Friday Question: Seasonal Changes

The Friday Question: How it works

Every Friday we will pose a question for you all to discuss or privately consider. You can engage with it publicly here on the RFAS blog, or you can join our forum (details below) for a more private discussion. You can write it down to think about later, journal about it, or bring it in to a therapy session with you.

If you would like to volunteer to become a moderator and host future Questions, please email us at volunteer@asexualsurvivors.org—or join our forum and post in the moderator volunteer thread. If you just have an idea for a future Question that you want to share, we have a brainstorming topic on our forum.

Something to Ponder Today

In most of the United States, the time has just changed again due to Daylight Savings. The time change can feel quite abrupt, and with the days getting shorter everything can suddenly feel very different. Meanwhile in the southern hemisphere, the days are getting longer.

For a lot of survivors, trauma is kind of cyclical, and different seasons tend to bring with them different kinds of triggers or feelings. Sometimes we don’t even realize the effect that seasonal changes have on us, but simply feel like things are suddenly different, and have a harder time coping without understanding why. It’s a good idea to give some serious thought to how seasons can affect us, so today I want to offer some questions to get you thinking about that.

Do seasons affect the way you experience your trauma?

• Do you tend to feel more easily triggered during certain seasons?
• Do seasons tend to affect your mood more generally?
• Do you have different triggers or challenges to navigate during different seasons?
• Are some of the ways that you use to cope not accessible to you during this time of year? Or, do you have more ways of coping than you would normally?
• Do you tend to find yourself stressed out or anxious about the upcoming holiday season?
• Do you find that it helps to try to get in touch with the season, maybe even do some sort of yearly ritual/tradition?
• Are there specific seasonal traditions that are now off-limits to you because of trauma? Have you established a different tradition instead of the old one? Can you think of something new to try?
• What are your favorite things to do during whatever season it is in your part of the world right now?

You don’t have to answer every (or any!) question, of course. These are just different ways to approach the topic which might be helpful to consider. You can share as much or as little as you like.

On the Forum

• You can discuss this question privately after registering at the forum
• Here are instructions for how to join the forum
• Here’s the invite request form
• You can also still discuss previous questions as well. There is no time limit for joining the discussion.
• Please abide by our rules in both comments and forum posts.

Please note that we are still working things out in the forum, especially technical issues. We are gradually letting people in now who are not moderators or volunteers, but it can basically be considered “in beta” for now. So if you do join, please excuse our forum being a bit of a mess while we get everything tested. There may also be a little bit of a wait time for sending out invites.

Here are a couple of things you should know about posting to the forum:

• All posts are private, and can only be viewed by members
• It is against forum rules to discuss any personal stories shared on the forum with anyone who is not a member without permission of the person who shared it
• You can post as anonymous, once you are a member

The Spoiler Tag

You can hide especially triggering details behind a spoiler tag—which also works in blog comments. Here’s an example:

[spoiler title=’Triggering stuff’ collapse_link=’true’]Explicit/triggering material would go here.[/spoiler]

To make one, just type…

[ spoiler ] ... [ /spoiler ]

…without the spaces. I hope that this helps everyone safely navigate this conversation.