When Winter Asks You to Do Less: Understanding Winter Mental Health
- Stefan Jurgens
- 18 hours ago
- 5 min read
Now we’re well into January.
Heavy snowfall settled over my neighbourhood this week, which has meant shovelling more than once. When I’m in the right mood, I actually enjoy shovelling. There’s a rhythm to the work. Scoop, lift, clear. I take satisfaction in clean edges and precise corners, a habit I’ve enjoyed since childhood.
What I notice most is how contained the task feels. Nothing else is required of me. The work has clear limits. When the path is cleared, I can stop.
And yet, even with these small moments of contentment, now that we’re past the winter solstice and the days are slowly getting longer, I still feel a pull inward. Toward stillness. Toward thoughtfulness. Toward doing a little less, wrapped in the warmth of my home.
The same season, even the same person, can hold both steadiness and heaviness at once.
That isn’t a contradiction. It’s part of the experience. Winter mental health is often less about illness and more about how reduced light, colder weather, and slower rhythms affect our energy and expectations.
Winter Mental Health Looks Different for Everyone
One of the reasons conversations about winter can feel so strange is that our experiences vary so widely.
Some people genuinely come alive in January. For them, winter means movement, skiing, skating, walking through fresh snow, or simply being outside in the quiet. Others feel their energy dip almost as soon as December arrives.
You may notice this difference at work or among friends. One person is refreshed and focused, while another is counting the days until spring. This can easily turn into comparison or self-doubt. Why am I struggling when everyone else seems fine?
There is no single winter experience. We each live it differently. For some, a narrower world feels calming. For others, it feels confining.
And there’s nothing wrong with either response.
When Winter Feels Especially Hard
For some of us, winter brings more than inconvenience.
Shorter days, colder temperatures, and fewer reasons to leave the house begin to narrow daily life. The range of what feels possible shrinks. Sleep shifts. Motivation drops. The world can feel smaller.
We might treat that narrowing like a problem, something to fix or push through, but narrowing is also what winter does. Fewer options. Less movement. More containment.
Where and how we live shapes how heavy this feels. When staying warm is expensive, when housing is drafty, when getting outside feels unsafe or exhausting, when cold intensifies chronic pain or snow blocks mobility aids, the narrowing becomes harder to bear.
What might feel like quiet simplicity for one person can feel like genuine confinement for another.
These realities often go unspoken, but they shape what winter feels like day to day. They help explain why advice to “just get cosy” can feel hollow. For many of us, winter does not simply slow life down. It reduces it.
And yet, reduction is not always loss.
Sometimes it is an invitation to attend more carefully to what remains.
Understanding Your Winter Mental Health Rhythm
Understanding how winter changes your energy can change how you respond to it.
When we treat winter's natural slowdown as personal failure, we compound the difficulty. You sleep nine hours instead of seven and call yourself lazy. You decline evening plans and label it antisocial. You choose a quiet Saturday at home and worry you're "wasting" the weekend.
The season narrows our capacity, and we shame ourselves for the very adjustments our bodies are requesting.
But what if winter isn't meant for the same pace as June?
You might call this "wintering," recognizing that nature cycles through dormancy, and so do we. Trees don't apologize for losing their leaves. Bears don't berate themselves for hibernating. The earth itself rests.
This doesn't mean resignation or giving up. It means adjustment.
Maybe you schedule important meetings for late morning when your energy peaks rather than forcing early starts. Maybe you say no to that book club in February, but yes to coffee with one friend. Maybe productivity looks like maintaining three priorities instead of ten.
And that's not failure; it’s wisdom.
When we stop fighting winter's rhythm, we free up energy for what actually matters: staying warm, staying connected, staying kind to ourselves. Not criticism. Care.
As a friend once described it: “I finally stopped arguing with January. I still don't love it, but I'm not fighting myself anymore.”
What Actually Helps
Get outside, even briefly, not with the goal of achieving anything but simply to let your eyes adjust to daylight and your body feel the air. If that's not possible, bright window time works, too.
Even 15 minutes outdoors provides light exposure and what researchers call "soft fascination," a gentle kind of attention that allows your overworked mind to rest.
Notice the way light falls on snow, or how bare branches move against the sky. These small moments of quiet awe can open something up inside, creating space for hope even in the heaviest weeks. Bundling up and standing on the porch counts, too.
Move gently, in ways that feel sustainable rather than heroic. Light, regular activity beats irregular intense exercise for mood. Twenty minutes of walking does more than an occasional ambitious workout. Indoor walking tracks, gentle yoga, even dancing in your kitchen all help.
Winter doesn't always have to be the season for intensity.
Consider light therapy if darkness feels particularly heavy. A 10,000-lux light-box used for 20-30 minutes shortly after waking is a well-established approach that shows significant effects for many people.
Notice small moments of comfort as they arrive: warm hands around a mug, the weight of a blanket, the sound of a familiar song playing in the background. These moments don't fix winter, but they soften it, and that softening builds genuine resilience over time.
Maintain connection, even in modest forms, because winter isolation often grows gradually. Simple gestures like a short message, a shared walk, or a voice on the phone provide regular, low-pressure contact that can be genuinely protective when the season feels isolating.
It helps to adjust what you're asking of yourself right now. Winter doesn't have to be the season for peak productivity or major transformations. It can be a time for maintenance, for reflection, for tending to what's already here.
That's genuinely enough.
Your Winter, Your Way
You don't need to fight winter or force yourself to enjoy it. Instead, notice how it affects you.
Honour that experience. Respond with care rather than judgment. Some people will thrive in the cold months. Others will move through them more slowly, keeping their inner warmth alive through small, steady actions.
Both experiences are real. Both deserve support.
Winter may ask you to do less, to focus on fewer things, to tend a smaller circle. That's not failure. Not every season is meant to expand us.
Sometimes the work is simply to maintain, to hold steady, to care for what's already here. And if you can do that through winter's coldest weeks, you're doing enough.
When to Seek Additional Support
For some people, winter's effects go beyond discomfort and begin to significantly interfere with daily functioning.
If you notice persistent changes in sleep, appetite, concentration, or mood that affect your work, relationships, or sense of safety, you don't have to navigate this alone.
Sometimes the most caring thing we can do is ask for support. At Inner Counsel Psychotherapy, I offer consultations to help you explore what you're experiencing and whether therapy might be a good fit.
There's no pressure, just space to talk about what winter and life are asking of you right now.
© 2026 Stefan Jurgens. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all content on this blog is the copyright of Stefan Jurgens.
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