Christmas joy or Christmas duty?

Christmas is a time associated with happiness and laughter; time away from your usual routine to spend with family and friends. But Christmas can be a time of dread, despair or depression if you don’t have a family or don’t get on with them. Perhaps throughout the year your support network is your friends, but they are with their families for the festive break. If you have lost someone close to you through bereavement or divorce, the Christmas holidays are a miserable time.

Christmas for many people can be the most stressful time of the year. Most families experience disharmony at times and how serious that disharmony is will often depend on how solid the bond between family members is. Conflict is often a consequence of spending a lot of time with people you don’t see often and maybe you have little in common with. Different values, different personalities, past misunderstandings can all add to tension and friction over the Christmas period.
Family dynamics can be particularly tricky during the holiday period when there is a lot of pressure to be jovial and to enjoy quality time together. Unresolved problems between family members can be reignited in an artificially close and confined environment.

The financial strain of Christmas can cause stress and anxiety too, as families struggle to please or meet the expectation of others to provide gifts, outings and copious amounts of food and alcohol. Many people spend more than they can afford to, running up bills on credit cards and causing a problem into the New Year and beyond.

Days of drinking and close contact with relatives and spouses who you don’t normally spend so much time with can trigger conflict, violence and break-ups. Domestic abuse increases over the holiday period and many divorces are instigated in the New Year when individuals or couples recognise that they no longer love or like their spouse. I often hear clients say that they ‘have to’ spend time with family members they can barely tolerate or that they have no choice about what they do at Christmas, but this is untrue.

The good news is that we always have a choice, even if those choices are tricky or uncomfortable. You can choose to do something different this year and if a different option this year will leave you less stressed, why not? Or if you choose to do the same as usual, maybe you can choose to feel differently about it..? If you want to make some changes, but you’d like help to build your confidence, get in touch.