Repainting the Holiday Blues

      

      So here we are again….the holidays. The shopping push has already begun. We haven’t even celebrated Gratitude Day yet and there’s Christmas music in the grocery store. With that comes the pressure to throw all our energy behind this being the most wonderful time of the year. For many people this time of year is marked by mixed emotions. We struggle not to judge our feelings because they don’t match the external expectation to be merry.

     There are numerous articles filled with tips on dealing with holiday stress. After reading through several of them what struck me was that while the tips were good, they don’t address the underlying cause…the expectations we create for ourselves, the expectations we take on from the external world and the grief that holidays can trigger.

    At this time of year we’re bombarded with idealized images of family. Holiday TV specials are filled with miraculous reconciliations of family conflicts, exiled loved ones returning to a perfect homecoming and wholly functional families. Ads in print and on TV brim with images of the ideal gift and holiday parties where everyone has a wonderful time.

    While these images are no more “real” than geckos selling insurance, they hook us. The images call to our human yearning for connection, family and belonging. We take in the images. We compare our families, our lives and how we feel about the holidays to the images we’re presented with and come up short. That’s inevitable any time we compare our insides to someone or something’s outsides.

    Every media message says we’re “supposed” to be happy at this time of year or at least act like that’s how we feel. That creates cognitive dissonance; the discomfort we feel when our beliefs and emotions don’t match external reality. The holidays come with a truckload of cognitive dissonance. Idealized images of stress free holidays conflict with how pressured we feel about hosting the perfect holiday gathering. Pervasive messages about the joy in finding the right gift conflict with stress exuded by most shoppers in every store we visit.

    So how do we disentangle ourselves? The holidays have a peculiar hook. They call up a yearning that’s been with us since childhood. When a longing is so deep it seems to be imprinted in our cells, it’s hard to acknowledge the feeling and move on rather than react. We leap into the momentum of the longing, allow it to propel us straight through hope and into expectation before we’re even aware of what we’re doing.

    Although I hesitate to use the word “always”, I am hard pressed to find a circumstance where expectation isn’t a set up. Expectation is usually a combination of hope and want. Rather than creating an expectation or taking on the expectation that’s handed to us from the barrage of holiday images, we can chose to be with what is.

   Yes, the longing is real. So is the powerlessness. We can’t create a perfect holiday. We can’t make ourselves feel differently about the holidays. We can accept and allow what is.

   The difference between what we have and what we wish we had will probably bring up some grief. It does for most people. The holiday images we’re presented with are basically special effects. They hit us differently than spectacular Hollywood explosions because they call to a deep human longing. What we’re really reacting to is not the external images but the yearning and emotions we already carry.

   For most people the holidays are bittersweet. That’s real. The pressure to be merry can easily push us to ignore or suppress our feelings of grief. As with other emotions, the energy we put into masking that grief only feeds it. What we resist persists. Our capacity to feel joy is equal to our ability to feel pain. Repressing grief because we “should” feel happy prevents us from feeling happy. Suppressed grief becomes the heaviness we carry through the holidays.

    Along with mixed emotions, the holidays carry a strong thread of memory. Whether we remember the messed up Christmas where someone walked out and/or the best Christmas we ever had, both are in the past. We can neither recreate them nor guarantee that nothing like that will ever occur again. Tradition notwithstanding, the holidays don’t magically give us the ability to control what happens.

    Many holiday traditions are bound up in obligation. The antidote to holiday obligation may be giving ourselves the gift of freedom from tradition. When traditions are held rigidly, they die. When we keep repeating the same things because that’s how it’s always been done, we lose the spark that gives them meaning. In order for traditions to remain vital and alive they have to grow and change. I propose we start a new holiday tradition of authenticity by expressing both the joy and the grief rather than choosing one over the other.

    When the weight of the holiday emotions becomes overwhelming, stepping outside ourselves can help. It doesn’t take away the heaviness, but it can help balance it. No, I’m not going to launch into suggesting volunteering at a homeless shelter, etc. Yes that can help. It can also add additional stress when we think about trying to fit one more time consuming thing into an already packed holiday schedule.

    While many of us donate canned goods or put a dollar in the Salvation Army kettle, how about something a little more personal? What about committing a random act of kindness that involves connection and looking another human being in the eyes? While we’re at it, what about being kind to ourselves?

    There are some great suggestions in Lifehack’s 29 Ways to Carry Out Random Acts of Kindness Every Day. Here are a few more:

1. Compliment a stranger

2. Give money to someone who’s begging

3. Give your place in the check-out line to someone who looks stressed

4. Tip big - order coffee or a meal and tip as much as the bill.

5. Give yourself permission to feel what you feel

6. Give some of the time and energy you feel pressured to give to other people and things to you. Take a bath. Read. Let yourself be quiet and still for a few minutes.

7. Create your own Pledge For Grateful Living and see how it changes your holiday experience.