As is customary for all Brits, when I woke up this morning and saw that the sun was shining, I immediately WhatsApped my friends: “The sun is out!”. It’s a sure-fire winner in a group chat, guaranteed to earn you a string of emojis and excitable responses, and this morning’s included one which read: “Good weather always makes me question whether I do actually need therapy or whether just moving to a sunnier country would more or less solve my problems.”
It’s undeniable that sun makes us feel better, longer days help us feel more energised and all the extra vitamin D does, scientifically, help boost our mood and our overall sense of wellbeing. Add to this the fact that, in the UK, it is thought that Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) affects 2 million of us, and this winter, we were hit with wave after wave of depressing news, and suddenly my friend’s comment starts to feel that it has more truth to it than you might have initially given it credit for.
But before you email your therapist to tell them that you quit with reckless abandon, or take yourself off any NHS waiting list, let’s think about this for a moment: is quitting therapy when you suddenly feel as though you are in a better place a good idea to begin with? As both the daughter of a therapist and a patient of various therapeutic methods myself (I’ve been with my current therapist for over three years) my answer would be no. It’s dangerous to assume that a clutch of sunny days have magically made our problems less prevalent and it’s short-sighted, especially given as summer is a season, not a lifestyle – or at least, certainly not here in the UK.
But, given that I’m not a therapist myself, I decided to ask a professional whether she notices a dip in clients over the warmer months and if quitting your therapist in response to feeling a boost in mood from the sun is ever a good idea.
“The thing about therapy is that many people wrongly assume that you only need to be actively working on yourself when you’re in a crisis,” therapist Tami Sobell, founder of TS Therapy says. “However, we often find that the real work – the deeper stuff – comes to the fore and can be worked on once the crisis has dissipated.”
She explains that, for example, many people start therapy to help them through a breakup and so during their initial sessions they are only dealing with what is happening for them in the moment. “Once they feel they are able to cope once again and are on their way to moving on, we can start to look at other aspects of their life – past and present – and this will, over time, give them a better sense of awareness and understanding about their own triggers, behaviours and boundaries – and it’s this, rather than being able to get over a breakup more quickly, that is ultimately going to give them a better quality of life,” Tami tells me.
Our mental health requires maintenance, not just an initial polish. It’s the same for most things in life. Take our bodies, for example, if we stopped exercising or eating healthily (whatever that means for us) when we felt at peace with how we looked or felt, we’d notice a steady decline in that soon after. Or think about your job, if you took a break from being productive every time you achieved positive feedback or a sense of security, you’d find yourself getting negative feedback pretty sharpish.