Coping with that 'Back to School' End of Summer Feeling

Today, we explore strategies for coping with the sudden shift into Autumn or Fall. Shelley shares her personal journey and how she prepared for a radio show aimed at helping people to embrace autumn. She delves into the concept of disappointment, encouraging listeners to challenge their thoughts and reframe their expectations. The episode offers valuable insights and practical advice for navigating the emotional challenges of the autumn transition.

Another podcast episode for you: How do I Stop Self-Criticism?

Transcript

Shelley Treacher Underground Confidence: 0:00

Today I'm going to talk about how you can cope with the sudden shift into autumn. Hi, this is Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence. I help people to cope with the emotional and psychological sides of overeating or comfort eating. What this means is that I work with a lot of emotional difficulty. And how to cope. If you're listening to this thinking, I'm not sure if my eating is emotional, it's a good idea to check out my new little course. Are you an emotional eater? At Underground Confidence in the App Stores. I'm going to start by telling you a little story. A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to talk on BBC Radio 5 Live. Whilst that sounds really exciting, and believe me, I was excited, it never actually happened. I was totally unprepared technically. and perhaps a little bit nervous. So, to cut a long story short, I kept missing the call when they were trying to get me online. But I can't help but think that the subject in hand was actually relevant here. The way they introduced it to me was that they wanted me to help convince somebody who was very cynical about the joys of autumn and winter coming to feel better about it. I've got to be honest, when I first heard this I thought, I can't do this. I'm not too happy about winter coming myself. But I got to thinking about it and I employed all the skills that I've got and I even asked around on social media as to what people do to adjust to autumn and the winter. So by the end of the three hour show, I was utterly prepared. So dear listeners, you are blessed with the fruits of my labor. Today is all about how you can adjust to a change that perhaps you weren't really hoping for. So a couple of weeks ago, when autumn looked like it had arrived with an abrupt clang, it suddenly got really cold in England. We're governed by the seasons here. And whether we have children or not, we know when the beginning of term is, usually. So there's a vibe about this time of year. But this year in particular, there was a great beginning to the summer a long, long time ago. But the rest of the summer was a bit rubbish. So you could almost feel the disappointment in the air. Summer was over. It was time to go back to school, back to full on work, and it was cold and about to get darker. How does one cope with that? And then weirdly, just as everybody was going back to school and this whole season was starting, we had a massive heatwave. In many ways I think that was lovely, but I don't think we were ready for that either, and now it's cold and windy again. I can't believe I'm talking about the weather so much. I think this might be the first time I've been very typically British and talked about the weather, but it's certainly a thing for us here. So let's start with challenging your thoughts. I'm going to tell you how I challenged my thoughts later. One of the things that we might be dealing with here is disappointment. But if you get really honest with yourself about what life is really like, something's always disappointing, isn't it? Life isn't what we see on social media. Things happen, and we very rarely get exactly what we want. A way to cope with this is to acknowledge how you feel, and then shift. You can take control of this by focusing on what isn't disappointing. Don't assume that you'll be depressed. You can actually retrain this way of thinking and your beliefs. Generalizing is perhaps not going to be helpful to you. So take it one step at a time. What are you really dealing with here? No day is ever the same all year. We've been watching the light go down every day since June, and the weather's been so varied. Often we get spells of cold, spells of rain, spells of wind, spells of heat. It all chops and changes in England all the time. Am I right? So maybe it's not one tangible big thing that's actually difficult for us. But we assume that there is one giant sudden shift to misery and winter. So just watch out for your brainwashing here. And take back control by thinking differently. What isn't awful? What's okay? Appreciate one step at a time and focus on what's good rather than what you dread. Then identify two arguments against them. Disappointment actually comes from an expectation, so be mindful of what you're expecting and what's appropriate to expect. Breathe, take it in, feel the disappointment, and move on. What can you still have that's okay? September has a kind of a renewal vibe in England, like it's our new year, really. So perhaps open your mind to what new project, what new idea, what new way of being can you adopt to gain some good rewards? If you think of life as precious, which it is, how can you live in the moment? How can you embrace this change of season? It's a new time. It could be exciting. We are never just one thing. We're made up of many parts. Misery, resistance, and appreciation can all come at once. And you do have the ability to change some of the things that happen for you. One of the suggestions that came from my social media post was to have a ritual to mark the change, and to embrace the new season, inviting it into your life. This could also be described as pushing your boundaries,. This is one