During a horrible year, my wife of 20 years divorced me, my employer of 25 years fired me, and I had a cancer scare. As I drove home one night, lovely Christmas music came on the radio. Melancholy aching evidenced the deep pain of abandonment and loss that I was still processing.
No fun.
Blue Christmas
Romantic estrangement, family strife, and bereavement can make your holidays dismal. One of Elvis Presley’s most popular songs was “Blue Christmas.” A lonely crooner mourns heartbreaking lost love. Performers from The Beach Boys to Celine Dion, Loretta Lynn, and Jon Bon Jovi have recorded it.
Does even thinking about that song make you depressed? The spoofed “Porky Pig” version could get you laughing. Google will take you there. But please … wait until finishing this short article to search, OK?!
Several factors can produce Christmas blues.1 Hectic activity can bring physical and emotional stress. Overspending can produce financial pressure. Year-end reflection and focus on loss can magnify sorrow.
McGill University psychologist Dr. Michael Spevack notes, “Overeating and over drinking combined with a decreased amount of sleep is also a formula for extreme emotional swings.” Depression can lead to thoughts of suicide, especially among the socially isolated, he says.2
The “empty chair”
Is your family apart this season by necessity or choice? Maybe an “empty chair” reminds you of your pain. Does Christmas “Ho, Ho, Ho” contrast with your deep anguish?
One widow recalled how she felt during the Christmas after her husband’s death: “Little mattered to me. I didn’t want to hear carols. I didn’t want to be cheered up. I didn’t want to look at perky Christmas cards. I wanted the same thing I’d wanted every day for eight months: the strength to force myself out of bed in the morning, to brush my teeth and to eat.”3
One possible influence, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), is a form of depression the medical community doesn’t completely understand. The Mayo Clinic says genetics, age and body chemistry could be the culprits. Mayo recommends seeing your doctor if you feel down for days and have motivation problems. Symptoms can include changing sleep patterns and appetite, feeling hopeless, contemplating suicide, or seeking comfort in alcohol.4
Coping
How can you cope with Christmas loneliness? Some suggestions:
- Spend time with people, especially positive ones who lift your spirits. Perhaps you’ll be grateful for their cheer.
- Exercise regularly. Blood pumping can help clear your mind.
- Eat right. Chocaholics beware. Overindulgence can mean temporary highs followed by disappointing flab.
- Lights on! Enjoy sunlight, outdoors if possible. Brighten up your home and workplace. Light therapy sometimes helps SAD.
- Budget your gift spending and stick with your budget. Prevent January bill shock.
- Talk about your feelings. Keeping them bottled up can mean anxiety, ulcers, sour disposition, and/or explosion. Need a trusted, listening friend? Try a local church.
- Give to others. Volunteer. Medical professor Stephen Post, PhD, is convinced that giving is essential for optimum physical and mental health in our fragmented society. He says some California physicians give volunteerism “prescriptions” to their Medicare patients.5
- Seek counsel. I used to be embarrassed to obtain professional counsel. Now I recommend it. We all can use good advice navigating life’s storms.
- Develop spiritual roots. I’m glad that before my dark days began, I had a friendship with God.
One early believer put it this way: “Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?”6His point: God loved us enough to send Jesus, his only Son, to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our wrong, our sins. What a demonstration of love! I can trust a God like that. Then Jesus rose from the dead so He could live inside us and become our friend.
Your choice
Would you like to meet Jesus, the best friend you could ever have? Wouldn’t Christmas season be a great time to place your faith in Him? You can tell Him something like this:
Jesus, I need you. Thanks for dying and rising again for me. Please forgive me, enter my life, and give me eternal life. Help me to become good friends with you and learn to follow your lead.
You could have the holiday blues. People who aren't acquainted with depression are surprised when they feel melancholy or blue during the holiday season. (Those who are accustomed to depression are used to feeling that way any time of the year). But these emotions seem so wrong and out of place at this time of the year.
The holiday blues are unsettling, and for many people, unexpected. One of the strongest emotions you can feel with the holiday blues is a sense of guilt and disappointment. After all, the holidays are supposed to make us feel joyous and celebratory, not sad and melancholy. Many people feel that something must be wrong with them.
