Dealing With the Holidays

‘Dealing’ with the holidays. Isn’t that a fascinating word choice? And yet it accurately depicts how so many of us have been forced by life to look at the holiday season.

If you prefer to listen to this article, here is Sven reading it:

For plenty of people, the holidays are something to be anticipated with trepidation, anxiously micro-planned to minimize damages, tap-danced through, and ultimately recovered from. For these folk, it truly is about ‘dealing with’ the holidays, rather than enjoying the holidays or even mostly enjoying the holidays.

Why Are the Holidays So Difficult?

The simple fact of the matter is that if the holidays for you are hard, painful, or to be ‘dealt with,’ it means that there are incidents from your past that caused this upcoming sequence of events, roughly from the middle of November to the first week in January, to be emotionally charged, even scary. Past experiences cause future experiences to frighten, or worry, us.

Dealing with Loss

My own mother died on November 30th, two years ago. So, that time immediately after (American) Thanksgiving, right as Advent is starting, is a bit melancholic for my family. (Interestingly, my dad passed on Palm Sunday four years ago; so they managed to ding both the Christmas and Easter seasons for us kids.) :)

And, I have to factor into this busy season time for my girlfriend (who was close with Mom) and me to be alone, talk about Mom, shed tears, feel Mom’s presence, and sit in the beauty of her memory. I also put in my schedule time to be alone, perhaps by a winter fire outside, to journal, drink a toast to her, and cry a few more wonderful tears to a person so dear to me.

Other people have lost

• Lovers

• A favorite pet

• Family

• Best friends

• A child/adult-child

• A business (perhaps rendering them unable to do what they used to do for the holidays)

• Their health (also perhaps rendering them unable to travel to friends or family this season)

• Their own belief in the season, whatever it might have been (thus creating a vast hole in this time of year or causing them to not want to be around others who do celebrate it or causing others to not want them around)

This can cause a profound gap or an emptiness, which cannot be run from or self-medicated from, but which tugs at the coattails, demanding attention.

Too Much To Do, Too Much Pressure

For others, the stress of the holidays is caused by the addition of a multitude of new details in an already crowded life.

Knowing how difficult this has made it in years past, these folks fill with a bit more anxiety each day as the season creeps forward, eventually enveloping them in a mad chaos that takes a toll in the immediate and the aftermath.

Wanting to Avoid Awful Personalities

For still others, it is not about even loss or busyness but the personalities and patterns of the people ahead, whether it’s seeing angry grandpa at the Thanksgiving table, enduring domineering auntie during Hannukah, tolerating Golden Child sib while enjoying Christmas lutefisk, or listening to divorced and bitter best friend all night on New Years, just like every other year.

What Are You Having to Deal with During the Holidays?

Due to past experiences, future experiences cannot be fully enjoyed but must oftentimes be only dealt with, robbing you of what you might otherwise enjoy, or creating a time of year that is just un-fun, all around.

So, what is it for you?

Have you fully named and delineated it, for the purposes of beginning to flush out all of the emotional charges that are attached to the mere thought of the season?

Have you begun to welcome those memories and their feelings up from the storage vault in your soul, so that you might finally be freed from their grip on your inner life and, hence, outer life?

When do you begin to journal it all out of you, rather than just perseverating, getting worked up emotionally, day in and day out, robbing your life of flavor, joy, and peace, whether you ever celebrate the holidays again or not?

Just start with one memory related to Holidays and write it out.

Write out how you feel, right now and back when it happened. Then write down the question, Why? Answer. Then more Whys. Then more answers. Let the feelings and more memories and feelings come. Write it all out. Keep flushing. All through the season. The more of this you do, the more peace will follow inside, as well as spontaneous energy, and clarity of purposes and plans.

In your journaling and healing work, I strongly recommend that you use my latest book, Badass Wisdom: A Killer Daily Meditational to Take You to the Ugly Places and Kick Your Ass! (Now available at BadassCounseling.com/books!) I wrote it specifically for the purpose of not only inspiring you and helping you heal but also teaching you how to journal and how to think about and frame healing work on yourself.

