The other night my husband asked me: “Has this time change made you feel really depressed the last few days?”
Yes! We have both been feeling kind of sad and depressed in the evenings and waking up with a shot of anxiety.
It’s the week of the end of Daylight Savings Time for the year, which means we “fell back.” What was before 6pm, is now 5pm, and what was 7am is not 6am.
Any change in time like this can really make our body and brain feel out of sorts.
Our bodies are made to naturally wake up with the sun rising and fall asleep when the sun goes down. The issue is that the work hours we have created for ourselves do not allow us to go to bed and wake up with the rising and setting of the sun all year round. One might think that Daylight Savings Time would help with this, but it does not because even when we fall back and end Daylight Savings Time and get an hour extra of sleep for one night, changing our sleep and wake times by an hour is a shock to our system.
Why is it a shock to our system?
We have become used to waking up with the sun looking one way, but now we wake up and everything looks different and we get that shot of anxiety because our brain is not registering what time it is. This raises our cortisol (stress hormone) levels too high, immediately increasing our stress levels for the rest of the day. Increased cortisol can make us feel shaky and disoriented, making it harder to concentrate and even harder to physically balance.
At night it gets dark so early that our brains get the cue to go to bed and may start producing melatonin, but it’s only 6pm. We get tired but are not allowed to fall asleep so we force ourselves to stay awake, which not only raises our stress level but and may make us feel depressed. We may also feel agitated as our brain and body just can’t regulate itself.
While the end of Daylight Savings Time (“falling back”) is a little bit easier on our health than “springing forward” and loosing an hour of sleep, it can still disorient us and take a while to transition to the new time change.
Here are a few tips for helping with your time change transition:
- Just knowing why you may be feeling more anxious and sad is helpful. A sudden increase in these feelings can make some of us scared that our mental health has suddenly changed. Knowing that it may be due to the time change can help us know that this change is temporary.
- Getting light exercise in the late afternoon or early evening. This can help raise our energy level a bit while also increasing endorphins that may decrease the feelings of sadness. Take a walk, light run, or easy rowing or biking, and doing that with a family member, friend or pet can increase joy even more.
- Have a relaxing nighttime routine. Wear blue block glasses an hour before bed, have a cup of chamomile tea, and diffuse some lavender oil in your bedroom. Do not use a screened device at least a half-hour before bed.
- Use a daylight lamp in the morning. This light mimics sunlight and can help you wake up in the morning when it is dark. Turn it on as soon as you wake up, or, put it on a timer and have it turn on for you when your alarm goes off.
It may take a week or so for your body and brain to regulate, so hang in there.
In Health and Happiness,
Coach Katie
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