Renee Fesser, a therapist who lives alone in Regina, poses inside her home with her cat, a rescue named Bella.MARK TAYLOR/The Globe and Mail
It’s the gloomiest of forecasts: huddling through these next few months with no extended family to warm us, no holiday parties to cheer us, no tropical vacations to distract us – and already wearied and downhearted by a pandemic.
Let the training for the winter mind games begin.
In Regina, Renee Fesser, a social worker, says her clients are showing worry and stress about this winter like no other. They express fears about being isolated, about COVID-19 cases rising and about their mental health declining.
“We need to build up our resources,” she tells them: It’s the mindset tucked under the tuque that will see us through.
That means pushing back on negative thoughts, Ms. Fesser says. Finding a balance between the reality of the situation, and openness to seeing opportunities. “We can challenge the way we think about the changes happening in the world.”
She includes herself, living alone, with no hope of soon seeing her grandchildren in Toronto, including the six-month-old baby she has yet to meet, except on Zoom. It’s not all bad, she says, offering an example of challenging the unhappy thought: Her grandson laughs at her voice now, and she is thankful her daughter’s family is safe in their bubbles. On her own, Ms. Fesser is already practising to stay mentally healthy, adopting it like an exercise routine. “I plan on learning and doing something new every day.” This includes big goals such as learning Hebrew online with an uncle, and keyboard lessons, and smaller ones, such as refinishing some furniture or trying a new recipe. “Oh,” she says, “and I got a cat.”
In therapy, psychologists call this behavioural activation, using activities to change moods and shift mindset – basically, in its current application, to avoid too much ruminating on the couch about all the stuff we can’t do. Robert Levitan, the Cameron Parker Holcombe Wilson Chair in Depression Studies at the University of Toronto and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, suggests this strategy will be vital for a population trapped increasingly at home, for work and play. Going into the office, even commuting, he says, forced us to wake up each day, literally and mentally; sameness is a risk factor of the long winter ahead.
“We are built to get out there, deal with stress, and then relax and go to sleep at night,” Dr. Levitan says. “We have to do what we can to introduce novelty to our routine.”
Erica Botner, a recreational therapist in Montreal and a lecturer at Concordia University, recommends being deliberate about it – writing down a list of activities, creating a weekly schedule to complete them and then tracking how you feel when you do them as an incentive to continue. She advises people, when making the list, to reflect back on a time in their past week on when they felt joy – how can they recreate that? The activities can be simple – reading, going for a walk, calling a friend. They should include what psychologists call the “pillars of brain health” – be physically active and creative, try something new, connect socially, and recharge or rest. "It’s about getting out of the cycle of doing less and feeling worse.”
While surveys suggest that many Canadians are already feeling more anxious and depressed than before the country’s spring lockdown, the idea that winter itself – and the lack of light that comes with the season – will make most of our moods worse is debated in psychology. Dr. Levitan suggests that some people may benefit from light therapy, as he sees with many of the patents he treats for Seasonal Affective Disorder, a type of depression that often worsens when the days shorten. But large-scale population studies have challenged the notion of SAD; Norwegian researchers studying the industrialized population in the country’s Far North, which goes two months without sun, have found little evidence of it. Genetics may be a protective factor. But for most people, researchers suggest, it may be the limits that winter imposes and the hassle its creates, rather than lack of light, that most test our mental resolve.
To those winter hassles, a pandemic is now added, with all its own heartbreaking life limitations. Ms. Botner often works with seniors with dementia whose memory loss prevents long-term thinking – her focus for them is on creating moments of joy. She compares that with how the pandemic has condensed life into smaller slivers and suggests a similar focus on simple pleasures for all of us. “The hardest part for me is not having anything to look forward to, not knowing when this is going to end,” she says. “We have to adapt, and even though we don’t love it, we can find ways to make it meaningful.”
In Kenora, Ont., Marlene Elder, an Indigenous employment counsellor, is already adapting, keeping her focus outward, to find some meaning and purpose this winter. She is working to find shelter for the homeless in the area. “It does make your life richer,” she says. “In order to survive this as a society, we have to think communally.” In addition to writing some “really, dark bad poetry,” she says activism and volunteering pull her out of her own headspace, where she still grieves for her mom who died during the spring lockdown. She can’t always be positive – “I tend to associate that with clueless” – but she can be realistic. "Some things will have to be done differently.”
And some stay the same. The other night, her granddaughter, who just turned 5, asked Ms. Elder to count the days until Christmas when being tucked in. “She was asleep by the time I reached December.” For a grandmother with much on her mind, a moment of joy.
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