Not the dramatic version.

Not the obvious aggressor and a clear victim in a scene everyone can see and hear in broad daylight & full high definition.

I am illustrating this example first, to get it out our way and move towards more nuance:

The everyday version.

👉 The team meeting where something aggressive was said and no one addressed the violation.
👉 The colleague who was quietly pushed to the margins while everyone went on with their work.
👉 The manager who “stays out of it” when team members face conflict or simply
👉 An HR process that produced a lot of paperwork and labor and no impactful change.

Previously, we looked at how leadership is not a personality type but a function that emerges within a group. Now, we will extend that to bystanding, enabling and bullying dynamics in groups, teams and communities. Because:

If groups generate leadership relationally,
they may also generate harm relationally.

📌

Harmfull and disruptive behaviors, passive and active forms of aggression, mobbying, bullying, these are not simply generated and sustained by the individual.

These are generated and sustained by the group dynamics around those individuals, and a “policy of silence” that often normalizes actively or passively harmful behavior.

Groups do not generate enabling (or any, really) behavior in a vacuum.

👉 They generate it within frameworks, processes, institutions and systems: workplace cultures, social norms, institutional processes.

🤫 Ones that make silence feel not just safe, but rational. Reasonable. Even virtuous.

This impulsive question of mine, reflexted in this article, asks:

🚨 What are the group/environmental/contextual/relational/organizational conditions that “enable the enablers” in the first place, or, more precisely, make it easy for disruptive behavior to emerge?

• If silent bystanders often know that something is wrong, and

• Bystander intervention can — positively or negatively — influence group norms,

then why does silence often remain a dominant response?

Environments That Make Harm Possible

Several conversations about bullying focus on individuals causing harm. Some extend to the bystander.

Fewer ask the more perhaps uncomfortable question:
👉 how does the group/community/organization itself contribute?

But studies spanning across decades of workplace psychology point consistently in a direction. Bullying is not simply, or primarily, a personality problem. It is an organizational one.

Workplace psychologist Denise Sali, as an example, identified three structural conditions1 that, when present together, make bullying not just possible but more likely:

🚨 power imbalances that give aggressors room to operate,
🚨 low perceived cost for harmful behavior (meaning the organization does not visibly respond), and
🚨 motivating structures (internal competition, scarcity of recognition, rewards tied to dominance rather than collaboration).

When, in an environment, these three conditions are present, bullying can emerge not despite the system, but through it.

A longitudinal study by Ågotnes and colleagues (2018) found that co-worker conflicts predicted new cases of bullying two years later, and that laissez-faire leadership, the kind that simply does not respond, significantly amplified this.

👉 Absence of leadership is not neutral. It reflects in a structural yet often unintentional and overlooked “green light”.

For many neurodivergent people in these environments, these conditions can compound. An organization designed around a single neurotype (one preferred communication style, one definition of “professionalism,” one reading of what composure looks like) is not a neutral environment for anyone who does not fit that type.

👉 It is an environment that generates friction, contextual assumptions, misreading, and vulnerabilities, often before any individual aggressor has acted at all.

A human environment does not necessarily need to intend harm to allow or sustain it.

Impartiality

When harm does occur, one of the most reliable features of the response is an appeal to balance.

• “We need to hear both sides”

• “Let’s not take sides”

• “This is a complex situation”

These phrases feel reasonable. They carry the tone of fairness. And in genuinely symmetrical conflicts, they may be.

👉 But bullying is not a symmetrical conflict.

It is a pattern of sustained harm enabled by a power imbalances. Treating it as two equal perspectives obscures rather than clarifies.

Psychologists Morrison and Milliken described what they called organizational silence: a collectively maintained norm in which speaking up is perceived as unwise, costly, or futile — not because people are cowardly, but because the system has made the cost of voice consistently higher than the cost of silence.

👉 Silence can become rational. Relational context, even.

But silence is invisible: it feels more like the “absence of a problem” rather than the “suppression of information about one”.

