I have noticed that prayer often helps with everything. It calms the mind and I feel better. I cope better in everyday life.
8 Likes
This gloomy time is not easy for me. During the day, a short moment of gray outside and then dark again. Next, Iâll try to hobble through a âpointless hour-long walkâ to boost my mental strength. On top of that, an intense sauna with a couple of ice-cold showers. That helps for a while.
6 Likes
Back at the cottage again with my daughter to spend Christmas. I just lit the fire in the stove; a live fire is a wonderfully calming element. Soon Iâll start filling the hot tub. In freezing weather, I use an auger to drill a hole in the river ice and lower a borehole pump into the hole, which is a powerful piece of kit. The tub fills in under half an hour. Spending a couple of hours in the tub under the starry sky, alongside some sauna time, is perhaps a kind of meditation. The body relaxes in the warm water. You can watch moving dots in the sky, which are likely some satellites. Yesterday, I fried âChristmas crepesâ on gas in the hut; alongside them, we roasted bacon on the embers, croutons for the salad, and I even tried âloimuâ style (glow-frying) some pieces of smoked turkey. Last year, we were making food from leftovers and realized the crepe thing: a fresh large griddle crepe with bacon roasted crispy on the embers, fig jam, goat cheese, and salad. It was surprisingly good, at least to me. So we thought, letâs make Christmas crepes now since crepes are the best. They put me in a good mood 
These kinds of things would be harder to pull off in the city. The mind really gets refreshed at the cottage by the riverbank! Not everyone would like it since thereâs an outhouse. For my daughter, though, thereâs a Porta Potti chemical toilet.
15 Likes
Personally, I like writing wish lists to Santa Claus.
News certainly has an impact. Personally, I decided and stopped caring years ago about what the news spews out. The main reasons are that I canât do anything about the news topics, they have never taken anything away from me or my well-being before, and there have always been these harmful news stories, and theyâve never bothered me before, so why let them bother me now?
I scoop up and grab onto that childhood carefreeness and positive vibe even into adulthood; why on earth should I, as an adult now, be any more worried about things if I am able, can, and am capable of maintaining a carefree life despite all the evil in the world? Iâve gained more age, responsibility, and independence, but I really want to keep that carefree positive feeling going all the way to the crematorium furnace.
Of course, I look at the world âselfishly in a healthy wayâ through the eyes of an extremely independent bachelor who has organized his life just so that nothing gets in the way of his own well-being and freedom, and that is precisely the well-being I have always aimed for. The latest thing to maximize my well-being is financial carefreeness for the rest of my life, so now everything is in order. Now I just have to hope that I stay healthy for as long as possible and live a long life; Iâm trying my best to influence these as well through my habits and stress-free lifestyle.
8 Likes
I think mental well-being is still treated somewhat dismissively, as if it were any more of a personal choice or decision than physical illness. Of course, you can try to influence it through choices and lifestyle, which works at a population level, but for the individual, things donât always balance out fairly and everyone eventually falls to their knees if they take enough hits. Some sooner, others later, but everyone eventually if it rains hard enough.
And if half a million people in Finland are taking antidepressants, not to mention anxiety which is even more common, there is still a desperate need for better care. I wish the subject were discussed more, as it still feels like anxiety, for example, is treated as just a bit of an âunpleasant feeling,â whereas for some it is as paralyzing as if someone were literally strangling you so you canât get air, while your heart is racing a mile a minute, a heavy stone is on your chest, and your thoughts are spinning like a dark tunnel full of horror and gloom, and reasoning doesnât help. A bit like a panic attack that never ends.
So that this doesnât just turn into meta-babble, here are a few tips that have worked for me:
- Melatonin in larger doses and an acupressure mat. You wonât get 8 hours of sleep with these, but itâs a surprisingly effective combination, especially for falling asleep.
- Intense exerciseâand I mean really intenseâthe kind where you are seriously out of breath for 20-30 minutes; more is not necessarily better in this case.
- Breathing exercises developed for panic disorder, which can be found on YouTube, for example.
- An ice-cold shower or ice swimming, or if you donât have access to those, a bath cooled with ice cubes to simulate ice swimming.
- Omega-3 EPA in the doses recommended by Dr. Tolonen.
- Medications: they work for some and not for others. Benzos work like a charm for many, but for good reason they arenât easily prescribed, and daily or continuous use canât be recommended except in extreme cases. On the other hand, the fear of the harms of benzos often overshadows the fact that antidepressants also have permanent, serious side effects for some, and antidepressants donât always work for anxietyâthey might even make it many times worse. Iâm not trying to scare anyone, and if you can get by without medication, thatâs great.
- Therapy: works for some and not for others; there are several different approaches and itâs certainly worth trying.
10 Likes
I have suffered from recurrent depression in my adult life. Iâm not surprised, as adult life consists of long workdays, stress, performance pressure, etc. Nowadays, I donât follow the news at all. Nothing positive comes from it, and I donât need any more negativity. Exercise also helps. I hope to find a new job; I donât know how much of an impact it will have, but a change of scenery could do me good.
I think it all comes down to balance. You need to have a job, but also free time and good people around you. You need realistic goals and enough money in your account so you donât have to worry constantly. If one area of life weighs too heavily, the balance suffers and everything comes crashing down.
11 Likes