Is it Normal to Notice the Need to Seek Online Psychotherapy Support in the Fall?

Is Autumn a Good Time for Online Psychotherapy?

Autumn is a transitional period during which the level of light, temperature, and weather changes. Our bodies react differently, needing a different diet, varying sleep duration. It’s hard to immediately adapt to the cold and the end of summer, which quickly accustoms us to experiencing the abundance of bloom, warmth, pleasure, light, and safety. It seems that losing these elements with the new season, we may also lose a sense of security on a completely unconscious level. Often, our attitude towards work changes too. After the holidays, we frequently implement planned changes. Thus, autumn is a time when we adapt to changes in general, even culturally, as our calendars are arranged around education, among other things.

It seems that to tackle such challenges, it’s necessary to work through structures that hinder openness to change during this period. And here arises a phenomenon, or even a diagnostic unit, like seasonal depression. Its intensity does not have to be high for it to be difficult to cope with mood dips and a decrease in strength. Physical activity levels also drop, and avoiding stimuli leads to a sort of isolation, a need to hide away. This creates space to return to the past — to what was alive earlier, including traumas and grievances.

What else might emerge during this period?

We often reminisce about relatives, the close ones, and what we have lost — missed opportunities and relationships. Sitting under a blanket with tea and a book, all this can come back to us with renewed force. This includes longing, awareness of many unresolved issues. If we are alone, variable moods, fears, and returns to crises and memories of traumas may arise. There is no way to vent these emotions, and a walk doesn’t always bring relief at this time of year. This is precisely the moment when we seek support. And it’s worth looking for it, worth talking about what hurts and what needs fixing, so that such states do not return with increased force.

Working with Loss in Systemic Psychotherapy:

From the perspective of systemic therapy, loss, including that of truly departed individuals, forms an important element of the system, which, however, is not introduced at the relationship level, e.g., into the genogram. We don’t draw relationships with loss unless it is absolutely necessary, and this depends solely on the approach or decision of the psychotherapist.

Symbolically, this makes a lot of sense. Loss is signaled, its cause is also marked, but at the relationship level, we leave only the elements that are alive for the given system or person.

The system recognizes and understands loss, has learned from it, and opens up to new dependencies.

In online psychotherapy, we talk about losses, learn to bid them farewell, and also sublimate them in some way through art therapy, meditation, emotional work. We can open up to the pain associated with them and then close it off.

In systemic therapy, deceased individuals are also an important topic for self-knowledge and understanding the family system. It may also happen that the deceased become closer to us than in life. The relationship, after some time, reaches a calm, leaving a good memory trace. It may also happen that someone forgives only after several decades. It’s not excluded that returns to the cemetery are that work, confronting feelings towards the deceased.

Sometimes, we finally see the person and stories associated with them, realizing how important it is that they existed. We have recorded them as an element of our own narrative and family and social system. We see, after all, whom we remember. All Saints’ Day is therefore a social event, not just a religious one. The deceased is a figure, a trace, a story, a resource, and a teacher. How many memories it generates if we were connected to someone, regardless of the worldview or religion we follow.

Similarly, loss or failure can be such a figure or element of the system that cannot be warmed up by signaling it on the genogram. It remains a figure of significant meaning, difficult to have a good relationship with. It’s a lesson and an opportunity to work so that it does not affect other life decisions.

In summary, let’s see how much can happen through the mere season of autumn — how much it can determine difficult experiences. Especially those naturally occurring at the individual, professional, or emotional level, in confrontation with loneliness or sometimes as a result of reflection, emotional returns to close ones, and losses in general. For others, it is a time of challenges and a different approach to time and simply a space for online psychotherapy focused on support for self-development and self-discovery.

Warmly inviting you, 

Paulina Kubś 

Cabinet of Interventional Systemic– Cultural Psychotherapy