LISTEN to a clip from the book:

Or, go the other way, start with one thing coming up that you’re feeling anxiety, sadness, anger, or some other feeling about.

Start writing about what the anticipated event is. Write out every last detail of what you know is ahead or what you fear is ahead. Write out all of what the upcoming event is making you feel. Keep going further into it. Come back to it tomorrow or this weekend when you have more time. Keep coming back and writing more because as you bring up and flush out some of it, more will follow. You’ll have more thoughts on what’s causing anxiety ahead and also more memories and feelings.

Or, focus first simply on a particular person, perhaps the one who drives you nuts just thinking about them.

Write out, whether in sentences or even bullet points, to start, everything about this person or event with this person. Talk about your feelings in your writing. Allow the feelings to come up. Maybe the feelings start small. That’s fine. Let them come. They may well grow from there. Keep writing.

Now, regardless of which approach you use, or even if you go about it more scattershot as I do sometimes, you may discover, if you’re being honest with yourself that there are feelings you’re deliberately keeping down or not wanting to touch, whether because they are too painful to even consider feeling again, or you fear being overwhelmed, or you fear the implications of not just feeling them but what that could mean, in terms of fallout or having to make changes not just in your inner life but your outer life.

Courage to Heal and Enjoy the Holidays

Please understand that you are under no obligation to make any changes or take any action in your outer life just because you are healing your inner life. You may choose to make changes later, but you are not required to do a damn thing, now or later. But you must bring that stuff up from out of the vault and allow it to pass out of you if you truly want to heal.

And, as you’ve heard me say before, it is precisely because of this precise issue that true healing requires so much courage. At the root of all healing is courage. And that courage is at the root of you turning your holidays from ‘dealt with’ to ‘thoroughly enjoyed.’

How Do You Deal With Family and Protect Yourself?

For some folks, the holidays represent stress and a cornucopia of ill feelings because it means family.

While the ideal in life would be to have family mean good things, warm thoughts, and positive experiences, often it is far from that, unfortunately. Heck, even in good families, there can be a person(s) who just makes it all so unbearable, or two people who are like oil and water when they are put together.

Whatever the mix of people is, you deal with family best by protecting yourself (and any children in your care).

What that means is, again, getting into the nitty-gritty, in advance, of what you anticipate happening and all the feelings that the process brings up; writing it all out, and continuing to write on it (and whatever else may arise) as you move through the holiday season. But, to really heal it and suck the oxygen from it so that it may not spread inside you and consume you means to go into the origin events and journal the hell out of them. Maybe even write letters to the person(s) that you do not send. The reason to not send it is because it is written not to convey anything to that person, but to flush all the crud out of you. Those are two completely different things. And, if you know you’re going to send it, you’ll write a very different letter from the one you’ll write for your healing. The latter will be far more raw and real. And THAT is what you need right now.

Then, be sure to journal and letter-write more as the time for the interactions gets closer. What all of this has the power to do is to deflate the emotional charges, and hence charged energy, from inside you, so that even though they’ll maybe never change, you are changing how you approach it, which can change everything, because you’re not engaging and it’s not hitting you inside nearly as much as it would’ve in the past.

>> See The Soul Disciplines and Keeping Your Spirit on Track

In the event itself, whether it’s the ritual meal or the loud football-watching afterward, the day of decorating the house and yard and the getting soused that has always gone with it, or the having to share living quarters for a few days, it is extraordinarily important that you give yourself permission, no matter what the naysayers, whiners, and controllers say, to take them in short doses, make time to be away from them, or perhaps even plug into the event your own other events for just yourself or with those who are actually lovely or give you great energy.

Your allocation of time, more than almost anything, will determine your happiness level in the execution of your holidays. And, until you believe – truly believe and ‘get’ – that your time is, in fact, your time, you’ll never make the holidays into something that truly works for you.

The Fear of Family Backlash

This, then, brings up the issue of backlash.

Too often in families, there is a fear inside a person who wants to change shit or just protect themselves. The fear is of the response(s) you will encounter if you have the audacity to actually have my feelings, my wants, my needs, my safety, and my enjoyment matter. And, the truth is, you wouldn’t fear those responses happening in the near future unless they had happened in the distant past (or at least the distance of one year). Denunciation, critical rebuke, insults, mocking, sideways glances, huffing and puffing, and a million other ways long ago became the ways that you were conditioned to de-prioritize yourself and do what you’re told or what is expected of you.

