Fall Is the Season for Building Mindfulness and Resilience

Whether you like it or not, fall is here. Soon the weather will get colder, the leaves will die and the nights will stretch longer than the days. Outdoor pools have closed and the holidays are coming. Another year is dying; that’s just how it goes.

At least, that’s the way autumn often is cast — as a time of aging and decay. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley compared autumn’s falling leaves to corpses in the grave. William Shakespeare called it “Death’s second self,” when youth burns to ashes. More recently, it’s become a time to acknowledge our existential dread.

For many of those who struggle with seasonal depression in the winter months, the fall is the beginning of their symptoms. A few small studies even suggest that if you are “ruminative,” or deeply preoccupied with your thoughts, in the autumn, you may be at more risk for depression in the winter. Changing the clocks in the fall is associated with depressive episodes (changing them back in the spring is not). It’s no wonder the season has so many celebrations to attempt to keep our spirits up.

Psychologists say that the feelings that often crop up in autumn stem from our discomfort with change, and an anxiety and uncertainty about what that change will bring. The melancholy we feel is a form of grief, mourning the lost sunlight, the ease of summertime, and the greenery that abounds in the warm weather.

But it’s not all bad. Fall also brings with it bright, brisk days, pumpkin patches and cozy sweaters. Somewhere in the crunching leaves, crackling fires and chilly air, you might locate a feeling of possibility, even electricity.

And all of these things — the anxiety, the promise and even the rumination — make it the ideal season to build resilience and practice mindfulness.

A SEASON OF RESILIENCE

For Jelena Kecmanovic, the founder of Arlington/DC Behavior Therapy Institute, the fall is reminiscent of exploring the mountains near her home in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, where she spent the first 20 years of her life, during one of that country’s most prosperous eras. But in the 1990s, she was forced to flee during a bloody four-year siege of her city.

Today, she is an expert in resilience, a concept centering on the capacity to adapt to challenging life experiences. Dr. Kecmanovic described autumn as the season when we can work on our acceptance of uncertainty — embracing that unsettled feeling we may have as we move out of our warm-weather routines.

Psychologists have found that the thought of change, the ending of one thing, the beginning of another and, yes, perhaps our own mortality, underlies a great deal of anxiety. Some of us struggle with “intolerance of uncertainty,” as experts call it, more than others. This tendency was first named in the 1990s by a team of Canadian psychologists and has since been identified as a risk factor for poor mental health.

“A massive amount of research has been showing that intolerance for distress, for discomfort, for impermanence, for uncertainty, predicts bad outcomes in the long run,” Dr. Kecmanovic said.

But intolerance of uncertainty is a part of being human; everyone has it on some level. And it’s changeable. One way to build tolerance is to lean into it — to cultivate uncertainty rather than running away from it.

“The avoidance of suffering produces suffering,” said Kelly Wilson, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Mississippi and a co-developer of an approach known as acceptance and commitment therapy, which encourages people to stop denying or wrestling with unpleasant emotions, and instead to accept them. A feeling of exhilaration can also come from experiencing something new or uncertain, which in turn builds resilience, Dr. Kecmanovic said.

Leaning into uncertainty means putting aside your routines and planning, which Dr. Kecmanovic calls “cushions that make us feel like we have control.” Bike through a neighborhood you’ve never been to without a map. Set out during one of these lengthening autumn nights to find somewhere dark enough to do some stargazing. Go for a walk on a day when it just might rain.

You might get lost, or soaked, or be unable to see any stars. You might feel uncomfortable or like you’re wasting your time. But those small moments of uncertainty, Dr. Kecmanovic said, will build exposure to, a tolerance toward and perhaps even an appreciation of times when you don’t know what’s ahead and feel out of control.

“It’s the opposite of ‘I have assurance of how it’s going to be in the next half an hour or next day or next year,’” she said. “It’s like, in this moment I’m alive. And that’s enough.”

A SEASON OF MINDFULNESS

There are quieter ways to engage with the changing of the seasons as well. Another strategy experts suggest for soothing seasonal anxiety is to step back and simply observe the world around you. Quietly sit on a park bench and watch a tree drop its leaves, for instance.

Dr. Kecmanovic said that weaving bigger themes of nature and purpose into quiet moments of meditation can help calm your sense of anxiety around short-term uncertainty and put it into a broader perspective.

For Jana Long, co-founder of the Black Yoga Teacher’s Alliance in Baltimore, fall is a time for samyama, a concept in yoga referring to, among other things, the meditative practice of observing an object and becoming absorbed in it. Sometimes Ms. Long looks at the grass after the final mowing of the year and spends some time thinking about what that means for a plant. Other times, she said, she examines the roses in her garden that need pruning before winter — imagining what they need and how they will change.

She said that in such moments, it’s important to stop thinking, analyzing or having internal conversations about work or troubles or even whatever you’re witnessing. A teacher once demonstrated this idea to her by placing a glass of water on the table. He started by saying he saw the glass.

“And then he continued to talk about how the mind shifts: ‘I like the glass.’ See, now that’s something else. And then ‘I want the glass.’ That’s something else,” she said. And he went on: It’s an ugly glass, I’ll take the glass, et cetera. “But can you just see the glass? That’s practicing samyama.”

This kind of mindfulness has been shown again and again to reduce stress and increase well-being. It can enhance your workouts, help you focus at work and cope with an uncertain world. For some, practicing mindfulness can shift how they see their lives in a big way. For most of us, it’s simply a useful tool to find a sense of peace when we need it.

It’s also perfectly suited for a cool autumn day, when the end of the year is in view and the world around you is turning in on itself.

“For me, it’s also about harvesting what has occurred in the year,” said Larry Ward, a meditation teacher and the founder of the Lotus Institute in Pataskala, Ohio. “What has this summer brought to you and your life? What has this spring brought to you?”

“Harvesting” means taking stock of the year (or years) behind you. And to do this, you must collect the memories without judgment or self-loathing. For instance, Dr. Wilson, of the University of Mississippi, said he acted poorly the last time he saw his brother before his untimely death. But rather than push that memory away, he holds it as a part of that relationship.

“I keep the thorn to keep the rose,” he said.

Autumn will probably always hold some whisper of decay and mortality for humans. But embracing that sadness is important.

If you’re always trying to avoid difficult feelings, you might end up also cutting yourself off “from love and richness and sweetness,” Dr. Wilson said. “This is how life is: sweet and sad, poured from the same vessel in equal measure.”