This connects to Bandura’s concept of moral disengagement. This concept refers to the psychological mechanisms through which people who would not describe themselves as complicit manage to participate in harm.

One of the most common mechanisms is diffusion of responsibility: when everyone assumes someone else will act, no one does.

Another is euphemistic labeling: “high standards, direct feedback, this is just how he is” etc. Language that re-writes or re-frames harm, dismissing it as something else entirely.

👉 The appeal to impartiality performs this same function at the institutional level.

It allows an organization to appear responsive while leaving the underlying conditions unchanged.

📌

It portrays the person experiencing harm as one voice among several equally weighted ones places the burden of proof on the person who is already least protected.

For neurodivergent individuals, this burden lands with particular weight. As an example, many (but not only, nor exclusively) autistic and ADHD adults have learned:

• to always anticipate exhaustive skepticism

• to over-qualify their accounts of their own experience

• to present their distress in a register that seems composed enough to be credible

often across years of struggling to be believed. The irony is that this very composure is then read as evidence that things are not that bad.

📌

Impartiality, when applied to asymmetric situations, is not a neutral position. It is a structural choice that tends to reproduce the pre-existing power arrangement.

For more details on inclusion of neurocognitive asymetries in real human teams:

Who Gets to Name Harm

The philosopher Miranda Fricker introduced the concept of testimonial injustice: the credibility deficit assigned to a speaker not because of what they say, but because of who they are. When this happens systemically (when a whole category of people finds their accounts routinely doubted, reframed, or dismissed) it is not a series of individual misunderstandings. It is a structural feature of how knowledge is organized within a group or institution.

👉 What happens when someone names harm in a context like this?

Sara Ahmed’s research on institutional complaints found a consistent pattern across organizations: the act of making a formal complaint generates its own problems for the complainant. They become identified with the complaint. They are seen as the source of disruption rather than the person responding to it.

📌

The institution, in protecting itself, absorbs the complaint by policy (procedures are followed, statements are taken, meetings are held) but the underlying behavior continues, and the complainant is progressively isolated.

“To be heard as complaining”, Ahmed notes, “is not to be heard”.

For neurodivergent people, these dynamics are further complicated by masking: the sustained effort to present as neurotypical in order to function in environments that were not designed for them. The term “masking” in this context is not about deception. It is a survival strategy. But it produces a gap between internal experience and external presentation that is regularly used against people when they name harm.

Research by Beck and colleagues captured this in a phrase that has stayed in the literature: “looking good but feeling bad.” A person who has masked successfully appears fine. They function. They meet expectations. And when they report that they are not fine, the visible evidence (their apparent composure) is invoked as a reason to doubt them.

The very capacity that allowed them to survive the environment is turned into evidence that the environment was not that harmful.

Sasson and colleagues found that non-autistic adults formed significantly less favorable impressions of autistic people within seconds, but that these impressions disappeared when the interaction was based on conversational content alone (written transcripts) rather than presentation style. Style, not substance, drives the credibility gap.

📌

This is not an individual prejudice. It is a patterned, potentially systemic one, and it shapes who gets believed when harm is named.

Empathy Gap as a Structural Condition

Damian Milton’s Double Empathy Problem (2012) offers a framework that challenges how we understand communication differences in majority-norm contexts.

The standard account of autistic social difficulty locates the problem solely in the autistic person: impaired theory of mind, difficulty reading others, atypical communication. Milton’s framework challenges this. The difficulty is mutual.

👉 Non-autistic people are also often inaccurate at reading autistic communication, emotional states, and intent. The gap runs in both directions.

Research by Crompton and colleagues made this more concrete: information transfer in autistic-to-autistic interaction was as effective as non-autistic-to-non-autistic interaction. The loss of information happened in cross-neurotype exchanges — and happened in both directions.

👉 Again, the problem is not simply a deficit in one party. It is a mismatch between two differently organized systems of communication.

What makes this a structural issue rather than an interpersonal one is the asymmetry of consequence.

