And you thought your family was dysfunctional?

I have written about family dysfunction before in this blog, and you are invited to go back and read previous entries.  I think that we do grieve that some of our families are so screwed up. 

We hear other people talk about how great their family gatherings are.  We hear that they gather together at Christmas. We feel envious that our holiday is not going to be that great.

I have thought that some people I know sugar-coat how great their Christmas is, and maybe they do.  Some of the people we know are pretentious and good liars.   However, they are reporting that they are having a good Christmas, and for those of us, whose Christmas is going to be lonely or marginal, we are still going to have our sad feelings.

To me when faith is removed from Christmas, it becomes incredibly empty and meaningless.  If gathering with a bunch of irritable and dysfunctional people is the end-all of Christmas, then we should probably cancel it . . . but that is not going to happen because of how many national economies depend on retail sales of gifts.

Family Dysfunction in the "Holy Family"

The idea here in this entry is not entirely my own, but it has made me feel at least a sense of meaning and connection with my faith today in addition a new appreciation for Matthew 1 in the New Testament of the Bible.

Now, I have tried to keep things secular in this blog because I wanted to help the broadest possible audience, but I am hoping to give you a new appreciation for the essence of the Christmas story.

Anyway, Matthew 1 1-16 is genealogical listing of Jesus’ family tree all the way back to Adam.  I did not do so great in Robert Stein’s Gospels class at Bethel Seminary, but I at least learned that the audience of this book is a Jewish one with lots of references to Old Testament prophecy arguing that Jesus fulfilled them.  

The genealogy speaks to a Jewish audience since that was important to them.

Within Jesus’ genealogy, there are indications that his family had black sheep and imperfection.  There are three women named, and two of them were of ill-reputation: Rahab and Bathsheba.  Rahab was a prostitute in Jericho.  Bathsheba was the woman King David had an affair with. David then had Bathsheba’s husband killed.  Ruth actually was reputed to be a good person (who actually has book in the Old Testament named after her), but she was a foreigner and the Jewish people at that time were big into ethnic purity.

Furthermore, when you look at how Jesus was conceived and born in Matthew 1:18-25, it was not ideal and Joseph wanted to divorce Mary.   He at least listened to the angel of the Lord in the dream and in faith took Mary as his wife and followed through.

As children we did not think about the adult undertones of the Christmas story.  It was all about Away in a Manger and Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Silent Night.   Then it is about Santa Claus and presents and a break from school.  As adults we grow cynical and empty.

The Meaning for Us

That brings us back to today.  There are nine more shopping days until Christmas.  There is a sense of drivenness that stuff that must get done.  Being driven is not always bad, but it can become empty after awhile.

We are being driven to a time when all the stores are supposed to be closed on December 24 and many of us are going to be stuck alone or with some people who are not going to be pleasant to be with.  Or we are going to lament being alone because the people we would otherwise be with are just plain miserable and lead to headaches (we made the better choice to be alone than to be stuck with those miserable souls). 

The story of Jesus coming to earth is wrapped in family dysfunction and fallible humanity.  It is not really the elegant story that is portrayed in a service of lessons and carols or in the Advent wreath.  It is a real gritty story that touches us where we live. 

We live in a world of pain and heartache.  We have many feelings that we must stuff and move ahead because reality dictates that feelings do not pay the bills.  We suffer through the ongoing anger and hurt from things that should have been different.   We open up the grief again and again that people have failed us and that we failed others and ourselves.

We grieve that we have immature relatives that will throw tantrums at the slightest trigger.   It is down right impossible to identify these triggers because for an immature person anything can be a trigger.   Many of us have tried to walk on eggshells around these relatives to try and not make them angry only to feel like failures.   If these immature family members were strangers, we would have avoided them a long time ago because they give us no other motivation to bond with them.

According to the Bible Jesus came to earth in a dysfunctional life situation and died for our sins.  The prophet Isaiah foretold his emotional, physical, and mental lot . . .

Who has believed our message

    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

   He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

    and like a root out of dry ground.

   He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

   He was despised and rejected by mankind,

    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

   Like one from whom people hide their faces

   he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

(Isaiah 53: 1-3 New International Version)

We need meaning.  Meaning helps us cope.  Meaning helps us get though.  Families are supposed to give us meaning through togetherness and acceptance, but when that doesn’t happen due to the dysfunction, the original message of Christmas can give us that meaning.  The savior who came knows what it is like to suffer like we suffer.

