no 13: creating an energizing "menu" for the winter blues
also known as: behavioral activation for seasonal affective season.
My heart sank on Sunday night when I saw a number of tiktoks about a joke from the host of the Golden Globes that reduced the plot of the Barbie movie to a story about a “plastic doll with big boobies”. However, director Greta Gerwig had a perfect response: “Barbie by her very construction has no character, no story, she’s there to be projected upon,”. A diplomatic answer that suggests that if that’s how men view the film, it’s quite telling about them.
Don’t call it a bounce back. Tennis star Naomi Osaka is returning to the court after the birth of her first child, and making a splash with a partnership with Bobbie while she does it. Osaka and Bobbie recently rolled out a campaign advocating for The Family and Medical Leave and minimum monthly benefit, and offering support grants in their quest to collect stories about the impact of paid family leave.
This week the American Red Cross announced a critical nation-wide blood shortage, citing the lowest number of donors in 20 years. Blood is critical for many high risk patients, including those with chronic conditions requiring regular transfusions. I’m signing up to donate next week, and would encourage you to do the same. if you sign up for an appointment, shoot me a note with your confirmation and I’ll buy ya coffee!
It’s week two of 2024. In Seattle, the unseasonably warm weather from December has taken an abrupt turn into cold rain, and we’re supposed to either get up to six inches of snow over the weekend (or, more likely, a torrential downpour because we all got our hopes up). Either way, we’re still hovering at around 8.5 daylight hours, made shorter by the clouds and gloom.
Things have been feeling a bit heavy — the chill in the air, the shorter days, the incessant cycle of overwhelming news, the list goes on. I always struggle with low mood and energy during the winter (hello, SAD Season!) but I’d be lying if I said that the dark, cold and rain this year haven’t wrecked even more havoc than usual on my feelings of well-being. I’m trying my best to power through, but the weather combined with work and personal stress, and I’m clinging to routine and stability by my (admittedly well manicured) fingernails.
It also seems like I’m not alone in that – tomorrow, January 12, is “quitter’s day”, the day most people are likely to abandon all those new habits and activities of their new year’s resolutions. A quick glance at my feeds and the general sentiment is “i’m doing my best, but….”…..It’s safe to say we’re all feeling some big feelings.
So today, as a follow up to the sad season guide, we’re doing a mini-deep dive into behavioral activation, a skill from cognitive behavioral therapy that is one of the most often recommended to manage seasonal affective mood and energy changes.
You can expect:
Background: What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Behavioral Activation?
Behavioral activation for beginners
How I use this framework to create an energy boosting “menu” of activities
The importance of adjusting the menu and plan to changing contexts
This framework informs a lot of my thinking on how I prioritize different activities in my life, and has been a major factor in how I manage my own mood and energy challenges during the big dark winters here in Seattle. I hope it will help you as well!
okay that’s it, love you !
Editor's note: this is the part where I call out that I’m not a mental health professional. I’m a professional communicator with a mental health research background. What that means: I’m sharing empirically research resources and references in a way that I hope is educational -a starting place in learning about something that could be useful. I am not making an individual recommendation for how you should handle a specific mental health issue. I highly recommend that if you are struggling with a serious mental health concern, that you reach out to a care provider or loved one.
COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY && BEHAVIORAL ACTIVATION 101:
If you’ve been around a while, you know I’m a big fan of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Originally developed for treatment of depression, CBT is a type of intervention that works to reduce mental health symptoms by challenging cognitive distortions (like thoughts, beliefs and attitudes) and their associated behaviors to improve emotion regulation and coping or problem solving strategies. Put simply: CBT focuses on changing negative thoughts and behaviors while building up positive thoughts and coping strategies.
I firmly believe that some of the skills I learned during my time in CBT for managing anxiety are some of the most productive things I have ever learned, and everyone could benefit from them. What’s not to love about understanding and productively regulating your thoughts, feelings and behaviors?!