Non-autistic people in majority-norm environments do not typically experience the gap as their problem. They experience autistic communication as difficult, odd, too literal, too intense, or insufficiently reciprocal. This reading shapes their social impressions, their trust judgments, and ultimately their credibility assessments.

Autistic people, by contrast, experience the consequences of being perpetually misread: exclusion, disbelief, constant social pressure to comply and mask, the exhaustion of endless adaptation, and more.

Chapman and Carel showed that this can extend to credibility: disclosure of an autism diagnosis in institutional settings tends to produce a reduction in how seriously a person’s accounts are taken. The diagnosis that might explain the pattern of harm they have experienced can become, simultaneously, the reason their account of that harm is doubted.

I don’t think this is incidental.

👉 This looks very much like the double empathy gap operating, in the background of everyday interactions, as a functional condition. Not just a conversational one.

And it means that neurodivergent, or otherwise vulnerable, people who name harm are often navigating not only the standard “credibility contest”, but an additional layer of misreading that has been reinfroced by the environment itself.

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Structural Accountability

One hopeful finding of mine in relevant literature on the Bystander Effect is how little it can take to shift a dynamic.

🛟 One person who names what they are observing.
🛟 One person who does not laugh to another’s insult.
🛟 One person who checks in privately afterward.

These small acts can affect the perceived norm and change how others position themselves. In other words, they can impact and shift power imbalance.

But individual acts cannot reliably shift structures alone.

Ng, Niven, and Hoel found that bystander passivity compounds over time. The longer a group maintains silence around harm, the more normalized that silence becomes, and the harder it is for any individual to break it.

Early intervention matters. But so does the organizational climate that determines whether early intervention is possible in the first place.

Salmivalli’s research on participant roles in bullying found that these roles are not fixed. The same person can occupy different positions depending on context (on who else is present, on what the perceived norms are, on what costs and protections the environment provides). This is important because it means structural change is not utopian. It is possible.

📌

People are not so much “predetermined to enable” as “allowed to enable” by conditions that can be intervened with and redesigned.

What does that redesign require?

☝️Not more awareness campaigns, which address individual psychology while leaving organizational conditions intact.
☝️Not more mediation processes that place two parties in a room as though power were symmetrical.
☝️Not more complaint procedures that absorb harm without addressing its sources.

It requires:

• Taking seriously the organizational conditions that produce or allow bullying behaviors to emerge (the enabling structures Salin identified) and changing them.

• Recognizing that impartiality in asymmetric situations is not fairness.

• Building into formal processes some accounting for the credibility gap that systematically disadvantages those with less institutional power.

• Accounting for the conditions that make neurodivergent and vulnerable individuals disproportionately exposed.

Not because they are fragile, but because environments designed for one neurotype generate misreading, misattribution, and disbelief as structural outputs: before any individual aggressor acts, and long after one has.

📌

Inclusive design, in this sense, is not accommodation. It is the removal of the preconditions for certain kinds of harm.

A Closing Reflection

This conversation began with a question about leadership: not who holds it, but how it emerges from the group dynamics.

Here, we extended that to bullying: not who causes it, but how groups allow and sustain it. And pushed with a further question: not just what the group does, but what the system surrounding the group was built to protect. Every organization generates a set of answers to that question (often without ever asking it explicitly).

Those answers are visible:

👉 In who gets supported and who gets “managed out”.
👉 In how complaints are received.
👉 In what counts as evidence of harm.
👉 In whose communication style is legible and whose is read as difficult.
👉 In who, when they finally speak, is heard.

The question is no longer: “Am I neutral?”. It is: “What or whom does this stance protect, and who’s vulnerablity does it expose?”.

An organization that has not asked that question has possibly already answered it.

👉 Wanna look into it further?

Ågotnes, K. W., Einarsen, S. V., Hetland, J., & Skogstad, A. (2018). The moderating effect of laissez-faire leadership on the relationship between co-worker conflicts and new cases of workplace bullying. Human Resource Management Journal.

Ahmed, S. (2021). Complaint! Duke University Press.

Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review.

Beck, J. S., Lundwall, R. A., Gabrielsen, T., Cox, J. C., & South, M. (2020). Looking good but feeling bad: “Camouflaging” behaviors and mental health in women with autistic traits. Autism.

Chapman, R. & Carel, H. (2022). Neurodiversity, epistemic injustice, and the good human life. Journal of Social Philosophy.

Crompton, C. J., Ropar, D., Evans-Williams, C. V. M., Flynn, E. G., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2020). Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective. Autism.

Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press.

Harsey, S. & Freyd, J. J. (2020). Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO): What is the influence on perceived perpetrator and victim credibility? Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma.

Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: the ‘double empathy problem.’ Disability & Society.

Morrison, E. W. & Milliken, F. J. (2000). Organizational silence: A barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world. Academy of Management Review.

Ng, K., Niven, K., & Hoel, H. (2020). ‘I could help, but…’: A dynamic sensemaking model of workplace bullying bystanders. Human Relations.

Salin, D. (2003). Ways of explaining workplace bullying: A review of enabling, motivating and precipitating structures and processes in the work environment. Human Relations.

Salmivalli, C., Lagerspetz, K., Björkqvist, K., Österman, K., & Kaukiainen, A. (1996). Bullying as a group process: Participant roles and their relations to social status within the group. Aggressive Behavior.

Sasson, N. J., Faso, D. J., Nugent, J., Lovell, S., Kennedy, D. P., & Grossman, R. B. (2017). Neurotypical peers are less willing to interact with those with autism based on thin slice judgments. Scientific Reports.

Think of the word “leadership” for a sec. It often carries a certain tone, doesn’t it?

One that suggests authority, hierarchy, and control. In everyday language, a leader is usually understood as the person in charge. The one who makes decisions, directs others, and holds power.

But this definition is not neutral.
It reflects cultural narratives we have collectively absorbed and maintained over time.

The Alpha Persona

In modern culture, leadership is often associated with confidence, charisma, and decisiveness, located within the individual. These qualities are not inherently problematic, but they are frequently interpreted in narrow ways.

Confidence becomes certainty. Charisma becomes visibility. Decisiveness becomes acting without consultation or consensus.

Closely tied to this is the idea of the “alpha” persona. The dominant individual. The one who takes charge and commands respect. This idea shows up everywhere, from workplace dynamics to self-development advice. It has expanded into labels like “alpha male/female”, often portrayed as an ideal.

However, this framing of leadership as individual label rests on an oversimplified — and inaccurate — understanding of how complex social and political systems (eg human group & community systems) actually work.

The popular idea of the “alpha” originates from, basically, culturally normalized misinterpretations of social animal hierarchies and behavior.

Over time, it was reduced to a narrow, monolithic stereotype: the strongest and most aggressive individual dominates the group. But research in primatology tells a more complex, or nuanced, story. As explained by Frans de Waal, social stability in primate groups (chimps, bonobos) is not maintained through aggression alone.

In many cases, individuals who rely heavily on force tend to destabilize the group. What actually supports group cohesion (and long-term survival) is something else entirely.

Relationship building, conflict mediation, and sensitivity to others play a central role. The individuals who hold a central position are often those who can maintain connections, reduce tension, and respond to the needs of the group, and can do so particularly well under conditions of stress.

📌

This shifts the meaning of “alpha” in an important way.

It is not a personality type. It is not about dominance.
It is a relational position that depends on trust and social attunement.

It also challenges rigid assumptions about gender.

Behavior across primates (a mammal-specific taxonomy humans belong to) shows significant variability.

What we might label as “leadership traits” are not fixed within male or female roles. They emerge through context, relationships, and individual differences. When we move away from personality labels, a different understanding begins to emerge.

📌

Leadership is not something someone is.
It is something that happens within a group.

Leadership is a function

A capacity of the group. Not a fixed individual role.

