SAD this February?

Poor old February.

It gets such a bad rap.

Month of dark evenings, dank mornings and dreadful colds.

Perhaps it’s not surprising people feel ‘seasonally affected’ this month.

If you’re one of the half a million sufferers  of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in the UK (or any other part of the Northern Hemisphere at the moment), read on!

By changing your thinking, you can change your life –  once you have the self-awareness, skills and resources to know how to do this.

Once you believe that your mood is caused by the weather or lack of daylight, you immediately feel powerless to feel any better.

The Thrive Programme teaches you how to feel more powerful in this regard: we might not be able to change the weather or jet off to a sunny beach on a whim, but we can change our perspective and learn to manage our thinking better, despite the weather.

SAD be gone.

There are various treatments available for SAD including light box treatment, medication and therapeutic interventions such as life-changing Thrive Programme.

5 Tips to help you feel less SAD

• ‘Eat a rainbow’ – this is not the time to start a diet so much as to focus on ensuring your diet is supporting your body & strengthening your immune system. Eating a colourful selection of fruit and veggies will boost your mental well being and your vitamin intake, especially mood-boosting B vitamins and D.
• See a sofa-bound evening of mooching and misery coming on?  Why not turn this into a cosy winter’s evening of movies and munching instead. Time to embrace ‘cosy’ rather than lapsing into lethargy.
• Endorphins are the enemy of SAD! Get out there and get some exercise – you will thank yourself for it. Whether it’s a gym class, game of football, quick walk to the shops, your endorphins will definitely raise your mood. And exercise in daylight is going to supercharge the benefits. The less you want to do it, the more you will benefit.
• Challenges can be re-framed as ‘opportunities’ to change your thinking. So if you draw the curtains to  another murky day (and that’s likely), realise that this only has as much impact on your thinking as you allow it to.
• Hang out with happy people! This can have a huge impact on your own mood.

The best thing about February? It’s only 28 days until March and then Spring Fever will kick in.