Summertime Sadness Is Real: When Grief, Burnout, and Shame Crash Your Vacation

Why ‘Summertime Sadness’ Isn’t Just a Lana Del Rey Song

Atypical Summer Depression, Grief, and the Glorious Mess of Emotional Dissonance

Let’s set the scene: it’s July. The sun is shining like it’s being paid overtime, Instagram is a parade of linen-clad picnic people pretending hydration is a personality, and you? You are wilting in the corner like a houseplant someone forgot to water back in May.

You’re not inspired. You’re not refreshed. You’re not even slightly enthused by the phrase “rosé all day.”

What you are is emotionally sunburned by the sheer expectation of joy.

Welcome to the not-so-secret reality of summer sadness: a time when your nervous system feels personally victimized by everyone else’s serotonin.

It’s not just you. It’s also not just Lana Del Rey.

The Emotional Scam of Summer

Culturally, we treat summer like it’s the reward for surviving the rest of the year. Everyone is supposed to be peaking: beach body, emotional wellness, “hot girl healing” arc. But for many people, summer is a messy convergence of grief, burnout, reactivation of trauma, and a total mismatch between external celebration and internal depletion.

You’re not lazy, broken, or failing to “match the vibe.”
Your nervous system is not solar-powered. It’s safety-powered.

And for some of us, the longer the days, the louder the dread.

Yes, Summer Depression is a Thing

While most people associate Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) with the cold, dark winter months, a lesser-known cousin exists: Summer-pattern SAD. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 10% of SAD sufferers experience symptoms in the warmer months. But unlike winter SAD, summer-pattern SAD is linked more to agitation, insomnia, anxiety, and poor appetite.

In other words, instead of curling into a couch burrito and crying into your tea, summer SAD might feel more like your body is buzzing with dread and your skin is too tight. Which is, honestly, a rude way to experience sunshine. Irritability + beach = bad, bad news (ask me how I know).

Some risk factors?

• Disrupted routines due to vacations or childcare shifts
• Heightened body image distress due to diet culture’s annual assault
• Trauma anniversaries or grief tied to the season
• The social pressure to perform happiness
• Heat intolerance, chronic illness, or sleep disruption from longer daylight hours
• Menopause/perimenopause or any other health issue that causes temperature disruption

But the real kicker? The shame spiral that says, “Everyone else is thriving. What’s wrong with me?”

That’s not a question. That’s a cultural setup.

Summer: Where Grief Gets Louder

Grief in summer is its own kind of cruelty. There’s something about watching the world bloom when your internal world is withering that makes the loss feel even more surreal.

Grief doesn’t care that it’s pool season. Grief doesn’t care about your vacation rental. It sits at the table during your barbecue, interrupts your beach nap, and screams during fireworks that the person you miss is still gone.

If you’ve experienced loss, summer might not feel light and free. It might feel ghosted. And not in a romantic way.

What makes this harder is the performative expectation of happiness. If you’re not cheerful, you feel like a burden. If you cancel plans, you feel like a disappointment. If you admit you’re not okay, you feel like a buzzkill. So instead, you fake it. Or isolate. Or scroll endlessly, numbing the ache while silently wondering why you feel so off.

That emotional dissonance? It’s not a vibe problem.
It’s a trauma-informed nervous system response to unacknowledged pain.

Let’s Talk Burnout in a Bikini

If you’ve been sprinting all year, pushing through deadlines, caretaking, hyper-functioning, and pretending you don’t need rest - your body will eventually pull the emergency brake.

And sometimes that emergency brake hits in July.

You finally take a break…and collapse. Or spiral. Or spend your long-awaited vacation crying into a hotel pillow wondering why you can’t just be happy.

Summer doesn’t magically erase burnout. It reveals it.

Your nervous system doesn’t know how to shift from “over-functioning professional with control issues” to “relaxed, whimsical human in a hammock.” Especially when said hammock is in earshot of your kids screaming, your group chat planning another thing you have to fake energy for, and your body image trauma staging a comeback.

Rest takes more than time off.
It takes permission.
And most of us were never taught how to give it.

Shame: The Real Heatwave

Here’s what I see most in clients every July: not just sadness, but shame about the sadness. Shame that they’re not “doing summer right.” Shame that they don’t feel better. Shame that they’re not grateful enough. Or healed enough. Or bikini-body-ready enough. (Side note: that term needs to go back to the 1990s and stay there.)

When you feel bad about feeling bad, you double down on distress. You lose the thread of your own intuition. And you confuse burnout with personal failure.

But shame thrives in silence.

So here’s your permission slip:
You are allowed to feel off in July.
You are allowed to say “no” to fake joy performances.
You are allowed to rest without ‘earning’ it first.
You are allowed to have feelings that don’t match the weather.

And no, you don’t have to go on a healing retreat or juice cleanse to feel better. You might just need to stop gaslighting your own emotions.

So What Helps?

Let’s not pretend there’s a five-step plan that solves existential despair. But here are a few things that help break the shame loop and reconnect you to your actual self:

• Name what’s real. Fatigue. Grief. Loneliness. Rage. Say it out loud. Or write it down. Or scream it into a pillow. Anything but pretending it’s not there.
• Find your off-ramp. If you’re stuck in performance mode, ask: “What would five percent less effort look like right now?” Then do that.
• Interrupt the spiral. Try a cold shower, a playlist reset, or a walk with no destination. Do not underestimate the power of sensory disruption.
• Rest without guilt. Not “productive” rest. Not “recharge so you can go harder later” rest. Just…stillness.
• Talk to someone. A friend. A therapist. A dog. Anyone who will not respond with, “But you have so much to be grateful for!”

And if you’re looking for a deeper dive into how shame hijacks your seasons and scripts your every emotional response? Then the Shame Disruptor Workbook might be your next step. Not because you need fixing, but because you deserve freedom.

Your Turn

Let’s make this the most rebellious Hot Mess Summer on record.
Post your “I’m not okay and it’s July” moment.
Or share your favorite micro-tool for surviving emotional summer dissonance.
Tag @windwaterwellness and use #ShameDisruptor #HotMessSummer

Because you’re not alone. You’re just awake.

Resources

• NIMH on Seasonal Affective Disorder
• Understanding and Managing Summer SAD Psychology Today
• Verywell Mind: Understanding Atypical Depression
• Self-Compassion Practices – Kristin Neff
• APA: Grief and Loss
• Mental Health Tips - Summer Edition - UConn Master Of Public Health

Quotes

• “The cure for anything is salt water-sweat, tears, or the sea.” -Isak Dinesen
• “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” -Winston Churchill
• “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees... is by no means a waste of time.” -John Lubbock
• “Grief is love with nowhere to go.” -Jamie Anderson
• “Being able to be your true self is one of the strongest components of good mental health.” -Lauren Fogel Mersy

Affirmations

• My sadness is not seasonal failure. It’s seasonal truth.
• I do not have to perform joy to be worthy of love.
• I am allowed to feel what I feel-even when the world says it’s time to smile.
• My body, energy, and grief all have seasons. I honor each one.
• I can rest, without fixing everything first.