ASM205 Holiday Blues

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let's talk about the holiday blues on ask science mike this week uh this is going to be one of those i just talk in the microphone episode so uh no theme song no intro if this is your first episode of ask science mike this is a weekly podcast hosted by me mike mccarg uh dubbed science mike by a friend at a party and then that became my job somehow this is a podcast where we honor every sincere question with an honest and non-judgmental response because we think that curiosity is important sometimes we change the format up and we just explore a topic together and that's what we're doing this week before we do that i'd just like to remind you that uh my travel is starting back up in 2020 and there's a couple things there first of all uh buffalo new york i'm headed your way to trinity church on january 11th for the fresh voices series and then if you're in fort smith arkansas you have the opportunity to spend an entire week with me at first presbyterian church from january 20th through january 27th and speaking of 2020 and bookings you know i'm reevaluating the way i do travel i'm having to lead all my decisions with taking care of my heart and supporting my mental health so i am not touring as extensively as i used to uh i'm not hitting as many dates per year as my cardiologist thinks that that cycle of heavy travel may have played a role in my heart disease so i'm trying to do what i try to tell all of you to do and that is i'm trying to take care of myself but next year has some really exciting things i've got a book coming out april the 28th called you're a miracle and a pain in your ass and it's been about my journey the last few years learning more about my feelings and accepting my feelings and honoring my feelings and learning how to be closer to others through that process of learning about my feelings it's a it's a book about why you know what we feel and what we do so often seems to run counter with what we want right and so i started by examining you know behavioral economics and cognitive psychology and interpersonal neuroscience all trying to understand this difference between what we want to do and what we actually do and coincidentally during that time my life fell apart i lost a dear friend far too early and was diagnosed with autism my daughter was diagnosed with eating disorder i went to the hospital went to the very brink of bankruptcy like it was a tough season while i'm writing a book about self-care and self-improvement and it ended up being a really remarkable experience so i'm really excited to share this book with everyone next year and we're going to orient my traveling next year around that book my health is continuing to improve and we're working on ways that i can travel that won't be so hard on my health and hopefully gets back to what i like and that's being in rooms with people where i can see everyone's faces where it's not so crowded where there's not like a a line a big line to get in the building you all can't understand how weird that is for me to like drive up to a venue and see a line that's a block or two of people waiting to come in and see me it's just it puts me in a weird headspace so um if you are interested in having me show up with you somewhere in the world um in 2020 i'd say start thinking about that now you can go to mikemcarg.com speaking if you can't spell my name don't worry about it you can just go to asksciencemike.com and find my speaking page from there but there's a button that says bookmark and you fill out a form but like i would just encourage you to not have preconceptions i've noticed that the people asking me to speak now it's all big things it's it's almost like a smaller institution smaller churches have given up if you're thinking about having me like in your living room go fill out uh that speaking form now what i'm trying to say is i'm going to intentionally balance my speaking between bigger events that yes are fun and help pay the bills but i'm going to intentionally counterbalance that with smaller events so don't assume that your conference or your church or your living room is too small a room for science mike that stuff is my favorite and i've challenged the people that manage my work manage my speaking manage my career to come up with different models and to make space in my calendar for groups that don't have the resources and here's why one of the first places to bring me in as a speaker um was a small church run by a friend of mine in fort worth and i had so much fun there and i went back a couple more times because we had so much fun and then my career kind of took off and i haven't been back since uh since i started speaking in rooms that have security guards basically and i don't like that i'm not that if you listen to my podcast i hope you know i don't do any of this stuff to be famous or gnome i don't care about any of that i actually kind of don't like it i talk into this microphone every week so that i can invite you into accepting yourself and i can invite you into imagining a better world that we can all cooperate and building together i care a lot about people who feel lonely or rejected or afraid or marginalized that's why i have a podcast that's why i write books all i'm saying friends is i want to see you this year and i'm going to do everything i can understanding that i have to take care of my health and i also have to make a living to make it possible to see people in as broad a range of experiences as possible there is no arc of my life where i'm just going to do big rooms for big fees and ticket prices um i think it's it's just there's no point in that for me so the url is mikemcarg.com speaking um and we are digging deep we are we are coming up with like just really accessible ways to book me we're we're saving a portion of my calendar and my appearance is basically uh to do events that i won't make money on or will even lose money on because uh you all have shown me that you support that some of the decisions i make that limit my income as a media person you all have shown me that that was a good decision because um when i was at my most dire need you all passed around a virtual jar and paid my hospital bills and uh so i sat down with with our team and said we're gonna continue in this kind of economy and that's important to me uh so that's all about events i've got two coming up and i'd like to do really careful planning about 2020 i would love to do a half dozen living rooms next year i would love to do some small churches next year in addition to uh you know if you've got a big conference you've got a big company you know i thought about i've spoken at google and mit that's crazy uh that's an honor and that's really fun so i'll keep doing that kind of stuff