I agree with that. Thanks for articulating so well. It is too easy to say it's SAD. And my shrink has resisted it though it was discussed. I tend to pull out of this in late December so if it were SAD, why would I do that in the colder darker part of the winter.

Plus the symptoms are very pronounced. It's not mild at all. It's very painful and exhausting, caused lots of behavioral changes, including some impulsivity. That's why I wonder if it could possibly be an anniversary trigger since I have lots of trauma in my background. When I was 5 I was hospitalized in a body cast and it covered the month of November as a significant time. I am not having any specific memories of anything that happened then, but I know that I developed a bad case of pneumonia and they also cut off all my hair because it became matted. My shrink believes that this whole experience is the most significant trauma because of my age and that I was abandoned and treated like a thing. It just seems more likely than SAD to explain things.