The first fortnight of dark evenings in Kent

Sunset in Maidstone is at about 6.23pm today.

By the 15th it is 6.07pm. By the 24th it is 5.49pm. Then the clocks go back on Sunday 25 October, and the sun sets at about 4.45pm.

Somewhere in this fortnight you drive home with the headlights on for the first time since spring. Most people can tell me the evening it happened. It is a real marker, and a recognisable run of changes tends to follow it.

You are flat by seven. The children are fed, the washing is half done, and the energy you ran on all day has gone somewhere without telling you. Then you wake at four, wide awake, going over the week.

Light is one of the main signals the body clock goes by, and the morning signal matters most. When the evenings close in earlier, tiredness arrives earlier too, and the mornings get heavier. It happens to a lot of people at the same time, so you are not the only one saying "it's dark already" this week.

Seasonal dips in mood are common, and they run from mild to significant. The first dark evenings are when many people first notice theirs.

I cannot tell you from the outside how much of your own dip is light, how much is routine, and how much is a pattern that was already there. Usually it is a mixture, and it takes a proper look to separate them. People often tell me they have been blaming the children, the job or the house, when the timing points at the season.

What helps this week

Get outside in the first hour of the day. Ten minutes is enough, and a grey sky still counts. Walk the last stretch of the school run, or stand on the back step with your tea.

Fix your wake time and keep it at weekends. A regular wake time helps sleep more than people expect, and a long lie-in on Saturday moves the clock you are trying to steady.

Decide what the evening is for before you walk in. At seven you will want the sofa and the phone, and the evening shrinks a little more each night it goes that way. A short walk round the block at half past six, while there is still some dusk left, gives it a shape.

The clock change gives you an extra hour in bed that Sunday morning, and most people enjoy it for a day. Then the dark arrives at quarter to five, and it takes many people a week or so to catch up. Start the walk now, because after the 25th the dusk is gone by the time you are home.

For the four o'clock waking, get up. Sit in low light with a drink for ten minutes, then go back to bed. Lying there trying teaches the bed to be the place where you work things out.

When it stays

For many people those small changes are enough, and the dip settles as the season does. For some it stays, and then it is a pattern more than a mood. If the low mood is heavy or you are struggling to cope, tell your GP as well.

Most weeks someone tells me the four o'clock waking started the week the headlights went on, and that by seven they have nothing left.

I take a history of your sleep and your evenings, going back through earlier winters as well as this one. I want to know when the early waking began, what the dread at the end of the day feels like in your body, and what you do to get through it. That tells me whether the pattern is new or old.

Then I use clinical hypnotherapy to work at the level beneath conscious thinking, where the alarm that goes off at four and the heaviness that builds as the light goes are actually running. You are relaxed and aware throughout.

I do not treat seasonal depression. I work with the sleep, the evening dread and the energy drop as patterns that can be changed.

What people tell me changes first is the four o'clock hour: it goes quieter, or they drift back off. The evenings take longer, and they come back a little at a time.

The days either side of the clock change are when the early waking tends to dig in. The small things are worth starting now.