but i don't want to lose track of where this all came from and how it got started if you heard the 200th episode of ask science mike that's what i'm talking about if you heard the living room episode those events were so dear to me and they were so much smaller than what i've been doing the last couple of years so i think i think there's something special about small one other announcement boy that was a long and wordy announcement i ended up kind of pouring my heart out there for a minute didn't i um we need your questions always on the show if you have something you're curious about we need your curiosity that's what this program is about so if you go to ask sciencemike.com which i rebuilt recently ooh fancy new website it's actually not fancy at all but i did make it myself uh you can scroll down to the bottom of the page and you can send me an email there and you can send me a voicemail or more accurately you can send andrew and caitlin messages and they sort through them and they pick some and those go to um the patreon community for ask science mike and then those people vote on the questions and that's what that's what happens to get a show every week the whole process breaks down if you don't send questions i've said this a few weeks now uh ask science mike has never been more downloaded than it is right now on an average weekly basis and we've never gotten fewer questions than we're getting right now so send in your questions and listen i know part of that friends is this is a very stable audience i am talking to just about the same people every week um at science mike doesn't grow very fast it's not like an explosively growing show it's just a very stable wonderful show and can i tell you something i'm full of asides today when i have guests on this program do you know they tell me that they've gotten the kindest feedback they've ever received from you that has happened multiple times that people have been a guest on ascent's mic and then sent me an email or a text or a letter to say that they've never gotten such kind and supportive feedback from any media appearance that they've ever made and i cannot tell you my friends how proud that makes me i am just so grateful for all of you so um if you've asked a question i asked science mike before ask another one it's just us every week friends it's just us every week and i so enjoy it so on to our topic for this week um because i notice a theme coming in from a lot of the questions we receive and things people ask me on social media and it's the holiday blues you may have heard that the suicide rate uh goes up dramatically around the holidays which is not actually true the opposite is true december is one of the lowest months of the year for suicide attempts or people attempting to die by suicide [Music] but why does that trope persist because people actually do get sad during the holidays and there's a lot of complexity here to talk about sadness during the holidays because some people will talk about things like seasonal affective disorder and other people will talk about depression and depression is a hard thing to talk about number one because people have a lot of shame about feeling depressed and being impacted by depression depression itself tends to cause one to feel more badly and more shame about being depressed which is one of the insidious things about depression but we also in the mental health community there is a growing and evolving understanding of what depression is so often our public conversation about depression and mental health and seasonal affective disorder is lagging behind more recent insights in psychology so let's i just thought we could kind of unpack some of these these things that happen around the holidays that make us feel sad and provide some clarity uh around that conversation in a way that i hope somebody listening experiences just a little bit of validation a little bit of understanding but maybe we'll feel seen or feel known in the season because what can happen is during this season uh for any given person one or more of these factors could be at play that we're about to talk about and that can create an experience that's unique to you because your personal holiday blues are a unique blend of factors so i just thought we'd talk about some of those factors and and what they're like and what to do about them um because i know people feel sad during the holidays my oldest daughter um feels really down this year about christmas and as we've talked about that you know she's uh she just turned 15. and when you are a young adult with childhood being a very recent memory isn't there something so magical about being a child at christmas and so what my daughter is experiencing is um kind of a dark nostalgia where um the presents under the tree well they just don't contain the same magic that they did for a child and the sense of anticipation is different i sometimes feel blue during the holidays myself so what's happening how can we unpack it well first let's be aware that there is a real documented phenomenon known as seasonal affective disorder um and this is a a significant serious and diagnosable mental health condition it's going to impact 1 in 20 adults in the u.s for example and it lasts a long time it can last almost half the year um some most people experience it during the winter although some people experience seasonal affective disorder in the summer and this is understood to be a mental health condition with a biological basis that is our bodies reacting to changes in daylight hours and having difficulty adjusting getting our internal clock or our circadian rhythms a bit out of sync with our daily schedule in a way that is disorienting and a lot of things come up or a lot you experience something specific if you're having seasonal affective disorder you're gonna have chronic fatigue even if you're sleeping too much you can gain weight especially because it creates food cravings it can create suicidal thoughts or feelings of worthlessness or guilt changes in sleep patterns changes in appetite loss of interest in pleasure activities it can look a lot like depression actually the the symptoms are very similar which is why um if you suspect seasonal affective disorder or depression is playing a part in your holiday blues you should seek out some kind of professional mental health support because both depression and seasonal affective disorder are medically significant they are medically significant uh because if we think about you know depression and we look at the diagnostic criteria here i'm pulling up an article from medical news today that i'll have in the links to sciencemic.com if we look at symptoms for depression feelings of discouragement sadness hopelessness lack of motivation a loss of interest or activities that once found