There is a feeling that is difficult to explain even to yourself. As if nothing terrible happened, you did not starve, did not freeze, did not do physical work, and yet by the evening you feel as if you had been unloading railway cars. This feeling is not made up and is not weakness. It has specific mechanisms, and most of them have nothing to do with darkness itself.

The research that explains the main thing

In 2016, a team from University College London published a study in the journal Nature Communications that for the first time quantitatively measured the impact of uncertainty on stress levels.

The experiment looked like this. Forty-five volunteers played a computer game, turning over stones under which a snake could be hiding. If a snake appeared, the participant received a mild electric shock to the hand. At the same time, the researchers measured physiological indicators of stress, namely skin conductance and pupil dilation. The conditions changed. Sometimes the probability of finding a snake was zero, sometimes one hundred percent, and sometimes somewhere in between. The result turned out to be counterintuitive. The highest level of stress was recorded not when the participant knew for certain that they would receive a shock, but when the probability was approximately fifty percent. The lowest level was at both extremes, that is, at zero and one hundred percent probability. The head of the study, Archie de Berker, formulated the conclusion in such a way that it is much worse not to know whether you will receive a shock than to know for certain that you will or will not receive one. This was not the first observation of this kind. Back in the sixties and seventies, experiments showed that both rats and people who cannot predict an unpleasant event become more exhausted than those who know when it will happen. In 2006, a separate study showed that people perceive unpredictable electric shocks as more painful than predictable shocks of the same intensity. There is also a very telling analogy from the work environment. A study published in the Academy of Management Journal found that employees experience more stress from a manager who behaves unfairly half of the time than from one who is unfair all the time.

How this relates to power outages

Now apply this mechanism to your winter. A schedule that is followed is a predictable situation. You know that there will be no electricity at a certain time, and this is unpleasant, but the psyche can cope with it. A schedule that is regularly violated is the worst possible option. The electricity may be there, or it may not be. It may disappear an hour earlier or return two hours later. An emergency outage may occur on top of a scheduled one. This is exactly what creates the state in which the brain never switches to a state of calm. You constantly keep the background question in your mind of whether there is electricity now, how much longer it will last, whether you will have time to do something, whether you should start a task that you will have to interrupt. That is, it is not the darkness that exhausts you. It is the fifty percent probability.

Why you get tired even when you do nothing

Several mechanisms work here at the same time, and each of them is small on its own, but together they produce that same state of emptiness by the evening. Constant background readiness. In conditions of unpredictability, a person does not fully relax even when everything is fine, because part of their attention is constantly occupied with monitoring the situation. It is similar to how you cannot fall asleep while waiting for an important call. Formally, you are resting, but in reality you are not. Decision fatigue. Every power outage generates dozens of small questions. Should I start the washing machine? Should I cook now? Will I have time to charge my phone? Should I take the elevator? Should I start work that I will not have time to finish? Each of these decisions is tiny, but the ability to make decisions is a resource that runs out. By the evening, a person cannot choose what to watch, not because they do not like anything, but because the resource for making choices has been spent on everyday life. The cost of interruptions. Any interruption costs more than it seems, because it is impossible to instantly return to the previous level of concentration. If your work is interrupted twice a day, you lose not two minutes switching, but significantly more, and that is why the day seems unproductive even though you were doing something all the time.

The breakdown of routine. Repeated daily actions serve as a psychological anchor, meaning they create a feeling that the world is predictable and manageable. When your morning coffee, evening series, and usual time for activities are no longer possible according to a schedule, it is not just convenience that disappears, but this very sense of stability. Loss of control. Psychologically, what is hardest to tolerate is not discomfort, but the inability to influence it. You cannot negotiate, speed it up, appeal it, or solve the issue through effort. This helplessness in small things gradually spreads to your attitude toward everything else.

Why many small stresses are worse than one major event

This is a counterintuitive thing worth understanding. A major event mobilizes you. The body produces a powerful reaction, a person acts, the event ends, and recovery follows. Small stressors work differently. Each one individually is not worth attention, so you do not perceive them as stress and do not give yourself the right to recover. But the physiological response to them still occurs, and it does not end because the next stressor arrives before the previous one has finished. Because of this, a person can honestly say that everything is fine, while at the same time having all the signs of exhaustion. Nothing bad really happened. The bad accumulated drop by drop over the course of months.

The biological component

Psychological mechanisms are accompanied by physiology, and in winter it works against you. The brain responds to light, its duration and intensity, and accordingly regulates the production of melatonin and serotonin. In winter, there is less daylight, and during power outages the darkness lasts even longer. The result is a shift in circadian rhythms, daytime sleepiness, and difficulty falling asleep in the evening.

Added to this is the fact that evening lighting becomes uneven, meaning that the bright screen of a phone in a dark room sends a completely different signal to the biological clock than ordinary lighting. I wrote in a separate article about when the seasonal decline crosses the line beyond which professional help is needed.

