[psych] Friendly Christmas Advice
Some friendly Christmas Mental Health Advice from an Ashkenazi Atheist chick who doesn't actually celebrate Christmas:
The reports are beginning to come in: the stores have started to hang the stockings by the registers with care and put Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer on infinite repeat. Most of these reports are very, very bitter and disgruntled.
One thing which is really, amazingly obvious from the outside (i.e. to someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas) is that there are an awful lot of people who do celebrate (sorta) Christmas, who basically think of it (or feel of it) as a spiritually oppressive chore. If your first visceral reaction to thinking about the on-coming holiday season is dread at how much work and stress it is... I'm talking to you.
There are various different reasons people get cranky at seeing stores start the xmas rush in Nov., but the biggest is a general dread of the stress of the season. If that's what's bugging you, read on.
There are things in this world we cannot change. Rather a lot of them actually. The fact that stores insist on creeping xmas up and up the calendar is effectively one of them. While you may be able to make policy and tactical decisions to do something about this long-term, as a day to day short-term pragmatic matter, the fact that store managers make this decision is deep, deep in the territory of "other people's behavior is not under your control and something you're just going to have to learn to cope with."
The person you do have control over to change is yourself. The choice you do have is how you're going to go about living in a world in which stores trot out the tinsel in mid-November.
It's certainly fashionable to complain about the calendar imperialism of commercial xmas. There will be lots of people ready to affirm your grumpiness and validate your feelings of unhappiness with the situation and helplessness to change it. That's because there's lots of people who feel just as oppressed by the demands of the holiday season as you, who are just as likely as you to use the signs of the season as targets of their ire.
But you might ask yourself if that's really what you want, to be confirmed and encouraged in your misery. Certainly, if you've never had your misery validated before, that may be exactly what the doctor ordered. But if what you want is to try to ameliorate that misery, if what you want is to not be miserable, that is counter-productive.
Of course, simply not complaining isn't going to make you un-miserable, either. The actual problem needs to be actually confronted. To not be miserable about the Christmas season would require debugging your relationship to the Christmas season.
That's a project. As such, it's usually the last thing someone needs to add to their already oppressively demanding Christmas experience. On the other hand, when else would you be willing to do it? June?
The way to tackle the project of debugging one's relationship to Christmas, such that it puts the least burden on an already burdensome experience, is to "get ahead of the curve", to "get the drop on it" -- to get ready for it before it catches up with you.
In other words, now is when to start debugging your relationship with the Christmas season.
Here is something you might try to start.
There are several purposes to this exercise. One is to simply get in motion and start some momentum; it's something simple and small you can start out doing to get a sense of success and accomplishment from which you can build. One is to be a liminal event which passes one over into Christmas season early, so one can start working on the problem early: it gets you into the right frame of mind. One is to provide a more personal and authentic emotional counter to the purely commercial xmas cues to which we are exposed this early: it is a form of taking control of your experience so you feel less helpless against something which is inexorable.
The exercise: Schedule fifteen minutes to a half-hour -- whatever you feel most comfortable with -- to do this. Dig out the holiday cards you received last year. Put on some holiday music that you like, and go through the cards, looking at all of them, and reading any messages. Think about your friends and family who sent you these cards, and what they've been up to in the past year.
If any of those relationships stirs up negative feelings, you might want to write a journal entry (perhaps privately) about those feelings. Perhaps someone who sent you a card has since died. Perhaps you've had a falling out with someone. Perhaps you received a card from someone who has not treated you well. It's OK to be sad, angry, lonely, hurt, conflicted. Simply observe the feeling, honor it as part of your reality, and let it change or stay as it will. Reflect on how it's the brightest of lights which cast the strongest shadows, and it's the intensity of our joy which makes loss so bitter. Reflect on how that that bitterness may be what lends richness to the sweetnesses of life. Remember to give equal contemplation to the positive parts (if any) of those relationships, and it is important to conclude by focusing your attention on those relationships which a positive and sustaining in your life.
Then put the cards away and turn off the music. That's it.
No list making. No tasks to achieve. Simply spend some time using the reviewing of the cards and the listening to holiday music as a prompt to contemplate relationships with friends and family, coworkers and neighbors.
Why?
