Every January, I religiously play the ‘obnoxiously locked-in Capricorn’ version of myself. I live and breathe through a bullet journal, multiple to-do lists and a heavily blocked Google Calendar. And it works — for a while. But a few weeks in, my motivation ghosts me, my routines become empty promises and goals that once felt easily achievable suddenly start feeling lofty.
For the longest time, I thought this was a ‘me’ problem. That I was simply lazy and not disciplined enough to follow through on my goals and habits. But noticing the pattern year after year, I came to a realisation: it wasn’t me, it was the heat (for the most part). The bright optimism I usually start off my year with almost always starts dimming somewhere around late February or early March, just as the days start becoming longer, hotter and harder to escape in India.
The more I paid attention to this pattern, the more hyperaware I became of how summer was affecting not just my mood, but my body too. What I had always interpreted as a personal failing increasingly felt like something else: a constant state of irritation, exhaustion and discomfort — one that followed me even to Rishikesh on what I thought was an escape from the heat.
Abha Kohli, a counselling psychologist and the founder of Connect, says “Extreme weather (in this case, heat) can leave people feeling trapped by conditions they cannot control, often manifesting as irritability, restlessness, frustration and agitation. What looks like not trying is often the psyche’s equivalent of a circuit breaker,” she says. Over time, my summers became an exercise in retreat. Curtains drawn, AC on blast, an iced coffee melting on the table, doomscrolling in tow, I spent most days trying to escape the heat rather than enjoy the season. It was during one of these reel-binge sessions that I came across the term Summer-Pattern Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
When you hear the term SAD, you instinctively associate it with winter: shorter daylight hours, gloomy skies and the kind of cold that makes you want to hibernate like a bear. Which is why the idea of SAD, commonly known as seasonal depression, showing up in summer feels counterintuitive at first. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, summer seasonal affective disorder or reverse SAD may be linked to increased light exposure which can disrupt melatonin production and sleep pattern. Unlike the lethargy and withdrawal commonly associated with winter depression, summer seasonal affective disorder is often characterised by irritability, anxiety, restlessness, insomnia and decreased appetite.
Shivani Shah, a 24-year old event manager from Pune, who also finds summer emotionally draining, had to say: “I’d rather take the harsh winters. I can put on two coats, but I can’t peel off my hot skin.” That sense of inescapability is central to the experience. What makes seasonal affective disorder particularly difficult to recognise is that it doesn’t resemble the version of depression we’ve culturally learned to identify. If winter SAD feels like a shutdown, summer SAD feels like a short-circuit. Summer comes with expectations. It’s marketed as a season of vitality. We’re expected to travel, get into our “summer bods” and laze on the beach or outdoors with Aperol spritzes — basically live it up and emerge from the season somehow improved or fulfilled. The problem is that unlike winter, which allows you to feel ‘blue’, summer feels like the wrong time to be dealing with these emotions. So, admitting that the heat instead makes you dysregulated, deeply exhausted or unlike yourself, you might feel embarrassed.
