Mind Matters: Help with holidays

Sure, sure, sure, I have written about holiday stressors many times before. However, just as holidays return every year, it can’t hurt to revisit some of the stresses they conjure and also what might help to allay those stresses. It’s sort of like old recipes — we know them, but we forget them and so we need to go back to the cookbook or the spilled-on index card from a beloved ancestor to rekindle our memory.

For starters, there is the stress of travel. If we travel for Thanksgiving, it doesn’t matter if it is by plane, or train, or auto. There probably will be stress. Traffic can be horrendous. Just knowing that can be helpful. When we can, at some level, accept the “it is, what it is,” we have taken the first step to emotional regulation.

Would that the stress of travel were the end of it. Holidays bring to the surface all sorts of buried hurts. Meanwhile, the media and merchandise mythology has it that we are all smiles in our matching pajamas.

Not all of us have fond memories of childhood. Some remember parents fighting at Christmastime, or dad’s drunken fit when he knocked down the Christmas tree. Others may remember when a mother would try to do it all and end up sick in bed. If there have been family cutoffs where factions of the family are not speaking to each other, holidays make the divide all the more apparent. The old festering angers don’t go away with the smell of cinnamon or pine boughs.

Sadness and grief are not erased during holidays either. In fact, the festivities of the holidays put grief in sharp relief. New losses of someone close are the most difficult. However, even years later, the loss of a spouse or a parent or a child or any significant person in your life can still engender a grief response. I do remember the first year after my parents died (within months of each other), I felt a deep hole in my stomach at Christmastime. What we did that Christmas was to drive five hours to a friend’s house in the Virginia countryside. My family and I were grieving, but we upended our usual traditions and did something entirely different. It helped not to do our usual traditions, which would have been hollow. We could return to them the next year.

Allow me to offer some suggestions for coping with the stress of holidays. Recognize your feelings of anger, or sadness, or frustration, or whatever they may be. Acknowledging them is important in being able to calm yourself down. There are numerous strategies for really taking note of your feelings and being able to calm down. One thing to do is to literally “take note.” Writing down what you are experiencing in the moment and taking twenty minutes or so to do a “free write” is amazingly freeing. The psychologist James Pennebaker has documented how valuable a tool is this sort of writing.

Also calming is taking a 10-minute walk — longer is great — especially in nature.

Know that whatever family issues were there before the holidays aren’t going to go away during the holidays. The holidays may only exacerbate the tension already there. If you do want to discuss any difficulties, remember the following: What is the truth you want to speak? Is it necessary to speak this truth? When is the proper time (when there is calm) to speak this truth? Can you speak your truth with kindness? This is “right speech.”

Also consider, rather than running away from our sadness in the season due to some loss, honor them instead. Remember your loved ones in a special way — a prayer, a place at the table, a picture.

It is interesting that some religions and cultures (for example, the Mexican Day of the Dead) especially remember the ancestors in November. How befitting a time to do that before the holidays come to help us face the dark of winter with a celebration of light.

About Kayta Gajdos

Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.

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