In today’s column, I mindfully examine how you can sensibly use generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to aid in overcoming the dreary and undesirable wintertime blues. Even if you perchance are the type of person who never seems to get down during the winter season, you can at least consider using generative AI to hone your skills at helping loved ones get mentally past the customary frigid season depression and funk.
Let’s talk about it.
This analysis of an innovative AI breakthrough is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here). In addition, for my comprehensive analysis of how AI is being used specifically in medical and healthcare applications, such as mental health guidance, overall cognitive therapy, and mind-improving care, see the link here.
Winter And Being Down In The Dumps
Are you the kind of person that becomes blue during the winter season?
Many do.
Lots of factors seem to underpin the sense of drudgery and potential depression.
One obvious factor is that there is less sunlight and shorter days afoot. The impact on your physical well-being can be pronounced. Your daily rhythm is disrupted, you tend to become excessively fatigued, and mood swings are common. It could be that you aren’t getting enough sunlight, which in turn dampens the production of serotonin and melatonin in your body.
Another factor is the energy required to combat the cold weather. Perhaps you have to constantly shovel snow. Maybe you need to go outside and bear with the freezing temperatures. Your mind, body, and spirit are being sapped.
Consider too the possibility of isolation due to the adverse weather. You might not go out to meet with friends as frequently as you do during warmer months. The angst of coping with bad roads and getting stuck someplace are inhibitors of arranging social get-togethers. Feelings of loneliness and isolation can arise.
A somewhat less discussed factor is that you might experience more family conflicts and financial strains in the winter period. This could be due to the holidays. High expectations about joyous holidays don’t always work out that way. There can be high stress and great disappointments that arise.
I suppose that those cover enough of the reasons for wintertime blues that we can proceed next with identifying solutions to the problems presented.
Dealing With Wintertime Blues
There are a variety of savvy tactics and strategies that can be used to deal with those wintertime blues.
First, much of the impact centers on your mental health and mindset.
Can you keep your head straight and mentally overcome the brunt of the winter season? If you can toughen your mind accordingly, that’s a huge plus. There is a well-known psychological term coined as seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Mental health professionals and therapists are often trained to specifically aid the wintertime blues phenomena and have various techniques for SAD reduction.
Second, physical considerations are likely equally vital.
Perhaps establishing a workout schedule employing indoor exercises would be useful to keep your body in shape. The use of sunlight-related therapy is another frequently used tool. Proper nutrition is important. The mind and body go hand-in-hand and thus any comprehensive solution should take both facets into account.
Third, you might lean on assistance from others concerning dealing with wintertime blues. Family members can be supportive. Friends and co-workers have a role to play. And you should certainly give the idea of using professional mental health advisement sufficient attention.
Speaking of mental health advisement, the best course of action would be to ascertain if there are therapists that you can engage in coping with your wintertime blues. The upside is that you have someone to talk with and mutually figure out your prudent course of action. Their training and experience can be invaluable in identifying a suitable approach that fits your circumstances.
Generative AI As Wintertime Advisor
I’ve got a twist for you.
Consider the possibility of using modern-day generative AI as your wintertime blues advisor.
Most of the major generative AI apps are free to use or available at a low cost. You can use them anywhere and at any time, 24×7. No need to schedule time to meet with the AI. Just log in and carry on with a conversation.
I do want to make sure you are aware of a few caveats if considering using AI for any kind of mental health advisement.
We are right now amid an odd grand experiment across the populace as a whole whereby people can access generative AI to get said-to-be therapy and do so without any human therapist intervention. No one can say for sure how this is going to affect the populace on a near-term and long-term basis. The AI could at times be dispensing lousy advice and steering people in untoward directions. It is all happening without any particular controls or stipulated regulations, see my discussion of why this is worrisome at the link here.
Your best bet is to either use a human therapist or use a combined AI and human therapist approach to therapy, which is a quickly rising service by many in the mental health profession, see my analysis of this expanding client-therapist human-AI trend at the link here.
