Winter is over. The weather is starting to warm up. There is more sunlight making for brighter, longer days and lots of Vitamin D.

You’ve heard of seasonal depression as it relates to winter, so you expect to feel better when winter leaves.

Even if you don’t experience depression during the winter months, people do seem happier during the summer, right?

But as summer begins, you notice that you’re feeling more stressed and anxious than you did during the winter.

You want to take advantage of all that is going on during the summer, but that stress and anxiety is making it less enjoyable than you expected it to be.

From my clients and my own experience, I can tell you that you’re not alone.

It’s not uncommon to feel stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed during the summer months.

In this blog, I’m going to share with you my ideas about why this occurs and suggestions for managing it, so that you can enjoy your summers more.

Why Do I Feel Anxious in the Summer?

I speak from the perspective of someone living in the Midwest United States (specifically Wisconsin), but I believe this might apply to people living anywhere - summer is busy!

For those of us living in the Midwest or in other areas where the weather is not so great for the rest of the year, it feels like an even bigger shift from our activity levels during the winter and summer months.

From festivals, traveling, graduations and other parties, it can feel difficult, maybe even impossible to fit in everything that is planned during the summer.

It makes sense that this feels overwhelming and can lead to feelings of stress and anxiety.

I believe some of this desire to squeeze everything in during the summer is also residual from student life.

For 13+ years, most of us are in school for nine months of the year, leaving three Summer months to fit in all of the traveling, camps, and hanging out with friends.

How to Enjoy Your Summer

Be Present

Being present, through use of grounding techniques, meditation, and other mindfulness skills, will help you manage stress and anxiety and get greater enjoyment out of whatever you may be doing in the present moment.

Set Boundaries

Although it may be tempting to say “yes” to every opportunity, it’s okay and helpful to be picky about what you say “yes” to. By engaging in only the activities that you really want to participate in and with the people whom you really want to spend time with, you will spend less time doing things that you don’t want to do and be able to enjoy what you’re doing more.

You can also set time limits. This can be a helpful boundary to set around things that you may not want to say “no” to but also don’t want to commit a lot of your time to, such as work events or certain family get togethers.

Choose Rest

Try to resist the urge to squeeze everything in and overschedule yourself. Make time for rest. This will help you enjoy the activities that you participate in and manage any stress, anxiety, or overwhelm you may be experiencing.

Keep Up With Mental Health Care

There is often a summer slow down in the mental health therapy world. The weather gets better and clients take a break from therapy or are more likely to cancel their appointments.

This may be completely appropriate and okay sometimes, but it’s also okay to continue, or re-start, therapy throughout the summer months.

Better weather can certainly have a positive impact on mood and stress levels; however, it usually doesn’t have a lasting impact or an impact on deeper issues like those that you may be addressing in therapy.

Final Notes

Summer anxiety, while annoying and frustrating, is a common experience. It makes sense based on how busy the summer months tend to be, and it may be related to residual conditioning from the many years of being a student, where the summer months were highly coveted.

There are ways to manage this anxiety, including being present, setting boundaries around how and with whom you spend your time, choosing rest, and keeping your therapy appointments.

It might help to remember that how you spend your summers is much more about quality over quantity and you get to choose what you do over the summer and how to take care of any stress or anxiety you experience.