On seasonal mood variations and coming back to yourself.
I’ve been a mom for 12 summers. That means 12 seasons of setting my sights high — I will savor each second! I will be serene! — and having them come crashing down by the end.
Okay, so maybe I haven’t nose-dived into being a terrible mom, like I sometimes fear, but I’m also definitely not a terrific one as often as I’d like to be. The long sunny days are exciting, but after a while, all that excitement is too much. I feel agitated.
As the sun sets earlier, I want to be less grumpy. I want to slow things down. I want to feel like myself again.
There’s a contemporary temptation to reach for psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) to describe this sort of deviation from emotional baseline. And sometimes, a diagnosis is useful shorthand, pointing to a set of symptoms and the supports that might help. But other times, it needlessly pathologizes ordinary human experience. Irritability can be a sign of generalized anxiety disorder or bipolar mania, sure — or it can be a circadian-mediated consequence of long days of frolicking and short nights of rest.
Long before the DSM, people understood that after the summer, we need a reset. For example, in the autumn, Jews celebrate Rosh Hashanah, featuring the practice of t’shuvah, the process of returning to yourself and to a more righteous path. Ethiopia’s Enkutatash and Hinduism’s Diwali similarly feature themes of renewal and a fresh start in the fall.
Maybe you don’t find the cultural evidence persuasive. Maybe you feel skeptical that as a modern human, these ancient practices have much to say about you. Maybe you’re a person of science.
Maybe, then, you’d be interested to know that scientific evidence suggests that even people with no diagnosed mental health condition show seasonal mood shifts at a population level. A study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders tracked seasonal mood patterns in people with and without bipolar disorder. As expected, people with bipolar 1 and 2 disorders had more depressive symptoms in colder months and more manic symptoms in warmer months. The odd thing was that so did everyone else. The seasonal effect wasn’t limited to people with a psychiatric label; it happened in the “healthy controls,” too.
But just because seasonal mood shifts are normal doesn’t mean they’re nothing. It’s hard to feel like you’re not yourself or to be more irritable than you’d like to be. I, for one, want to reorient toward those high sights I felt closer to at the start of the summer. I want to return to myself.
Luckily, it’s the season for it.
Note: To be clear, having a diagnosis of bipolar disorder means the mood that is fluctuating seasonally is more extreme and benefits from more and specific supports. If this is you, please take care of yourself as the seasons change. The point isn’t that you don’t need and deserve care, just that the fact of fluctuation doesn’t only impact you.
New Article Alert
Bipolar Research & Insights: Ketogenic Therapy, Dementia, Creativity, and More | August 2026 (bpHope)
Bipolar disorder has been in the news a lot lately, and a lot of people have opinions. If you’re interested in understanding the condition and the latest science around it, one place to start is the monthly column I write for bpHope, where I cover the latest research impacting people living with bipolar disorder.
Book Recommendation
Nine Stories, by JD Salinger
I remember liking my adolescent encounters with Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey. Then in college I learned that Salinger, like many of his contemporaries, was probably “problematic,” in Salinger’s case especially with women. That was enough for me to set his work aside for 20-plus years.
But last month, the book club I run for alumni of that same college read Salinger’s Nine Stories. And you know what? It was great. The man can write. His short stories feel like walking into a room and catching two people in the midst of a conversation so intense they don’t notice your existence. You hope they keep not noticing, so you try not to breathe too much because suddenly it’s become very important to understand everything that’s going on. As a reader, it’s exciting, and as a writer, it’s interesting to figure out why it’s exciting.
Like many, I still don’t know what to do with the work of artists who, evidence suggests, didn’t live by my values. And, still, I’m glad I didn’t leave Salinger on the shelf for another couple decades.
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