The Signs of Seasonal Low Mood Usually Arrive Before the Sadness Does

It does not start with feeling sad

Most people expect low mood to arrive as low mood. Seasonal low mood rarely does. It arrives first as a body change — waking heavier, wanting an extra hour in bed, reaching for bread and pasta, letting the evening plan quietly fall away because you are "just tired this week". The sadness, when it comes, is often several weeks late to its own arrival.

I hear the same sentence from clients every September: I know it is coming. People who have lived through a few winters with this can feel the season turning in their body before they can name anything about their mood. That knowledge is worth something. It is the earliest signal you will get, and it comes at the point where it is still easy to act.

What the pattern actually looks like

Services such as the NHS and the National Institute of Mental Health describe seasonal affective disorder as depression that follows a seasonal pattern — most often beginning in autumn as daylight shortens and easing in spring — rather than a separate illness with different rules. In practice, the early weeks tend to look like this:

• Sleeping longer and waking unrefreshed
• Appetite change, often towards carbohydrates
• Concentration that slips without an obvious reason
• Cancelling things you would ordinarily want to do
• A flatness that is easier to describe as tiredness than as sadness

None of those look like depression from the outside. Which is exactly why the first six weeks so often pass unnamed.

Why early matters more here than almost anywhere else

The things that help with a seasonal pattern — daylight early in the day, a routine that does not depend on motivation, movement, and keeping contact with other people — are all things that become harder the further into it you get. Decisions made from low energy shrink your life. Decisions made in early autumn hold through November.

So the useful work is not "cheer yourself up". It is: write down, now, what your own early signs were last year, while you can still remember them accurately. Put one regular thing in the diary with another person, before you stop wanting to. Fix daylight to a time rather than to a decision.

A question to sit with

If you look back at last autumn — not at the worst of the winter, but at the first two or three weeks — what changed first? Was it sleep, appetite, concentration, or the plans you quietly let go?

Where to take this next

If the change of season is where this shows up for you, Brighten Your Seasons is the guided journal written for exactly this. It walks through recognising your own pattern, tracking what shifts first, and building self-care that keeps working when the light goes. It is designed for the weeks before it takes hold, not the middle of January.

There is also a plain-English overview of the pattern in Understanding seasonal affective disorder and seasonal low mood.

If this feels heavier than a seasonal dip — if it persists, worsens, or makes daily life difficult — please speak to your GP or a mental health professional. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, contact your local emergency service now.

And if you would like to work on it with someone alongside you, you are welcome to book a session.