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InFocus

Blue Monday

“If we can schedule a week at this time of year, every year, to help others, then at the very least it will have helped others, and at the most, it will have helped us too”

A booklet came through my door yesterday. It was printed on thick, matt, expensive paper, and the photography was exquisite. Think icebergs on fjords and tiger fruit with orchids in a floating market. This was a brochure from a very expensive travel company acting like a vulture preying on my boredom with the British winter with its dark, drizzly days.

Their timing was perfect. I only have to move around funds, work all the bank holidays this year and take money from my son’s university fund and we can afford to go camping under the Northern Lights in Norway in a pod with a hot tub.

The term “Blue Monday” – the third Monday in January – originated when a similar travel company, Sky Travel, hired psychologist Cliff Arnall to create a promotional tool for winter deals on summer holidays. He decided to also employ people’s low mood after the Christmas and New Year festivities had died down and thus coined the term.

He had a point in that many of us are feeling that anticlimactic, comparatively low mood after the highs of Christmas and New Year. Note the word “comparatively”.

Organising massive get-togethers, and cooking food with all the trimmings, and quenching our thirst with pink fizz to wash down the mince pies every day is unsustainable. It’s fun, and then we have to return to earning a living, paying the bills and flossing our teeth again, all while looking at the drizzle.

Commonality: we are not alone

Life, after Christmas, is also full of waves, some of which we surf and others which knock us over or even throw us onto the sand where we scrape our skin and gasp for breath wondering if we will ever surface

Commonality means that many of us are feeling roughly the same way at the same time. We can celebrate this commonality and social connection. Celebration doesn’t always have to be about good times (bear with me here).

We already know that our social connection is as important to our well-being and longevity as is whether we smoke or not, or even whether we are hypertensive and obese or not (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010).

So, here is something worth observing: we are not alone in how we feel.

I’m not suggesting we take to the streets shouting about how down we are in order to bring others down as Cliff Arnall did. I’m talking about not being ashamed or judgemental about being down or “blue”. How can we ever notice the highs if we don’t also experience and notice the lows?

I recently read a book called Saltwater Buddha by surfer, journalist and Zen practitioner Jaimal Yogis. He says, “Surfing is the perfect metaphor for samsara. You paddle, paddle, paddle, suffer, suffer, suffer, for this fleeting rush, one wave, but then it ends so quickly, and you’re sent back to the beach.”

Life is like this. We strive so hard for the perfect Christmas. We save, cook, clean, shop, wrap and plan. Then we have a great day, and then it’s over for another year.

Life, after Christmas, is also full of waves, some of which we surf and others which knock us over or even throw us onto the sand where we scrape our skin and gasp for breath wondering if we will ever surface.

I advise when you’re down, feel it. Maybe your emotions have a name; however, often they don’t. You just feel “blue” or “a bit down”, “for no reason”. Try not to judge these emotions as wrong or misplaced. It may just be the lull after the perfect series of waves.

We traditionally celebrate Christmas and New Year with others: loved ones, family and friends. We are told to “be of good cheer”, “have a happy Christmas”, “it’s the most wonderful time of the year”, etc. Pick a Christmas song and see how the words are often about being happy and sharing that moment with others, and faking it if necessary. It’s supposed to double the joy.

It’s OK not to be OK

Allowing this knowledge that others are feeling the same way can soften the effect it has on you, and the hold it has on you

But… we can also “celebrate” the communal down times, like the way camaraderie and mutual support helps us enormously when we, as a team, lose a patient after a crash or after a long time in intensive care. It’s awful how we’re feeling, but the effects are less painful when we know that we are not alone in feeling this way.

Notice the same with “Blue Monday” and probably the Tuesday and even the whole week before and after that Monday. Allowing this knowledge that others are feeling the same way can soften the effect it has on you, and the hold it has on you.

So, we’ve accepted the unhappiness; it’s not feeling like the most wonderful time of the year at all. It may even be a Christmas and New Year that we’re trying to just get through because it’s the first, second or third since we’ve lost a loved one. We just need it to be over.

How can we defuse this aching inside?Well, unlike other times when mindfulness may help elevate our mood or ease the ache, around this dark, wet time of year, maybe we can aim to not feel better. It’s a big ask to just turn our frown upside down when we feel the same misery as everyone else, and for good reason too. Maybe we can keep this frown on. It’s OK to not be OK.

Helping others

If we can schedule a week at this time of year, every year, to help others, then at the very least it will have helped others, and at the most, it will have helped us too.

Maybe, while we’re hurting or just feeling a bit sad, we can make a point of using this time to help others each year, like an annual charity period.

It’s well known that helping others by volunteering, donating to the poor or placing items in food banks makes us feel good about ourselves and better about life. However, this time, feeling better isn’t our primary aim (although it is a common side effect).

If we can schedule a week at this time of year, every year, to help others, then at the very least it will have helped others, and at the most, it will have helped us too.

Helping others comes in many shapes. Volunteering is only for those who have time – and that certainly isn’t me, although it may be you. Donating to a good cause is easy. Making a direct debit to a reputable charity is the donation that keeps on helping without us having to do anything apart from noticing it every month in our bank statement, which prolongs the good vibes. Cooking for someone who has to work all the time is an amazing way of saying “I care”. Cooking for anyone is special.

Here’s a favourite of mine: send a positive message each day to someone. The more random the better, and to a different person each day: for example, sending a message of thanks to your college tutor for helping you to do a new surgery, messaging someone who least expects a message to say that you hope they are well or messaging a colleague to point out something they’ve done really well. It can be to anyone about anything so long as it’s sincere.

Making someone else feel good (when they may very well also be feeling in a low mood) can be very powerful for them. If they reply, fantastic, the good vibes continue like ripples, but that’s not the aim.

The aim is to make this time of year become the new annual time when we help others, while noticing in a non-judgemental way how low we are feeling. Thus, the pressure to “cheer up love, it may never happen” is instantly removed, and we can become proactive in making Blue Monday and the weeks around it less sad for many, many others.

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