Northern countries' winter mindset

 How Scandinavians cope during winter (and now covid) blues: mental reframing

Kari Leibowitz, a Stanford University health psychologist in the Mind and Body Lab and an expert on what’s often called the “wintertime mind-set,” asserts that these first months of the new year “are where the rubber really meets the road in terms of winter.” In December, the cold and darkness have some novelty, and there are holidays — many of them festivals of light — to anticipate. By January, she says, the season becomes “the coldest, darkest, wettest time of year. . . . People are sick of it.”

Leibowitz has long studied what’s known as “mental reframing,” which can help us adapt to midwinter darkness, approaching winter storms and even stress. Several years ago, she moved to the Arctic to learn how Scandinavians don’t just survive but thrive during the long winters. The sun doesn’t rise at all in the far north for two months, but she noted that Norwegians have comparable rates of seasonal depression to those of us in the United States.

“One reason . . . is that they tend to have a positive wintertime mind-set” unlike many Americans. “They see the winter as a special time of year full of opportunities for enjoyment and fulfillment, rather than a limiting time of year to dread.”

Her research found that a positive mind-set — the result of reframing — is associated with well-being, greater life satisfaction and more positive emotions like pleasure and happiness. Accepting the inevitable helps, too — as a yoga teacher once told my class, “Let go or be dragged down.”

 “People who see stressful events as ‘challenges,’ with an opportunity to learn and adapt, tend to cope much better than those who focus more on the threatening aspects — like the possibility of failure, embarrassment or illness.” She suggests that mental framing can not only impact our mental health but also result in physiological differences — for instance, changes in blood pressure and heart rate — and our capacity to recover more quickly after a challenging situation.

At a meditation retreat, Sinikka Isokaanta, a psychotherapist, stated that Nordic people don’t see the “dark cold winter as a crisis but more as a challenge that can be managed in different ways.” For her, it’s all about “kotoilu,” similar to what the Danes call “hygge,” meaning the coziness of home. “It’s a time to enjoy being home with dim lights on, feeling like wintersleeping bears,” she said. Echoing Leibowitz’s research, she added, “These periods bring about a sense of grounding, contentment, happiness and togetherness.”

Isokaanta also had a surprising reframing about how she experiences the long nights. “The darkness offers a safe container to hide from the world. It can be thought of as protection, unlike the bright daylight when everything is visible.”

Is it too late for us to cultivate such a mind-set this year? Leibowitz says no, but urges people to deploy two strategies as soon as possible. Spend time outside, perhaps walking in a park or enjoying winter sports if you are in a snow zone. Or just gathering at a coronavirus-safe distance around a fire pit. Being in nature is a well-known way to boost mood as well as mental and physical health. Use natural light to celebrate the darkness of winter, Leibowitz says.

Appreciate the winter months, and be conscious of your perspective. Try to stop thinking about this season as dark and depressive, with backbreaking snows to clear or gray skies to wear you down, in favor of something magical or evocative of happier times. Take out that instapot to cook up stews and soups, pull out the baking soda and tins to make muffins and cakes, even take a few minutes or more to enjoy the magic of a new snowfall before turning to the salting and shoveling.

Mental reframing, however, is not only a strategy about fighting the wintertime blues. This concept can also be applied to how we experience illness and other daily challenges.

Leibowitz also cited studies indicating that people tend to perform better under stress if they view it as a positive influence rather than a negative or destructive one. “When you’re able to adopt this mind-set, that stress is something that can propel you to achieve your goals, then stress becomes a positive thing.”

Adapted from an article by Steven Petrow in the Washington Post