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. 

Vulnerability in the holiday time--an inevitable paradox

If you have been following along (or are catching up) and identified yourself as an emotional survivor and that you are surviving this holiday season, an inevitable paradox is that we survivors are vulnerable. 

A survivor is about looking, sounding, and presenting as anything but vulnerable.   The survivor wants to look invincible wearing inpenetratable armor for fear of ever getting hurt again.   Some of the armor includes:

• Your pulled-in feelings which you are no longer willing to share with others lest they take advantage of your vulnerability.
• The insecurity and lack of trust you exhibit to others who reach out to show interest or concern to you.
• Your lack of tolerance and apparent lack of empathy for the feelings of people who have their own problems and are in pain. This is especially true if you think their problems compared to your past ones are trivial or less severe.
• The competitive way in which you deal with people always looking out for “who is the winner or loser” in each human transaction you encounter.
• Your inability to warm up to people and your shy and retiring ways whenever you are in a new social situation.  
• Your fear of speaking up in a group of people lest they not accept or approve of you.
• Your desire to be invisible so as not to be hurt or abused in any way.
• Your guardedness and watchfulness in your interactions with people lest they get to know too much about you for fear they take advantage of you with that information.

http://jamesjmessina.com/toolsforcontrolissues/tempersurvivalbehaviors.html

Reviewing the selected items from Messina's list, it is clear that the survivor separates themselves from others by wearing an armor of emotions, space and information.  A survivor looks tough, maintains his or her distance, and intentionally acts like a stranger.

The armor of a survivor is heavy to wear.   While everyone has to put on this armor at one time or another in their lives, it is not healthy to wear for long periods of time.  Long term use causes emotional and even physical damage.  If you go to the above link, Messina has a very well-thought-out list for the long-term consequences of engaging in survival behaviors as a lifestyle. 

While I am not a medical doctor, quite a few of the survivors I have served in the psychiatric hospital presented with Fibromyalgia.  I think that if good epidemiological research was done studying whether there is comorbidity of Fibromyalgia with chronic psychological stress, I would bet they would find quantifiable and statistically significant evidence.  

Nevertheless, this armor that survivors wear can feel heavier at the holiday season.  The holiday season is supposed to be a time of happiness and joy.  If someone has made a lifestyle out of being fearful and guarded, they are very unlikely to warm up and start being joyful at Advent, Hanukkah, Christmas or even Kwanzaa.  The opposite happens instead--and people feel dreadfully worse.

The reality is that the armor of a survivor corrodes from the inside and not the outside.  Eventually, the reality that we are vulnerable and have needs eats away at us.  We are going to get the picture and make changes to meet those needs or we are going to wrecked by the unfulfilled needs.

Loneliness

The biggest complaint at the holiday season is loneliness.  Some people do confuse loneliness with privacy.  We do prize the right to privacy in the United States, and a survivor can hide behind the claim to privacy, but nevertheless feel painfully lonely.   

Aloneness is a state.   There are times when we need to be alone and have our privacy.  When we do not have any needs and are content, we are ambivalent--it does not matter if we are around people or not.  When we are needy we hate being alone.

The continuum of being alone 

Privacy---------------------------------Ambivalent-------------------------------------------------Loneliness

(Need to be alone)                                 Content with situation                                                      (Need to be with others)
 

I think that when a survivor is lonely, he or she is especially vulnerable.   Staying to yourself while in emotional pain can exponentially increase your pain.  We become strangers from the rest of the world and we lose touch with reality.

The experience of family continues to be the set of eyeglasses through which you and I continue to make emotional judgments and set expectations.   If one believes: I am supposed to have an intact and happy family at Christmas, then that person puts themselves in an unrealistic and irrational place when they do this, and will stay there because they are surviving.  It is my opinion that many people feel lonely and act as survivors based on the standard of family. 

The Challenge of Beginning to Be Vulnerable

After awhile, surviving becomes woefully unfulfilling, and I think that loneliness is one of those cues that tells people that surviving is not working very well . . . or working at a cost.   I think that regardless of who you are, the feeling of loneliness tells you that you are vulnerable, you have needs.

Going back to the heart of the message of Christmas tells us that humanity has a larger need--humankind is sinful and in of a gift in the form of a savior.  Human beings cannot do it all by themselves--that includes saving themselves from their sins.

Whether you consider the Christmas story to be a Joseph Campbell-type myth, an archetype in the theoretical framework of Carl Jung or a theological truth, it goes back to a need and a gift to meet that need.   We as humans are all vulnerable or there would not be the need for the gift.

In my next post . . . 

I will discuss resolving loneliness if your family continues to be unavailable to you.