Ep 57 - Unwrapping the Christmas Blues
Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Caroline Lloyd and welcome back to the EMDR Doctor Podcast. And today I am being a little bit of a Grinch. It's Christmas time, we're in December, we're well into December, and a lot of my clients are talking to me about Christmas and how much they hate it. So I thought I would do a podcast on how much we all hate Christmas!
I don't actually hate Christmas.There's a lot that I do love about it, but I can fully understand why a lot of people don't like Christmas. So I've come up with 10 reasons to not like Christmas.
The first reason is time. Time. We are all short of time and towards the end of the year, everybody's rushing towards that final date. You know, they're rushing towards the last day of work, last day of shopping, last hour or minute of shopping that they can all run out and buy Christmas presents.
This is this huge and irreconcilable deadline to the end of the year, and we often kind of have a bit of a reflection about, you know, where has this year gone? It just seems to have disappeared. Why didn't I get my project finished? Why didn't I get this accomplished? Why didn't I get that other thing done? Where has the year gone? Why did I allow time just to slip through my fingers? So there's an enormous amount of time pressure. Schools and universities and workplaces don't help because they seem to cram in an awful lot into those last couple of weeks of effective time, ie term for schools. And they have to have, recital, they have to have the end of year assembly and the teachers perform dances and the students perform songs and. There's this deadline to get everything done before that special day. And then there's the end of term everything for teachers. And even at my work, which we do wrap up the end of the year at Cabrini, we wrap up in that we close for Christmas. So we actually have to have all of our clients, ready to go home and, and asked to be ready to, to pack up the unit. So there seems to be extra meetings about how to manage the end of term and extra things to do and you know, deadlines just become that little bit tighter. So time is the first reason that we all hate Christmas because we don't have enough time, generally speaking during the year.
And then with this deadline of the end of the year, time becomes just one of those commodities , that are so precious.
The next reason that I came up with to hate Christmas is the perfectionism. So, so many people. I feel that Christmas has to be perfect, you know, and there's lots of reasons for that. It might be, you know, we really want to impress our in-laws, or we wanna impress our cousins who we only see once a year, or maybe this is our year for Christmas. So we want it to go perfectly. We wanna have the best Christmas cake and the best Christmas pudding and the best ham. And you know, we wanna buy presents that people really love. So there's a lot of pressure over what to buy for whom, how much to spend. We really want them to enjoy their presents. It has to be the perfect present. So we put a lot of unrealistic expectations upon ourselves. So this perfectionism is, I think, something that really works against our enjoyment.
Of course, some people didn't have very good Christmases when they were growing up. So they might have had really unhappy Christmases or Christmases marred by violence or poverty or family breakdowns. So for them, they may really and truly want a perfect Christmas where everyone gets along well together. Everyone has presents, which they really love. They might wanna make Christmas something for their kids that they never were able to enjoy.
So that's another reason for this kind of heightened perfectionism around Christmas and of course family.
So we all love our families or do we? Some people don't actually get along very well with their families. And even when you do love your families, you know, seeing them in, in a such a sort of a heightened time of expectation, it can be really tricky.
There might be some sibling rivalry that has gone unnoticed or unchecked or unresolved. There might be families where the family kind of spreads themselves far and wide. So say if you have a family where one partner, their parents have split up. So you've got two different places to be for one partner, and then the other partner also has divorced parents. And so you have two families to be with on that day, on the other side of the family. So for some families, Christmas Day is like a marathon, they get up early, they get everything into the car, they go to one place, they have a short meal with them, they bundle back up into the car, they go to another place in the afternoon, it's another one. And in the evening it's another one. And to be quite honest, that kind of day is just incredibly exhausting and , very. Not relaxing. Very tense, very stressful. And certainly not a happy day. And traffic, I have to say on Christmas day tends to be pretty bad. I always used to think it was better than other days, but having had to drive across town a couple of times over my family's life, Christmas traffic is, can be really something to contend with.
So we might have to spend time with lots of different people, many of whom we don't know that well, and who might be wanting us to be something that we are not. They might be wanting their day to be perfect. There's a lot of pressure on all sides and there might be really high expectations to be this happy, cheery, merry generous kind of a family where in reality we just want to, you know, go home, hide under the covers, and then crawl out later for a little bit of Christmas cake.
So there's a lot of expectations and not enough time and a high degree of perfectionism and lots of family members to see who you may not see very often.