It is precisely that set of expectations and scorn that you fear going against. It’s a very high price to pay for having the courage to make your life meaningful, fulfilling, and peaceful for you.

Perhaps they will gang up on you or even some of your favorites will turn on you. Or, perhaps the threat of them ostracizing you is very real or even guaranteed.

And, this is where the rubber hits the road. This is really the decision that your life keeps coming down to:

Do your happiness and peace matter enough to you to stand up to and possibly lose (or walk away from) the people or person who, in the words of the Commodores, “wants [you] to be what they want [you] to be?”

At some point, you have to decide if your life is actually yours and how you want it to look.

That decision is never more powerful than when your happiness involves angering or possibly losing family. Though, really, isn’t it fascinating that they either state or imply you are not allowed to be yourself and have your family? They so badly want you to conform to their expectations and submit to their rule that they’ll threaten everything to keep you under their thumb?

I’m not trying to be a dick when I say, Is that reeeaaallly the type of people you want to be involved with to the degree you always have been? Further, can you see how continuing to interact with people who negate the importance of your individuality and your feelings will only continue to increase negative feelings in your life and inside you – i.e., if you don’t cut negative energy sources out of your life, or cut them back, you are, in fact, allowing negative energy sources in your life.

At the moment you are aware of that fact and still choosing it, you are no longer a victim. Now, you’re a volunteer. Now, you’re allowing the negativity in your life.

But far worse, by doing this, by allowing this treatment of you in your life, YOU are confirming that you do not matter. YOU are choosing situations that negate your importance. Your silence about your needs, wants, and feelings confirms the underlying message, “I don’t matter to me.”

So, now, it’s really quite irrelevant what they do, say, or imply. For you are stating and confirming your lack of worth by your inaction. Are you okay with that?

Scaling Back Holidays With Family

This naturally brings up the next possibility: maybe you just don’t go, at all, or greatly scale back the amount of time you spend with family or the people you normally holiday with.

Maybe this is the year you begin to craft a whole new holiday season of your own making (see below). If you choose either of these options, you know doggone well that you’re going to have to deal with pushback, to some greater or lesser degree, which means thinking about and journaling about all of the likely comments, questions, and actions from them, which also means journaling about all of your feelings surrounding all of that. Again, letter-writing works very well in a case like this, not just because it helps flush out all of your feelings, but because by doing so we almost always have greater clarity about what we think or want to say/do, and often a new sense of calm enters in that enables us to operate from a ‘centered’ place inside us, rather than a state anxiety, confusion, and uncertainty.

And that’s as good as gold in high-anxiety or emotionally charged situations.

What If You’re the Source of Holiday and Family Friction?

All of this discussion of how to deal with family or particular persons, during the holidays, brings us to one final possibility: What if you are the person?

What if you’re the person no one else wants to deal with, see, or have to tolerate/interact with? What if you see it, you know it, and are perhaps trying to change, or not?

I was that person in my immediate family, for a while. And I still can be for some in my extended family. In my case, I just didn’t like the normal boring family bullshit, so I just was me. I wasn’t trying to be a prick, but that is precisely how I was perceived by some. I’m sure I was perceived as selfish, maybe at times I was.

Some of it I had to change to stop hurting others, or maybe just stop annoying others. But some of the stuff I just chose not to change, because I knew those aspects weren’t me hurting someone else, but simply someone else wanting me to conform to their expectations of Christmas, or what have you.

But what if you’re the person and you know you’re being a dick? Maybe it’s your anger, your short fuse, your incessant controlling BS, your caterwauling, your always making it about yourself and your need for attention, or maybe it’s something completely different.

Whatever it is, has it occurred to you that you, too, need to make the decision about whether you choose yourself or choose family, or whether there’s some happy medium, not just for you but for them, too? For, has it occurred to you that if you keep being an a-hole, eventually you will drive people away from you, or you will so break them down that they start to hate themselves (rather than allowing themselves to hate who they really resent most…you), which is one of the working definitions of depression?

