{"id":5177,"date":"2020-01-20T17:02:39","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T17:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=5177"},"modified":"2021-06-15T16:39:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T15:39:00","slug":"winter-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/winter-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Blues?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Blue Monday cheer-up tips are glib argues Dr John McGowan, so what do you say when you\u2019re asked for some? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I\u2019m quite sure that you\u2019ll tell me, just how I should\nfeel today\u201d. When you\u2019re asked to write something about Blue Monday, it\u2019s New\nOrder that come to mind. Rather than the day that is apparently the saddest of\nthe year. Even when the request is to supply a few coping tips, the Hacienda\u2019s\nfinest still are to the fore. Isn\u2019t assuming have an answer for someone I don\u2019t\nknow dangerously close to telling them how they should feel? To be honest I\u2019m\nnot sure about the whole idea of coping tips. Niles dismissed Frasier\u2019s radio\nshow as McSessions and I think he had a point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, I think that the idea of Blue Monday illustrates the\nlimits of general advice fairly well. It was publicised in the\nnoughties<\/a> for a company called Sky Travel. Putting parameters such as\nweather, debt level and time elapsed since Christmas in to an \u201cequation\u201d (the\nquotation marks are intended as pejorative) it turns out that were apparently\nA) at our most down on the third Monday of a British January and B) that the\nanswer is obviously a trip to somewhere sunny. Steal the name from one of the\nbiggest hits of the decade and you had a concept with surprising durability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll say right out that I want<\/em> to believe in it. I\nwant to believe that the levers of my mood are dictated by the climate and the\nseason. However, while there is some evidence<\/a>\nthat, for some of us at least, bad weather might influence our mood a little,\nthe concept of Blue Monday has been firmly consigned to the category\n\u201cpseudoscientific hokum\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can get into the details elsewhere<\/a>, but\nmuch of the difficulty comes from the sheer multiplicity of other factors that\ncan pull us down. Relationships, loss, poverty, unemployment\u2026 The persistence\nof Blue Monday perhaps comes from how tempting it is to wrap sadness up into a\nparcel marked \u201cBritish Winter\u201d great but there really is a\ngreat deal more<\/a> to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if the solution to one\u2019s woes were as simple as suggesting better weather, writing a column urging sun-seeking might come across as a little trite. This compounds the initial problem of handing down a universal (Mc)Nuggets of advice. Also I personally would be less happy after my teenage kids had given me a lecture about the consequences of air travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The desire to be able to give general advice and clear\nsolutions though perhaps speaks to a difficulty in finding the right thing to\nsay when our fellow human beings are struggling. It\u2019s something even people who\ndedicate their lives to helping others. I have the privilege of working with an\nincredibly impressive bunch of young people who want to be Clinical\nPsychologists<\/a>. They are thoughtful, knowledgeable about human suffering\nand, above all, have a powerful desire to help those who are suffering. I don\u2019t\nuse the word privilege lightly. So concerned are many of them in fact, that\nworry hugely about not being able to say the right thing. But what if we simply\ndon\u2019t try and say something clever at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When faced our trainees desire to get it right, I often find myself keen to talk about why listening may be a perfectly fine response too. Not just listening but actually just being with someone who is struggling. Also I often end up moving away from the latest therapies to something slightly more old school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This may sound to you like a different version of\npseudoscientific hokum. Stop and think about it for a minute though. The\nfriends you have may not always have a magic bit of advice when you\u2019re struggling.\nSome though will not only listen but also simply just be able to acknowledge\nhow tough things are for you right now. That simple. But I\u2019ll bet when it\nhappens you often feel even just a little more strength to get through. We all\nsometimes want to say something insightful and psychologists and\npsychotherapists are no different. And psychotherapies offer many useful ways\nof understanding ourselves and how we feel. When we\u2019re ready to. Sometimes\nthough just being heard, really heard, and acknowledged is all we can take. And\nbelieve me even that isn\u2019t always easy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Maybe I do have Blue Monday tip after all. Let yourself off the hook stop trying to sort things out. This is not something I\u2019m always great at but I never stop appreciating those who can do it for me. I\u2019ll just try and keep my mouth shut and listen if someone needs me to. Maybe, if I can do that a little, then this Monday, and every other day, can be a little less blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The University offers a range of support services for our students and staff. Find out more here. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr John McGowarn is the Academic Director of the Clinical Psychology Training Scheme in the School of Psychology, Politics and Sociology. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blue Monday cheer-up tips are glib argues Dr John McGowan, so what do you say when you\u2019re asked for some? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151654,"featured_media":5182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[261,3902],"tags":[3205,3209,3206,9,3213],"class_list":["post-5177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-research","tag-blue-monday","tag-clinical-psychology","tag-january-blues","tag-mental-health","tag-sky-travel"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Emma Grafton-Williams","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/437\/2020\/01\/Blue-Monday.png","postExcerpt":"Blue Monday cheer-up tips are glib argues Dr John McGowan, so what do you say when you\u2019re asked for some? ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5177"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7585,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5177\/revisions\/7585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}