There's also another group of relatives who can be really, really problematic. They are the relatives who may have been a person's abusers in an earlier phase of their life.
So perhaps having to sit across the table from someone who bullied you or who abused you, who verbally, physically, or sexually abused you and maybe the rest of the family don't know, maybe there's a big coverup involved in it. Maybe it's just still all a very big and dark secret. And having to be pleasant to people who you would normally avoid at all costs is exceedingly difficult.
So many people do put up with that, just to please other people in the family. So mom might really want everyone just to get along for one day of the year. And so the whole family tries their very best and it doesn't go that well, especially if you introduce a little bit of alcohol into the mix. When you get a couple of drinks under your belt people are much more likely to say things that they wouldn't normally say to bite back, to be sarcastic , to spill the beans to just let loose a little bit. Other times they would never dream of doing such a thing, but on Christmas day, under all the pressure with a little bit of alcohol, that's much more likely to happen.
Money is another really huge factor in Christmas. So Christmas there is a lot of spending, spending on decorations, spending on food and alcohol and presents and travel and you know, there's often a lot of pressure to give people the exact thing that they wanted, which, you know, if those things are quite expensive and you've got more than one person to give to. It can really add up a lot. So spending is really highly stressful for a lot of people at Christmas time. And if you put that together with some end of year bills and you put that together with some forced holidays, not everybody has a job where they get paid for being on holiday.
So people who are self-employed, people who are under-employed. People who are casually employed all have problems during Christmas and New Year because they may have a week or two weeks where their job is not employing them or they have to cut back their hours. So you add that to a lot of extra spending and a decreased income, and the financial stress can get really, really big.
Another aspect of the end of the year, aside from the pressure to have finished all your projects is that the idea of what actually did I get done this year? So for some people, the end of the year represents time when they reflect on what they did get done, what they didn't get done. And that might be health goals or personal goals, financial goals, business goals. I listen to quite a few podcasts and a few of them are encouraging people to do a bit of an end of year stock take, which can be rewarding. Also, we have to recognize that it can be really stressful. So if you got to the end of the year and all you've done is survive, you've managed to pay the rent, you've managed to keep the wolves from the door, but you haven't hit those big goals, then that sense of failure can kind of compound an unhappy Christmas.
And the other aspect of the end of the year, which I'm negotiating in my practice at the moment, is my unavailability. So even though it's lovely for me to take a couple of weeks off work, it's a really tricky time for me to take a couple of weeks off work because those clients who I see regularly who might rely on their therapy with me to be able to do a little bit of unpacking and a little bit of debriefing and get some support around very difficult times. If their Christmas is not going well and they know that they can't see me for another two or three weeks, then that can be really upsetting. So therapist unavailability at Christmas can create a whole other level of stress, especially if people have abandonment issues or sensitivity to rejection or abandonment, and also their being around family, which is often the cause of this sensitivity. And then their therapist is not available either. That's kind of like a bit of a double whammy for them. So that can be quite problematic.
So I wanna speak a little bit around grief. Grief at Christmas time can be really pronounced. So Christmas is supposed to be a time when we're with our loved ones and our family, and if we have lost loved ones, especially in that previous year, then the first Christmas without them especially, can be really very, very heart wrenchingly difficult.
And it can be a magnifier for grief. Everybody else is around you except for that one person who you really dearly loved and they are not here. So it kind of magnifies the loss in a lot of ways, and that can be really very difficult. For some people, the grief around not having children can be magnified at Christmas time. Christmas is often a little bit about the kids, which is fun. But for people without kids, Christmas can feel a little bit too quiet, a little bit lonely and that sense of maybe a failure or loss or grief can really raise its head.
And then there's another aspect to grief. So grief for parents who have separated can be a bit tricky at Christmas time. Sometimes what Christmas looks like for people with children and an ex-partner, Christmas can be quite dislocated. Sometimes it's a year in year out affair, which feels, you know, fair, but still hard. Sometimes it's a split the day affair, like I have them until midday, you have them for the afternoon. Something like that. Other families wanna go interstate and so, you know, occasionally there's a just a little bit of a non-negotiable. I'm taking the kids to visit nana and granddad in the country and you can't have them this Christmas. It often is a really a difficult time if someone doesn't have their kids with them for Christmas.
