Too Busy for Hope at the Holidays?

I debated whether or not I was going to write this blog again this holiday season.  I had a due date of December 1 to get my manuscript into my publisher. I had just finished my turning in my manuscript to my publisher on November 28 and I have been feeling brain dead and burned out.   Having a book contract with a reputable publisher is amazing, but it monopolized my life.

Then wham . . . it was the first Sunday of Advent again on November 30 where the hope candle of the Advent wreath was lit at church. The sermon was about hope.  It was about the hope of the world to be found in Jesus Christ . . . at least that was what I came away with when I left the sanctuary.

I came to realize, my mind was just too busy.  My mind was just too focused on problems and things to do.  Since July 1 when I had signed the contract I was busy with work and writing.  I had been a driven individual.  I was just too busy to think about hope.

I think I have been a driven individual most of my life.  Either I have the compulsive trait inherited from my mother or I have been out to prove myself.   

Many of us who live in the average metropolitan area likely have some pressure to be driven.  We commute to work either on crowded ring road highways or we cram ourselves into mass transit vehicles.  We go to work pushing ourselves to keep up a fast pace to be productive.   Many of us live paycheck to paycheck seeking to maximize what we can do with the money.   

For those of us who are already driven, the holiday season only seems to intensify the driven-ness.  There are events added to the schedule, there are extra food items to make and gifts to buy and the house has to be cleaned.   There is not much time and place for hope.

Well, for me there was a call for at least to take a breath and reflect.  With my social commentary, is Christmas about making sure everyone gets the perfect present or is it about celebrating faith?  Is Christmas about Santa Claus or is it reflecting on us as broken individuals needing the gift of God sacrificing his only son to save us from our sins?  Of course, if you do not identify with the Christian faith, the significance of Jesus Christ may be in question.

Well, with the need for a breath, I have thought not just twice but three times about writing the blog again this year.  However, 1976 page views tell me that the blog has been meaningful or encouraging to someone—maybe it has helped given some hope.

Feel free to review the other entries for subjects of interest to you.  Feel free to comment. I hope that you too can find hope. 

LIVING COURAGEOUSLY WITH CONVICTION AT THE HOLIDAYS

Over the past couple of days listening and watching some of the deluge of news stories, I have noticed that 1) many pundits and critics in the media are no longer shocked but now angry over Newtown Connecticut.; and 2) many people are scared and wondering how much more stringent safety measures should be?  It sounds like a form of grief to me of a very strong kind.

Collective Grief and the Energy it gives us

I think that we do experience grief collectively as a society and as individuals.  It seems to me that the media has this ability to connect us emotionally in a very strong way.   Other than the media we seem to experience it collectively as we disclose our feelings in the small talk we make in churches, barbershops, in grocery check-out lines.  We also seem to be grieving collectively in our facebook posts and comments.  We experience it individually as we feel our feelings looking at news aggregating websites.  We feel the energy that emotions stir making us feel like we should just do something.

Anger

Anger is a large energy generator.  At the risk of over-generalizing, it seems that much of the “empathetic” society including the fourth estate of media has moved into the anger stage of grief over Newtown.   They are looking for causes and some are making wide sweeping conclusions that there needs to be more gun control.   Some of the news analysis and opinion is focusing on the mentally ill in his country as the problem.

The energy that anger stirs is also manifested in the extra-large letter to the editor section of my local daily newspaper.  It is stirred in the late night comedy show I usually watch where the comedian came out and made a statement that recognized the tragedy.  It is present in the emotions of people who are critical of gun control laws and how something should be done to keep mentally ill people from having them.  The anger motivates us to stand and protect ourselves.

Fear

However, fear is also an energy that makes us protect ourselves.  Fear tells us

“run stupid there is danger!"

This appears to be showing up also in statements about making schools safer.  As I have heard the fear at my place of work, I have heard people go into laborious detail about what all the possible risks are in a place.

It is hard to say whether the fear we are feeling is tangled with the anger or whether the fear is a logical reaction unto itself, but there is talk about giving teachers guns to protect themselves and the students. There is talk about how things can be made more secure in schools.   This fear still may be part of the societal shock.  