Behavioral Activation, (BA) a specific CBT skill, is one of the most frequently recommended interventions for seasonal affective disorder symptoms. Research indicates that typical seasonal affective interventions like light box therapy were most effective when paired with CBT, to address both psychological and physiological aspects of seasonal affective disruptions.
BA is a structured behavior change approach, focused on increasing your engagement in positive, adaptive activities, and solving problems that limit your ability to engage with positive activities in order to reduce activities that maintain depressive symptoms.
In the context of seasonal mood and energy, behavioral activation can be an invaluable tool for disrupting the negative cycles of inactivity > low mood and energy > inactivity. Especially with the darkness of the winter months, many folks struggle with energy and motivation, to do the things we know deep down make us feel good: seeing friends, going outside, cooking a healthy dinner.
In other words: behavioral activation focuses on intentionally problem solving to help you do more things that make you feel good (even and especially when you *don’t feel like it*), and do fewer things that make you feel crappy. if you’re interested in the theory, this is a good video!
So, what does this look like in practice?
BEHAVIORAL ACTIVATION FOR BEGINNERS:
(Reference: this excellent University of Michigan worksheet)
1. IDENTIFY THE CYCLE. Often, writing things down helps identify patterns:
What is happening? events or situations like seasons or stressful life events
How do you feel? emotions!
What do you do (or not do?) behaviors
2. IDENTIFY HOW ACTIVITIES IMPACT YOUR MOOD: In order to know what to do to change a problem, it’s important to understand what’s going on. For a given amount of time (a few days to a week), track what you do every day and rate your associated mood, energy, or anxiety 0-10 (0 = low, 10 = high). You can do this with varying degrees of specificity: I’ve seen BA charts that have you track every hour you’re awake, some that just focus on morning, afternoon, evening.
3. IDENTIFY YOUR UP AND DOWN ACTIVITIES: What are the activities that help you feel more positive? Which ones do you feel more down, or negative? For me, I also like to consider the intensity and duration of these “ups” and “downs”: do I feel positive while I’m doing something, but it doesn’t last long? Does something really set me off and it lasts all day? All helpful insights!
4. CATEGORIZE YOUR “UP” ACTIVITIES: Different activities may directly impact mood directly (like social time, meditation or exercise or sleep), while some may also help us align with our life goals - the big juicy stuff that makes life good and exciting and full of purpose. These things are *so important* and should also be prioritized:
values
pleasure (play, or fun)
mastery of something that matters to you (in moderation, all you perfectionists!)
progress towards your goals.
Finding a balance of “UP” activities that cover all these bases can be critica to feeling grounded and balanced without being burnt out.
5. TRANSLATE VALUES INTO ACTIVITIES: Meaning can be a critical motivator for behavior, if we understand what it is that we value and how to turn those values into goal-directed behavior. Consider what you deeply value and want to prioritize. For example:
Family relationships: what kind of relationships do you want? What kind of mother, sister, friend, do you want to be? What is important to you about a good family?
Hobbies: How do you want to enjoy yourself? What relaxes you? Are there any interests you want to pursue?
Personal growth: how do you want to grow? What kind of skills do you want to develop?
Once you have a handle on what your values and priorities are, the next step is to turn values into activities or behaviors that help us fulfill those goals. For example:
VALUE: Friendship: I want to have a sense of belonging: have and keep close friends.
ACTIVITIES: I will proactively reach out to friends and maybe schedule a social event at my house once every quarter. I can call long distance friends while driving or walking.
6. MAKE A BIG LIST: Once you have your value-based activities, it’s time to round things out. Identify other “up” activities you care about and want to prioritize:
PLEASURE: activities we enjoy for the sake of the activity itself. Social activities like spending time with friends, parties, social clubs,
HOBBIES: “play” and other interest-based activities: reading, tv, dancing, music, games, crafts, sports, travel,
MASTRY: activities that involve skill development and accomplishment (it feels good to be good at something!) This can include jobs or other meaningful skill based activities like sports, arts, music, education or home improvement.