It appears when someone helps a group coordinate, adapt, or stay connected. This means that leadership can shift between people depending on the situation. One person may take initiative during a crisis, another may guide planning, and another may help repair relationships after conflict.

In this sense, leadership is fluid - distributed - relational1.

This changes the focus in a subtle but important way. The question is no longer “How do I lead?” but “What does this group really need right now?”

• Sometimes the answer is structure.

• Sometimes it is clarity.

• Sometimes it is space, listening,

• or protection from unnecessary pressure.

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In Practice

This kind of leadership often goes unnoticed.

In a team, it might look like someone making sure quieter voices are included. It might be adjusting communication so that more people can participate. It might involve reducing friction rather than increasing urgency.

In everyday life, it can be the friend who helps stabilize a tense moment. The parent who adapts to a child’s needs instead of enforcing rigid control. The colleague who quietly supports others in doing their best work.

These actions are not always recognized as “signals of leadership skills”, but they are essential for any group to function well.

Looking beyond humans

Similar patterns appear across social species. Groups organize themselves in ways that allow them to survive and adapt. These structures are not purely based on dominance. They are much more nuanced, dynamic, context-dependent, and deeply relational.

In primates in particular, empathy plays a key role in maintaining cohesion. Social intelligence, empathy, reciprocity, fairness influences whether a group remains stable or becomes fragmented.

Humans are not separate from this. We are part of the same continuum, with — let’s say — some extra layers of complexity.

Language

This points us to the role of language, or linguistic - conceptual associations more precisely.

When the word “leadership” becomes tightly associated with authority and control, it limits what we are able to see and value.

It can lead us to overlook quieter, relational, yet essential forms of contribution.
It can push us to reward visibility over attunement or dominance over responsiveness.

Expanding the language can help shift this perspective.

Concepts like facilitation, coordination, stewardship, or relational responsibility point toward different aspects of the same function. They highlight a more nuanced idea:

📌
Supporting a group

is not about standing in front or above it.
It is about being respons-ive and respons-ible within it.

This allows for a clearer contrast

The common view frames leadership as authority, a fixed role, and power over others. An inclusive — contextually, functionally — aware perspective understands the term of leadership as facilitation, a fluid function, and responsibility toward others.

Instead of dominance, it emphasizes impact.
Instead of an “alpha” personality, it recognizes context-sensitive contribution.

From this perspective, leadership is not about being followed.
It is about making it easier for others to exist, contribute, and function within a shared space.

This raises a few important questions.

• Who in your team or group actually holds members together in everyday life?

• Which behaviors tend to be recognized, and which remain invisible?

• What might change if attunement and responsiveness were valued as much as authority or decisiveness?

And perhaps most importantly, what becomes possible for teams, groups and communities when we start paying closer attention to what people around us actually need and actually bring to the table?

Έχεις παρατηρήσει ότι τον χειμώνα έχεις πιο χαμηλή ενέργεια;
Ή ότι το καλοκαίρι ξυπνάς πιο εύκολα, έχεις περισσότερη διάθεση, κοινωνικότητα ή έμπνευση;

Καθώς οι εποχές αλλάζουν προσέχω τα μικρά σημάδια της μετάβασης:
τα χρώματα στο τοπίο που μαλακώνουν, η κατανομή του φωτός που γέρνει προς το χρυσό, η θερμοκρασία που πέφτει σιγά-σιγά. Οι περιβαλλοντικοί ήχοι των εντόμων σβήνουν, αφήνοντας πίσω τους μακρόσυρτες σιωπές. Όσο νωρίς κι αν ξυπνήσω, η μέρα έχει μικρύνει.

Και κάπως έτσι, κάτι μέσα μου τραβάει χειρόφρενο.
Οι φυσικές διακυμάνσεις της ενέργειας μετατοπίζονται σε χαμηλότερο εύρος.
Το σώμα γίνεται πιο απρόθυμο, η διάθεση πιο εσωστρεφής.
Μια σιωπηλή, αλλά επίμονη ανάγκη μου τραβά το μανίκι:
ώρα να επιβραδύνω.