Maybe that doesn’t bother you. But the likelihood is that it does because you surely would’ve never read an article like this if you’re that insensitive to the needs of others and so unwilling to acknowledge your own pain inside.

If this is you, you need to be doing the deep inner work that I walk you through in my last book, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup (available at badasscounseling.com/books). And, you need to start now, so that you don’t ruin another Thanksgiving or Hanukkah.

>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?

Stupid Stuff We Do When Overcome By Dealing With the Holidays

Let’s be honest, there ain’t a person alive who doesn’t get tripped out at some point or another during the holiday season if for no other reason than traffic is worse, often weather is worse, the year is coming to an end and finances can get tight, and a whole host of other reasons.

And, to make matters worse, until we’ve deliberately created and built the practice in our own individual lives of purging the anxieties, fears, sad stuff, and anger producers from inside us, not to mention the messages that go with them that often condemn us from within, we’re screwed! Why?

Because all of that stuff then lodges inside us and stores. It sets us off, chews us up inside, and creates an internal state where the motor is always running, always anxious, always quickly triggered, or always depleted of energy.

So, if we haven’t cultivated the tools for releasing out of us all that eats us up inside,

what we have done, over the years, is cultivate mechanisms

for numbing the anxieties, pains, and rampant feelings;

or we’ve cultivated means for manufacturing some sort of (happy?) feelings

amid the constant numbness.

This use, and often abuse, of manufactured means to escape the reality you’re living is rarely more heightened than during the times of Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Solstice, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, and Santa time.

So, what’s yours for dealing with the holidays?

People use all manner of contrivances to escape the reality they’ve created, or that has been created for them, over the decades, not the least of which are:

• Over-working

• Booze

• Busyness, often unnecessarily

• Pills of every stripe

• Over-parenting

• Shopping

• Gambling

• More pets

• Over-gaming

• Excessive swiping and scrolling

• Surrounding oneself with constant chaos to distract from what’s inside

• Cheating

• Over-exercising/yoga-addiction

• Fighting

• Killing (in wartime)

• Smoking

• Pasting on a false happy face with just plain willpower

• And of course, eating and/or not-eating

• On and on

Of course, the use of these mechanisms of escape often has the effect of heightening the very thing being escaped, whether it be the next day or cumulatively, over time. Thus, for example, if the stressors and pains are intensified during the holidays, then the escapes are dialed up, as well, which then exacerbates the original problems, leading to….wait for it…more escaping.

Yeah, you see where this is going: meltdowns, anxiety attacks, severe depression, madness addiction, and huge upheaval by the time the season is done. This is why, in my business, there’s invariably a big spike in people seeking counseling, come the new year. Right?! Makes sense. It sucks to be the person in it, but it makes sense.

For me, for years, my escape concoction was liquor, food, and even cigarettes for a handful of years.

For me, I sought not to escape the holidays, per se, but the boredom of the rest of the year, during which I drank a lot. And, me being me, I go ape-shit eating when I’m drinking. When I’m actually drunk, I become a human vacuum cleaner. Yeah, not good. But, the reason it intensified during the holidays was because the year was finally fun, so let’s booze! How fun! And, of course, all the great food (and the blessed unending leftovers!) just sent me to the moon.

Put Your Spiritual SOUL Disciplines In Place!

However, the one saving grace in all of this was that I had started putting my spiritual disciplines in place when I was 13, cementing them by my early 20s. So, I was still engaged with them as the season moved forward. That definitely took off a lot of the spikes and reduced the amount of inner crud that could be triggered by outer crud, thereby making me a tad more bearable during the holidays for others. And, it definitely saved me from devolving into full-blown addiction.

Over the years, I ramped up the spiritual disciplines of journaling, Sedona Method releasing, daily solitude/quiet time to rest (not sleep), writing letters I don’t send, commitment to good sleep, eating healthy, semi-regular exercise (but not excessive, ever), and especially the removal of people and paths that were sources of raw sewage energy in my life.

In fact, the years I was completely alone were so regenerative, especially at holiday time. The quiet of the season was incredible. These disciplines and years made all the difference. I finally was getting out the most massive crud that had been inside. And I finally basically calmed down inside.