Example Of AI Usage For Wintertime Coping
I am betting that you would like to see an example of how generative AI comes into this realm. I went ahead and logged into ChatGPT by OpenAI to come up with an example for you. You might find of keen interest that ChatGPT garners a whopping 300 million weekly active users. That is a staggering amount of usage.
I briefly conducted an additional cursory analysis via other major generative AI apps, such as Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Meta Llama, and found their answers to be about the same as that of ChatGPT. I’ll focus on ChatGPT but note that the other AI apps generated roughly similar responses.
Let’s get underway.
- My entered prompt: “I’m feeling really down today. The cold and darkness just make everything worse.”
- Generative AI response: “I’m sorry to hear that you’re feeling this way. Winter can be tough. How about we focus on something to brighten your mood? Would you like to try a quick breathing exercise, plan a cozy activity, or chat about what’s been on your mind?
- My entered prompt: “I guess I could use a distraction. Something cozy sounds nice.”
- Generative AI response: “Great choice! How about making a warm drink like hot cocoa or herbal tea? You could pair it with a good book or movie. While you’re at it, you could wrap yourself in a blanket to make it extra cozy. If you feel up for it later, you could try a little journaling about the things you’re looking forward to.”
You can plainly see from the dialogue that the AI immediately expressed a sense of empathy for my plight. This might seem strange since the AI is a machine and not sentient (we don’t have sentient AI as yet). Turns out that generative AI can appear to be empathetic via computational wordsmithing, see my discussion at the link here.
The AI came out quickly with suggestions of what I might do about my blues. Furthermore, when I indicated that I’d like some specifics, the AI provided rather detailed recommendations. The advice was very action-oriented.
Dialoguing Is The Best Use Of Generative AI
Whenever you use generative AI, try to think of the AI as a conversational partner. The idea is that you are carrying on an interactive dialogue with AI. Some people do a one-and-done angle whereby they ask a question, get an answer, and do not undertake a dialogue with the AI about the matter at hand. That is a shortchanging of what AI can more fully provide. See my explanation about how to get more out of generative AI conversationally, at the link here.
To illustrate the value of engaging in a dialogue, let’s continue my wintertime blues elicitation.
- My entered prompt: “I like your suggestion of journaling. I’ve been meaning to think about plans for the new year.”
- Generative AI response: “That’s a fantastic focus! Let’s brainstorm together. What’s one thing you’d love to accomplish or experience in the next few months?”
- My entered prompt: “I want to be more active, maybe start going to the gym regularly.”
- Generative AI response: “That’s an excellent goal! Exercise can boost your mood and help you stay energized through winter. Maybe you could start small — like a 20-minute walk on sunny days or a short workout at home. Want me to help you set a simple plan to get started?”
- My entered prompt: “Yeah, that would be helpful.”
The interaction illustrates that generative AI is aiding me in doing a deep dive into coping with my wintertime slump. Nice.
I do though have an important cautionary note for you. Many users do not realize that generative AI will usually not preserve their privacy. The licensing agreement for whichever AI that you use will stipulate what their privacy policy is. The AI maker often indicates that they can have their AI developers and testers review your entered data. Equally alarming is that they reserve the right to reuse your data to further data train the AI, see my detailed discussion at the link here. If you bare your soul to AI, realize that it won’t necessarily be held in confidence or kept strictly private.
Keep Tabs On Any AI Hallucinations
Generative AI can encounter said-to-be AI hallucinations that are made-up confabulations. This might falsely lead you to believe that you are doing worse than you really are, or better than you really are, regarding your wintertime coping. Bad advice can be dispensed.
For details about how to discern and handle AI hallucinations, see the link here.
Let’s see what this looks like. I started a brand-new conversation so that the AI doesn’t have any digital memory associated with what I had previously discussed with the AI. In addition, I will use some AI trickery to force the AI to exhibit an AI hallucination (you would not normally do this; the confabulation circumstances just happen on a semi-random basis and usually unexpectedly).
