The week the clocks go back

The clocks go back at 2am on Sunday. That afternoon the sun sets at about a quarter to five, and by the end of the month it is nearer half past four.

On paper you get an extra hour in bed. Most people tell me they wake at the old time anyway, lie in the dark, and spend the bonus hour listening to the house.

The change hits the body before it reaches the calendar. Your body clock runs on light and routine, and it takes several days to catch up with a one-hour shift. For a few mornings you will wake at what your body still thinks is seven, which the clock now calls six.

Sunrise that week is around a quarter to seven. If you are up at six, you are up in the dark, and the day starts with nothing in it. The walk you took all summer now ends as the light goes.

What the first week tends to bring up

A few things turn up so regularly that I have stopped being surprised by them. The first drink moves earlier. Tea becomes dinner at five, then there is a long evening and the television. Sleep drifts: later to bed, lighter, awake at four.

Sunday afternoon is the first test. The light goes at a quarter to five, and the day that felt long yesterday ends before you have decided what it was for.

Then a flat mood arrives, and people take it personally. "There is something wrong with me. I was fine in August." The light changed, the routine loosened, and the days lost their edges.

A flat week in late October is very often a body adjusting to less light and a looser routine. It says little about you.

People describe a sinking feeling as the light goes, around four, and an evening that feels longer than it should. Research on clock changes and mood is mixed, and how much it touches any one person varies a great deal. But the pattern in the first week is familiar enough that I plan for it.

What helps this week

Three anchors, all small. First, morning light. Get outside within an hour of waking, even when the sky is grey. Your morning walk is already doing the most useful thing there is, so keep it in the morning rather than letting it slide to the afternoon, when it will be dusk. Daylight early in the day helps hold the body clock in place.

Second, fix the first hour. Same wake time, same tea, same walk, every day including Sunday. A day with a fixed start keeps its shape. Without one it goes soft by eleven.

Third, plan the evening early. Decide on Saturday what is happening at five o'clock on Monday: a phone call, a meal you cook, the pub, a class. Decide what you will drink, and when, in daylight, rather than at the fridge door at half past four.

Evenings that start at half past four need something planned inside them. Decide it in daylight, before the evening arrives.

Go to bed at your usual time on Saturday. Do not stay up an hour later to bank the extra one. None of this is clever. It works because the body is short of cues this week, and you are supplying them on purpose.

When it does not lift

Most people settle within a week to ten days. If you are still waking at four in mid-November, or the flatness has not moved, it has become a pattern rather than an adjustment. If the low mood is heavy, see your GP as well.

When you come to see me, the first hour is mostly talking. I ask what you do at five o'clock, when the first drink is poured, what wakes you and what the first thought is. Most people are surprised how exact the answers are. The same hour, the same thought, every night.

Then I use clinical hypnotherapy on the pattern itself. You are relaxed and attentive, and I work with the part of the mind that runs these responses, so that dusk, the early waking and the pull towards the first drink stop arriving as a package. I do not promise a timeline. People tell me the sleep changes first, and the evenings follow.