The anxiety no longer controlled me. Now holidays could include cocktails, or not, as well as cookies and all the rest of it, but without them becoming all-consuming. I was finally enjoying the holidays I hadn’t since my childhood.

And that’s really the solution, of course, long term -- to create a reality you don’t have to escape and don’t want to. In the words of the immortal comedian/actor, Robin Williams,

“If you need booze and drugs to enjoy life,

you’re doing it wrong?”

That is to say, the time to begin getting therapy or committing to these and other disciplines that heal the soul is not after the holidays, or even during them.

The time to begin any work on solutions is before the problems happen. It’s to assiduously study the patterns of the past, beforehand, to anticipate the problems of the future, then dive into the problems to either find full solutions or remove the problems.

That means you need to be doing the work now.

Perhaps you have been.

Perhaps you do the work all year yet still get set off during the holidays.

Then now, in advance, is the time to double down and intensify your efforts. Employ new tools and disciplines. Give more time each day/week to your healing work. This is definitely not the time to begin to go lax with your disciplines because, “Hey, f*ck it, it’s the holidays!” Bad idea! Heading into what you know will be a hard, stressful, or painful time is NOT the time to ease up on the very things that contribute to your peace and centeredness.

So, now let’s game out some common holiday scenarios and how best to not just survive, but THRIVE!

How Do You Deal With Holidays If You’re Alone, Homeless, Living On the Streets Or In a Car?

If you're alone, what's the best way to deal with the holidays? Or, what if you’re homeless? How can someone living on the street or in their car possibly enjoy the holidays? Isn’t the dichotomy between what you’re living and what the rest of the world is living so great as to be profoundly depressing, even maddening? What about someone who physically cannot leave their home?

As mentioned above, it is no exaggeration to say that some of my very happiest and most peaceful holidays in my 56 years were the years I was either alone (sometimes living in my car, ministering to other homeless) or on the street, working with and living among the homeless, sleeping on concrete every night for years. But, I don’t delude myself or you by pretending that is the experience of all in those situations.

Did you ever wonder why so many of the wisest teachers, great Indian gurus, and folks whose words resonate most deeply are often poor?

Whether that poverty/simplicity was chosen or involuntary, what the deepest thinkers and most centered healers know is that the real battle isn’t outside of you, but inside. Mastery of the outer demands mastery of the inner. Therefore, any situation, even homelessness, aloneness, or being trapped inside a broken body can be a place of peace and even joy.

This is dependent upon the willingness to do the work of flushing out all of the pain, fears, and BS beliefs you’ve been taught about yourself. That is the essence of ‘the work.’ The more that is attacked with vigor and deliberateness, the greater one’s inner, and hence outer, happiness. I simply cannot emphasize this enough.

Also, if you feel so compelled while alone find a new group to connect with or create.

Volunteering During the Holidays

What if you have a heart for the homeless, shut-ins living alone, the poor, the disabled, or anyone else whose pain or sadness might be heightened during this season?

This is a fantastic time of year to let your love, spirit of kindness, and generosity flow.

To add a wonderful, exciting new element to your life, invite someone into your home to share your holidays with you, someone you know to be hurting or alone.

Do some volunteering in a shelter, food line, or animal shelter/fostering, or do it on your own! Make it fun.

My kids recall a Thanksgiving or two after their mother and I had divorced where they would bake a turkey with me, then we’d make cookies, chop/cut other things, and make sack lunches. I’d then drive through parks and neighborhoods where the homeless were, and they’d jump out and run over to them to offer them a little food, a smile, and a kind touch.

There really is no limit to the imagination of what you can do during the holidays when stirred by generosity of spirit.

I remember one of the most generous things anyone ever did for me on the street. I was sleeping on my usual tiny plot of sidewalk near a university in a city yet on a side street. A bit quieter. People would come and go.

One night, say midnight, as I slept in my sleeping bag, I felt a gentle touch on the sleeping bag where my shoulder was. He couldn’t see my face, but I heard a young man (no way was he older than 22), gently saying,

“Sir. Excuse me, sir, I’m sorry to wake you. But, may I give you some food?”