Fear and Anger are Powerful Emotions

It is in times like these where we may realize again that anger and fear are very strong and powerful emotions or energies in motion.  I have to use the word “may realize” because both rage and panic short-circuit common sense.   The energy of the emotions often bypass the rational thinking part of the brain where you and I think through the facts and look at things in a problem-solving fashion and makes us impulsive. 

I am mindful of mob behavior.  Mobs of people can run for their lives together and then they can get angry and become a lynch mob or start a riot.  The one commonality is emotion—they all share it despite what they are actually thinking and act impulsive in unison.

On the flip side, people can be paralyzed by their feelings.  To see someone having a panic attack is like watching someone stuck in their seat on a roller coaster or like a victim in a horror film in terror just before the villain is about to attack.    When someone (whether adult or child) is having an angry tantrum, you cannot get them to do anything else until they have gotten over the emotion.   Emotions can be like G-forces that push someone back against a wall to the point where they cannot move.

One of my favorite shows is Survivorman with Les Stroud.  Again and again throughout his shows, Stroud will talk about staying calm if you are stuck in a survival situation.  Staying calm can mean the difference between life and death.

If you are reading this, you are not likely in the Arboreal Forest of Northern Canada or in the Amazon Jungle or in the swamps of Southern Georgia, but you are probably in an emotional wilderness where the pressures of the holidays are combined with the added emotional stress of the Newtown CT school shooting.   The feelings are powerful and perhaps are making you feel like you are beside yourself and frozen in anger and fear and feel like you are just surviving.  I think when we are stuck in such situations we need courage and calmness because we just cannot stop life as we know it just because of the Connecticut school shooting

Courage

Without looking at a dictionary, courage is essentially going along with the conviction of what the right action is despite the fear and emotion.  It seems to me that courage is romanticized through the movies and TV as big gestures of one hero fighting an army or the hero making a daredevil move for whatever reason.  (My favorites models of courage were John Gage and Roy DeSoto from the TV series Emergency who climbed up in high and dangerous places to rescue people.  John admitted he was scared in a few of the scenes.)  

In our real world, courage is not that exciting or suspenseful.  Courage can be:

• telling someone no. 
• walking away when they want to fight you . . . and maybe you might be called chicken by the bully,
• saying enough is enough to one relative badgering another relative at the family holiday celebration,
• buying yourself a present because you would like it despite having low-self-esteem telling you otherwise,
• doing the right thing at your job when others are not,
• going out to the malls and sending your kids to school despite the fear of what happened in Newtown CT
• going to that holiday family celebration and trying to patch things up with that estranged relative
• finding joy at the holiday season in some fashion or form

Courage is based on your context or situation, and it may be going against some crowd or “grain.”  Typically, you do not have courage without some type of conviction where you believe that some value or principle is worth the cost.   Usually the cost is someone calling you a fool—the vast majority of our risks in the world are not ones of life and death.

 One does not always act tough when showing courage.  When you are showing courage it can feel like the wind is blowing in your face at hurricane-force speeds.  Courage does not feel good until after you look back at it from the future.

I hold that there are people of courage everywhere that go on living and doing what is needed because it is the right thing to be doing.  I'm trying to be one of them.

I hope that if you are feeling paralyzed by your feelings that you can find courage to start moving again.  and do something in the spirit of the holidays.       

Pondering the Reality of Evil at the Holidays

While in my last post I called what happened in Newtown Connecticut an unthinkable tragedy, I have been pondering it the last two days as "evil."  A public official in Connecticut called it evil.  My pastor called it evil in his sermon today.   Yes, 27 people including 21 first graders being killed in an elementary school by a shooter who then killed himself is evil.  How in the world do we comprehend such evil happening at a time where people are supposed to be nice to each other? (You know peace on earth and good will toward men.)

For all practical purposes we are entering a theological and philosophical discussion here versus one of self-help psychology.  Part of emotional journeys often mean considering philosophy and theology.  In a sense everyone has both a theology and a philosophy.

