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| Call of the wild - a little time outdoors can improve both your mood and sleep patterns. Not related, I took this pic up the Orongorongo Valley (NZ) a few years ago - check out all the epiphytes hanging in this tree! Image: Louise Thomas |
Life has delivered me a few sucker punches this year. So
much so that I have been unusually paralysed – words not written, books half
read, drawings started and not finished, exercise not taken, Sunday baking for
school lunches forgotten about, etc.
In other words, a case of situational depression that
probably isn’t going to go away by itself.
In desperation I went to my GP to enquire about counselling,
but he wanted to put me on antidepressants – counselling was mind-blowingly
expensive he informed me. Drugs were effective and cheap, and a nine-month
course would have me back to my “old self” tout
de suite.
Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, I’m cursed by being
an atheist (no higher power to turn to), a part-time cynic (the self-help books I’ve been
reading are mostly stress-inducing crap filled with unobtainable standards),
and I also carry a healthy suspicion about the side-effects of long-term drug
taking.
The problem with drugs is I just don’t like messing with my
brain – finely-honed tool that it is. Despite wanting to flip an off switch on
some of the anguish it’s causing me right now.
And the problem with counselling is I doubt another human
being’s intellectual capacity to provide unique insights into my particular
problems. Not that my problems are unique, far from it.
Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that my naïve happyish
“old self” might have been part of the problem in the first place. Perhaps a
return to it is not actually desirable.
Finally, I suspect that, like death and taxes, some grief in life is unavoidable.
But I’m sick of wallowing – life is too precious to waste on
unhealthy self-absorption. Speaking of crap self-help books, endorsement of
wallowing is just one of the reasons I think the concept of personal dairies or
journaling is just over-rated introspection of the worst kind (it’s worse than
the scrap-booking craze, which thankfully seems to have died down, for wasting
one’s life). Not that writing isn’t cathartic – indeed there are some studies
that suggest that targeted, time-limited, writing about your problems helps to
objectify them and suggest solutions. It’s the reason for this blog post
actually. Just don’t wallow. There’s a whole world out there way more
fascinating than you are – go be in it.
I accept that I can’t change past events – I had no control
over them in any case (actually a feeling of lack of control over events and
other’s behaviours is an identified cause of depression – that feeling of
helplessness. In most cases we can only seek to control our own responses and
attitudes towards events/other people).
Being a science writer, I’ve decided to tackle my emotional
problems based on actual scientific studies. After all, a few rogue studies and
dishonest researchers aside, if you can’t trust peer-reviewed journals, who can
you trust?
The call of the wild
Henry David Thoreau once famously wrote: “I went to the
woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts
of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I
came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Ignoring the fact that Thoreau was in walking distance to a
village and had his laundry sent out for cleaning (he was really glamping for two years while he drafted Walden), the
idea of getting back to nature to combat life’s malaise is not misplaced at
all.
The quote reminds me of a study I wrote about a couple of
years back, Great outdoors resets biological clocks,
where researchers at the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the University
of Colorado, showed that when exposed to natural light without the interference
of artificial lights, humans’ internal biological clocks will tightly
synchronise to a natural, midsummer light-dark cycle – they effectively cured
insomnia by taking subjects camping for a week (no torches or smart phones
allowed).[1]
So what’s a sleep study got to do with helping my
situational depression? Quite a lot, as far as I’m concerned. The researchers
found that in the wild, melatonin (the stuff that makes you feel sleepy) levels
rise in the early evening and then taper off before a person wakes up. But in
our modern world, melatonin levels tend to decrease to daytime levels about two
hours after we wake up. “In other words, our biological night extends past our
wake time and contributes to why many of us are at our sleepiest soon after we
wake up in the morning. With exposure to natural light, that decrease in
melatonin shifts to the last hour of sleep time, then brain arousal rises
earlier, likely helping people feel more alert in the morning,” writes lead
researcher Professor Kenneth Wright.
It has also been well established that exposure to sunlight
increases serotonin levels, which could make you happier. A bit of a turn
outside is usually recommended for those suffering from SAD or Seasonal
Affective Disorder – but recommending a brisk walk may seem shallow in the face
of over-whelming anxiety and would hardly fill the pages of a self-help book
would it?
Frankly, I could do with feeling more alert, getting some
better quality sleep, and a bit of sunlight. In practice, it’s midwinter here
in New Zealand .
Camping is definitely out – even if I knew where the tent I haven’t seen for
four years was. But is there a modified form?
I’ll go for a trot along the beach and have a think about
it. See if I can’t come up with a solution.
Funny update: On the way out to find myself, I was pulled
over by the local constabulary at 7.45am in the morning on some deserted back
streets for failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign on a clear-visibility
T intersection. They must have been bored staking out the intersection, I
couldn’t even imagine what they were pulling me over for – I drive like a
deferential Nana. I was given a $150 fine and 25 demerit points on my licence
(my first ever in over 30 years of driving). Who said the universe doesn’t have
a perverse sense of humour. I’m too scared to leave the house now.
I’ll try something else and report back – perhaps a few
Terry Pratchett books or Monty Python for a bit of laughter therapy in the safety of my lounge.
#situational depression, #making happiness
[1] K.P.
Wright et al. (2013). Entrainment of
the human circadian clock to the natural light-dark cycle. Current Biology. Published online August 1, 2013. doi:
10.1016/j.cub.2013.06.039. Print edition: September 7, 2013; Vol.184 #5 (p. 10)