He had clearly just walked the nearby row of small restaurants, gotten some takeout, and was going home to enjoy it.

“It’s Thai. I hope that’s okay.”

I literally started to tear up on the spot.

“Yes, that is so kind of you. Thank you so much! So gracious of you.”

He just smiled and walked into the darkness with his paper bag of food to take home. Hands down, the best frickin’ Asian food I’ve had, before or since!

A kid. He was a frickin’ kid! There was literally no one around. No one. No one saw him do it. The food was clearly purchased by him with his own money. A kid! Who raised this kid?!

PRO TIP:

Having lived on the streets for years, bringing food or gifts or mittens/socks on a holiday is wonderful! Keep it up!

But, generally for the homeless, there is no shortage of food on a holiday. For, that’s when everyone is delivering food. Because that’s when those generous feelings are most stirred.

So, bring it the week before, the week after, in the middle of the week, or even just late at night, because often synagogues, churches, and organizations that feed the homeless don’t provide food at night for the sleep ahead.

Building and Creating: How Do You Deal With Holidays if You Aren't Happy?

I had been living in Los Angeles – a city I swore I’d never live in, back in my 20s – with the woman who would become my second wife. We had an apartment in a poorer area of North Hollywood. I literally knew no one in the entire LA area. She knew a few folks, as she had lived there a few years before we met. But, we were, for most intents and purposes, alone together.

So, we went about the business, through the year of building new friendships, whether through work or in our little 6-unit apartment building, and then friends-of-friends. This was back well before social media and even before texting existed. It was good, old-fashioned face-to-face talking, phone calls, and invites to parties came in the mailbox.

One of my fondest memories from this time is of Thanksgiving and Christmas. My gf and I would have parties at our 600 sq ft apartment. We’d send out invites. Prepare for a week. Extend the dining room table, or add a folding table from a neighbor. Maybe put out a buffet. Maybe it’d be sit-down. Drinks in the small kitchen. Lots of inexpensive, yet pretty decorations.

And it was glorious!

See the thing we discovered is that everyone in LA is a transplant. No one is actually from LA. (Obviously, there are plenty of people actually from LA, but I’ll be damned if I ever met one.) That means everyone there is family-less/friend-less and needs to build their own little friend group.

It was not until those holidays there in LA, in my mid-30s, that I discovered what it is like when friends become closer than family. There was a sense of gratitude and true connectedness that I don’t think I had ever experienced in my life, prior.

The point is that sometimes making the holidays means remaking the holidays – creating something new. Maybe you’re recently divorced and this is your first Thanksgiving alone. Maybe your lover or your closest companion (even a pet!) died this year, or at this time of year in years past. Maybe all the rituals of your past just no longer work for you or are dripping with so many painful memories that you’ve not processed yet that you need to destroy and create, tear it down to the studs, or even the foundation.

Create Your Own Holiday and Feed Your Soul

Whatever it is, the question you maybe need to be asking is, What would this holiday look like if I made it into something that would actually make me happy, or make the kids and me happy, or might be fun to just try for one year?

What if you started from scratch, real tabula rasa sh*t? What if you made this year about playing with new ideas, allowing for new successes and failures, but a commitment to thinking outside the box you’ve always lived in?

Travel, if you never have; stay home, if you always travel.

Worship with a different faith on their special day. Don’t go to religious services, at all.

Decorate differently. (One year, my girlfriend and I decorated for Christmas not in green and red, but all blue and white. It was gorgeous and such a fun new thing.) Skip the family portion of the holiday.

Hell, skip it all.

Foster a pet for adoption through the cold holidays. Create a new holiday menu. Bring someone in need into your home to share the holiday. Don’t give gifts, but instead, give notes of love/admiration/gratitude to those who matter to you. If you are newly sober and fear the pushing of alcohol at shindigs, don’t go; go with a friend where both of you commit to fun with no alcohol; bring your own alcohol substitute; celebrate or have the coworker gathering at a bar specializing in mocktails.

But be very deliberate about doing what you need to do to protect your sobriety, sanity, and peace. Again, if that means skipping it altogether, do that. But then, create something else in that vacuum that feels good to you and feeds your soul.