7. SET SMART GOALS: A smart goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Trackable. Plan activities and actions that support your values and goals and can be demonstrably measured (in moderation!) some pro tips:
Start with 2-3 of the *easier* activities.
Consider your schedule, other responsibilities and how reasonably you can complete an item. For example: travel and exploration is always a priority for me, but I’m unlikely to be able to jet off to an international trip in the middle of my workweek. I can make time for a new coffeeshop in a new part of town though, so I’ll be sure to pencil that in.
8. ACT FROM THE OUTSIDE IN: Avoid the low motivation trap by acting according to plan, rather than how you feel. We know that we can improve our mood by starting with actions and letting our mood follow. One helpful way? Compare how much you *think* you’ll feel after an activity versus how you *actually* feel, as evidence of just how much an activity can improve your mood.
Struggling with perfectionism or procrastination? Consider the “worst first” or “just 5 minutes” approaches - I personally find a combination of the two is enough to jump start me out of my low motivation and get up the energy to keep things moving.
Not sure how to make or break down big goals and values into things you can actually do? Actionable goals require breaking down a long term vision or objectives into smaller goals, milestones, actions and tasks to make them manageable.
These eight steps are a summarized version of a comprehensive behavioral activation exercise that may be conducted with a therapist during a course of CBT. I used a similar worksheet and set of exercises with my therapist in 2019 over the course of a few weeks. When done comprehensively, it’s a pretty in-depth process, focused on the alleviation of clinical mental health symptoms. For many people, the complete process might be overkill when considering normal day to day anxieties or mood changes. (a topic for another day: the overpathologizing of normal feelings of sadness and worry, and self-diagnosing on social media).
That being said, I personally find the thoughtful investigation of situations, behaviors, activities, values and goals to be helpful things to revisit from time to time, even and especially when things are generally going well. I find it unnervingly easy to run on autopilot, doing things I’ve done forever without critically examining whether those things are continuing to serve me, or continuously filling my plate with responsibilities without ensuring I am prioritizing the things that bring me joy or pleasure or support a goal or major health priority.
With that in mind, I think about the outcome of this kind of exercise more as a menu than as a prescription: it’s not about identifying and impossible schedule of activities you “have” to do. It’s also about problem solving to remove barriers that keep you from doing the things that make you feel your best. Sometimes that means doing less, in order to do more. (Low, Medium and high energy morning routines ring a bell to anyone??)
I’ll give you an example: Y’all know I’m a morning person. I love it. I take pride in it. Morning workouts set me up for my day, give me energy, and help me take care of my body. But this fall, actually doing morning workouts was a terrible experience. I felt good about having done a morning workout, and I know that they have been a key part of my mental health in winter's past. So, I did them, even when I didn’t feel like it (which, in this framework, is technically good! It is advice I have given!!)
But this fall, I realized that the combination of logistics to get to the classes, plus baby’s schedule for breastfeeding or pumping (have you ever tried to put on a sports bra when you need to pump? Because I actively would not recommend it!) , plus issues being able to get enough sleep and still wake up on time for class was actually adding more stress than it was alleviating.
The morning workouts technically checked a bunch of boxes on the list above ( hobby, check! Value-based, check! Energy giving “up” activity, check!) but currently don’t practically fit into my day to day life the same way they used to, and aren’t supporting other health behaviors I’m trying to prioritize. Sleep is *so* important to me right now, and so something had to change. I went back to my menu, and picked different options.
I adjusted by starting to take baby on some low-key walks in the morning instead of an early early workout, and shifting to afternoon workouts a few times a week. The change has enabled me to regularly get much closer to my 7+ hour per night sleep goal, and still prioritizes getting in both endorphins and enjoyment (plus way fewer late cancel charges for accidentally sleeping through my pilates class).
A win is a win is a win!
I’d love to hear how you all approach managing the complex interaction between feelings and behavior — especially as we make our ways through the hardest, darkest parts of winter before spring emerges. What’s your energy boosting menu of choice looking like these days? ! ✨🤍