Should this make your holiday all better?   No.  But I hope that it will make your holiday more meaningful to look underneath the Christmas songs you have probably heard for the 200^th time and the 100^th Christmas cookie or piece of candy you have eaten. 

Last Christmas: Music Reminding us of Loneliness

Christmas music has been playing on three different stations in my city for over one month.  I have heard various renditions of songs, and yeah I confess to sing along with it like a hypnotized person regardless of my intellectual self. 

Music has a certain power to pull us in.  It empathizes with us and it makes us empathize. It makes us think.  It can make us nostalgic about the good memories.  It can make us sad in reminding us about the bad memories. 

We usually sing the winter songs along with Christmas.  Songs like Baby It’s Cold Outside and Winter Wonderland and Jingle Bells do not have Christmas themes but we will stop playing them on December 25.  They are songs of togetherness and belonging and celebration. 

I have my criticisms of some of the music.  For example, the Christian songs Do you hear what I hear? and Little Drummer Boy have no Biblical basis—meaning the events they portray are not in the Bible.  The only documented visitors in the Bible were the shepherds and the wise men.  The only king in the birth narrative of Jesus (Herod) wanted to kill him and set out an order for infanticide in Bethlehem two years after Jesus was born in order to eradicate any challenger to the throne.  The king only knew about the one born to be king of the Jews after the wise men told him about the star.

However, when we were singing Little Drummer Boy in church today, there was a moment when I came to realize I really have no gift to give to God that is good enough, but he still accepts me.   It was a moment of worship and meaning.

Last Christmas

Biblical matters aside, in the past month or so I have heard three different remakes of Last Christmas.   I feel old in saying this, but it was a hit for Wham!  in 1984, from their album Music From the Edge of Heaven.   I was a sophomore in college when it hit the charts.  However, hearing the different renditions of this song again and again over the last 1.5 have made me mull over the lyrics.

Last Christmas is not a Christmas song, but an angry lament written by George Michael with a co-writer.  The lyrics are directed at some unnamed “party” the writer met year before.  The writer got sucked in and gave his heart to the party (with a note, saying I love you I meant it).  The party was in emotional need and the writer also admits throwing themselves at the party (me I guess I was just a shoulder to cry on).   The other party turned out to be a total jerk (and your soul of ice) and spurned the writer's affections the next day (or at least soon after that).    The writer pledged to give his heart to someone special this year.  

Loneliness

This song has me thinking about relationships.     There should be someone to kiss under the mistletoe.  There should be someone to keep warm with.  There should be someone special who makes you feel complete.

Human beings need relationships.  We need connection and intimacy.  We need to give and be given to. 

Some people hide despite the hunger for connection and intimacy.  Some people have been so hurt that they are not going to risk the imagined pain that could happen with the next relationship.  Some people actually push away relationships because of their pain from family dysfunction and trauma.

However, the music of Christmas blaring at you from all corners can remind you of the pain.  It unnecessarily tells you what you do not have.  If it blares for close to two months, you are reminded over and over again.  

Many people do feel lonely at Christmas for the special relationship.  Loneliness is a form of anxiety felt when the need for connection is unmet.  We can be lonely in a crowd and when we are all by ourselves.   

Loneliness compounds the existing pain.    Being alone allows you to dwell on grief, loss and regrets.   Loneliness also gives the imagination time to become your enemy where you are brainwashed to think that no one cares.

Coping with this pain: Choice

I think that loneliness is a time where up front, it serves to say that coping is not going to make you happy.  Coping in times like these means living with the pain . . . and enduring the pain.  We are going to feel terrible, but we cannot stop living.  Coping is distraction by at least getting your mind on something other than yourself and your situation. 

Coping in these times becomes a choice.  I have heard numerous patients/clients talking about this pain of loneliness but unwilling to do anything about it. There seemed to be this secondary gain of power or sympathy through the perception of victim-hood.  They got some attention from someone new, but they were not willing to change by making a different choice.

Choice is powerful.  Victor Frankl’s coping in a German concentration camp was based on his choice to hope.  (Man’s search for meaning).    He chose to have hope and it helped him survive.   We do choose from minute to minute.  We choose now.  Hopefully having read this gives you pause to think about your choices for coping.