And I remember a couple of Christmas days where I was really at a loss with what to do with myself. My kids were not with me, so I'd try things like I'd go out into the garden and pull weeds, you know, do a bit of angry gardening, as they say, which was really often fantastic. But on Christmas Day, it's kind of hard to be in the public eye by yourself. And my neighbors would, you know, wander out to their car and they'd say, oh, Caroline, what are you doing out here? It's Christmas day. I am like, yep, I don't have the kids this Christmas. And so I'm just doing some gardening and, and, and, you know, that would be the extent of the conversation.
A couple of times I was very kindly invited to other people's houses for Christmas day, which is, you know, I really love my neighbors, so thank thank you to my neighbors for doing that for me once or twice. But not everyone's in that position and so that, that can be really hard.
Now another tricky thing about Christmas is the number of decisions we have to make. Decisions about where to be, how to get there, what to take all the presents to bring, the end of the year kind of decisions. Are we gonna have a holiday, how much can I spend on it? And decision fatigue I think is a really big thing around Christmas time. And I think it's one of the reasons why people don't really love buying for Christmas.
Because if you don't really know Auntie Flo that well, you know, what are you gonna buy her? and those kind of decisions or even perhaps for the people that we really do know really well, we really want them to have a beautiful Christmas. And so we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make a good decision about what to buy them. And that can be really hard. And the overwhelm that comes with lots of decisions can be hard, especially for people who are a little bit neurodivergent or a lot neurodivergent. So if you have autism or if you have ADHD, all of those processes around getting yourself somewhere on Christmas day, taking everything, not forgetting anything, can all be really quite overwhelming.
And then meeting lots of people who you only see once a year. Also very overwhelming, and sometimes just the amount of stimulus that happens on Christmas day can be really overwhelming. Not to mention the food.
My number nine reason to hate Christmas. Now food is a touchy issue for many, many people. And if people use food as a means of regulating, you know, having to be faced with, you know, tables and tables of food and the pressure around maybe not binging or maybe if you're an under eater, maybe having to eat and being seen to eat all of these things, especially for eating disordered clients, or people who have issues around food, that can be really, really tough. Also, the food and perfectionism comes in again here because if we're taking things somewhere, we want it to be the best that we've ever made. So the perfectionism and food can come in there.
So my last reason to hate Christmas is a bit more of an ethical one. And lots of people find that they really struggle with this. And the issue is the commercialization of Christmas. So the never ending ads, all of the Christmas decorations that come out into the shops like, you know, in October and the pressure to buy things . Yeah. And all this stuff that will end, just end up in landfill. So the idea that a lot of what we do is actually just waste and that element of waste, especially for someone like me who is quite thrifty and just hates to have things just wasted I guess all of the little bits of plastic and lots of wrapping paper. It can be almost a little bit distressing, certainly distasteful. So all the commercialization of Christmas and the pressure to spend stuff and the idea that most of what we spend it on will just end up in landfill anyway, is really, you know, quite a hard thing to swallow.
So I know that today has been just a little bit of a moan about Christmas, just a big old complaining session. And I haven't spoken about EMDR, not once, but of course, EMDR can help with all of these issues and especially with the family issues.
So if you have memories that are making Christmas tricky, then I would definitely suggest you find your way to an EMDR therapist.
But aside from that. There are a few ways that you can make Christmas a little bit easier for yourself. So try and put things off until the new year. If you don't have to make those plans, just put them off until the new year. Just allow yourself a little bit of space, a little bit of grace around that.
Allow the perfectionism to drop. Maybe just say This is gonna be an experiment. How little can I think about Christmas and still get away with it? Do I need to spend all of that money on presents, you know, maybe do a Chris Cringle instead of buying for everybody in the family? By gift vouchers instead of actual gifts. Like in Australia, we have like the Westfields vouchers, so you know, that's a voucher for a big shopping centre so that you can basically go take yourself shopping on a voucher. It's not personal, but it can be a really effective way to shop because people then actually get what they want.
So there're just a couple of suggestions. I'm sure you will find your own way to a more peaceful, more restful Christmas and , if you don't celebrate Christmas, then holiday period. I do hope you get a bit of rest. I will speak to you again next week, and then I'm gonna take a couple of weeks off from my duties in my podcasting.
So, I'll talk to you again next week, and then again, probably mid-January. So all the best for a peaceful, restful holiday season. I will talk to you soon. Until then, take good care. Bye for now.