The social component

It is mentioned less often, although it is significant. Power outages destroy the spontaneity of communication. You cannot simply call, because the other person may not have a connection. You cannot arrange a meeting without checking schedules. You cannot rely on being able to have a call in the evening.

Every contact turns from a small everyday action into a small planning operation, and some contacts simply do not happen. The consequence is gradual isolation, which a person does not notice because they did not make a decision to communicate less. It was simply inconvenient every time.

Why you cannot simply get used to it

A common idea is that you can adapt to anything, and that the second winter should be easier.

Psychological adaptation does exist, but it works with predictable conditions. You get used to a long commute to work, noise outside the window, an uncomfortable chair, because all of these things are stable.

It is impossible to adapt to instability by definition, because it is precisely its variability that prevents a new familiar pattern from forming. Therefore, the feeling that it is not getting easier with each month but harder is not your personal problem. It is a consequence of the fact that the adaptation mechanism here simply has nothing to attach itself to.

What really helps

Now the practical part, and it follows directly from the mechanisms above. Bring back predictability where possible. Since uncertainty itself is harmful, any element of a schedule that depends on you works as a counterbalance. A fixed wake-up time, a fixed time for meals, a fixed time to finish work. This sounds small, but you are creating islands of certainty inside an uncertain day. Separate what is controllable from what is uncontrollable. Take a sheet of paper and write down in two columns what you can influence and what you cannot. The outage schedule goes in the second column. Charged devices, prepared food, a planned list of tasks for dark hours, an agreement with family about communication go in the first. Efforts spent on the first column pay off. Those spent on the second exhaust you without results. Make decisions in advance. Automation works against decision fatigue. Make a list once of what you do during a power outage, and then simply follow it instead of deciding again each time. Create a separate list of offline activities. When the electricity goes out, the worst feeling comes not from the darkness, but from the feeling that time has stopped. A list prepared in advance of what can be done without electricity removes this part completely. Create a transition ritual. When the electricity goes out, follow the same sequence of actions every time, for example, turn on the flashlight in a certain place, make tea from a thermos, turn on a prepared playlist. A ritual turns a sudden event into a familiar scenario, and this is exactly what reduces the reaction to it. Get daylight in the morning. A walk in the first half of the day, even in cloudy weather, provides many times more light than indoors, and this is the simplest way to support circadian rhythms.

Keep social contact by agreement. Since spontaneity has disappeared, replace it with an arrangement. A fixed time for a daily call with someone close works better than intentions to call when it is convenient. Allow yourself to do less. During a period when basic everyday actions require twice as much effort, expecting your usual productivity from yourself is unrealistic. Lowering the bar here is not weakness, but a correct calculation of the available resources.

What is better not to do

Do not try to constantly monitor the situation. Checking schedules, channels, and apps every half hour creates an illusion of control while maintaining the same background anxiety. It is enough to check the schedule once in the evening for the next day. Do not blame yourself for low productivity. Self-criticism adds a burden to what is already there and improves nothing. Do not put life on hold until better times. The idea that you will get to something when everything gets better postpones recovery indefinitely, while uncertainty itself is the problem here. Do not try to compensate for everything with alcohol or constant scrolling through the feed. Both options provide short-term relief and worsen sleep, meaning the very resource that is already lacking.

When it is no longer about power outages

What is described above concerns a normal reaction to prolonged unpredictability, and it passes together with the circumstances. But if the condition lasts for weeks without change even during periods when everything is fine, if you have lost interest in things that you used to enjoy, if ordinary tasks have become significantly harder, or if your sleep and appetite have changed, this is already a reason to talk to a specialist. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists work in state institutions free of charge under the Medical Guarantees Program, so seeking help does not necessarily involve expenses. You can start with a family doctor. If thoughts appear that you do not want to live, you should seek help without waiting, and in Ukraine a suicide prevention line operates around the clock at the short number 7333.

Summary

Exhaustion from power outages is not proportional to their duration, and the reason for this is not darkness but unpredictability, which according to research creates more stress than a guaranteed unpleasant event. Added to this are decision fatigue from constant small choices, the cost of interruptions, the breakdown of routine, and the gradual loss of a sense of control, with each of these factors seeming insignificant on its own, but together they produce that state in which you do not understand where the fatigue came from. Because of this, the most effective things are not technical but organizational, meaning the creation of islands of predictability inside an unpredictable day and consciously separating what you can influence from what you cannot. And it is worth remembering the main thing. If things are difficult for you, it is not because you are coping badly. It is because it is impossible to get used to instability by definition, and your reaction is a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances.


Sources

de Berker A. et al. Computations of uncertainty mediate acute stress responses in humans. Nature Communications, 2016. A University College London study funded by the Medical Research Council. Publications in the Academy of Management Journal on inconsistent managerial behavior. Materials from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine on seasonal affective conditions.