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CynthiaWVirginia -> RE: Stress relief (10/13/2011 4:05:06 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: myotherself
- do you do anything to make yourself feel better and more positive about life when things get a bit rocky? It may be food, it may be a drink, a change in routine, whatever.
I do many things to avoid falling into a deeper depression. Homemade hot cocoa with marshmallows on top, making caramel apples, eating red jello cubes with my fingers, having a red popsicle (my favorite when I was little), fresh strawberries, shrimp dipped in cocktail sauce, eating pretty, bright colors...
I put away all sad things and start stuffing happy things into my brain to try to alter my brain chemistry. Dramas? Movies with people dying? (can you believe that friends kept recommending movies with dying people in them while I was having chemo for lymphoma?) Pfft. Disney cartoon movie orgy time, and the same for comedies. Favorites here are Galaxy Quest, Blazing Saddles, and White Chicks, when things get rough.
Hobbies help...I knit and quilt and do crafts. I read fun books and play my Pokemon games. I also do silly things that I left behind in my childhood, like coloring in a pretty coloring book, blowing scented bubbles, taking bubble baths with food dye (like blue) dripped over the bubbles, yanno...just STUFF. I stare at flowers as if trying to memorize them to draw from memory, I walk on rose petals because it pleases me, spritz my favorite perfume over my pillow case, light candles and burn insence...and if I feel like wading through a mud puddle then so be it. Sometimes I buy day old bread and feed the ducks.
I also take time to grieve. I try to honor the loved one who died by writing down details of happy or quirky memories before time steals away all the details. I take flowers to Carin's grave because my roses remind me of her. My aunt, before she died, was obsessed with getting all of her pictures into pretty scrapbooks...and I cannot pass a scarlet macaw picture in some store without thinking of her and her pet Scarlet who loved her so.
Life. Whenever I feel weighted down by death I gravitate toward life... I look for babies of all sorts, human and kittens and puppies and little chicks. I need to feel that sense of balance.
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