For the past couple of days, my mood had been dark. Like clouds, it hung over everything; from work to social interactions, shadowing it with gloom and making it difficult to be happy. I was sure I had been a pain to everyone around, and we are all going through a lot.
The year 2020 has been like a concert, unveiling artiste after artiste remarkably good at what they do which in this case is causing worry and depression with performances of a pandemic, worldwide, and national crisis. It is almost impossible not to succumb to the weight of it all.
By October, I was handling it all very badly. My mental energy levels were low, and with the scare of a second wave of the Coronavirus looming about, it became even worse.
How do you cope with heavy feelings and recharge your energy?
HAVE A SUPPORT SYSTEM
Vanessa had been holding up better than I had, and as the day wore by, she decided I needed an intervention.
I was surprised by a knock on my door one Saturday morning. A number of my friends and siblings that were in town hovered on my doorstep with food, ice cream, and snacks I couldn’t remember the last time I indulged in.
Together, we all moaned about the happenings in the world and our personal lives. The hours spent lightened my mood considerably.
It is the realization you are not alone, and in some way, everyone else is on the same rocky ride with you that brings comfort in a weird way. After hours of talking, sharing, laughing, and eating, I was ready to face the world again and stage an intervention for someone else like Vanessa had done for me.
TAKE A TRIP
Someone once said to me that leaving your house and going somewhere is traveling. I liked the thought of that.
A trip to the local market or the gym has something in common, you never know what you might encounter on the way and that in itself is exciting. You don’t have to break the bank to recharge your energy levels, and sometimes just breathing in a different location feels relaxing.
I learned that the best way to revamp your headspace is to put on some clothes, tell yourself very firmly that you are putting aside all worries for a couple of hours, and set out with a destination in mind. I assure you, even the skies would look prettier with a worry-free mind.
Allow yourself to breathe.
UNPLUG
Take a couple of days off work, and on your days off, rediscover yourself.
Pick up a hobby you have left behind, cool off with a long swim, take long naps, have a good cathartic karaoke session, purge yourself. Basically, unplug with activities that bring you excitement and a sense of calm.
GIVE YOURSELF A TREAT
A perfect item to eat when you are down is ‘chocolate.’
Dark chocolate stimulates the production of endorphins, the ‘feel-good’ chemicals. It also contains serotonin which is an antidepressant that serves to elevate your mood.
It mustn’t be chocolate. There is some food that adds the tone of sunlight to the mood when you think of them. So when you are having a cloudy day, it is a good time to light it up with a portion of these foods.
There is a phrase that has been trending lately and it goes ‘suffer no dey finish’. Hard times do not end, dark days will always come. Where there is good, there is bad; where there is light, there is also darkness.
It is up to us to make more memories of days filled with sunshine and hold someone’s hand in these dark times as we journey on.
Leave a Reply