By Sue Siebens
Some of us find the grey skies of winter affect how we feel. It usually starts in autumn and is better by spring. Somehow, the diminished hours of sunshine, outdoor activity and distraction settle into our being like a dense fog. This overcast expresses itself within each of us in a highly individual way. It is generally characterized as a persistent low mood, along with:
· Increased irritability and being less sociable
· Losing interest in everyday activities
· Tearfulness and feeling stressed or anxious
· Low self-esteem and experiencing feelings of guilt, despair and worthlessness
· Feeling lazy, sleepy and having difficulty concentrating [1]
Like the bears, we want to hibernate.
SAD—Seasonal Affective Disorder
Conventional treatments for SAD include Light Therapy, antidepressants, and talk therapy.
But like depressions with other names, our moods do not just arise from one event or thing. It is the result of many unprocessed emotions. When left untended, these feelings sink into the unconscious and reemerge as behaviors and attitudes whose origins are often untraceable. The darkness of winter and the weather add an environmental cue to trigger SAD, in particular.
For this reason, melancholy is more like a cake with many layers and sub-levels—not to be eaten in one bite. We need to slice it up into smaller, manageable pieces.
And while we may say that we are sad all the time, depression is like a wave, with moments that are lower than others. We’ll feel not great, but okay. An incident will strike us and send us into a trough of sadness. Then, we’re back to some level of okay again after a while.
These descending incidents are our way in.
When our feelings linger for over a few minutes, we are reexperiencing an unprocessed emotion. Emotions related to high-stress events will linger until we compel our bodies to finish the processing. Coping methods work temporarily. Talking about the feelings and identifying their origin is interesting but will not remove them from future episodes.
It is the body that experiences emotions and feelings. The body informs the conscious mind that an event has occurred that might need a response. The mind only reacts and is not the keeper or maintainer of emotions. It is the body that we must engage to help us out of depression.
Emotional Resolution, or EmRes, is an upcoming technology that evokes the natural mechanisms in the body to eliminate lingering emotions. By selecting recent episodes in our life, we can guide the body to its forgotten task.
The emotional relief is immediate. Once the unprocessed emotional memory is gone from the body, it can no longer be triggered. That piece of the depression cake is gone forever. It won’t come back tomorrow, next week or next year.
EmRes work is an exercise in resolving each unwanted emotion as it appears in our lives. Through sessions with a professional EmRes Practitioner and Self-EmRes, the waves of depression are lifted out of our lives so that we can enjoy the sunshine—even in winter.
Are you ready to take the BLUE out of your winter?
References
1. Symptoms - Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder-sad/symptoms/
Image by Khusen Rustamov from Pixabay
About Sue
Sue Siebens uses Emotional Resolution, EmRes, to work at a fundamental level, where the roots of the illness, fear, and pain can be accessed and resolved. Sue teaches and writes to raise awareness about this new technology so that as many people as possible can find relief and peace in their life. Sue is based in Ft Worth, Tx, USA.