1) One of the most common lurking sources of stress and suffering in the Christmas season is that it is a powerfully family-themed holiday, and no small number of people come from pretty messed up families. Instead of waiting for the wave of family-related neurosis to catch you up and overwhelm you, start confronting it by situating yourself, emotionally, within your web of relationships, both familial and extra-familial. Take stock of where you are now, so you have a chance of holding on to the present emotional reality instead of emotionally regressing to a past Christmas season, so you can say "This year, I have people I love around me, and I am safe" or "I'm not a little kid any more, and I can stand up to people who talk to me like that" or "I am not helpless; if I am not treated right, I will get in my car and go to spend time with people who like me". Start addressing any unfinished emotional business from past Christmases consciously, instead of letting them erupt as a surprise when triggered by encountering a certain scent or sight or sound while tired. It's powerful to know, "Yes, the taste of ginger cookies reminds me of the first Christmas without my Dad," to be able to say, "Yes, I recognize this sadness as being about my Dad", instead of being surprised and overwhelmed by emotion.
2) This exercise will go a little way to associating, in your mind, those songs with the memory of your wealth of relationships and people you care about and who care about you. Each time you hear that music, you will be reminded of how many people you are fortunate to have in your life. You will associate that music with feeling good about relationships. You can then exploit that deliberately, if you want -- and sometimes, you'll encounter the music in the wild, and have the happy serendipity of being reminded of your social network.
3) If you powerfully associate the Christmas season with chores, with having to do things, this will be a counter-example. This is an exercise in being-with, as opposed to doing. This is an exercise in measured time, instead of trying to race through tasks as quickly as possible. It is the opposite of rushing.
4) If you feel the Christmas season is degraded by commercialism, focusing on relationships is a deliberate act of cultural rebellion; it puts the personal front and center. It repudiates the commercial message about the season which you are getting from many quarters. It is a way of tilting the balance away from commerce and towards intimacy.
When? Do it by this weekend if you at all can. Better late than never, of course, but the point is to do it before becoming engulfed in other people's ideas of (and messages about) the season. So do it now.
NOTE: I welcome discussion, BUT I have an important request: do NOT post additional or alternative suggestions of things for people to do, or even things you do, in the comments. I would love for you to email those to me, for me to include with attributions in later posts. It would be very easy for this to become a huge list of "helpful hints" that by their very numerousness becomes, itself, daunting and oppressive-seeming. I'd like to avoid that for what I hope are obvious reasons, and if I feel it appropriate I'll screen any comments which are suggestions. But I do look forward to compiling helpful contributions into another post, so do email them along.
P.S. If people like, I might continue to post exercises and approaches up to and through Christmas.
The reports are beginning to come in: the stores have started to hang the stockings by the registers with care and put Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer on infinite repeat. Most of these reports are very, very bitter and disgruntled.
One thing which is really, amazingly obvious from the outside (i.e. to someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas) is that there are an awful lot of people who do celebrate (sorta) Christmas, who basically think of it (or feel of it) as a spiritually oppressive chore. If your first visceral reaction to thinking about the on-coming holiday season is dread at how much work and stress it is... I'm talking to you.
There are various different reasons people get cranky at seeing stores start the xmas rush in Nov., but the biggest is a general dread of the stress of the season. If that's what's bugging you, read on.
There are things in this world we cannot change. Rather a lot of them actually. The fact that stores insist on creeping xmas up and up the calendar is effectively one of them. While you may be able to make policy and tactical decisions to do something about this long-term, as a day to day short-term pragmatic matter, the fact that store managers make this decision is deep, deep in the territory of "other people's behavior is not under your control and something you're just going to have to learn to cope with."
The person you do have control over to change is yourself. The choice you do have is how you're going to go about living in a world in which stores trot out the tinsel in mid-November.
It's certainly fashionable to complain about the calendar imperialism of commercial xmas. There will be lots of people ready to affirm your grumpiness and validate your feelings of unhappiness with the situation and helplessness to change it. That's because there's lots of people who feel just as oppressed by the demands of the holiday season as you, who are just as likely as you to use the signs of the season as targets of their ire.
But you might ask yourself if that's really what you want, to be confirmed and encouraged in your misery. Certainly, if you've never had your misery validated before, that may be exactly what the doctor ordered. But if what you want is to try to ameliorate that misery, if what you want is to not be miserable, that is counter-productive.
Of course, simply not complaining isn't going to make you un-miserable, either. The actual problem needs to be actually confronted. To not be miserable about the Christmas season would require debugging your relationship to the Christmas season.
That's a project. As such, it's usually the last thing someone needs to add to their already oppressively demanding Christmas experience. On the other hand, when else would you be willing to do it? June?
The way to tackle the project of debugging one's relationship to Christmas, such that it puts the least burden on an already burdensome experience, is to "get ahead of the curve", to "get the drop on it" -- to get ready for it before it catches up with you.
