Why does cold weather make me happy? I love cold weather. I love rugging up to the eyeballs and splashing in puddles. The only time I go to the beach is in winter when I can watch the waves crash and pound on the beach and I am snugged up in the car with the heater on. This is a shame really because I live in Western Australia with arguably some of the prettiest beaches in the world.
I suffer from reverse SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), also known as summer SAD. I loathe summer. The waves of heat coming off the bitumen make me very cranky and I fiercely resent getting hot and sweaty before work and coming home on the train feeling like I’ve been dragged through a bed of hot coals. Summer Sadness generally affects people, mainly females, in hotter climates, and is probably caused by too much sunshine.
Rain makes me joyful and hail and sleet makes me positively ecstatic. It doesn’t snow in Western Australia. Sunshine on a winter’s day feels like God’s betraying me. Most of my depressive tendencies come out at the end of a long, hot season, because in Australia summer is a long, drawn out process, starting in November and ending in May.
Most people love the hot weather. I’m not sure if it’s my English background that’s inherent in me or whether I just hate the heat. On a trip to England in July once I had to buy thick shoes and a thicker coat, one that I was never able to wear back home in Australia – even in the grim depths of an oxymoronic “Australian winter”. The English summer is colder than our winter.
Only two other people I know love cold weather and one of them is my son who is very much like me, an indoor person, very booky and studious, who used to take a bandage to school on sports days so he could stay inside and read. The other is my child-hood best-friend who now lives in America and gets to experience snow at the same time we are frying eggs on the pavement (sidewalk).
So what can I do about this? I don’t take anti-depressants in summer, I tend to sit it out, not unlike a bear that hibernates for winter and comes out bellowing and roaring when summer arrives. Only I come alive round about June when temperatures drop considerably.
Acceptance helps. Philosophically allowing for the mood swings an increase in temperature generates for me; this liberates my mind into thinking that this too will pass. Making sure my air-conditioning works, eating light meals, cutting back on coffee and alcohol (yes all those things that make life worthwhile) cuts back on that infernal internal body heat.
Other than that I could move to Greenland where winter never ends.
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I am so glad to hear there is someone else out there like me. I live in Texas where we have already experienced multiple days over 100 degrees.
My coping techniques include - watching winter movies, reading books about the cold - especially anything by Russian authors, and staying out of the house (to save on my own electricity costs which would be through the roof!) I go to malls, movies, wherever there is a lot of A/C. I also like outdoor activities that involve water - skiing, swimming, etc. I take regular vacations to places with low humidity (West Texas, for one) or high altitude (Colorado, Montana, etc). I have found just a few short days can really boost my mood.
Best of all, I will be moving to Colorado as soon as I finish school. I can’t wait and am literally counting the months - 36 to go!!
I’m so glad to hear about someone in the same searing kettle of fish. I’m stuck in this infernal Australian climate, too. I only visit our fantastic beaches during rain and storms.
During the summer, I slither home and become a hermit. The past few record-breaking New Years have had me laying on the cool dining room table under the air conditioner instead of celebrating.
I’m extremely susceptible to even the slightest skerrick of warmth. It’s never made sense to me; I’m a scrawney pile of skin and bones–no insulation at all–who could sleep in sleet rain and probably get better rest than usual. To this day, I still haven’t heard of any reasonable theories on it.
I too have always enjoyed putting it down to the English heritage. My girlfriend, however, comes from an equatorial country, so she’s your regular SAD sufferer. We take 6-month shifts of mercilessly teasing the other about it.
My current plan is to get into shape, and hope an increase in fitness, leading to an increase in overall health, will help me cope with the temperature.
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