enjoyable changes in sleep cycles they actually look really similar and then if you have a major depressive disorder which is if you've got uh basically depression longer than two weeks then you have signs of hopelessness and sadness insomnia tiredness feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt on a daily basis when i'm depressed that's how i know is the feelings of worthlessness and guilt i just feel guilty about everything difficulty concentrating i think i recently came through a period of depression i did not know i was in and the reason i know that is my concentration is suddenly so much better of course suicidal thoughts and suicide radiation are also a major warning sign there so you can see it can be difficult to tease out the difference between seasonal affective disorder and depression and it is possible of course you have both seasonal affective disorder and to have a major depressive disorder at the same time and there's no easy way to do this but uh we're going to switch to talking about our sponsors this week one of whom is um especially relevant uh to our conversation and that is my friends at betterhelp if you have trouble finding us a therapist or if you you know think you can find a therapist but you just can't find the energy to go to a therapist betterhelp is here to help you it is an online counseling service staffed by real licensed therapists thousands of them what's neat about better help is it lets you get professional mental health support in your own home or in a location of your choosing at your convenience so if you are experiencing holiday blues and it feels overwhelming to try to find a therapist better help could find a therapist for you you can text chat phone or video conference that therapist and you can start communicating in under 24 hours it is secure convenient professional and most of all affordable as there is financial evade available for those who cannot afford their pricing which is frankly very reasonable so as i'll ask sciencemic listener you can get 10 off your first month by going to betterhelp.com sciencemike okay that's our first sponsor this week and i'm so thankful again it's also true i use better help myself the bulk of my therapeutic work right now is happening through that platform and i am a paying subscriber to better help myself i'm also a paying subscriber myself to kiwiko who i absolutely love if you're on my email list you got an email from me recently about kiwi co because they are not just sponsoring ask science mike they're actually going to help me promote my next book i mean they are a wonderful company and consistent supporters of this program if you don't know about kiwi co they create hands-on projects and toys to expose children to science technology engineering art and math also known as steam they're based in california just like me and they are on a mission to help kids build creative confidence and problem solving skills while having lots of fun how this works is they have a variety of subscription lines where they send crates or projects in the mail every month for children to work with although they did launch a new two new lines recently there are eureka and maker crates that are also for adults i've tried them myself they are so much fun uh jenny and i my wife we started to get jealous of our daughters when they would get their kiwi crates because they would bust these things out and have lots of fun they'd set the phones down and it was a great time and then we just like looked with total envy so i'm so glad kiwico has now launched crates for adults as well because now we get four crates a month in my house one for each person what's really neat this time of year part of the stress of what happens to us is trying to figure out holiday shopping and kiwico makes that easy you can send a subscription to kiwiko you'll send the gift of learning all year to every kid on your list it is the perfect subscription or perfect gift for every young explorer engineer and artist in your life and again kiwi co has products for kids of all ages with all types of interest and possibly even if you want a memorable gift for adults in your life why not send a eureka or maker crate so they're really really wonderful and so if you would like to send that gift all you've got to do is go to kiwico.com science isn't that cool i got the coolest referral url at slash science i'm actually legitimately proud of that and by using that url guess what you're going to get a month for free completely free so the crate that shows up under the tree this year you don't even pay for it you just continue the description for the subscription for the rest of the year it is absolutely wonderful there's no commitment you can switch lines at any time so kiwico.com science gosh what a cheerful sponsor message that was quite a relief for me as we talk about seasonal affective disorder and depression um but here here's what's important to understand in this conversation the word depression is overused in public conversations about mental health which is quite a remarkable thing to say about um a mental health challenge as common as depression i mean depression is incredibly common millions of people every year probably i don't know 18 or 20 million people last year probably experienced symptoms of depression it is very very very common so how could it possibly be overused i think we have a tendency to describe all unpleasant feelings as depression remember depression has specific diagnosis diagnostic criteria and specific treatment options and i have been depressed i understand depression very well personally but it is my theory that for example my daughter madison is not experiencing depression right now not even a situational or temporary depression because depression is not sadness depression can involve sadness but just as commonly or perhaps even more commonly involves almost an inability to feel feeling at all feeling nothing uh depression can can can stop you of all motivation the excessive guilt and worthlessness that you feel when depressed uh are unique to depression or similar disorders like seasonal affective disorder but sadness sadness is a normal even healthy human emotion that everyone should experience sometimes and and we have a culture that is obsessed with being happy or joyous or ambitious and doesn't leave space for sadness or for grief and i think what happens or part of what happens in the holidays is people feel sad because of two things well more than two but i can think of two and they make a handy podcast topic talking points first the holidays happen every year right this is a time that reminds us of loss no matter what time during the year you may have lost someone close to you there was a first christmas without that person and then every year christmas