Why do some people have a more difficult time adjusting to the change of seasons than others?

When I lived in Seattle I knew a lot of people who had some serious issues with the shortness of the winter days, many had light boxes. Personally, I always have trouble adjusting to summer yeah, I know how weird and backwards that is but I do very well transitioning to fall, winter and spring.

@JilltheTooth yeah, I think it makes a more sense to have trouble in one direction. Maybe just the heat, or just the cold.

I would question whether they adjust to each season easily. Maybe they like the seasons you don’t, and so when you are dreading the change they are all happy about it.

Although, you said once you are getting used to a season, have finally adjusted, which kind of negates what I first wrote in a way. So you don’t mind each season, just want them to last longer?

Almost everyone around me is excited for the cooler fall weather that has been here the past week or so, and I am not happy because I dread the coming cold weather. I don’t like the change of season, because I have lived in FL and know how much I like warm weather all year. But, before I lived in FL I just accepted season change, now I kind of rail against it, pissed off. Even the summers where I live now are not great, because they are too hot.

It’s 45 deg F here right now, and it feels like -10 to me.

@tom_g , here ya go, Sweetie, put on this nice warm sweater.

@JLeslie no, I’m happy. I like all of the seasons, though I have a preference for the cooler ones. I’m excited about autumn approaching, but I am seriously freezing. I’m with @tom_g, it’s ridiculous how cold this “cool” weather feels to me. And I know it will last a long time. But, I feel like it took me forever to adjust to the warm weather earlier this year. Most people seemed to be acclimated long before I was. I know other people who seem to be slower at adjusting to the temperature changes, I just wonder what factors contribute to how quickly or slowly someone makes that adjustment.
@tom_g when the warm weather kicks into high gear, do you feel like it takes you longer to adjust to the heat, or is it comfortable and welcome?

@ANef_is_Enuf – Yes. However, to be fair – I don’t think I ever adjust fully to the hot weather. The cold weather does take me some time, but I do adjust.

@tom_g that’s more accurate for me, as well. I love the change of seasons, but I suck at it. :)

Temperature change is not as big a deal now that we live in air conditioned spaces, unless someone works outside of course. And, there are people who still don’t have air conditioning and suffer badly in the summer, but the majority of Americans have their climate tempered all year. I think the worst part for me is the lack of sunshine and blue skies. Also, contributing factor is the dryness of the winter months, because I am so dry to begin with. I hate the static electricity, I hate wearing two layers at home (I swear my next house will be little and kept 5 degrees warmer in the winter than I keep my house now.)

@JLeslie – No air conditioning here at home.

No a/c for me, either. Maybe that’s the real answer. It is a more dramatic shift, in that respect.

Yes, get an air conditioner. When I lived in MI so many people said, “it doesn’t get hot enough here to need one.” Bullshit! It got hot like crazy, and that was back in the dark ages when I was in college before any climate change hypothesis were flying around. My friends up there, eventually, by their mid twenties all had at least one area air conditioner for their houses.

In Memphis, where I live now, they say, “we have a mild winter.” What the hell does that mean? Sure it is shorter and milder than MI, but I don’t care if it is 25 or 6 degrees. I still am in two layers of clothes and a coat if I am outside, under a blanket inside, with the heat on all day long. Yeah it is only miserable late November through March, instead of 0ctober through April. So?

I’m not sure what state you are in, so some of my generalizations may not apply to you.

@JLeslie : Not nearly as many Americans have “tempered” environments as your post would suggest. Even if AC is available the cost of running same can be prohibitive, same with heat. Cost of oil goes up, thermostat is set lower. Cost of electric high in your area? You’re lucky if you can afford to set at 65 in the winter and 85 in the summer.

@JLeslie – Yeah, I know air conditioning might help. However, my wife and I are not willing to do this because of the environmental and financial costs. Plus, we spend sooo much time outside, the air conditioner would just be cooling a perpetually-empty house.

@JilltheTooth I have no idea the perecntages. Anyway, it still explains the misery of the seasons impacting some people more than others. My husband’s family would complain like crazy when the temperature would dip to the 40’s in FL. They were freezing in their houses. They have the money to runt he heat, but had it in their heads Florida does not use the heater. I finally convinced them that even people who live in MN put on their heat when It is 40 degrees out.

Everywhere I have lived air conditioning is much less expensive than heat. In the summer we are cooling 10–20 degrees from outside temps, in the winter we are heating 40–60 degrees above what the outside temp is, and electricity is less expensive than oil and gas.