Definitions

There are different theologies and different philosophies so, let me be precise here in the definitions of what I am aiming to discuss.  For the purpose of this discussion:

• a theology has to do with how you see things regarding God (or God as you understand him, her, it) or as God pertains to a subject and    
• a philosophy is the system by which you order your thoughts and view the world.  

I am quite sure that there will be people who have a quibble with the definitions, and if you do, you can comment (it is about time someone commented).  For some of you this will sound like philosophy and for some of you it will sound like theology--it is your choice.

How Can a Loving God Allow Such Evil to Happen?

When it comes to theology/philosophy, people tend to ask how a loving God could allow such evil to happen?  It is a fair question and one to which there has been so much written that justice could not be done.  It serves to say that there is a continuum of views that go all the way

• from Atheism (God does not exist)
• to hyper Calvinism (God sovereignly made it happen for a purpose). 

In between the two extremes are a variety of views that go (I am not listing all of them)

• from a distant God who is not involved (Deism view)
• to a God who is in process and not all powerful (Process Theology view)
• to a God who allows free choice (Free will defense view)
• to a God who has created the best of all possible worlds (Theodicy view) 

The Free will defense and theodicy views are not exactly in conflict with each other.   It all just depends on who is talking to whom when the discussion is happening. 

As a Christian, I prefer to think that a loving and all-powerful God has given us choice.  He (I do prefer the male pronoun) will allow choice and stay out of the way unless he sovereignly decides to get involved according to His will.  He will allow people to choose and he will allow people to choose evil.  Sometimes that evil is horrific.

Mind you, it is not exactly easy just to make academic, theological/philosophical statements about evil to someone is hurting.  Theological discussions like this about the presence of evil in the world are just not something you are going to have when you are talking to a bereaved person.  We only have academic philosophical and theological discussions when we are in a good spot.

When talking with the bereaved who lost someone to a violent crime, the common sense option is to have little to no such discussion about such matters.  People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care!

Our Theologies and Philosophies are Challenged by Life's Collisions

Regardless, some of us have faith and have been regularly interested in spiritual matters and can fit life's pain into where it in our theologies and philosophies.  When I had been diagnosed with a brain tumor over 16 years ago and faced the reality that I could die, I was able to choose how to think in detail given that I had a seminary education (to me the fallen nature of human bodies means some people are going to get brain tumors--me included). 

However, not all of us have the interest and time to put into theological education beyond our attendance at church.    We are usually intensely involved with the day to day affairs of life and we only stop and think about God when we have a collision course with death and tragedy.   The times of tragedy force us to usually call us to times of reflection about what we believe and how things fit together.

Evil has happened in this world, is happening in this world, and will continue to happen in this world. Most of us deal with evil and horrible bosses, neighbors, co-workers, school-mates, professors, and family members every day and it will not make the news.   Many of us think about evil people who have abused us in the past and it will never make the news.  Many of us will have to endure evil family members at family celebrations in nine days and our suffering will be discounted and brushed away by codependent family members who say "It's just them."    However, only when the evil is catastrophic does it seem to shake us up to think about it.

So Where is God? Jesus?  The Babe in the Manger?

In a somewhat abrupt closing to this post, I think the Sandy Hook School shooting two days ago in Connecticut may challenge what significance Christmas will have for you and me.  Did your expectations and views get shaken and changed because of Friday?   I think that it is okay if they were.  You are entitled to question as it is a human trait to question. 

To me God is bigger than Christmas and I pray that God will be a very real and present comfort to the people of Newtown Connecticut.

Dwelling on the Past: Good and Bad.

Tonight I went to my daughter's middle school for a "winter" concert.   It is a very plain school with white hallways and very bright fluorescent lights. I smelled the cleaning solutions that the custodians/janitors used only a few hours before.   

It took me back to to my days in school.  The junior high that I went to had similar features and it seems that over the years, a school still smells like a school.  It took me to times in my youth where I performed in choral and band concerts.  It took me back to all of those days I smelled the cleaning solutions and felt nauseous.

