The Mixed Blessings Of Wishes For Happy Holidays And A Happy New Year
I often cringe not just a little when I hear people offer glowing wishes for Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year
. No, I'm not an old curmudgeon or Grinch in the disguise of a wholistic therapist. I'm a traveler on many paths of healing - personal, professional, global and spiritual.I also hasten to add immediately that I would never discourage someone from bringing in the light and cheer of positive attitudes and wishes for joyous experiences on the occasions of holidays, points of transition, and other opportunities for smiles, warm fuzzies and celebrations. And I'm not just pointing out, as Tom Lehrer did in one of his pointedly comic songs about being kind to each other during American National Brotherhood Week, that we should be happy that it doesn't last all year.
What bothers me is the gloss and glitter in our holiday decorations and well-wishing cards, internet communications and festivities, that seems to transfer into superficially glittery thinking about life, the universe and everything. By focusing on being happy happy, we set ourselves up with unreal expectations on the one hand, and create negative attitudes about the shadowy, plain, undecorated parts of our lives because they are not glitzy. I offer a few recipes here for what feel to me to be healthier holiday wishes and preventives for holiday blues.
Common problems and suggested antidotes:
1. Our glitzy expectations are often contributors to disappointments on festive occasions, if not outright causes for holiday blues. At holiday times we often miss those who cannot participate in celebrations or mourn those who are no longer with us in the flesh. We may hesitate to mention such feelings of longing or grief, lest we be seen as woeful Eeyores who are bringing down the mood of others who are partying. Holding in our feelings may then set up a nagging or even festering competition between the light and the darkness we all carry inside ourselves.
Some possible antidotes:
Plan with our families and other celebrators that we will hold a moment of silence or prayer at some point during the festivities, to acknowledge those who cannot be with us for whatever reasons. By allowing ourselves an agreed measure of expression of sadness, we stop the festering process. It is also a common experience that a burden shared is only a fraction as weighty as one we carry on our own.
Use WHEE, or any other self-healing method of our choice, to lessen the intensity of our negative feelings. This may even be a doorway into deeper emotional housecleaning - although not necessarily in the midst of a holiday meal or other celebration.
2. Taking on board all the happy happy wishes may set us up to feel like failures when reality sets in - as in returning to a home where the absence of someone dear to us is felt even more acutely; or in getting our next credit card statement; or in encountering a bump in the road of life such as downsizing. Having absorbed all the good cheer wishes may make the challenges in our lives that much harder to address from the perspective of being disappointed ourselves or believing that we are disappointing other well-wishers.
Some possible resources:
Talk with family and friends about the problems you encounter. I have often found in my own life, as well as in the experiences of therapy clients, that just airing an issue puts new perspectives on it and makes it feel less onerous. Don't feel you are being a burden to others in doing this. You would probably be willing to support them, were the roles reversed. Allow them to be there for you when you are feeling needy.
Again, WHEE could be of great help, converting troublesome worries into manageable concerns. Emotional releases are not about forgetting your problems. They are about letting go of festering ruminations and then making lists of the issues and their possible solutions. Getting into anxieties over them is not going to solve them any quicker, nor will it make you feel any better. WHEE enables you to do this reliably, quickly and deeply.
3. Offering wishes for gentle lessons and good healings in the New Year can set up more realistic expectations.
So I wish you the blessings of challenges that will stimulate you to see life in exciting and transformative ways in this holiday season and in the new year. And may your positive attitude contribute to the healing of other people and other living beings on this planet, and to our planet, Gaia, herself.
Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.
- Helen Keller
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