I have never been so happy to leave winter in the past and say hello to spring! Do not get me wrong, I love the winter when it comes to holiday season. The gift giving, snow falling, and bundling up, all while binge watching an endless series of winter wonderland movies. Yet, there is also something about winter that makes me feel super muggy on the inside, I do not feel like my typical self.
What I have noticed is that a lot of my peers relate to this. I believe the last two seasons of the year bring an uninvited guest to our developed emotions: seasonal depression. Seasonal depression usually arrives around the time daylight savings occur. Less long-term exposure to the sun can make people feel less joyful through the winter months. However, to combat my frequent feelings of negativity, I curated a multiple-step process that keeps me feeling more proactive and puts my mind at ease.
- MEDITATION
After starting college, I started to develop a love for meditation and any calming exercises that help keep my mind focused. Typically for me, I like to go to an isolated environment, such as my room, and take at least ten minutes of my day to focus my mind on anything that instantly makes me more tranquil. Whether it is thinking about childhood memories, relationships I have formed, or my dream adult life that I am working toward, the key is to keep your breathing steady and let negative energy in your body flow outward.
For an added benefit, I will sometimes play music in the background to help with my breathing patterns.
- COOKING
I will proudly and loudly say that I am not the best cook in the world. I am the opposite of Gordon Ramsey. Even though I will not produce a Michelin-star-worthy meal, I will make delicious and hearty pasta dish made with love. That is another way that I calm my nerves and mentally recover from an evening of sulking. Growing up, I was always surrounded by cooking.
I come from a big Jamaican family, full of cooks who were taught by their parents and attempt to passed it down to us. However, that did not go as planned for me as my mother always kicked my sister and I out the kitchen when we could not chop an onion to her liking. My personal memories of cooking as a kid have transformed into a core part of my life now and help me better cope with life around me. Whenever I feel super stressed and anxious from my day, I like to be home alone and cook recipes I find online. I focus most of my attention onto perfecting the dish I saw on social media so that I don’t cocoon myself in my emotions and feed my brain with negative thoughts.
- BOOKWORM
Anyone who knows me would describe me as the biggest bookworm they have ever seen. Ever since I was a little girl, the only thing I would do in my free time was read or write. I ran through my entire Harry Potter book collection by the time I was 9 and was always craving to dig my nose deeper into the crisp pages of a new novel. That love has transpired even deeper more than a decade later, as I read any chance that I get.
No matter what scenario I am in, I will completely stop whatever I am doing so I can continue working on internally annotating whatever book I am reading. My deep love for books has served tremendously as a suppressor for me, as I block off any feeling that is racing through my mind. A book offers me the ability to dissociate from the world and focus on one thing that guarantees internal peace and stability.
A person’s mental health and well-being should be a well-respected priority in their daily life. It should always be valued. Even though it might seem hard to keep balanced, the well-being of everyone is important to keep sacred. For me, finding a self-help routine is essential for healing and is easy to accomplish if you find what works well for you.