our exposure to the sunlight.
ALANNA ELDER: Sunlight affects a part of our brain. It's called the hypothalamus. It controls our body's internal clocks, partly by releasing chemicals that can rev up our energy or wind it down.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: When it's day time, it kind of helps us to build up some serotonin, which keeps us up and going. And then when we have more lack of sunlight, then we create more melatonin, which helps us to be more sleepy and being able to rest at night. So I needed to find a way to get that sunlight exposure when it was available to me.
ALANNA ELDER: Getting outside helped Cecilia. But she's a therapist, so she was also learning how to help others. That includes clients who can't get out in the sun as much, or who feel the lack of it more severely.
The winter blues can range from feeling off to a type of depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. Maybe you've heard of a sad lamp. That's one way Cecilia says you can boost your mood.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: There are some research on light therapy. And the research seems really promising. It needs to be the right one, so it needs to be like another one that is at least 10,000 long or more. It seems like the better results now if someone has that exposure early in the morning for about 30 minutes in the day, that can really boost up your serotonin production and minimize the melatonin piece.
Light therapy is not something you can do a once and done. It's something that it would give you a result as you do it for that day that you did. So you get it in a consistent basis.
ALANNA ELDER: She contrasts that with psychotherapy or talk therapy, where results take longer to show. But they also last longer. That too, she says, can be helpful for dealing with seasonal depression.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: If there is any listeners that are really struggling with depression, this is a good time to go and get help before it gets worse. Don't wait too long. Another thing that I would suggest is talking with your primary care provider.
So when you're going to do your annual exams, bringing this up. Primary care is very comfortable talking through any type of mood-related issues. And they have great resources that they can support you with.
ALANNA ELDER: There are also simple things that can make a difference, like the daily steps of caring for yourself. Cecilia says not to skip out on those.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: Having a good sleep routine, you change your clothes. So it's telling your body that it's time to be up, or it's time to sleep. And it doesn't need to be fancy clothes, but you're putting something different, just to show that shift.
All those things that are our daily self-care habits we have a tendency to want to skip when our mood is down, those are really important things to stick to. I suggest having an accountability partner. I know sometimes it's hard to find the right person, but one person that you can check in once in a while or talk about how you were doing, how you took care of yourself during the day.
ALANNA ELDER: In general, she says, spending time with others, even when you feel tired, is important. At the same time, having more quiet and more stillness is part of what winter's all about, whether you're a tree, or a squirrel, or a stressed out human. And embracing that can help, too.
CECILIA BLOOMQUIST: I am fortunate now of living in an area that is full of artists. They talk about how much they like the winter season, just for the introspective portion of that and how pretty it can look.
I always suggest now to clients to look at the window when it's snowing and just watch that snowing as a meditative practice without judging what they're seeing and just really kind of watching the snow fall down and just being in that moment.
[SIMON AND GARFUNKEL, "THE SOUND OF SILENCE] Hello, darkness, my old friend
ALANNA ELDER: For Professional Help, I'm Alanna Elder.
(SINGING) I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
ANNOUNCER: Support comes from Breck School, an Episcopal, independent college-preparatory school focused on intellectual curiosity, self-knowledge, and social responsibility for students pre-K through 12. Breck is holding an open house on Saturday, November 8. More information at breckschools.org.
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