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Seasonal Reset and the 50-Minute Therapy Problem · Ryan's Journal

0:07
So, um, my toes are literally freezing right now.
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Like, I woke up, walked into the kitchen, and I was like, wait,
0:12
when did the floor turn into ice?
0:13
Is it September already?
0:15
It is.
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It totally crept up.
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I felt it in the air this morning, like, uh, that crispness where your body just
0:22
goes, oh, okay, fall is actually here.
0:24
And instantly my brain goes into reset mode, like, what are we doing for recovery,
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what are we doing for light?
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It happens every single year around mid September.
0:34
You think you have a few more weeks of summer warmth, and then suddenly you're
0:38
pulling out sweaters and wondering why you feel just a little bit more sluggish
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coming out of bed.
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No, for real though!
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I was trying to do my morning routine today, right?
0:47
I put on these, like, super tight compression socks because someone told me it helps
0:52
with circulation when it gets cool out.
0:55
And I'm on the treadmill, literally walking like a robot, trying to do deep
1:00
breathing, and I'm like, man, am I doing wellness or am I in training for something?
1:04
Compression socks are amazing, Justin, don't dis the socks!
1:07
But seriously, if you want to get ahead of the fall slump, you have to talk about
1:11
light.
1:12
Like, actual light therapy.
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I've been reading so much about this because according to Psychology Today,
1:18
light therapy lamps for seasonal affective disorder really work,
1:21
but people mess up the setup all the time.
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How do you mess up sitting in front of a light?
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Well, okay, so first off, you need a lamp that gives off 10,000 lux.
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That's the intensity level you need.
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But the key thing that most people miss, like, the exact detail from the article,
1:37
is that you have to place the light 12 to 18 inches from your face.
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If it's across the room on a side table, it's not doing anything for your eyes or
1:47
your brain.
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12 to 18 inches?
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That is right in your grill!
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Like, boom, sunrise in your face while you're trying to sip coffee.
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Right, but you don't stare directly into it!
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It just sits 12 to 18 inches from your face while you read or check emails,
2:01
and you want to do it before noon so you align your circadian rhythm.
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That morning soak of light signals to your brain that the day has started,
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so your melatonin drops and your mood stays steady.
2:13
It's interesting how much effort we put into constructing this physical armor
2:17
against the changing calendar.
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You get your happy light going, you stack your Vitamin D supplements,
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maybe you hit a steam room or a sauna to get the blood moving,
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you wear your compression socks...
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it's like we sense the dark months coming and we start building a fortress around
2:32
ourselves.
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It really is like emotional armor!
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Because when the sun goes down at like five afternoon, it can hit you hard.
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I mean, I've even heard people talking about those big red light therapy beds at
2:45
salons, like going all out with high irradiance, Joules per square centimeter,
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getting the full body exposure to stay warm and keep the energy up.
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Oh, red light beds are next level.
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The higher irradiance you get from a commercial unit, it penetrates deeper into the
3:03
tissue, helps cellular recovery, circulation...
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like, if a desk light is a quick tune up, a red light therapy bed is like taking
3:11
your whole body to the pit stop.
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I think there's a real psychological comfort in those physical rituals,
3:16
too.
3:17
When you feel the weather turning and you start to worry about seasonal affective
3:21
disorder or just that heavy winter fatigue, taking control of your physical
3:26
environment...
3:27
doing the treadmill, getting your Vitamin D, using the light...
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it gives you a baseline.
3:32
It gives you a feeling that you're grounded in your body before you have to go deal
3:36
with the heavy mental stuff.
3:37
Yeah, like, if my body feels like garbage, there's no way I'm gonna sit down and
3:41
handle my mind, you know?
3:42
You gotta get the engine running first.
3:44
Exactly.
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It sets the foundation.
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If you're sleep deprived and starved for sunlight, everything feels ten times harder
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than it actually is.
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Which brings us to what happens when you actually try to sit down and work on the
3:56
mental stuff.
3:57
We talk a lot about going to therapy, taking care of your mental health,
4:01
but there's a massive structural issue that people run into when they're dealing
4:05
with really deep, persistent trauma.
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Yeah, like, imagine having this massive story in your head,
4:11
right?
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Something you think about pretty much 24 hours a day.
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And you go to see a therapist...
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like, say you've been seeing a therapist named Duncan for a year and a half,
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over 70 sessions...