of the ways that I've embraced the season. During that heatwave, I worked too hard. My brain wasn't working very well. Maybe you can relate to that. I know a lot of my friends said that they just were really lethargic and couldn't think very well. It could be an hour age type of thing. Could be that we're all menopausal. But it also seemed to come with the heatwave. Every day, I said to myself at the beginning of the day, I'm gonna go swimming later, somewhere in a beautiful lake or river. But every day, I didn't do it because my brain just wasn't clear enough to get it together. So by the weekend, I was so irritated with myself and frustrated. That I sat down and made a plan of what I could do the following week. So as I saw the heatwave waning, I went wild swimming five days out of seven. The irony here is that it cleared my head. I'm not going to go into all the benefits of wild swimming, but there are a lot of health benefits to swimming in cold water or getting used to it. So I embraced the season by getting cold. And so far, I feel pretty good about it. My boundaries are firmly in place because I stop work at a certain time of day. My priorities have completely shifted to getting this wild swim into the day. It's almost the first priority, I would say. And I'm having some really gorgeous experiences. Some lovely conversations. With people I would otherwise not have met. I went swimming with cows. And I've ended the day thinking, I've done something really good for myself. The hope is that I will adjust to the cold quicker, and so the winter isn't quite so much of a shock to me. I'm aware that this is quite extreme, and you probably don't want to be doing this. Kudos to you if you are. But can you think of at least two things that you could embrace about the season? Just in case you can't, here's the list of the things that people came up with in response to my social media post. Go barefoot in the leaves. That's another one about embracing the cold, huh? I might actually do that one this year. Take photos of the trees. Go up into the hills and breathe the fresh, crisp air. Hot water bottles. Have hot tea outside on a crisp chilly morning. Festive winter songs. The smells of mulled wine, squash soup, gingerbread. Twinkling lights. The autumn mists. New PJs, sweatshirts, fallen leaves. Blankets, jumpers. And generally being cosy. You could also watch comedy. Have things to look forward to. I've started planning loads of things into my diary. There are tons of things going on in Bristol at least. And somebody pointed out that sleep is actually easier at this time of year. There are seasonal activities like pumpkin carving, apple picking, but there's also lots of exciting shows. Personally, I'll be going to Handel's Messiah a Christmas Carol? And some fantastic light displays. Something special happens to our eyes when we see red leaves in autumn. The same sort of thing happens when you see a big vista, or the sea, the blue of the sea. Something happens, it calms us down, makes us feel good. Maybe we get a dopamine hit from that. But I'll talk about moving and exercise later. And finally, this is another way that you can release disappointment. Or let go of a reaction that you keep having. Like if you keep telling yourself, Oh God, it's winter. It's going to be dark and cold soon. I don't like it. You can imagine putting that experience on a boat, put all those feelings in your mind, put them on a boat, and then imagine yourself. Just gently letting them go across the ocean. You can also try writing with your wrong hand and then burning it. That does something in our brains. Or you can try breathing them out and letting them go. I'm going to leave it there for now. Because I've actually talked more about this than I thought I would. Next week I'll talk more about how you can manage this change of the season. Or any change. But now I want to hear from you. Which of the things that I've mentioned might help you make a shift? Or what do you do to adjust to the season? Please let us know. And maybe I'll be quoting you next time. There are several ways that you can do this. You can sign up to my Underground Confidence app and... Comment on any of my questions. This is where you'll find them all in one block. Or you can join me on any of the social media channels. Or you can write me a personal email. I'll be delighted to hear from you, in any way. One of my other September New Year's resolutions. is to have more conversations. This is something that I know feeds me. But I, as I have told you many times, I can spend a lot of time on the computer not talking to anyone. That's not doing me any good at all. So please have a conversation with me. So today I talked about how you can start to cope with the change of the season. I talked about challenging your thoughts, around disappointment in particular. I gave you a list of things that some people have suggested to appreciate about autumn. If you need any further help, if you want to get a hold of your comfort eating and you want to actually recover from it, please start by looking at my app. That's Underground Confidence in both of the app stores, in Apple and Google. Get yourself signed up there, or on my mailing list. I'm currently putting together a six month program for comfort eating recovery. This would specifically be for people who are already aware that emotion drives their eating. I'm just gauging interest at this stage. So if this is something that you might be interested in, those are the two best places to be first to hear about it. And also, let me know if you're interested. If the interest is there, I'll pull together some details and send them to you. Thank you so much for listening today. This has been Underground Confidence with Shelley Treacher. I'll see you next Thursday.