For the matter of loneliness, it does eventually become a matter of choice.  Too many people choose loneliness.   I have come to realize that some people are better off choosing getting a pet due to their family and relationship traumas.  Some might be better off looking for some activity clubs (jousting, stamp collecting, dancing, community theater) to get involved in.  Otherwise, maybe seeking healthy relationships is in your future (take a note from George Michael as to who you should avoid).  Some recommended reading if you are looking for that special someone is the book: If I’m so wonderful then why am I still single?  It is available at Amazon here is a link to a bunch of copies of various prices and book conditions (http://www.amazon.com/Wonderful-Why-Still-Single-Strategies/dp/0609809091  ).  Please note, I have no financial stake in recommending this book.  

As usual, if you are reading this, I assume that you are seeking to meet a need.  I hope I helped. 

Wants

The engine of the holiday season as we know it is  . . . “wants.”   A common question in our conversations is: what do you want for Christmas?  Retailers hope that you want to part with your currency or incur debt to get what you and others want for Christmas.

We human beings have wants.   The wants may be expectations, desires, longings, cravings, obsessions or just plain wants.   The intensity of the want corresponds with the intensity of our emotions.   Some of our unfulfilled wants can cause must pain and distraction to the rest of the business of life.

As children we wanted the coolest toys but would often settle for something that we could at least enjoy.    As adults, what we want varies.    Maybe we want things.  Maybe we want our families to behave in the same room together and be happy.  Maybe we want to get everyone just the perfect gift.  Maybe we want the deceased loved one to come back into the room and make the holiday good again.

Some of our wants are realistic and some are just fantasies that will never happen.  We sometimes cannot tell the difference based on how much emotionally close we are to the situation.  Emotional closeness to matters takes away the objectivity and judgment and so there is a blur in whether a want is realistic or fantasy.  

Sometimes we do not learn what our wants are until we have the negative feelings.  We may not have realized how strong the want was until we have gotten distracted with the thoughts.  Detangling this emotional web is difficult because emotional thinking is not always clear thinking.

Wants in terms of Grief

Grief has my thoughts when it comes to wants.  Grief and wants come together in the forms of regrets and the act of holding on.

When we think of our regrets, we think about what we would have wanted of ourselves in a previous situation.   When people grieve or are stuck in grief, they are usually regretting not having done something.   They are expressing anger towards themselves.

In my profession I have seen people get creative with the regret.    People who take things personally let their imaginations get creative with everything they could have and would have done . . . but did not do.   (Hindsight is viciously 20-20)

Another kind of want I have seen lately is the want of hanging on.  Many people have pictures plastered of the gone loved one all over their residences. Husbands or wives keep closets and garages and attics of their deceased spouse’s possessions untouched.  Some people keep their loved ones’ ashes on mantles and shelves in plain sight.  People keep tons of books from degrees that they have achieved but no longer use.  They do not want to let go.   

At the holidays many of us we feel pain because of the unresolved grief and loss.  We reflect on why we feel terrible.  We want to feel better.   The question is what do we do to feel better?  

The matter of what we want does not necessarily have an easy solution due to the matter of emotions.  We are often greatly invested in the want.  There is nothing particularly rational about the want—it is a piece of us—and we do not want to lose that.  

The solution to the want is not necessarily a quick one.  Sometimes the solution is surrendering what we want, because continuing to hold onto it causes more pain than letting go.  Sometimes holding onto a want holds us back in our lives as to what we can be and what we can do.  It is often a matter of choosing what kind of pain we will feel.

I hopefully do not leave you with a glib answer as to what to do.  I am assuming that you are reading this because you wanted something in the form of coping or relief. 

Maybe you need permission to want to feel terrible.  You have my permission if it matters to you, because we as humans feel terrible at times . . . even at holidays. We all have terrible circumstances at times.  Just be warned . . . continuing to feel terrible often turns out to be a choice (whether you intended it or not).     You maybe needing to make another choice.

Needs

 

Beginning note: Today is the beginning of another Advent season.  I was wavering about whether or not to write another year.  I was inspired to write after seeing that 80 people alone looked at this blog the previous month (November 2013).   Within that in mind, I hope that there is something for you to think about . . . benefit from . . . find comfort in . . . and help you live your life.
 