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and you get in there, and before you even get through the warmup,
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the clock runs out.
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Fifty minutes goes by in a blink.
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By the time you unpack the week, slow down your breathing, and actually get to the
4:32
core of what hurts, there's like five minutes left.
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It creates this awful emotional whiplash.
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You open up this massive, painful box of memories, and then suddenly the clinician
4:43
has to wrap it up because the next person is waiting in the lobby.
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And where did that standard even come from?
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Why fifty minutes?
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Well, according to research published in Arjun Gupta's piece on Substack,
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the 50 minute therapeutic hour originated with Sigmund Freud himself in his 1913
5:00
paper Zur Einleitung der Behandlung, which translates to On Beginning the Treatment.
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Wait, Freud made this up in 1913?
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Like, over a hundred years ago?
5:10
Yes!
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And the exact detail from the research is that it was a product of convenience and
5:15
efficiency instead of being a result of empirical data.
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Freud used to do home visits that lasted hours, but as his clinic grew,
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he needed time between patients to take notes, use the restroom,
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and rest.
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So he capped the session at fifty minutes to leave ten minutes for himself before
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the next top of the hour.
5:33
Wait, so...
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so modern insurance companies and mental health clinics are using a schedule that
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was invented just so a guy in 1913 could take a breather and write notes?
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Not because it was proven to heal trauma faster?
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Precisely.
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It was practical for the provider's schedule, not designed around the client's
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emotional capacity.
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And today, insurance policies lock that in.
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Most insurance will only cover one 50 minute or 60 minute hour a week.
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If a therapist like Duncan wants to squeeze in an extra session or request more
6:05
hours, they have to jump through massive administrative hoops to get approval.
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That is wild to me, man.
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Because if you're carrying a story that literally haunts you all day long,
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fifty minutes a week is like...
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it's like trying to drain an ocean with a spoon!
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You're telling the client, hey, slow down, zero in on just one tiny detail for forty
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minutes...
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but their brain is exploding with everything else that happened!
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And therapists are overloaded!
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They're seeing back to back clients all day long.
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So to the therapist, fifty minutes feels like a full, structured block of work.
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But to the person sitting on the couch, carrying thirteen years of hurt or
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confusion, it feels like you just started talking and then you get thrown back out
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into the street.
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It creates a real tension between the delivery system of mental healthcare and the
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actual human need.
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When you have a massive backlog of unsaid thoughts, being told to pace yourself
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within a rigid administrative box can make you feel even more isolated,
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like the system itself isn't built to hold the weight of what you're carrying.
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And that isolation gets so heavy when you're trying to explain a place or an
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experience that nobody around you understands.
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Like...
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like, say you spent years in a place, like Rockwell City, Iowa.
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Fourth grade all the way through twelfth grade.
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That's a huge chunk of your life!
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School years shape everything.
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If those years were marked by social tension, being called names like Screech,
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people laughing at you, or someone you thought was a friend calling you a baby in a
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car...
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those memories don't just disappear when you receive a diploma.
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No, they stay in your nervous system!
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And what's crazy is how different life can feel later.
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Like going to college and realizing, wait, people aren't picking on my hygiene here,
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people are calling me by my actual name, Ryan, instead of some old nickname.
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But even when college is better, that old ghost of Rockwell City still hangs over
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you.
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Because people in the flesh right now, like people you meet today,
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they weren't there!
8:00
You try to tell them what happened, and words feel like...
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I don't know, like trying to translate a language nobody else speaks.
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You say you were tense, you say you were crying, but nobody gets the actual weight
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of it unless they lived inside your skin back then.
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And if you try to express it to people in your life and they laugh it off,
8:16
or ignore it, or don't take it seriously...
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that is so toxic.
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It hurts even worse than keeping it inside, because now you've put your
8:25
vulnerability out there and it was discarded.
8:27
That's why I think digital voice journaling is such a huge deal.
8:31
Like, when you get up in the morning and you can't get past the feeling of that dark
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cloud or the Ouija board mode where everything feels mysterious and heavy...
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just pressing record on your phone and dumping the thoughts out into an audio memo.
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Yeah!
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Like a raw, running archive of your brain.
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You don't gotta edit it, you don't gotta make it sound cool.
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You just talk.
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It serves as a portable record.
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When you only get fifty minutes a week with a therapist, you can bring those
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recorded journal entries with you.
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It bridges that gap.
