Fighting Winter Blues

There are people who love winter. They love cold weather, snow, and ice. Wonderful for them. Winter is the time of year when there is less sun, temperatures curb outdoor activities and it gets easy to isolate.
I have never enjoyed winter. Cold. Colds. Being Cooped up. Dangerous driving conditions. Financial stresses. Limited work. I do my best to try to put myself in states that do not get snow (or get very little) this time of year.
People ask often, how do you fight the Winter Blues?

Lists. Lists are important. Lists of favorite mood boosting activities, songs, movies, pictures, places.
Lists of goals and the steps you are taking to reach them. When your mood is at its darkest, its time to use the items on your mood boosting list. Look at your goals: what are you doing to accomplish them? What have you put off? Winter is a good time to accomplish things that you don't have time to sit down and do other times of year. Getting closure on projects is always a satisfying feeling.

Call or write a friend. Long winer no see, drop a line, a Meme, a Gif, a photo to a friend you haven't heard from in a while. Take time to stay connected. Talking and interacting with other people gets us out of our own heads and lifts our mood. The request for friends to share positive pictures or picture number such and such frequently impact you and the people who share positively.

Visit friends! Get out to social events! This winter we've hit $5 movie nights to get out and have fun, we also went to a good friends' birthday party at an Arcade for Adults. We tried out a new virtual reality game (pictured below). Dodging a virtual stone snake to snatch an idol, traveling through virtual temple ruins chases thoughts of snow away with lava pits!

What are you eating? Nutrition directly influences mood. Healthy, balanced diet equals better mood versus empty calories and heavy meals that literally weigh you and your mood down. Watch portion sizes, get fresh fruit and vegetables in your diet every day. Vitamins. Some people love them, others roll their eyes. B 12 is the mood booster. Magnesium supplements other than magnesium oxide (magnesium oxide is not a form of magnesium our bodies can actually use) like SloMag, Calm, Magnesium Maleate also help with lifting the mood, easing anxiety and depression. Sunlight. Get in it as much as you can. Your body needs that sunlight to work properly, let the sun in!

Get out! You don't have to have money to bundle up and go outside, it is cold but can you handle it for a brisk walk? If not, there are many malls and other public indoor places to walk where you might have to ignore advertising and dodge customers but you can get your steps in. If you have the money for it: this is the time of year to use the gym or recreational center near you. This winter I am going to a recreational center once a day, spending a half hour doing laps, then walking a mile on their track. I see people practicing basketball, volleyball, and I can meditate in the dry Sauna.

Pet Snuggles! Curl up with a favorite show and a snuggly pet. Research shows that holding or petting our animals improves our mood.

Picture time! Take pictures of things you find beautiful to share with friends on Facebook or Instagram. Looking for things that make you smile gets your mind focused on positive rather than negative.

Thought stopping. If you catch yourself wearing down the negative mood and thought trail, stop. Do you really want to? What reframing can you do? How can you make your focus and mood turn around? Each of us is different. Some can turn it around with humor, others need a hug or at least acknowledgement of the negative before they can get back to the brighter side.

Little things have a big impact. What can you do to offer people more brightness this winter?

A Real Gift

I am not a Christmas Elf. I have worked as one. It's not my favorite holiday for many reasons.
Irony, this year to have a microburst drop a pine bough 40 plus feet through the roof of our carport tent. We were underneath it and were lucky to be unharmed when the 14 foot long branch came straight through the roof nearly spearing our crockpot of bean soup. Christmas tree delivered whether we wanted one or not. We used comedy to deal with it, and an extra tarp. Then, to have a complex story game I loved stolen by an ex through chance- specifically to be hurtful, only to have several friends who could empathise surprise me via paypal enough to make it possible for me to replace what was stolen.
Speechless. Usually, I pick through my friends and go through what I have and send of what gifts I can; because I choose to. I try to give what I can especially if I know a friend is having a rough year.
I am not used to receiving. I am used to giving. It changes the feel of the season. It turns it into something that can be beautiful.

Got spare time? Spare food? Spare toys?There are soup kitchens and other options for volunteering from caroling to giving toys to Toys for Tots.

How are your friends faring? Reach out. Depression and Christmas are a tough combination. Share laughter, share good memories. Make new friends. Make more beautiful memories. Seriously.

Instead of investing in the most expensive yada yada, why not invest in each other?
The best gifts are memories. The memory of our crazy divebombing tree will be the most priceless Christmas tree memory.

The memory of volunteering to work Christmas and cook dinner and play card games with psych. residents who had no families back when I worked at a group home was my best Christmas ever. I remember one resident, a grizzled guy we will call Teddy, asking me repeatedly as we checked the turkey why I was there and not with family. I remember finally pausing, after many joke responses and saying; "I am here because you all are here. Because together we can have a great holiday, however we choose. If we want to throw out the turkey and eat ice cream, we can. If we want to play card games and stuff ourselves on leftovers we can. We can have a great day here together regardless of what the rest of the world does." And we did. Three years I worked there, he and I played card games often as I was trying to help his neurons build pathways around the damage done by an aneurysm he survived in the 60s. His short term memory did not connect to long term. He knew my face. But I was Barbara, George, Herman, Isabelle, Sarah, and if he was angry the names became bad puns- Not So Mary, Missy Witch etc. I taught him behaviors to negate the temper flares he had until the memory of being upset passed. I taught him not to stress about what he could not recall. Behavior and repetitive patterns to implant new information where memory could not lose it. If you brush your teeth every morning, eventually you do it without thought. That was our process. Slow. No one had seriously worked with him, he had been shuffled for years between programs.
Three years I beat him at Rummy, putting all the cards I needed to score with gradually in the discards out of sequence. That night was the night his brain was finally able to connect them. That night he won.
The memory of the look on his face when his thoughts connected. Nothing wrapped in paper or topped with a bright bow will ever top that look. I have never been so happy to get trounced at a game. The next week, for the first time- he remembered my name. He never lost it. Just after that I was promoted to a different site and was gone. I left the agency shortly after that, disliking how they approached mental health. They seemed more interested in having clients than in helping people heal.
Almost twenty years later I realize, Teddy gave me the best gift. He was working on healing my heart as much as I was working on his mind. It was a holiday free of expectations, free of moods and attitudes, it was just a pleasant day.
I hope that in your life you are lucky enough to have someone like Teddy change your world for the brighter. I hope you let them.