Two years ago, cultural guest Johanna \”Yona\” Rasmus, 38, wanted to die. Now he knows how to psych himself up to be happy.
– I can be your therapist, Yona says as she sits on the higher of the two seats in the room.
We are at Sellosali’s bakery in Leppävaara, Espoo. In a few hours, Yona will take the stage with her big orchestra for the last time this year. The evening is sold out.
Good thing, because there are plenty of challenges. The year 2022 has been long and heavy. Yona has toured, made new music and appeared on television. For the past few months, he has been marketing *Vai äääää* songs and worried about how he looks and sounds in an entertainment program that is watched by hundreds of thousands of Finns.
Yona would like to do much more, but knows how important it is to know how to rest. For a long time he couldn’t, and it meant to kill him.
Unstable personality disorder
After her debut, Yona has released seven studio albums under her own name and two as part of Lilja Loisto. Genre experiments have led through folk and jazz to pop, tango and rap.
Album after album, Yona has established herself as the royalty of Finnish indies. Released in March 2021, recorded with the Tapiola Sinfonietta, *Uni johou häären* won the Teosto award.
The album is a collection of songs in which Disney-like orchestral arrangements support stories of love, separation and pain. The texts were born out of complete loneliness, which Yona was driven to by divorce and the corona pandemic. In the song *Kultavehka*, the narrator slits his wrist open, but is turned away from the hospital ward.
The cutting is not true, but Yona did try to seek ward treatment in her most difficult moments due to suicidal thoughts. He talked about his desire to die so much that his friends called the police in alarm.
Now he says he feels better than he has in a long time, thanks to therapy and medication.
– There may be bad moments, but now has been a season when I have been able to move on from them faster. They don’t take over me.
Yona was diagnosed with unstable personality disorder in her twenties. It means that he feels positive and negative emotions more strongly than others.
As a child, Yona says she was an easy and balanced child. She was born as a bumpkin to a Pentecostal pastor’s family and grew up in the \”role of an affectionate evening star\”. Yona noticed that in public situations you should be cheerful and cheerful, no matter how dark the waters are.
– I have always wanted to cheer everyone up and took care that others are in a good mood. The different thing is how well I succeed in it.
Easier to breathe
Under the new album, Yona spoke publicly about her diagnosis for the first time in Helsingin Sanomat’s big story. He wanted to explain why he might be happy and bubbly but sing about death on his records.
– Maybe I also thought that it would deepen my image as an artist.
The release made sense, because *The dream I wake up from* was born \”hand in hand with instability\”. Yona says that she told about the diagnosis so that she wouldn’t have to worry and carry the guilt.
– It was an act of mercy towards myself, and everyone else who has a thread on their head, so to speak.
After coming out, Yona was afraid that she would be considered \”a total nutcase\”. But there was praise. From fans and others, including those struggling with their own mental health issues.
Some told Yona about their diagnosis, even though their spouses didn’t know about it.
As Yona gets older, the fluctuating emotions have gotten a little easier. It is common with unstable personality disorder. It is all the time easier for him to bear the suffering, leave it behind and focus on the good. But these things require active concentration.
– It would be awfully easy for me to get myself into a really anxious state in a couple of minutes, says Yona.
Anxious in the mornings
Yona usually wakes up in the mornings in such a way that it makes her anxious. The hands may shake, the heart may beat or the hoop may tighten around the head.
– It’s in trouble that I’ve been reborn into this world again.
Even today, Yona would not have wanted to go to the band meeting scheduled for ten in the morning, let alone the interview scheduled for Yle after that.
– I thought that I could go to a party, be toxic and ruin everyone’s morning. I’m damn good at it. But I decided that it wouldn’t work out.
Instead, Yona looked out the window and said that it’s wonderful when it snows in Helsinki. He made the coffee and thanked the gods for being allowed to make music for work. Self-proclaimed agnostic, Yona prays a lot, but to no specific god.
Soon he saw beauty everywhere.
Boiling required a conscious effort. Yona had to learn to do them mechanically, just like someone else lifting weights at the gym.
– When you get a positive response often enough that the meeting went well, you start to remember faster the next time. But it requires a lot of repetition.
Out of Helsinki
In addition to psyching herself up, Yona has calmed her mind by leaving Helsinki, where she lived for over 25 years. He now lives in Jyväskylä and just bought a cottage in Central Finland.
In recent years, Yona traveled just to get away from Helsinki. There are too many acquaintances in the capital, from Jyväskylä he can list all the people he knows.
Since childhood, Yona has had a desire to please others, and therefore social situations are exhausting for her. I had to learn to recharge myself in small moments. Yona spends a lot of time alone with her dog. He always has candles with him when he travels.
– When I recently had a gig in a concert hall, I put candles in the hotel room shower and was there for about ten minutes in peace, listening to the gongs and being in my own worlds. I came out more refreshed, as if I had slept for many hours.
While doing the interview, Yona steals such a charging moment when we shoot a timelapse video on the stage of Sellosala. He stands still for several minutes, and after that he seems visibly more alert.
– The fact that I have a manager who takes a significant part of my income is an investment in my ability.
Yona says that no amount of money or attention is worth more than not having to suffer anymore. That’s why he says he refused a big production this year as well.
– I would like to do more than what I do. I have to refuse a lot of things that I really want to do.
Rest is important, because Yona finds almost everything but sleeping burdensome.
Be and let be
Then they performed their own versions of the songs. Some a little timidly, as if they were sacred texts, which it is not appropriate to just talk about. It was clear that among the residents of the house, it was Yona who was considered the greatest artist.
Yona didn’t want to believe that the others were serious. By many standards, he was the smallest artist of the 13th season of the *Only life* program.
– At the end of the table, I had the fear that this is a fucking fake. None of them really Digg my music, no one appreciates me at all.
In Satulinna, old insecurities surfaced. Yona was suspicious of others and considered herself a fool. I remembered how when he was younger he compared himself to other artists \”to the point of mental illness\”.
– They have been like an obsession, I haven’t thought about anything else but another artist.
He knows how to protect himself a little in this matter as well. He does not use the Spotify for Artists service, where an artist can monitor the success of his own songs in streaming – and compare rankings with colleagues.
– You should just, as they say, *be and let be*. To be and let others be. Take care of your own quality of life, and let others make their own choices.
Yona is not quite ready yet. Maybe he wouldn’t be a therapist after all. But there wouldn’t be time for that.
*You can discuss the article until 23.12 on 26.12.*