A Cheat Sheet on How to Survive the Lockdown Winter
In winter, people may experience seasonal affective disorder due to lack of sunlight. Winter depression, as it is also called, causes lethargy, anxiety and loss of interest. But it can and must be dealt with. I found a cheat sheet on how to survive this difficult winter. You can stick to it from December to March, finish it off and generally use only those items from it that fit, and those that do not fit, and ignore it. We will divide ourselves very conditionally into 3 cubes: a cube of the body, a cube of the psyche (the whole tangle of hard-to-recognise feelings) and a cube of thoughts. Actually, things are more complicated: each cube is inextricably linked to the other two, but - conditionally. To survive in December, we have to fill each cube with something. Because if we let things go, they will be filled with gloomy and motionless longing. Fatigue and anxiety. What does the body need?
Moving. Go for a walk
Stillness in an enclosed space is destructive to the body, and therefore to the nervous system as a whole. So we go outside, if not to the park, then at least around the house. Morning walks around the house for half an hour. Walks before bed. Any home training - through strength, through Zoom. No interest. No faith in success. Easy charging. 15-minute stretch. The body needs 4-5 hours of active movement per day, otherwise the motion deficit accumulates, causing apathy and physical pain. Let's calculate how much we do not give the body in winter and in the flat. Let us be terrified and give it at least these 15-20 minutes - let it give us endorphins.
New pictures, tastes and smells
The brain needs novelty: to see something new, to hear, smell and touch. When we keep sliding our eyes around the familiar corners and walls of the room, the psyche sank into apathy. Changing pictures on a laptop screen - no, not that. So we add bright spots, any visual stimuli, the most absurd. Orange pumpkins, autumn bouquets, glossy pictures. A heartbreaking salad-coloured towel - let him go on stage, his finest hour has come. Bed linen in scarlet roses. After all, you can rearrange the furniture every week. All the New Year's tinsel that is in the house, Christmas balls and garlands. And every couple of weeks I would move them from place to place.
Cook new
We smell lemon combined with cumin, black pepper with fried garlic, cinnamon with ginger and so on. You can put a saucepan, pour some water into it, throw lemon, cinnamon, clove grains in it and put it on a little fire - and now the Christmas spirit has already descended upon the house. Or you can put a pot of coffee and anise with cardamom in it. In general, the direction is clear.
Listen to music
Listening to your favourite, experimenting with the strange. Classics, rap, alternative rock, Hawaiian reggae. You don't have to turn it off on the first minute with the words: "Ew, not mine! - turn it off on the second minute, and now the ear has won a whole minute of novelty.
Standing under a warm shower for a long time
So that the whole body can feel the novelty and pleasant tingling from the pods. I will not give biting advice about hugging children and partners, lying down and giving each other massages. In an ideal world, of course, everyone does this from morning to night. But that's not where we are. It's good if we're just being polite. Do we remember, yes, that we still have 2 cubes left? Psyche and thoughts. Just a couple more tips for them, and we'll stop.
Talk with people in a voice
Not with those who "need to call", but who you want to hear. Here's how our grandfathers used to talk - not in correspondence with WhatsApp, not with Zoom. Since technology has "grown" since then, you can put them on speakerphone - it turns out that the voices of loved ones that fill the room have absolutely magical powers. And especially if the room already smells of lemon and clove grains.
Whine
Allow yourself to whine. Whining is not "disgusting" but a great way to relieve tension when everything around is unclear and nothing can be done anyway. Turn inner suffering into words, retell it 10 times, adapt and eventually get rid of it. I am going to write about the benefits of whining for six months now, and I will write about it because it is a beautiful and creative act. For the time being, let's remember that the worst thing is to try in silence, clenching your teeth stoically, experiencing tiredness, pain and fear.
Comfort others
It's a process, mirror whining, and they go hand in hand. As we all know, if you want to calm down yourself, calm down the other, tell him a calming story and believe in it yourself. By calming others, we go into 'parenting' mode, and then the brain tries, it knows that we, as parents, have to be on top of it, even the memory starts to work better.
Observe yourself
Even the most gloomy days are divided into hours or minutes, when at all unbearable, and when still tolerable. For example, in the morning after coffee and breakfast. Or in the evening, when everyone is already asleep, except us. So, let's not load these precious minutes with work, distance learning and household chores. We will keep them for ourselves. These are the only sips of strength we have, and no one needs them as much as we do ourselves. And let's double-check that at home we have a place to hide, put our laptop and our cup of tea and put our notebook in. For at least half an hour. And this is neither a kitchen nor a toilet. Okay, let's have a toilet. These are the times.
Last but not least, the most important thing is how things work: let's reduce expectations. From ourselves, and then from others. Radical
What can be seriously demanded from people who have long forgotten their appointments, read messages inattentively, and confused dates and chat windows. And the schedule of classes has generally stuck together in some unimaginable tangle. Spare me. I would have spared my life too and would not have expected much from it this winter. It will be somehow. Average. It's good to have hot water, electricity and internet. Sooner or later we will go back - not to our old life, but to some other life. So we'll winter and get close to it.
Ucrania
Alemania