@tom_g Having an air conditioner in one room on really hot days would give you incredible relief in my opinion. When I was a little girl it was in my mom and dad’s bedroom. On really hot nights we would all pile into their bed. When I lived in MI I had one apartment that had an air conditioner in the bedroom, and one in the main living area. We just turned them on when it suited us. The room came down several degrees fairly quickly. There is a huge difference between 85 degrees in the house and 80.

We do keep a/c in the bedroom in the summers, but to cool the whole house is just too cost prohibitive the vast majority of the time. The house is old, the windows are old, the insulation is old… it gets to the point where we just accepted that this is something that we cope with. But, I definitely think you are right about the difference between a controlled climate and adjusting, vs grinning and bearing it. When I was sitting around sweating my ass off in a 100F house, most of my friends and family were in their 70F living rooms. So the drop to 40F outside is considerably different.
The same definitely applies in the winter, just reversed. The thermostat is kept at a lower temperature, and old homes [at least ones like ours, where there is a limited budget for repairs and remodeling] come with big ol’ drafts. Smart theory.

My body is in permanent limp mode, living in England we can pretty much have all seasons in one day throughout the winter months….. As spring comes to an end I’m almost acclimatised but this year the anticipated summer struggled to arrive…. Now I’m back in limp mode again with winter just around the corner……. :-/ it’s getting colder. Even if the sun makes an appearance I know it’ll soon be gone.. Seasonal affective disorder has kicked in early this year for me….. Lol.
The heating will be going on pretty soon…….

@tom_g I think it would cost you a $100 more a year in electricity to be much more comfortable in the summer. I am assuming your hottest times don’t last more than a couple of months. Not including the intitial investment of the air conditioner. I can pull my electricity bills for you in the hottest months if you are curious. I have a 5,000 sq ft house and keep it around 77–78 all day and night on the first floor 80 on the second pretty mich all summer, except when we are upstairs for shirt periods, or if we have people over. Memphis is 90’s and 100’s during the hottest part of the summer.

@JLeslie – You could be right about the cost I suppose. I actually don’t usually complain, because I know there is a solution to make my time in the house cooler. But we’re environmentalists and all, and we really don’t spend much time in the house other than to eat and sleep. We actually do own a small window air conditioner that we got during a heat wave when my daughter was really young. I usually throw that thing in a window in one of the kids’ rooms once a year so they can escape a particularly-bad heat wave. Then it goes back in the basement to free-up the window again.
By the way, we live in a 1100 sq ft house.

Ah, @ANef_is_Enuf , I so get the old house thing! My house was built in 1920 as part of a slapped together tract in this neighborhood. No insulation, and the cost of blowing it into the walls was prohibitive as the each stud is a different distance from every other stud and there are just weird supports strewn throughout the walls. I finally got new siding with a nice layer of insulation, and I switched out my windows and doors. And I still am too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. But the house is charming. That’s got to be worth something. ;-)

@JilltheTooth I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but charm is one of the most valuable qualities in a home, personally.

Depends on how abrupt the change is for me.

For example, here in Boston, it was 80F and humid on Thursday and 65F and breezy on Friday. Boom – Fall has arrived.

@cprevite: And, va va voom, we had a brief frost last night (about 140 miles W. of you).

The maples are beginning to turn red and orange.

@tom_g My only point with the size of my house was if I told you my electric bill, I think you would see that it is not a fortune to air condition. Most people have house my size or smaller, so yours, or whoever is interested, would easily be much less.

Dunno. Sometimes I adjust slow too. When I’m about to go from summer to autumn or autumn to winter it doesn’t take that long since I like cold more but when winter ends or spring ends it’s a pain to adjust.

Here in the north east of little ol england town we regularly experience all four seasons in the same day, such is our wacky climate. Therefore I have no problems with season change, mainly because it passes by almost unnoticed.

Season? What’s a season? Here we have the dry season and the wet season; the temperature itself doesn’t change much.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like to not see the sun for months.

I’m sure part of it is people just not spending enough of their time outside.

Maybe it’s a perception thing? After spending a few years in Florida, 47 degrees feels COLD.

@incendiary_dan wouldn’t that have the opposite effect? I would think that spending a lot of time out in the weather would make you more aware of the drastic changes with the seasons. Kind of like @JLeslie‘s theory about so many people living in a climate controlled environment probably aren’t as sensitive to the changes.