rolls around and it reminds you of that loss this is especially true as we get older christmas reminds us of people we lost and so it re-invites grief into our daily experience every christmas eve without fail i can remember handing my newborn daughter madison to my grandfather for what i did not know was his last week of life at the time and when i remember that i experienced grief on christmas eve and remembering that moment then creates this almost um in memory montage in my mind of people i've lost and experiences we had together around the holidays and there is a sense of grief and sadness and i usually usually have a nice cry especially now you know i used to i used to put those feelings shove them deep inside and say you don't belong on christmas christmas is a time of joy and celebration oh but my friends as i've learned that all my feelings belong and all my feelings are good and all my feelings are helpful and all my feelings are here to teach me i just sit down and i let grief have a seat at my christmas table and i i don't fight it i sit and i grieve and i think about my grandfather i think about my grandmother and i think about what christmas was like before my parents got divorced and i just let those feelings wash over me and i could just cry right now with all of those memories but something that has helped me i feel no shame over that sadness that grief gosh it feels so right it feels so appropriate when i think about things i have lost grief becomes our companion because it evokes memories of things we once had relationships with people who have passed on relationships that have changed gosh i think about how much i used to love the candlelight service for christmas eve in the evangelical church and how fun it was to sit with my kids and sing all those songs and a time before i understood you know how problematic some of that theology that i was in was there's a grief there's a grief grief's okay i think if you feel blue in the holidays maybe you could check in with yourself as i've encouraged my daughter to what do you miss what has changed what is different it's okay to have a nostalgia and a longing for the way things used to be even if it's not clean or clear in some ways i feel much better and much more liberated in my life now than many years ago in many ways my parents are able to be healthier people because they are no longer married so i can know that i could know that i feel more free to be myself and spiritual community today than i did back then and also rejoice in my parents freedom while still being sad for what i once had and was once a part of and in a related way when we feel sadness in the holidays it can be because we bring expectations one expectation we bring is that the holidays will be joyous and will be celebratory and will not be sad and then if things aren't as exciting and wonderful as we hoped they would be then suddenly people disappointed and then we feel sad so i try to set aside any expectations of what will happen during the holiday season and just be present in my life to celebrate the people i do get to talk to i also find a good spike technology is quite nice it's a time we think about tradition christmas and the holidays right so i've tried to make a tradition every year trying a new one this year my family we all got together we went to a restaurant in l.a and listened to christmas carolers and we had a wonderful time and creating that new tradition i noticed lifted the spirits of everyone in my family and this is a year of a lot of loss for us and since as we honor the past by grieving it we're also bringing ourselves to the present by trying something new i guess maybe if i have an expectation for the holidays i have created an expectation that everything belongs in my holidays that there is room for sadness that there's room for concern over the future that there's room to laugh with friends and to cry with friends to speak with hope of the future and longing for the past to name hurts my holiday blues are less severe because i have accepted that depression and seasonal affective disorder and sadness are all allowed to be a part of my experience that i'm not in some way missing out on the holiday season by not having an amazing endless wonderful time full of presents and shopping and parties and whatever else that we imagine would be perfect do you know how grateful i am that my daughter madison told me she's sad around christmas how close that made me feel with her i'm so fortunate to have the opportunity to sit with my daughter and be sad together i just had to take a moment to sit in that feeling my friends i'm sorry for the long delay i know that's not great radio but there are tears rolling down my cheeks right now as i celebrate and am grateful for sadness this is a lot of work an entire system of capitalism is training us that we should have a certain feeling that there should be a bow on a brand new car in the driveway and everyone should jump up and down and cheer and that is the holidays there's nothing wrong with new cars well i mean there's some things wrong with their cars but um i don't know maybe a blue christmas is just fine if we do the work to understand that our feelings belong in this season for me not just this holiday season but this season of my life sadness is my favorite feeling it is my absolute favorite i like to be sad more than i like anything why because i feel proud that i can accept my sadness now and i've become aware that when i let myself be sad so many bottled up feelings get space to get expressed and relieved and the more i'm sad the more i let myself be sad the more clarity i have in life the more energy i feel the more room there is for joy because i'm not constantly trying to hold down sadness yesterday hillary and i were recording something together and we shared a moment of sadness and it was so beautiful and it was such a bonding experience so if you're experiencing depression or seasonal affective disorder those are very difficult things and i'm sorry i would encourage you to get some mental health support from professionals who can help you and who can guide you but if you're sad i would encourage you to start the long and difficult journey of naming for yourself that your sadness belongs that your sadness is welcome that your sadness is okay because i think you might find that by letting go of expectations of a non-stop ceaselessly pleasant joyous holiday season you might find instead something far more remarkable than a brand new volkswagen with a bow on it and that's acceptance for yourself and a sense of bonding and intimacy with those you're closest to however you celebrate this season i wish you well i wish you the joy of accepting and loving yourself completely and as you grieve friends may you grieve well happy holidays