How Mother Nature and I Manage My Depression

a post by Amie Gabriel for the Tiny Buddha blog


“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” ~John Burroughs

I sat on the front stoop sobbing, unable to move. Hunched over like a heaving dog hugging my knees and clutching a wad of decomposing tissues. About fifteen minutes before, I’d managed to get myself off the couch where I’d been parked, withered and absent, for the fourth consecutive day, and had made it through the front door.

Once there, I tried to stay upright, but like cool syrup I slid down the side of the wrought iron railing and down onto the steps. Now all I had to do was get up and walk to the mailbox and back and maybe I’d feel better. But I couldn’t do it. It was too much.

I hoisted my ladened head from my knees and stared out the driveway to the mailbox about seven hundred feet away. It may as well have been ten miles… or fifteen feet. It didn’t matter, it was too far.

“Please just help me get up,” I pleaded to a sombre sky. The help didn’t come and so there I sat crying, searching for the energy or the wherewithal to make myself move. Fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, twenty-five… the time oozed by thick and distorted.

It had happened before, more than once, and had overtaken me at varying speeds and intensity. Sometimes it leached in with the change of seasons; like an inflatable pool toy left floating past the end of summer, sad and wilted, the air having seeped out in infinitesimal degrees. Sometimes I could fight it off, catch it before things got too grim. Not this time. I’d felt myself spiralling down, hot wind escaping me until I was in a deflated heap, slack and flaccid on the sofa.

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Finding Emotional Freedom After a Toxic Relationship

a post by Sharon Martin for the Happily Imperfect blog [via World of Psychology]



A toxic or codependent relationship can make you feel trapped, small, and deficient. It can feel like an anchor weighing you down, suffocating you.

People who grew up in dysfunctional families, with parents who lacked boundaries, abused drugs or alcohol, or suffered from mental illness, develop a set of coping skills that helped them deal with the chaos and dysfunction in their families. And although these coping skills helped us get through a lot of difficult childhood experiences, they can make it hard for us to manage our emotions and prioritize our needs.

In adulthood, we continue to suppress our feelings, get into relationships with needy or dysfunctional people, and spend so much time and energy focused on other people and their needs that we neglect ourselves. Our lives continue to be consumed with anxiety, efforts to please people who are never satisfied, and feelings of shame and self-blame.

In an effort to survive, many people “lose” themselves.

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From contest to context: urban green space and public policy

an article by Julian Dobson (University of Sheffield, UK) published in People, Place and Policy Volume 12 Issue 2 (December 2018)

Summary

The role of urban green spaces in supporting mental and physical wellbeing is well evidenced. At a time when mental ill-health is seen as a major factor limiting the life chances of the poorest groups in society, the case for the provision and protection of natural urban environments would appear indisputable.

Yet establishing direct causal links between natural environments and specific health outcomes is complex and problematic. Different green spaces contribute to experiences of wellbeing in different ways for different people. Public policies that seek to employ green space to achieve health objectives through ‘interventions’ or ‘prescriptions’ are thus fraught with difficulties.

Rather than seeing green space as an instrumental factor or ‘dose’ in improving wellbeing, this paper, based on emerging findings from research in Sheffield, UK, argues that policymakers need to think of multifunctional natural environments as essential contexts for the promotion of wellbeing. Urban austerity, however, acts as a countervailing context-changing driver, reframing wellbeing within a narrative of public service cost control.

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Riding the energy transition: Oil beyond 2040

a column by Reda Cherif, Fuad Hasanov and Aditya Pande for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The motor vehicle was very quick to replace horses in the early 20th century, and the advent of the electric car suggests that another profound shift in transportation and energy could be around the corner. This column projects how different rates of electric car adoption will effect oil demand and consumption over the next three decades. In a fast-adoption scenario, oil prices could converge to the level of current coal prices by the early 2040s. Even under a slow adoption scenario, oil could become obsolete before it is depleted.

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