@ANef_is_Enuf Yea, but our bodies have adapted to those changes for our entire history, and we’re used to using cues in our surroundings to trigger subtle physiological changes. More aware, but less effected.That, and it just makes you tougher, damnit. :P

I also suspect that people need to make more ample use of wool socks when it gets cold.

@incendiary_dan I see what you’re saying, but I don’t know that it makes sense to me. I would think that a person that spends most of their time in a space between 68–78F year-round would be less susceptible than someone, like @tom_g or myself that has a home that reaches over 100F in the summer, or drops into the lower 60s in the winter. You think it is the other way around?
I’m not arguing, btw, I just don’t quite understand your theory. If you don’t mind explaining, that is.

@ANef_is_Enuf It’s really just a matter of getting used to it. If you’re outside all day, you simply learn to deal with it, and therefore aren’t effected so much. Physiologically, our bodies adapt to the conditions we’re in. For example, many indigenous people living in the Andes develop huge lung capacity to offset to thinner air up there. Inuit peoples often have increase bloodflow to their skin and extremities, so much so that they’ll often be quite comfortable hanging around almost naked at 30 degrees. Spending more time in conditions some might call “adverse” gives you the opportunity to get used to it.

I know that I personally don’t get bothered as much by heat or cold as people who spend a lot of time in climate controlled conditions, and I’m fairly certain it’s because I’m exposed to the elements fairly often. Cody Lundin of the show Dual Survival walks around barefoot everywhere (okay, he wore socks in the snowy areas) and claims that by doing so in cold areas it trains the mytochondria in your body to compensate. I don’t know it that’s the actual change occuring, but the body adapts to deal with the elements just as it deals with stress from exercise by producing more muscle and bone mass.

Changes in the season mean changes in those circumstances, and if you’re exposing yourself to them more as they’re happening, it gives you the chance to make the necessary changes before it gets in full swing. Consider it like training before an event; the athlete that gets more training in will probably do better.

@incendiary_dan well, now I understand what you’re saying. So maybe that isn’t the root of the issue, at all. Because that would negate what @tom_g and I are saying about not living in a climate controlled environment, but seeming to feel the effects more intensely than many other people we know, who often do live in a climate controlled environment. Good theory, though. I like that a lot.

Maybe it just depends on the individual, overall. I’m glad that I asked, though, because I like hearing the theories as to why it is so different for people.

Though, again, there are not necessarily gradual changes to adjust to. This year we literally went from 97F to 43F (during the day) in a matter of 3 days. There was no cooling period, the temperature just steadily dropped one night and has yet to go back up. So, not unlike what I said above.. if someone is in their 70F house, while I am in my 100F house.. and the temperature plummets to 40 something, then I am experiencing a much greater gap in the temperature than the person with a/c.

So, I don’t know. But, interesting, anyhow.

Well yea, that drastic of a change will be confusing no matter what.

Of course, there’s genetics to account for, too. Lots of really white people I know can’t handle the summer. Maybe I’m just fortunate to have genes from all over the place.

@incendiary_dan that’s definitely possible. I come from an almost entirely slavic background, and I’ll tell you what.. you stick me out in the dead of summer and I feel like I’m suffocating. I would rather be ankle deep in snow, in my bare feet, any day of the week. haha. Just sayin’.

I am obscenely-white.
Let me add that my work has AC, so it could be keeping me from fully getting used to hot weather. Although, for years (many) even my work didn’t have AC, and I was still a wimp.

@tom_g it’s ok. I like having a wimp-ally.

@ANef_is_Enuf and @tom_g ; If it makes you guys feel better I bitch and whine about the heat all summer, I’m really rather annoying about it…

I do, too. :) You can join our club. How do you feel about frilly toothpicks?

Well, I actually like them because when they don’t have the frills I can’t see them in the sandwich and I hurt myself. Was that the right answer?

I’m for ‘em.
Sorry, I just think of that every time I talk about being in a club.

Oooooh… Now I get it! :-)

I have no trouble adjusting to the change of seasons. I actually welcome the beginning of each season. Right now, I love the incoming cooler weather of fall. I am naturally “tanned”, so I don’t lose my darkish golden complexion in the fall and winter, and in the summer I avoid the heat and sun because I don’t want to get any darker than I am or get sunburn.

Where I do have trouble is in the middle of a season, particularly summer and winter. I hate late July to mid August. Too hot. And I hate the month of November——too dark, cold, and depressing.