The holiday season is over. If you can plan for next year . . . plan for good things.

I had plans to do two more posts, but only one came to mind, and so here it is. The holiday season is over and we have made it.  Besides the page views from the United States, it has been a thrill to have readers from Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Canada, Aruba, and France.   I hope that you got something you needed from my blog.

My target audience for this blog this holiday season is someone who is a survivor, but who is wanting to make it better.  This is a challenge in every day life but much more at the holidays.

The world of survivors is typically negative.  There is a relishing and nursing of the negative because it keeps a survivor feeling like they are in charge behind that emotional wall that they put up between themselves and the world.  However, the negative does not keep you warm nor does the negative satisfy.  The negative is insatiatible and hard. 

Control and Change

In my talk with many a survivor, they want to be in control.  They do not want to be convinced of anything and in terms of academia, they would likely be called a skeptic.  A skeptic commits to nothing except being skeptical; it is like they are always trying to balance themselves on a teeter-totter or fulcrum, and they always seem to be worn out.  However for the survivor, the skeptical position feels like the safe spot and it gives you a little power when you feel you have "defeated" the person trying to convince you otherwise (it sometimes feels like a little entertaining game in which you are gamey).

I have considered that many of the treatment-savvy people who have came through the different programs I have worked were survivors.  They know the self-help books and can spit out the coping skills, and they were just took invested in being a survivor.   Self-help materials (especially the materials in this blog) and insight-based therapy work are empty unless a person makes the change.

A change for a survivor is to come out from behind the wall and the emotional desert behind that wall and commit to one side or the other of the teeter totter.  However, they are usually going to be gamey with a therapist who suggests to them an avenue of change. Their live stinks, and it is not satisfying, but they are in control on top of the teeter-totter and they will not change unless they want to change.

So it is with any of us . . . if the way you do business tires you or is wearing you out . . . are you willing to change?  So many people hide between their emotional walls from the world.   They feel that if the real them came out people would not like them.  

A key mystery that gets missed behind the emotional wall is that everyone else has problems in this world and is not perfect.  Behind the wall you are so focused on your own pain and past that you create your own, individual world and get disconnected from emotional reality.  If you stay behind your wall  you miss that there are many people outside of your family who are safe people looking for safe people to be friends.  You don't have to be perfect if you don't expect others to be perfect.  It is liberating not to have to be on guard all the time, but only you can choose this course.

Of course, the survivor does not want to be taken for the fool, but as we go through life, everyone will be the fool in relationships. It is part of the learning process in finding good friends and in stopping merely trying to survive the world.

The Next Holiday Season

I have shared insights from my personal and professional journey in this blog and while no one can predict what will happen 11 months and three weeks from now the reality is that life is going as good as we can make it within our circumstances.

I suggest a positive plan for the next holiday season.  A positive plan is not planning for perfection, but is planning good things.  Some of my thoughts on a positive plan include:

• The holiday season will not be perfect--trying to make it perfect is only setting yourself up for disappointment.
• You are not responsible to make your family members behave and keep their mouths shut--only yours.  
• If Christmas has been a lonely time because you have no available family, get out and make some friends so you have a potential pool of people with whom you can share the holidays with.  Some of us have to create family.  A family is two or more people with enough of a past to suggest a future. 
• If you have intensely been looking for meaning and magic at Christmas, back off and simply try to make the holiday season a time of enjoyment; "the wonder" of Christmas may come and it may not come.  It is okay if it doesn't, and it does not mean there is something wrong with you if it doesn't.  
• If there was a loss of a loved one at the holidays, seek to reclaim the holidays for what they are . . .  special days that you observe or keep.  
• Plan to do something different than what you do during your regular schedule.

For further reading . . .

If you are interested in reading more, Amazon.Com has a variety of books for sale.  My favorite continues to be:  Caplan, M.  (1997).   When Holidays Are Hell!: A Guide Surviving Family Gatherings.

Thanks again for reading

Thanks for reading this blog and I hope that you thrive and not merely survive the next holiday season.   If you need to come back to this blog and read it again, it will remain in cyberspace for people to read as long as Blogger will keep it.