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Instead of spending twenty minutes trying to remember how bad you felt on Tuesday
9:07
morning, you have the exact evidence of your mental state right there.
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It turns that chaotic, spinning rumination into something tangible.
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You can hear your own voice, track your own endurance over time,
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and see that even on the days where you felt completely drained,
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you survived it and you kept processing.
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When mental stress accumulates like that over years, it almost always manifests
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physically.
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The toll it takes on the body is profound.
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Oh, totally.
9:34
Like taking medication in the past that just knocked you out,
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putting you to sleep for years, and then waking up to find out you developed sleep
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apnea from it!
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Now you're literally losing oxygen while you sleep, waking up exhausted every single
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day for two or three years straight.
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Sleep apnea and chronic nighttime oxygen deprivation...
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that level of fatigue is bone deep.
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It makes your body feel like it's constantly under attack.
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And when your body feels exhausted, your brain starts searching for a physical panic
10:02
button.
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You start thinking, is my heart okay?
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Am I having a medical emergency?
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So you go through the medical wringer trying to find safety.
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You get a twelve lead EKG, you wear a Holter monitor for days,
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you get chest X rays, repeated blood tests...
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and every single test comes back totally normal.
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Clean bill of health.
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Which should be a relief, right?
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Like, hey, your heart is great!
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But then your brain goes, wait, what about an ultrasound?
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We didn't do the ultrasound yet!
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What if something showed up there?
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That is the classic somatic panic loop.
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The medical tests prove you are physically safe on paper, but your body is so wired
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from years of trauma and fatigue that it refuses to believe the results.
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The physical sensation of exhaustion feels so dangerous that logic can't quiet it
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down.
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And then you have medications like beta blockers.
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Beta blockers, like propranolol, are amazing for blocking those physical adrenaline
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spikes...
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keeping your heart rate steady so anxiety doesn't make your chest race.
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But the flip side is they dampen your overall energy.
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They keep the heart safe, but they leave you feeling a bit flat,
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which makes the fatigue feel even heavier.
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It's a double edged sword, man!
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The meds protect your heart and calm the somatic spikes, but you're still waking up
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feeling like you ran a marathon in your sleep because of the oxygen loss and the
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sleep apnea.
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It's so draining.
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It shows the paradox of trauma.
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You can have doctors telling you your heart is fine, your blood work is great,
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but until your nervous system feels safe, the exhaustion persists.
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Reassurance from a test helps build self esteem, but the bodily memory takes time to
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catch up.
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You know what's crazy though?
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When you realize that the story in your head...
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like, all those heavy memories and old ghosts...
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it's almost like the story itself wants to bring you down.
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It wants you to sit there and cry all day, right?
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It feeds on powerlessness.
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The moment you feel helpless or like you're stuck in the past,
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the story wins.
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But building self esteem is how you reclaim your ground.
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Self esteem isn't just a mood that happens to you, though.
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It's something you build through active structure and clear self advocacy.
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If fifty minutes of therapy isn't enough, you advocate for extra hours,
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or you look for clinics with sliding fee scales, or you set firm boundaries about
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what social situations you will and won't tolerate.
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Yeah!
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Like setting up a reward system for yourself in daily life.
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Even small things, like cleaning out a deep freezer or scrubbing the shower...
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acknowledging that stuff!
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If you gotta work with a case manager like Susan to structure a token economy where
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you earn small rewards for keeping your apartment clean, that is real self care!
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Compounding those small daily actions is everything.
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Using your 10,000 lux light box 12 to 18 inches from your face before noon,
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walking on the treadmill, recording your audio memos, keeping your medical records
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in check...
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each small act is a vote for your own recovery.
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It shifts you from passive endurance to active self management.
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You stop waiting for the past to give you permission to feel better,
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and you start building a framework in the present that holds you steady.
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It's like...
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remember when you shot the story down twice?
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Like winning a random drawing out of a box in the closet or picking the movie in the
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common room and getting Robin Williams twice in a row?
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You proved to yourself you could win then, and you can win now.
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Building self confidence piece by piece, refusing to let old labels like Vogel or
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old school yard cruelty define who you are today...
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that is the ultimate victory.
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You don't have to keep visiting Rockwell City in your mind when you've already built
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a life somewhere else.
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You just keep laying down the structure, one day at a time,
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light box on, socks on, voice memo recorded.
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You take control back.
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Yeah.
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Day by day.
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We got this.