How to Regain that Balance that Gets Lost During the Holidays

Good evening, This time of year can be challenging for so many of us, I know that for quite some time I have felt this uncomfortable, heavy feeling starting November through the middle of January. But something I didn't realize last year and the years prior is that the reason I was feeling so unusually low during the holiday season was because I was immersed with these false impressions that everyone else had their shit together, having a good time with their families, except for me, that everyone else had these big enormous families that they were so close with and got together with all the time, where no fighting or any problems existed. I bought into this illusion of perfection and it was affecting how I felt about the holidays. But what I didn't know was that it was the Hallmark movies, and even the commercials on TV showing families all sitting down together at the dinner table looking so blissful, that my subconscious absorbed, leading me to believe that something was "off" and that I was the only one out there that felt this way. When I started talking more to people about Christmas, I was surprised to hear how many people felt the same exact way as I did, that they wanted a bigger family and wish that they could spend Christmas differently each year. That it comes way too quickly and it is too repetitive.

This made me realize what the true problem was, it wasn't that I did not like Christmas, it was the constant commercialization shoved in my face 24/7 that made me push away this time of year because of this illusion--that I tried so hard to protect and prevent myself from feeling the emotions that came along with it-- I had about how things should have been and or could have been. I cannot even emphasize enough how disgusted I am by the commercialization of Christmas because it fills our heads with something that we end up believing exists, when what is being portrayed is not realistic at all, our subconscious takes it in and then we believe that our Christmas should look like a Hallmark movie or that TV commercial. It is almost like a brainwashing system, and the show business does not care about what kinds of images or impressions that they are sending out because to them the ends justify the means. In other words, it is okay to make Americans watching at home, buy into this fantasy that simply does not even exist, in order to get people to buy their products.

The fact that the Advertising business makes commercials like this just for marketing to drive up sales, not because they portray how real American families look and appear, this fact alone is mind-boggling to me. I really wish that Christmas was not so commercialized the way that it is, because it is no wonder that so many people suffer with mental health issues during this season because this over-glorified standard of how Christmas should be and what it should look like is constantly being stored and flashed into our mind through subliminal messages. These are stimuli, flashed so fast that it didn't make the connection to our conscious mind, but your subconscious mind got it, affecting your behavior and how you feel. So they affect you without you even knowing it and without having the knowledge of what they are. As I was saying, when our Christmas doesn't look like how it does in the movies, like one family sitting together harmoniously, looking like they wouldn't wanna be anywhere else, we start to wonder why our actual Christmas looks like and perhaps even feels like anything less than that hyped up version of Christmas that we try so hard to attain. Maybe your parents are divorced and your dad starts dating someone new and she is verbally abusive to you or maybe you have a small family or maybe you are not really close with your extended family or maybe you don't have any grandparents that are still living or maybe you recently lost your grandparent and it is the first Christmas without them. Whatever the case may be, just because we feel that someone else has glory and we are lost in our own perpetual loop of disappointment after disappointment, or grief after grief, does not mean that everyone else has glory and is 100% happy with their lives or with even themselves for that matter. Most of the time, what I have realized is the people who seem like they have it all, are usually missing something. Sometimes they are the unhappiest, I mean after all it would be very exhausting trying to prove how great your life is to those around you just to cover up a deeper wound inside.

To be honest with you all, I still sometimes feel exhausted dealing with obstacle after obstacle in my life. They do not really serve as no surprise to me anymore because I have been accustomed to living with trial after trial. I find myself feeling kind of sad, that most of the time there never really seems to be any in-between time, it feels as though they just pile on. But, at times it can be very hard in realizing that some things are only for a season, and everything happens for a reason and that nothing lasts forever. I still struggle with that part, but as someone who understands the troubling emotions that sometimes accompany us during the Christmas season, I want to tell you all, it is not really about how many possessions you have, if you are still single and cannot seem to hold onto relationships, how close you are with your sister or brother, how many different cookies you can bake, or creating the fantasy Christmas in your mind and trying to force it the way you think it should be, It should not be about any of those things, I want to challenge you to open up your mind to other things that can make Christmas enjoyable; maybe it is your dog Polly or seeing the Christmas lights in your subdivision/town, listening to Nat King Cole, Karen Carpenter, or Bing Crosby, or getting to play Pictionary with your cousins on Christmas Eve. Do not limit yourself to unreasonable, idealistic, expectations that you already know are unattainable. Be easy on yourself and challenge your beliefs this Christmas and realize that Christmas is not about if you get the iPhone X or flat screen TV, it is about spending time with your family, in spite of the problems.

#Christmastime #holidayblues #holidaystress #unrealisticexpectations