Whatever it might be, create something new that feeds YOUR soul. Let your sole driving question be, What would finally feel good to me to create this holiday season? And do only those things. Then watch your holidays transform into something completely unexpected, yet magical in its feel.

How Do You Deal With Social Media During the Holidays When You're Miserable and Your Family is a Problem?

Well, as a guy who has a bit of an online presence, I definitely believe you should binge more on social media! <<<<I’M JUST KIDDING!>>>>

In terms of amount, it’s really no different from all the stuff mentioned above in terms of how to use/not use them. The holidays are not the time to be lax and let yourself go, whether by stopping exercising or going to therapy less.

It’s also not the time to allow your habits to slip into incessant swiping and scrolling, or content-creating or buying, simply because that has the power to suck you in even further. And remember, these behaviors are nearly always a compensation or outright diversion from the pain inside.

Further, you and I know precisely what can happen when sucked into the hole of social media. It’s very easy to see all the happy faces, twinkly settings, and swanky lives others seem to be having, which, obviously, has immense power to plunge you further down that rabbit hole of misery, thus heightening your need to escape even more.

Others Are Miserable During the Holidays

First off, you’re not the only person who thinks their life sucks or isn’t what they want it to be. It’s far more common than you realize, even if you realize it. And, some folks use social not to rub your nose in it, but because it enables them to show themselves that they are/were happy for a moment in time.

And for that reason alone, it can actually be a good thing – a dot of joy in what can feel like an unending shitstorm of misery. So, if you’re having a happy time and it would feel good to mark it publicly, post it. You can always take it down later. But give yourself a breath of joy, for once.

But also, just keep moving forward, scrolling down if you find yourself swelling with feelings of jealousy, sadness, or even anger as you do social, this season. Why allow yourself to get sucked in. As my high wrestling coach, Joe Frank, used to say,

“If you’re cutting weight, get out of the cafeteria.”

If you’re already sad, or prone to falling into a slump, even a mild one, don’t go to the place – either in real life or virtually – that is likely to beckon you back into another slump. Get off social.

(Same is true of porn. If porn can become your black hole, let it go; reduce it; substitute something else. But get the hell out of the cafeteria!)

Coping and Healing Are Completely Different From One Another!

But again, again, again, you must always remember that all of these are coping mechanisms. Coping and healing are two completely different things. As I tell clients all the time,

If you’re still coping,

You’re not healing.

That means at some point before, during, or after the holidays, or long down the road after you’ve endured so much hell that you’re sick of your life this way, you have to go into the origin sources of your pain, fears, and BS beliefs you’ve been taught about yourself. And that’s what all of my tools are for, precisely that. But yes, truth be told, there are those times when you just gotta stick out your chest, pin your ears back, tighten the gut, steel your resolve, and cope the sh*t out of it! Just be sure to flush as much as you can before and after. Be smart about this stuff!

What if You’re Still Planning To Do Holidays With Family? How Can You Change the 'Normal' Family Dynamics, Create New Rituals, and Get Your Other Significants On Board?

So, you still want to be with family, either by choice or obligation that you feel unready to say ‘no’ to? That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. So here are a few pointers to gird your loins properly, so to speak.

Expect Pushback and Be Prepared

First off, whether during the pre-holiday planning with family or during the events themselves, don’t be a damn fool. If you’re going to try to change anything – anything, even the seemingly most minute thing – expect blowback, hot tempers, and attempts to shut you down. Do not expect your ideas to be treated with open arms, even if you come from open folks. Changing people’s ingrained rituals, especially their private/family rituals, is an attempt to change something that actually core to their identity. People define themselves, in part, by their rituals, be they weekly rituals, daily ones, or those precious once-a-year rituals. Shake those and you shake the very foundations of people who potentially already exist in a power structure that keeps you down and them up; them in control; them wanting it their way.

Yeah, you’re going to eat some serious sh*t if you try to mess with their sandbox. But that doesn’t mean you have to back down. If you want to institute a change or even a trying of something new, go for it. But assume, in advance, they’ll escalate their power to put you back in your place.

• Game out in advance how you’re going to respond to it; journal it.

