When sadness hits, your energy may be low or you might feel paralyzed. In these times, you might just skip making a fancy inhaler or spray. Just grab the bottle of oil and take a couple sniffs every couple of hours, being careful not to spill it. If you’re going to be out and about, a spritzer is nice, as it’s easy to use and less of a disaster if it leaks in your bag.
After, oh, roughly the age of 21, birthdays get a little less exciting for a lot of people. Instead of counting down to your birthday, you might find it sneaking up on you, leaving you no time to plan any kind of celebration. Or maybe as an adult, you’re stuck working on your birthday and don’t feel up to making a whole day of it—or even an evening. In this global age, perhaps you’re living far away from most of your loved ones or a recent transplant to a new city without a large local social network. Some of us are watching our wallets and want to celebrate our big
Many of us regard depression as an inner darkness that can throw us into the depths of debilitating emotional and mental pain, making it impossible for us to function in this world for weeks or months even. Life feels pointless, the world appears hopeless, and all we can feel is numbness.
I’ve always loved that patch of stillness that succeeds the holidays: No work, no school, no parties to prepare for or gifts to buy. The sun doesn’t rise until 7:20 and it sets again just after 5, abandoning well over half of the day’s 24 hours to darkness. For me, this means I can embrace my tendencies toward hibernation without feeling antisocial. The first quiet days of January feel like a reprieve from the tumult of the previous year.
So with the holidays looming around the corner, most, if not all of us have already made our plans to be with family or friends. In case you didn’t, or can’t or, well, won’t—here’s how you can have a Merry Christmas all by your lonesome self…
Even with the vast social networks and instant communication we have available to us, many of us feel alone.
We feel separate and isolated from others. Our longing for deep and meaningful connection is tangled up in the facades that we carry and try to match to another’s. And we think we are alone in this.