Christmas time as most any other time is a time for reflection on memories.  We tend to be reminded or triggered regarding the past a lot during the holidays.    

Memories Considered

Our memories essentially come back when someone brings something up or we get triggered.  The most useful concept in understanding triggers is what another author called "The Trauma Wall."  Our our traumas get permanently engraved  in our mind and when we encounter the trigger or something like it, we have flashbacks.

I actually think that we have a wall where all of our memories are engraved in the granite of our minds and there are good triggers and bad triggers.  If the memory is good then it is good.  If the memory is bad then it could be just an unpleasant memory or a flashback.

The good triggers lead us to remember pleasant memories.  We remember the easier times in our past with nostalgia. Nostalgia usually happens when we are thinking about times when we did not have the problems we have now.

However the flashbacks are very shocking to our systems.  We experienced terrible things and they remain terrible things to us.  When they come back into our conscious and we think about them, we feel all the stressful and desperate emotions and are energized by the adrenaline the emotions signal the adrenal glads to produce.

A flashback can be so horrific that it disorients us from reality.  The more trauma we have experienced, the more flashbacks we have.   I have found some people who lose touch with the fact they are having flashbacks either dissociateor have mood swings that they cannot account for. 

When people dwell on the past, they often waste the present.  In the here and now we only have so much energy and time.  How we occupy our mind can mean the difference between distraction or focus and satisfaction.   Dwelling on the past has rarely made anyone a better person.

Memories Only Matter as Much as We Want Them to Matter

I think that it is human to dwell on the past. We all have these past experiences that captivate us in that we cannot get them out of our minds.  Usually it is the pain.  Our minds want to rewrite the past. We may get mad at ourselves

I have decided that many people with low self-esteem dwell on the bad things in the past because they believe they are too stupid to make a better decision now or in the future.  They just do not have faith in their capabilities to change.

With a few exceptions, the majority of people in our lives could care less about our screw-ups and mistakes in the past.  Many of us hold our painful past behind a wall of shame and continue to say "If you only knew." 

The few exceptions usually include family members.  We cannot shake the family members.  Some of our family members seem to have this impulsive urge to bring up the past at the most awkward and bizarre times and they will ruin holiday celebrations.   This is one of the reasons why the relationship problems people have are predominantly with families.

However, for many of us the non-relative people of the past have moved on and the current people in our lives have no clue or interest in  our past accidents and embarrassments. They do not read our minds and they are not looking to learn all about our past problems.  They only care about who we are and how we treat them in the present.  What this means is that we are making a choice to dwell and hold onto the memories.

We make a choice as to how our past affects us today.   We decide how much we will dwell and how we will dwell.  To stop dwelling on the past is to make a change within us and only within us.

Some people say that they just cannot help it.   They will continue to dwell on the past.  They only will stop when they find the motivation for change.   The motivation often is a spiritual-like realization that dwelling on the negative past is neither making you feel good, nor is it making you a better person. 

Concluding Thoughts

People who tend to isolate and stay to themselves are more likely to dwell on the past.  Getting active and being around people is often a better bet to reduce dwelling on the past.  When you are doing things with people, you tend to be more present-focused.

To stop dwelling on the past can be very liberating.   It is not always easy, but it is fruitful.  People who do not dwell on the past tend to sleep better and enjoy the present. 

This Christmas, I hope that if this is your deal, that you can be focused in the here and now and how you can make this holiday a good one. 

 

Considering Hope: Real People Do it.

In keeping with the first Sunday of Advent, I have been mindful of the concept of "hope."   Hope is one of the themes of Advent.   I think that "hope" is rarely something contemplated or reflected upon the average person's life.

The meaning of the word.

I am not being original in this but according to Webster, hope is a feeling that something wanted is possible, and confidence.   Hope is looking forward to the future and does not look backward to the past. 

When Do We Hope?

