5 questions for when you’re feeling the winter blues
Blue Hill mental health professional offers tips on how to fight Seasonal Affective Disorder this upcoming season
Tim Peper is a clinical professional counselor and owner of Blue Hill Integrative Counseling. Photo by Steele Hays.
Oct. 6, 2026
By Steele Hays
It’s that time of year, when the falling hours of daylight and the longer nights may trigger emotional swings for many Maine residents, including feelings of low energy, depression, sadness and a loss of interest in activities one usually enjoys.
They’re the winter blues, now labeled as Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, by mental health professionals.
Tim Peper, a clinical professional counselor in Blue Hill, sees an uptick this time of year in issues reported by his clients.
“People’s struggles get exacerbated, people don’t realize they’re experiencing SAD, but the season brings things to the forefront for them,” Peper said. “All human beings have circadian rhythms. There’s a very real thing that happens to our bodies and different people react differently.”
Two treatments Peper said are often prescribed for SAD symptoms are using a light box for 30 minutes daily and taking Vitamin D supplements. Vitamin D production is stimulated by sunlight, therefore decreasing during winter months.
Between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30, the amount of daylight will decrease by one hour and 57 minutes in Blue Hill, but Peper said focusing only on the shortened hours of daylight as a cause for the winter blues misses other important factors.
“The feeling that people have no choice in this change of seasons and the dark — this makes them feel they have no agency, they feel a lack of autonomy and a lack of control,” he said. “Winter feels like something they are getting subjected to.”
Peper encourages clients experiencing the winter blues to reflect on a set of five questions:
What does winter tell you about who you are or what you can do?
When you notice the days getting shorter, what happens in your body? What does that part of you seem to need?
Has there been a winter moment, even a small one, that felt good? What made it possible?
What matters to you that winter doesn’t have to take away?
If winter were a character in your life, how would you want to relate to it?
Peper said “there are a lot of things you can do” to cope with SAD and the winter blues.
He encourages people “to get curious about winter,” and think positively about it. “What if winter is something you get to experience?”
Winter can be an ideal time to try new things, take up new hobbies and explore new interests. Winter can be socially isolating for many people, so making greater efforts to engage with other people is a positive step, he said.
Forbes Health, a health information website, combined a range of factors to measure state rankings on winter blues propensity, combining mental health survey data with weather metrics like the incidence of sunny days versus cloudy days. In their rankings, Maine is 16th highest in winter blues incidence. Alaska, Washington and Oregon are the top three, with scores driven by the shorter hours of daylight and low number of sunny days.
According to the Mayo Clinic SAD is diagnosed more frequently among women, and occurs more frequently to younger adults.
Peper said that “acknowledging the land and the seasons and the natural world” is “one of the most important things we can do” to maintain good mental and emotional health during the winter.
“We can’t control the land or the seasons,” he said.” That’s a practice we can cultivate all year round.”