• Journal all the feelings you’re feeling in advance of doing so, and all you’ll likely feel.

• Write a mock letter to them you don’t send, in which you pour out all your thoughts and feelings.

Doing this, in advance, clears the head and empties a lot of the emotion, enabling you to see much more clearly.

That way, you can craft an argument that succeeds and can also more easily manage your own feelings in the moment, which is key.

Add, Don’t Subtract

Second, ‘add, don’t subtract.’

In my first year of seminary, the Dean of Students taught a class to all the new seminarians. One of the messages he drove home constantly is that when you’re new to a church that you are now the pastor of unless you’ve been given an explicit mandate to tear down what’s not working, you need to go in there and listen, a good long time, perhaps a year, then always begin by adding, not subtracting.

Again, taking something that belongs to someone else, particularly their identity-driven rituals, nearly always excites strong feelings and a desire to defend and fight, not to mention garner resentment toward yourself.

Take that same approach to changing your family’s holiday rituals or habits. You’ll still get pushback from people if you try to add new events, add a non-meat option to a meat-driven meal or add a trip to a museum or comedy club to a strictly football family. But it won’t be nearly the same as if you tried a full-on substitution. Don’t back down. Stand up for your add-on. Pitch it as a compromise. Get allies to support you and stand up. Then, when you get the okey-dokey, read your audience.

Incorporate elements into your new thing that you know might appeal to their existing sensibilities. Maybe the museum is running a show about tattooing in your country/city, and you have relatives who have and enjoy tattoos. Perhaps you know that your family loves spicy food, so you make your plant-based dish a super spicy, yet flavorful one and pitch it as a challenge to see ‘who can eat it without grabbing the milk.’ Maybe you want to incorporate singing old carols into a non-singing family; so make it a karaoke night of rum punch, hot cider, a fire in the fireplace, and a rented karaoke machine only playing popular holiday songs from Bing Crosby to Whitney Houston and so forth. Make it fun/appealing, while simultaneously creating new growth.

An Erlandson Family Holiday Example

When all six of us kids were still all married, before two divorces, and the children were young, the sisters-in-law lobbied to have a Christmas dinner that did NOT include the traditional Swedish ‘white meal’ as they called it – lutefisk and white sauce, boiled potatoes, lefse, peas, and korv. It wasn’t all white, but not to their liking.

So, we all acquiesced, and they called on me to camp out in the kitchen and create a Christmas brunch of primarily Swedish pancakes, which only the wretched cretin cannot enjoy. Mom had made millions of them over the years, as kids, so it was a natural, easy substitution. So, I flipped a lot of those thin delights that morning. And we had a wonderful time! Granted, that was a flat-out substitution, not an addition, and it didn’t become a permanent fixture, but it made that Christmas fun!

Let Go Of Family Control

Lastly, if you’re the one who is atop the family power tree, why not start to let go of control so that others can breathe? Open the conversation in the family up. Ask them what additions they might like to make. Stop hoarding control as if you are the sole arbiter of what is good and great during the holiday season.

Why?

Because the more you give ownership and room to dream/implement to others, the more they feeeel a sense of ownership and commitment, a sense of pride, and a sense of true family. And those feelings have legs; they last. They’ll want to continue into adulthood when they have kids of their own. You’ll become more beloved to them, not just feared.

So, in all of this equation of the holidays, what do you need to let go of? What do you need to embrace, no matter where you are in the power structure? If you’re always the one sucking hind tit, what do you need to stand up for? If you’re the one always in control, what do you give room to others in?

What do you need to create? What do you need to destroy? What disciplines do you need to hew closely to? What’s the greatest potential pitfall ahead? Have you done the journaling and the like to prepare for that?

Do You Need to Skip the Holidays Altogether This Year?

Perhaps the real gift of the holiday season this year is you giving yourself permission to make this a year that actually makes YOU happy and fills your soul!

Have a Kickass Holiday Season!!!!

P.S.: For a visual taste of the holidays, including my deceased Aunt Viv’s signature Christmas Tree Cookies, check out my daughter’s collection of exquisite baking work on Instagram/@sveamade.

——————-

-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com