Holiday season isn’t a holiday for everyone.
This blog post is taken from the second edition of my regular mental health/counselling newsletter.
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Whether you celebrate these particular holidays or not, we are approaching the period of the year when thanksgiving, Christmas, the end of the calendar year/new year’s eve and the dawn of the new year come together. They are hard to avoid. They are hard to hide from. They are hard for many people.
They are often sources of great stress and anxiety. They are, for many people, the furthest thing from a holiday we could imagine. Why is that?
As so often in life, the answer is: ‘it depends’.
For some, the stress and anxiety arises out of feeling forced to spend time with family and/or friends with whom we have history. Baggage. Tensions. Strong feelings. Previous form.
These things have a habit of coming up to the surface during intense periods of close proximity and the added pressure of the expectation of having a good time - of organised fun. In fact, the words ‘expectation’ and ‘pressure’ are the two words that clients most often use when talking with me about their concerns about the upcoming holiday season. They dread it. They wish it was over. They would like to fast-forward it away.
They will often feel expectations around where to celebrate the holidays, whose house to stay in, who to visit, how long to stay there, in what order they should visit, what to buy as gifts, how to meet everyone’s needs, how to be in two places at once. They will often explain the pressure they feel to do what others want - including parents, their partners, their partners’ parents, and many others beside - when they have a much better plan in their heads (or hearts) for how to spend that time. A plan that would make them happy, or at least, happier.
The problem with that plan is that it doesn’t please others. It doesn’t meet others’ needs. It doesn’t seem to work. It creates disappointment - something we seem so often wired to avoid: the disappointment and judgement of others, regardless of the impact it has on us.
This time of year is a perfect storm. We have all these pressures and expectations on us from others - often others that we care about but who can be triggering for us, especially if we spend a lot of time with them. We have the tiredness we feel from having lived and worked for over 90% of the year and are hitting the last few weeks in a daze and ready for a rest. We often have the end of year forced fun of work events and celebrations - which thankfully working on my own I am spared - a huge bonus for an introvert like me - that can leave us already drained of our social battery before we land at granny’s on Christmas Day expected to smile along as Uncle Tony makes yet another reference to the positive outcome of Brexit and his joy at the 2024 US election. We often experience a change in our normal routines - out of patterns that work for us - including sleeping in our own homes and beds - which can on its own be unsettling and difficult.
We have a time of year when our needs can easily play second fiddle to the needs of others, which is unsustainable for more than a little while and can lead to resentment and sadness. It is easy if we are not vigilant about what we need.
If the holiday season is a time of joy for all people, then perhaps we should think about what would give us joy; what would work for us; what would make us happy. Perhaps we could listen to our own needs and our own gut instincts and do what would make it work for us.
We are entitled to enjoy the holidays too and have our needs met - not just make sure our loved ones are enjoying it and get what they need.