Ο οργανισμός μας αποκρίνεται στις αλλαγές των εποχών, του φωτός, της θερμοκρασίας.
Το φως λειτουργεί σαν ρολόι του νευρικού συστήματος: ρυθμίζει ορμόνες, ενέργεια, εγρήγορση, και τον φυσικό ρυθμό ύπνου.

Όταν οι μέρες μικραίνουν, ο εγκέφαλος λαμβάνει σήμα εξοικονόμησης ενέργειας. Δεν είναι τυχαίο αν τον χειμώνα:

• χρειάζεσαι περισσότερο ύπνο

• αποζητάς πιο συχνά υδατάνθρακες

• νιώθεις πιο ήσυχος/η ή πιο αποσυρμένος/η

• δυσκολεύεσαι να κρατήσεις υψηλούς ρυθμούς

Το σώμα, απλώς, ακολουθεί τη φύση.

Ο χρονότυπος, ο φυσικός ρυθμός ύπνου και αφύπνισης, μπορεί επίσης να αλλάζει εποχικά. Το φθινόπωρο και τον χειμώνα, πολλοί άνθρωποι βιώνουν μετατόπιση στο ωράριο ύπνου: άλλοι κοιμούνται πιο νωρίς, άλλοι πιο αργά, σύμφωνα με το πώς προσαρμόζεται ο κιρκάδιος ρυθμός στο φως της εποχής.

Κάποιοι άνθρωποι, μάλιστα, είναι πιο ευαίσθητοι στα αισθητηριακά και κοινωνικά ερεθίσματα: φως, ήχους, θερμοκρασία, κοινωνική ένταση. Για αυτούς, οι εποχικές αλλαγές μπορεί να βιώνονται πολύ πιο έντονα. Αυτή η ευαισθησία δεν είναι ‘πάθηση’, είναι μια διαφορετική μορφή επεξεργασίας του κόσμου.

Κι όμως, αυτός ο φυσικός ρυθμός του σώματος συχνά δεν χωράει στο εξωτερικό, εορταστικό πλαίσιο. Καθώς πλησιάζουν οι γιορτές, το περιβάλλον γύρω μας γεμίζει φως, μουσική, κοινωνικότητα, υποχρεώσεις, προσδοκίες. Είναι μια εποχή που ‘πρέπει’ να δείχνουμε χαρά, διαθεσιμότητα, λάμψη, ακόμη κι αν το σώμα ζητά σιωπή και ανάπαυση.

Για πολλούς ανθρώπους, ο χειμώνας δεν είναι εποχή εξωστρέφειας. Είναι εποχή μετακίνησης προς τα μέσα. Όπως η φύση χαμηλώνει τους ρυθμούς της, έτσι και πολλά νευρικά συστήματα ζητούν λιγότερο φως, λιγότερο θόρυβο, λιγότερη κοινωνική ένταση και περισσότερο ύπνο, περισσότερη ενδοσκόπηση.

Η τάση για παύση, για εξοικονόμηση ενέργειας, δεν είναι αδυναμία.
Είναι φυσική και οικολογική.

Λειτουργεί σαν υπενθύμιση ότι δεν είμαστε φτιαγμένοι για διαρκή παραγωγικότητα, επιτελεστικότητα ρόλων και ‘ανεβασμένη’ ενέργεια.

Το πρόβλημα δεν είναι ότι κάποιοι άνθρωποι επιβραδύνουν τον χειμώνα.
Το πρόβλημα είναι ότι η κουλτούρα μας δεν αφήνει χώρο για αυτή την επιβράδυνση.
Αντί για αποδοχή, ζητά υπέρβαση. Αντί για φροντίδα, ζητά ‘να το παλέψουμε’.

Κι έτσι, κάτι που θα μπορούσε να είναι μια προστατευτική εσωστρέφεια, μετατρέπεται σε ενοχή, σε κοινωνική πίεση, ή τελικά σε εξάντληση.