It seems that we hope when we are not in a good spot.  We tend to hope when we are not feeling good, miserable, or are anxious.  Maybe something bad is predicted or expected to happen (such as a employer laying off workers or the "Fiscal Cliff") and we desire an exception to occur.  Maybe a loved one just died and a piece of us hopes that we are in the middle of a bad dream and we will wake up and the person will be there (this is part of the denial stage of grief).  

We tend to engage in hope when we are not in control.  We hope when an object, outcome or action is to happen sometime in the future.  We do not control what happens tomorrow . . . no one knows what happens until it happens. 

Sometimes we hope for something that we cannot get a clear timeframe on when something is to happen.  Many hope and wait for the love of our life to come.  Some of us hope for a job.  Some of us hope for the promotion we have worked so hard in our current employer.  

Sometimes we hope for the impossible against our better judgment.  This usually includes hoping for acceptance from your critical parent.  Maybe it is hoping that Aunt Phyllis will at least smile and be nice at the holiday and not find someway to make a scene at your holiday gathering. 

When Do We Give Up Hope?

People give up when they are depressed or when they feel that they have been hoping for the wrong thing.   It can be bad and then again it can be good.

When someone is depressed, they feel stuck and possibly suicidal . . . and give up hope.  Only when they start to feel hope do they recover.   I have had many depressed patients who had given up hope and feel that they were up against a big black wall.  By accident, years ago I told one patient that I offered them a message of hope and that they could get better.   When that patient was being discharged from my program, they said that my offering of hope helped them begin to recover.  (You bet I started making that statement a habit.)

On the other hand, sometimes we discover that we are hoping for the wrong things.  We find that we are waiting for something that is not going to happen.  We then surrender to the reality that it is not going to happen.  We grieve and make a choice to move on.  (I wonder how many people have gone to Hollywood and then went crawling back to their hometown in humility that their dreams were dashed?)

In reality, many people still keep some of their unrealistic hopes in corners of their minds.  Many hope that the estranged family member will return and apologize.  Many hope that they can become a celebrity.  Many hope that their lottery numbers win.  I think that it is part of human nature. 

The Spiritual Hope of Christmas

While I have not particularly sought to proselytize, I will say that if you are looking for hope in Christmas, then you probably need to examine the situation you find yourself in.

Christmas is a celebration that is more theological at its core than anything and part of the theology of Christmas is the spiritual hope for the world.  In making a general, theological statement, the world is a fallen place where bad things happen, and Christ is the redeemer to save it.  Jesus Christ is the hope of the world.

Sometimes we become mindful of how bad we are as people. We think about all of our bad points and how evil and rotten we can be . . . and have been.   That is when we can be open to looking for hope in deliverance.  The Bible tells us in a number of places within its pages that God loved us first in sending Jesus to earth to be that deliverer, and in him we can have hope and can be made renewed and clean. 

It is challenging to look at spiritual matters.  Life in the 21st century does not lend itself to spiritual reflection.  We are very busy people in the western world who tend to be driven to produce and be busy and not think about the spiritual.  We become numb to most matters of hope, and we only end up hoping when our expectations crash.   It is usually when our expectations crash, and when logic fails that we are open to the spiritual and the miraculous.  We hunger for something that knowledge just cannot fill, and that is the spiritual part of us.

Hope.  Real people do it.

I'm Dreaming of What?

It does not seem like the holiday season here in Louisville, Kentucky USA.  It was in the 60's (Fareinheit) today and it was rainy.  Yes, there are 21 more days until Christmas and it looks like a late February/early March day in terms of weather.  But it is the holiday season and you cannot judge by the way things look outside.

Despite the weather, all of the man-made trappings are out.  Many people have decked their houses and yards in "Christmas" lights.  People are trying to get the Christmas Spirit listening to the music and watching old Christmas movies, and wearing festive holiday clothing that sits in their storage tubs the rest of the year.

The music is probably the most powerful of the different aspects of the Christmas season for most people.  The music goes everywhere and can be heard .. . in stores . . . the malls . . . and on the radio.  People sing it to themselves as they drive, and wash dishes.  Music has a way of bringing on feeling and emotion and can make people laugh or people cry.