What generally causes these holiday blues? Here are a few of the different causes and triggers:
- Expectations of the holiday that are too high for reality to measure up to.
- Expectations for yourself during the holiday that are impossible to measure up to.
- The commercialization of the season.
- Sadness over the loss of a friend or family member.
- Being with family or friends who you have issues with.
- Dissatisfaction over what you doesn't have materially.
- Increased stress and more hectic lifestyle.
- Lack of sleep and less-healthy nutrition.
Many of us have childhood memories of the holidays that are sugarplum visions of perfection, and the adult experience suffers in comparison. It's very possible that our memories are accurate, but we tend to forget that as children we weren't responsible for anything except perhaps helping to trim the tree or picking out presents or "helping" to cook. We're in charge of a lot more now, so the joys of the holidays are now combined with stress and the need to organize and plan. If we adjust our expectations to an adult experience of Christmas instead of holding onto our childhood experience, we'll probably enjoy the season more.
Keep your own expectations of what you can accomplish realistic. Scale back if you think you've been too ambitious. If you get everything done and find yourself with free time before the holidays, great. You can always do more then. Remember that gift certificates are not a cop-out for people like your mail carrier or your child's scout troop leader and buying some of your holiday meal instead of making it all yourself is not a sin.
Commercialization
Are you starting to grit your teeth every time you see or hear a holiday-related commercial? The rampant consumerism and commercialization of the holidays at times seem to usurp the meaning of the season. Since the only place you could possibly block out these sales pitches is a mountaintop in Tibet, the best way to handle it is to realize that yes, the holidays have been commercialized. Merchants try to sell things to you – that's their business. But that doesn't mean that you have to let it bother you. You can make an effort to connect with the parts of the holiday that aren't commercialized.
- Organize a Christmas caroling party .
- Watch holiday specials like “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” or “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” (and ignore the commercials). Read Charles Dickens' “A Christmas Carol.” or The Gift of the Magic .
- Rediscover the spiritual aspects of the holidays. Find out what activities are planned at your church or religious center. My family used to attend a candlelight service at church every Christmas Eve that was one of highlights of the season for me.
The first holiday season spent without someone who's died during the previous year can be very rough. Any aspect of the season that's normally joyous is inevitably touched with sadness, as every special event serves to remind you that that person is not here to share it.
If this is your first holiday season without someone you've lost, face it head on. If you try to ignore your feelings, the pain will just fester. Think about how you want to mark their passing or honor them during the season. Discuss it with family or friends who were close to them. It could be a healing experience for all involved.
Toxic Family
Are the holidays bringing you in touch with family who you would rather slug than hug? Many people have a relative who they dread coming into contact with. It could be the brother who insists on controlling every aspect of the holiday get-togethers or the grandmother who drinks too much and gets belligerent, or even the uncle who molested them.
Try not to let this person or people ruin your holidays. If possible, limit the amount of time you spend with them. Why spend time with a toxic person just out of obligation? In addition, you might want to talk to a therapist or your pastor/priest/spiritual leader and practice coping skills.
Material Dissatisfaction
If the barrage of commercials has served to remind you of what you don't have, you're not alone. But again, if marketers and advertisers didn't make you feel that way, then they would not have done their job well. Consider volunteering at a shelter to serve the holiday dinner or buy a present for a child in need through a Toys for Tots program. It's a productive way to get some perspective on how much you do have, and it really does feel great. You could also weep your way through the ending of "It's a Wonderful Life" and remember that family and friends are the true riches.
Staying Healthy
Treat your body better than you usually do, not worse. Exercise (or at least take a walk occasionally) and get plenty of rest. Even if you feel that you can't spare those precious extra hours, getting enough sleep will make you more effective when you're awake. Also try to maintain a balanced diet. Too many carbohydrates and sugar versus too few fruits, veggies and protein will leave you feeling tired and cranky. Stay away from alcohol. Put simply, alcohol is a depressant. It definitely won't help your mood, except temporarily.
Finally, if you feel blue, don't beat yourself up about it. A certain amount of melancholy is not going to ruin the entire holiday season for you. Just let yourself feel it and move past it.
No comments:
Post a Comment