Ίσως, λοιπόν, το χειμερινό ηλιοστάσιο να μην είναι υπενθύμιση για περισσότερα φώτα,
αλλά για λιγότερα ερεθίσματα. Όχι για περισσότερα ‘πρέπει’, αλλά για περισσότερη άδεια να ξεκουραστούμε όπως έχουμε ανάγκη.

Και ίσως, τελικά, το πιο ‘εορταστικό’ πράγμα που μπορούμε να κάνουμε αυτές τις μέρες να είναι να αφουγκραστούμε τι χρειάζεται ο δικός μας οργανισμός, ακόμα κι αν αυτό δεν ταιριάζει με το πρόγραμμα των γιορτών, και να του το προσφέρουμε.

👇 Ή, ίσως προτιμάμε να βυθιστούμε σε ένα θέμα που μας τράβηξε την προσοχή.

If you’re joining me here in English for the first time, I’m really glad you’re here. And if you’ve been following my work in Greek, thank you for staying with me as this space slowly opens to a wider audience, as you may notice from the new section:

Following my own winter pull for introversion and introspection, last week I found myself working in high isolation, organizing long-dreaded and skillfully avoided notes, documents, lists, notebooks, folders, even my pc desktop. Yet this particular draft on “Seasonal Mood Patterns” that I stumbled upon coincides beautifully with a core need of the season to reduce cognitive/ emotional/ social/ sensory noise, and input overall.

Let’s put organizing on hold and get distracted together, impulsively following another pull for a sidequest to dig deeper into a favorite winter topic, highlighting some fascinating yet often overlooked dimensions of the human biological-psychological diversity.

📌Key terms

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), Chronotype, Light, Seasonal Responsiveness, Sensory Processing, Seasonal Preference, Cultural Framing and Moralization

The most established scientific literature on seasonality of mood comes from studies on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It may present with symptoms similar to depression but with a strong seasonal pattern. SAD occurs most often in winter, though a smaller proportion of people experience summer-pattern symptoms.

📌Beyond diagnosis

While large-scale reviews suggest that winter-pattern SAD affects a minority of the population, another group of people may experience ‘subsyndromal SAD’: seasonal symptoms that are noticeable but do not meet diagnostic thresholds.

1. Winter-pattern presentations tend to center on low mood and reduced energy, often accompanied by lethargy, difficulty concentrating, increased sleep, carbohydrate cravings, and weight gain.

2. Summer-pattern presentations, in contrast, are more commonly associated with insomnia, reduced appetite, agitation, restlessness, anxiety, and, in some cases, increased irritability or aggression.

What feels important here is not the diagnostic boundary, but a discussion on aspects left out by a strictly clinical framing.

Many people experience seasonal shifts in energy, mood, sociability, and sensory tolerance that didn’t get to become a diagnosis, yet may still impact their lives in significant ways.

These patterns may often be regarded as personal weakness or poor self-regulation skills, rather than as relating to underlying biological rhythms. So, it feels important to notice, understand and destigmatize seasonal mood and energy fluctuations. Then, we can proactively design for them, rather than moralize or condemn the natural diversity of individual rythms.

Chronotype, Light, and Seasonal Responsiveness

Chronobiology adds another layer in this discussion. Chronotype, our natural tendency toward morningness or eveningness, is not entirely fixed. It is influenced by light exposure, and evidence suggests it can shift seasonally, particularly in individuals who are more sensitive to changes in day length.

Students and working adults show later sleep timing and later chronotype expression during fall and winter, even when social schedules remain constant. Importantly, people differ in photoperiod responsiveness: some nervous systems adjust easily, while others resist waking and functioning in darkness.

This suggests that for some people, seasonal change doesn’t just influence mood, it reshapes the entire timing of the nervous system. Someone may feel aligned and energized in long summer days, and noticeably misaligned in winter darkness, while for others the opposite is true.

Sensory Processing, Arousal, and Seasonal Preference

From a neurodivergent and highly sensitive lens, seasonal preference may reflect differences in optimal arousal and sensory load, rather than mood disorder.

Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS)

describes a trait characterized by deeper processing of stimuli, heightened awareness of subtleties, stronger emotional responsivity, and a greater tendency to pause before action.

Some studies show it is found in roughly 20–30% of the population and is not considered a pathology. From this perspective, seasonal environments may act as regulatory contexts.

Some people appear to thrive in summer conditions:

• higher sensory input (bright light, warmth, outdoor stimulation)

• increased social density aligned with cultural norms

• longer days offering more perceived “usable time”

• heat as soothing for certain nervous systems

Others appear to regulate better in winter conditions:

• reduced sensory demand and social pressure

• colder temperatures that feel organizing or clarifying

• cultural permission for withdrawal and introspection

• darkness experienced as protective rather than depleting

• alignment with slower, more contemplative pacing

Seen this way, seasonal preference is less about liking or disliking weather and more about how a nervous system maintains stability.

A Polyvagal Lens

Polyvagal theory offers a language many find useful for describing autonomic nervous system states, though parts of the theory remain debated within neuroscience.

Broadly, the framework proposes that our autonomic nervous system shifts between states associated with:

• conservation and immobilization

• mobilization and defense

• social engagement and safety

From this lens, winter’s reduced stimulation may allow some nervous systems to settle into restorative states without tipping into collapse. For others, the same conditions may signal danger or deprivation, triggering anxiety or shutdown. Likewise, summer’s expansion may support connection and play for some, while overwhelming others with excessive sensory and social demand.

Cultural Framing and Moralization

Seasonal biology does not exist outside culture. Productivity-oriented societies implicitly and explicitly appreciate ‘summer traits’: expansion, visibility, activity, growth. ‘Winter traits’ (slowness, withdrawal, conservation) are easily framed as laziness or dysfunction.

For sensitive and neurodivergent people especially

this moral overlay can turn a natural seasonal rhythm into chronic self-criticism. Recognizing that winter withdrawal may reflect regulation needs rather than failure can be quietly radical.

In addition, research comparing rates of winter vs. summer SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) across dozens of countries suggests that cultural values like individualism and power distance significantly relate to how seasonal mood changes are experienced and reported, beyond biological factors alone.

Toward a Non-Pathologizing View

What is rarely mentioned is a framework that treats seasonal variation as neuropsychological diversity, not deviation from ‘correctedness’.

We might conceptualize seasonal experience along multiple continua:

• High seasonal amplitude ←→ low seasonal amplitude
  (dramatic shifts vs relative stability)

• Summer-energized ←→ winter-energized
  (expanded by light, heat, activity vs restored by dark, cold, stillness)

These are not fixed identities. They are dynamic patterns shaped by light sensitivity, sensory profile, circadian biology, trauma history, health status, cultural and environmental context.

Perhaps the more useful question isn’t whether you are a “summer person” or a “winter person,” but:

What does your nervous system need across the wheel of the year, and how much of your life allows that need to be honored rather than overridden?

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❗Disclaimer

This is an informative and dialogue-oriented post and should not be taken as individual advice. If you need mental health assistance, please contact a national hotline or a mental health professional.

References

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Bjorvatn, B., Saxvig, I. W., Waage, S., & Pallesen, S. (2021). Self-reported seasonality is strongly associated with chronotype and weakly associated with latitude. Chronobiology International

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Meesters, Y., & Gordijn, M. C. (2016). Seasonal affective disorder, winter type: current insights and treatment options. Psychology Research and Behavior Management

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Murray, G., Allen, N. B., & Trinder, J. (2003). Seasonality and circadian phase delay: Prospective evidence that winter lowering of mood is associated with a shift towards eveningness. Journal of Affective Disorders

Porges, S. W. (2025). Polyvagal theory: a journey from physiological observation to neural innervation and clinical insight. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

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Shawa, N., Rae, D. E., & Roden, L. C. (2018). Impact of seasons on an individual’s chronotype: Current perspectives. Nature and Science of Sleep