I'm dreaming of what?

The power of  music leads me to think about how powerful illusions and false appearances at the holiday can be.  One of the all-time best selling recordings is that of White Christmas  by Irving Berlin.   The opening line is about someone dreaming about a snowy Christmas like the ones he used to know.  

The irony of it all is that Irving Berlin was jewish.   He did not keep Christmas as a child . . . he kept Haunukuh and even while as a secular jewish who was not observant, he did not keep Christmas during that time either.  Christmas Day was actually tough for him because his son died on a Christmas Day in the 1920's.    From the different sources I could briefly piece together, he wrote a song for the Christmas market because it would sell.   Yes, he made a lot of money off of it. 

Don't get me wrong, the song was a morale booster to American troops during World War II. It made them think about getting home for Christmas.  However, the point is, at its basic nature, the song is an illusion--the composer simply composed something and it was not real or personal.

Being Real

I think that coping during difficult holidays means looking at what is real and what is illusion.  I am not suggesting that everyone be skeptics, because if someone is not having a hang up  about Christmas and the holiday they should continue doing what they are doing.  However, checking out whether or not you are chasing an illusion can be of value if you are dealing with pain, so you might feel less pain or maybe even feel good. 

The primary Illusion in this case mean that Christmas is supposed to happen in such a way also known as

perfect. 

 In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy it means that a person suffering such distress in such a way is focusing on the "shoulds," "musts," and "oughts."    Perfection is unattainable and does not happen.

Who says that things should be a certain way?  Sometimes it is a powerful person in our life.  But most of the time it is us and what we are choosing to think.  We have the power to say what should happen and what should not happen.  People judge themselves needlessly against the illusion. 

Giving up the "should" often means surrendering and grieving that the illusion is not going to happen.  But giving up the "should, must or ought," can also be liberating.  The liberation comes from not feeling that the holiday has to meet a standard that is merely an illusion and not real.

If you are grieving a loss this holiday, your holiday does not have to be perfect.  It may feel numb and surreal.  Things may not exactly taste as good as they would other holidays.   You may choose a scaled down menu. You may turn on other music instead of listening to Christmas music, and it is all okay because you are grieving.   Grieving is a necessary part of life so we can move on.

For many, Christmas will still be painful and hopefully there can be less pain when people get real and stop chasing illusions that things should be perfect. 
 

Merry Christmas versus Merry Consumerism

I missed writing yesterday in my transit back from Thanksgiving through the stark and austere farmlands of rural Indiana.  But my mind was very much on that this is the weekend of the year where it is all about retail shopping.

Last year I gave a critique of the economic exploitation of Christmas. As I think about this year, my thoughts did not change so much. The Christmas tradition continues to be exploited for all the profit that can be had.   It seems to me that consumerism is becoming a tradition unto itself where a day gets called "Black Friday" and its meaning is known to everyone.  

It made headlines here in the United States that some were protesting Walmart's opening on Thanksgiving Day to get the jump on Black Friday. Economic competition and continued recession make for such drastic sales techniques, and I am glad that some people are beginning to take notice.

Mind you there were some good deals that I had been tempted to get in on such as the 40-inch TV for under $200.00 (US). In terms of real economic terms that was a great value in the history of Television, however, my better nature said no . . . I did not need buy it . . . yet.

Yesterday, on the way home, we stopped by a large outlet shopping mall by the interstate highway, and drank in the atmsophere, and we went today to the nearby shopping malls.  All three places were full of people like myself looking for good deals and buying stuff. The Christmas music was blaring from store to store to store and the two youth-oriented clothing stores nearly asphyxiated mall shoppers with the strong wafting of some unknown cologne. It was not exactly inspiring but maybe a little boring as I waited in line for my Starbucks.

 

We don't want to look like jerks

Nevertheless, as I drove home today from the last shopping mall, I asked myself: what truly drives us to go to the wall in consumerism at Christmas? I am still working on this one--and I may come up with other ideas, but my current, working theory is the pursuit of happiness versus the sense of obligation and prevention of not looking like a selfish jerk . . . yes I am thinking that it is about the emotion, and it is not exactly profound.