In other words, now is when to start debugging your relationship with the Christmas season.
Here is something you might try to start.
There are several purposes to this exercise. One is to simply get in motion and start some momentum; it's something simple and small you can start out doing to get a sense of success and accomplishment from which you can build. One is to be a liminal event which passes one over into Christmas season early, so one can start working on the problem early: it gets you into the right frame of mind. One is to provide a more personal and authentic emotional counter to the purely commercial xmas cues to which we are exposed this early: it is a form of taking control of your experience so you feel less helpless against something which is inexorable.
The exercise: Schedule fifteen minutes to a half-hour -- whatever you feel most comfortable with -- to do this. Dig out the holiday cards you received last year. Put on some holiday music that you like, and go through the cards, looking at all of them, and reading any messages. Think about your friends and family who sent you these cards, and what they've been up to in the past year.
If any of those relationships stirs up negative feelings, you might want to write a journal entry (perhaps privately) about those feelings. Perhaps someone who sent you a card has since died. Perhaps you've had a falling out with someone. Perhaps you received a card from someone who has not treated you well. It's OK to be sad, angry, lonely, hurt, conflicted. Simply observe the feeling, honor it as part of your reality, and let it change or stay as it will. Reflect on how it's the brightest of lights which cast the strongest shadows, and it's the intensity of our joy which makes loss so bitter. Reflect on how that that bitterness may be what lends richness to the sweetnesses of life. Remember to give equal contemplation to the positive parts (if any) of those relationships, and it is important to conclude by focusing your attention on those relationships which a positive and sustaining in your life.
Then put the cards away and turn off the music. That's it.
No list making. No tasks to achieve. Simply spend some time using the reviewing of the cards and the listening to holiday music as a prompt to contemplate relationships with friends and family, coworkers and neighbors.
Why?
1) One of the most common lurking sources of stress and suffering in the Christmas season is that it is a powerfully family-themed holiday, and no small number of people come from pretty messed up families. Instead of waiting for the wave of family-related neurosis to catch you up and overwhelm you, start confronting it by situating yourself, emotionally, within your web of relationships, both familial and extra-familial. Take stock of where you are now, so you have a chance of holding on to the present emotional reality instead of emotionally regressing to a past Christmas season, so you can say "This year, I have people I love around me, and I am safe" or "I'm not a little kid any more, and I can stand up to people who talk to me like that" or "I am not helpless; if I am not treated right, I will get in my car and go to spend time with people who like me". Start addressing any unfinished emotional business from past Christmases consciously, instead of letting them erupt as a surprise when triggered by encountering a certain scent or sight or sound while tired. It's powerful to know, "Yes, the taste of ginger cookies reminds me of the first Christmas without my Dad," to be able to say, "Yes, I recognize this sadness as being about my Dad", instead of being surprised and overwhelmed by emotion.
2) This exercise will go a little way to associating, in your mind, those songs with the memory of your wealth of relationships and people you care about and who care about you. Each time you hear that music, you will be reminded of how many people you are fortunate to have in your life. You will associate that music with feeling good about relationships. You can then exploit that deliberately, if you want -- and sometimes, you'll encounter the music in the wild, and have the happy serendipity of being reminded of your social network.
3) If you powerfully associate the Christmas season with chores, with having to do things, this will be a counter-example. This is an exercise in being-with, as opposed to doing. This is an exercise in measured time, instead of trying to race through tasks as quickly as possible. It is the opposite of rushing.
4) If you feel the Christmas season is degraded by commercialism, focusing on relationships is a deliberate act of cultural rebellion; it puts the personal front and center. It repudiates the commercial message about the season which you are getting from many quarters. It is a way of tilting the balance away from commerce and towards intimacy.
When? Do it by this weekend if you at all can. Better late than never, of course, but the point is to do it before becoming engulfed in other people's ideas of (and messages about) the season. So do it now.
NOTE: I welcome discussion, BUT I have an important request: do NOT post additional or alternative suggestions of things for people to do, or even things you do, in the comments. I would love for you to email those to me, for me to include with attributions in later posts. It would be very easy for this to become a huge list of "helpful hints" that by their very numerousness becomes, itself, daunting and oppressive-seeming. I'd like to avoid that for what I hope are obvious reasons, and if I feel it appropriate I'll screen any comments which are suggestions. But I do look forward to compiling helpful contributions into another post, so do email them along.
P.S. If people like, I might continue to post exercises and approaches up to and through Christmas.