Anyway, the holiday season has effectively been going on for more than one month where I live in Louisville Kentucky USA.  Stores have had Christmas displays set up before Halloween (October 31).  Three radio stations have been playing Christmas music with Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah song thrown in for good measure since November 1.  Christmas-themed commercials have been playing for a little bit longer.      I have not exactly found myself too stressed because I have been too busy.

However as Thanksgiving has just passed, Christmas is getting closer.   The intensity has increased with more commercials, more music and more conversations that include discussions about Christmas.  It is inescapable.

The holiday season tends to bring to mind to many of us that we feel empty.  We feel terrible. 

Emptiness—a signal that there is a need

I have been mindful in the past year of the concept of feeling empty.  When we feel empty we feel sad and lost.

Emptiness is not exactly a feeling in itself.  I would say that it is a form of sadness or depression.  It tells us that something is missing.  It tells us that we have a need. 

Maslow tells us that we have several kinds of needs in his “hierarchy.”  We have a need for food and water.  We need security and shelter.  We have a need for belonging.  We have a need for self-esteem.    In his hierarchy, Maslow notes that self-esteem does not matter unless we have food, safety and belonging.   

Depending on the logic you use, Maslow’s theory could be applied to just about any situation.  However, I would add that we have spiritual needs and that our needs change over time.  Furthermore, what meets those needs also changes over time.

Needs change

Through my career as a social worker, I have learned that needs change in our lives as we age, and as our situation changes.   When I was working with geriatric patients, I saw the need for feeling safe and not falling down as one heads to the toilet.  As I currently work with adolescents, I see the primary need to belong and fit in.  

I have seen that my needs have changed throughout my life.  I had certain needs as an adolescent that I do not have in my 40’s.  I have current needs that were not present in my teen years.  It could be good or it could be bad . . . but it is definitely different.

Grief and loss cause a lot of change in terms of “needs”

I have also learned that when someone has a death of a loved one or some other significant loss, they suddenly have unmet needs that they have to identify and figure out how to meet again. 

We live our lives assuming that things will never change.  That is okay because we cannot be distracted from the business that is in front of us. 

However, when the loss happens, we realize a reality that can only come through loss . . . we were getting our needs met in a certain way that cannot continue.  We usually are lost in the shock and later during the anger, bargaining, and depression stages of grief we realize the unmet need.   

Part of the grief recovery in the stage of acceptance, we figure out how to meet the unmet needs again.   Hopefully, when we meet our unmet needs, we move on and our lives are more happy than sad.

Needs are not always needs . . . but are wants in disguise

The reality of life is that not everything we think is a need is a need—this is true in the areas of self-esteem and belonging.   The child wants a new toy that everyone else allegedly has.  The adolescent wants to look like every one of their peers.  Adults have similar needs to adolescents in terms of belonging.

As I have gone on in my life, I have had to admit that what I thought was a need, was really not a need.  I think that the struggle for many people my age (late 40’s) we have beliefs as to what should give us the self-esteem.   We find ways to cope with not having what we feel we should have.  Hopefully, the coping methods and skills are not destructive.  

Coping hopefully allows us to distract our mind from the negative and focus on the positive.  Hopefully, we feel there is something for which to be thankful. 

We often have to reflect on our unmet needs.  We have to evaluate them with the question: Will I die if I do not have this?     I admit that I have had to answer “no” to this question many times.

However, this concept gets tricky when we think to the need for a family.  We do need to have belonging, and Christmas commercials showing family members having a good time remind many of us that we do not have family . . . or are estranged from family.  The catch here is that even if we were with those estranged family members, there would be more pain than benefit.  Sometimes we have to create family to meet the need of belonging.

Fulfillment and contentment—the opposite of emptiness

When we feel contentment and fulfillment, we do not have the feeling of emptiness.  As we have different kinds of needs, we get our sense of contentment and fulfillment from all kinds of sources. 

However, we feel emptiness at different times for different reasons even in a split second.  When we become mindful of a disappointment or a loss our mind can forget the contentment and fulfillment that existed the previous minute.   

All of us have the potential challenge today and this holiday season of quelling the feelings of emptiness.  Maybe we will have to do something to find fulfillment, and maybe we will have to cope with the feeling of emptiness until we find what it is we need and then meet it.

Maybe you can find something to find fulfillment today.  If you are reading this blog for the first time, you are welcome to go back to the previous entries and find things you can use to help you cope today.

May your needs get met today.