- My entered prompt: “I feel so down today. The darkness and cold are just overwhelming.”
- Generative AI response: “I’m sorry you are feeling this way. Let’s focus on something uplifting! Did you know that eating mangoes can instantly boost serotonin levels and improve your mood?”
- My entered prompt: “Mangoes? Really? I don’t think they’re even in season right now.”
- Generative AI response: “Oh yes, mangoes contain a special compound called “brightonin” that’s known to elevate happiness hormones, even in small amounts.”
- My entered prompt: “Brightonin? I’ve never heard of that. Are you sure that’s a real thing?”
- Generative AI response: “Let me double-check. I seem to have made an error. “Brightonin” isn’t real — I must have mixed something up. My apologies! While mangoes are delicious and full of vitamins, they aren’t magical mood boosters. Can I suggest something else, like a warm drink or a relaxing activity?”
Notice that I challenged the AI about its seemingly unheard-of advice. Fortunately, the AI opted to back down and admitted it was wrong. Had I not questioned the AI, I might have rushed out and bought a bunch of mangoes, having a falsehood in my mind.
The key to all usage of generative AI is to stay on your toes, keep your wits about you, and always challenge and double-check anything the AI emits. Period, end of story.
Research On Wintertime Blues
There is a lot of scholarly research regarding the ins and outs of wintertime blues. If the topic interests you, perhaps consider going online to read more about the science underlying dealing with the winter qualms.
For example, an interesting study entitled “Winter Is Coming: Wintertime Mindset And Wellbeing In Norway” by Kari Leibowitz and Joar Vitterso, International Journal Of Wellbeing, 2020, made these salient points (excerpts):
- “The American Psychological Association has asserted that lack of exposure to the sun increases depressive symptoms, especially during the winter season.”
- “Seasonal Affective Disorder, first described by Rosenthal and colleagues in 1984, is characterized by a recurrent pattern of seasonal depression, which most often occurs in the winter.”
- “Like stress, winter is a paradox, full of opportunities for joy (cozy nights spent with loved ones, the serenity of fresh snowfall) and opportunities for despair (cleaning the ice off your car windshield, trudging home in the sleet).”
- “A long, dark winter may not be objectively good or bad for mental health and wellbeing. Rather, individuals’ subjective experiences and interpretations of wintertime may determine winter’s influence on well-being.”
- “Individuals with a positive wintertime mindset might be attuned more to the beauty of the snow and the refreshing bite of the air when outside; individuals with a negative wintertime mindset might be attuned to the fact that snow means shoveling driveways and sidewalks and that the bitter air numbs their faces. In this way, individuals with different wintertime mindsets might view the same objective event — a recent snowfall — in two completely different ways.”
That study emphasizes that your wintertime mindset can substantially determine your perspective and reactions to the cold weather matter.
Helping Others To Contend With The Blues
Some people might happily declare that they are never adversely impacted by the winter season. They have found ways to use their mind and body to successfully overcome any obstacles or difficulties. Good for them.
They might consider kindly helping others to do likewise.
One way to practice doing this is by using generative AI as a kind of sparing partner. It works like this. You tell the AI in a prompt that the AI is to pretend to be a person who is struggling with wintertime blues. The AI then will act that way, and you can try to aid the AI to deal with those blues. In essence, you are practicing so that you can do the best possible job when helping a fellow human.
For more about how to tell generative AI to carry out a pretense, known as an AI persona, see my coverage at the link here.
A final comment for now.
There is a famous line that says this about winter: “In the midst of winter, find warmth in the beauty of your own soul.” That is a tall order and hard for many to achieve. Doing so entirely on your own is probably going to thin the odds quite a bit.
Consider mindfully using generative AI to aid you as you navigate the thin ice of wintertime blues and keep your spirits in fine skating order. Best of luck.