Walk On Podcast Episode 68 : How to Get Through the Holidays

In (for lack of a more appropriate term) narcissistic family dynamics “keeping up appearances” is more important than whether or not anyone is actually happy or healthy or having a good time. The Holidays are peak pretending time. Guilt, shame, and control are used in excess, the pressure to spend money and energy nobody has on gifts, decorations, and elaborate meals is suffocating, and let’s not forget the expectation to be around our abusers and play family several times in a short period of time. It’s exhausting, it’s traumatizing, it leaves a mark.

When I went no contact with my family, I thought all the holiday yuckies would go away. I was wrong. Every year I am surprised by the heavy cloud that descends upon me right around the middle of November and doesn’t leave until January 2nd. I am nebulously triggered. It always takes me at least a week of going “what the hell is wrong with me?!” before I remember. I have tried everything. Spoiling myself with hotel visits, avoiding the internet and holiday movie marathons on TV, isolating, getting blackout drunk, popping xans like Santa pops sugar cookies, but I could’’t escape it.

It was way worse when I was still spending Holidays at home, though. Even as I healed and started learning how to lay boundaries, I would crumble as I watched them get trampled all over. I could feel my heartbreak every time I was shown how little my feelings mattered—how vastly more important it was to keep up the illusion. Even as I pulled away, spending Holidays with a partner’s family, having a much better time, I would still have to deal with the post-holiday guilt deluge.

So, being alone to feel my feelings was hard, it was heavy, it was actually kind of a living nightmare the likes of which I thought I would never escape, it was preferable to continuing to be traumatized.

We all have our triggers. Death and losing loved ones can make the holidays hard. Not having a family while everyone else is living it up with theirs can bring on deep waves of grief. A breakup. Simply not having money to buy everyone gifts, not being able to afford to travel home and see your family, or working in retail and having to work through Black Friday sales and be abused by the dregs of human behavior. The list in endless.

Even though we are supposed to be eating, drinking, and making merry, the Holidays, statistically are one of the most depressing times of the year.

So what can we do?

The answer I’ve found along my own journey is self-care, getting to know your boundaries, laying those boundaries, finding joy where you can, making your own traditions with people who really love you, treating yourself in whatever ways you are able, reaching out when you need help, and keeping in mind that this, too, shall pass.

If The Holidays are the most joyful time of year, why do they get people so down? Easy: capitalism and trauma. Here's my Holiday Survival Guide full of coping mechanisms to get through and maybe even enjoy the Holiday season.

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