Life in the 21^st Century United States is intense enough. Then we have this season where we try to be “merry” and “happy,” which complicates matters.

Furthermore, many of us feel responsible for the feelings of others around us (family and what not). Yes, some of them have their emotions on their sleeves, and they are likely to whine and make blaming statements if they are missed. The obligation and desire to avoid guilt pushes us out there to buy things and possibly re-gift the things we find unusable to us. Obligation and the compulsion to avoid guilt are powerful drivers.

What makes emotions all the more complicated is that hard-to-buy for person. The hard-to-buy for person

• either has everything,
•  or we don't know them,
• or they hate everything—there is no pleasing them.

Helpful Re-framing.

 

The statement “__ shopping days until Christmas” has this way of putting pressure on you to get out there and shop, or go online and look. I think that in the end, two of the greatest inventions of the past 20 years have been the gift receipt and gift card, and I highly recommend them as sanity savers.

Otherwise, I have come to find serenity in agreeing that nothing is perfect in this world, and I am not responsible for the feelings of others.    I choose to see the person as hating everything as being someone who is so-self-centered that they don't have the social grace of being thankful that someone gave them something.  I am going to do my best this holiday season and I will not to push myself to make everyone happy—it just won't happen.     

 

Yep. It is Christmas Eve. Did you get ready?

It is Christmas Eve and the stores have been closed for about five hours.  For those of us survivalists out there, we have made our last trip to the grocery store and we either have what we need or we will "suffer" without it for 32 hours while Hurricane "December 25" comes and goes.

Yes, we have heard nothing but Christmas music and talk about Christmas on TV, on the Radio, in the newspapers, and in the everyday talk amongst co-workers, neighbors, friends, and acquaintances.  We will still not get away from Christmas until December 26 when Christmas Day has passed.  

Assuming that you are amongst the survivors, did you get ready?  Do you have your coping skills and strategies in place?  Do you have your affirmations that you will repeat to yourself?  Do you have your plans for how to respond to abusive and intrusive relatives at family gatherings?   It is time to be ready because the time has arrived. 

Some people never get ready

I do think that some people never get ready.  I remember one particular patient.  While she had chronic mental illness, she actually presented as quite intelligent.  She claimed to have no friends, no money, and no family to go to at Christmas.  She was a very difficult patient in that she contradicted everything I suggested and she regularly canceled sessions just before the scheduled time with an insincere-sounding 'sorry.'  

She liked to call at the last minute on the last workday before the Christmas holiday and complain that she had nothing and she was lonely.  The first time I felt sorry.  The second time, I believed it was a bit.   She didn't want to take the advice and she made her choices.

I concluded that she just liked the victim role.  She controlled others with it and she made a lot of enemies while taking liberties under the guise of victimhood.  However, to this day I occasionally wonder if she just liked to yank chains or if she was really as bad off as she claimed to be?   Whatever it was she was a miserable person that either did not want to plan or wouldn't tell you if she did.

Some plans do fall through

While some people refuse to plan, some people have plans fall through. In this life, we have plans, and then we have what actually happens.  Some people will find themselves alone this Christmas for numerous reasons when they originally had plans.

If our plans fall through, we have to look at the choices available to us.  The choices are not always attractive and it can be a matter of which is least objectionable--you plug your nose and choose the less-stinky one.

We have all had plans fall through. The good news for most people is that they have resilience and can problem-solve and create a "plan B" or even plans C, D. or F. Christmas will not likely be as good as originally planned, but the experience of Christmas will be found to have some good in it.

The important statement is we have to look at the choices available to us. We will not all have the same choices.  But we have choices.  I can only make my choices while you can only make your choices.  

December 25 has 24 hours like every other day

If you are still dreading Christmas for whatever reason and cannot come up with any other plan but to stay in bed, I offer that it has 24 hours like every other day on the calendar.  December 25 will end and society will get back to its normal rhythms of life and then we can get lost in the normal madness of regular life.