Say Goodbye To The Holiday Blues

By: Natasha Horsley, MS, LPC

The holidays are upon us and some of us are in joyful anticipation, while others are getting ready for a test of endurance. As we get older the holidays become associated with work, as well as rejuvenation, with loss as well as gratitude, and with the journey ended as well as a journey begun. People suffer because they think "if this is supposed to be about giving, why am I feeling greedy?" "If this is supposed to be about love, why isn't my partner, my child, my mother here anymore?"

It is the innocent who see only birth, love, gratitude. It is the suffering who sees only death, loss, hypocrisy. The rest of us struggle with the in between nature of life, trying to make sense of a life that is about living and dying, gratitude and anger; love and fear, wealth and deprivation.

Our culture does not teach us how to understand the "gray" between the "black" and "white" of life. "All or nothing" ideas about life are more sensational, more marketable. Buy this and you will be happy. Eat this and you will be happy. Spend more and you will be happy. Get thinner and you will be happy. Succeed and you will be happy. If you're not, it's not our fault, so don't come looking for a refund!

At the TEMENOS Center, we have a different view of happiness. Like our logo, the labyrinth, we believe the journey is as important as the destination. There is no "magic pill" to create happiness, instead we must be willing to learn to truly love others and ourselves. Love is a journey of twists and turns. Sometimes, along this route, it even feels as though we are going backwards instead of forwards, which means that this way requires patience and persistence. Other times, however, when we let go of control, we find surprising turns that lead to unexpected joy. This, as Robert Frost says, is the path less traveled. Less traveled, that is, because it's so much more tempting to look for "magic pills."

This is the path that we, at the TEMENOS Center, invite you to travel with us this holiday season, and into the new millennium. Instead of working so hard to make everyone else's holiday perfect (and becoming depressed and exhausted in the process), take an hour a week to learn how to love yourself, so that your love for others becomes rejuvenating, rather than depleting. Learn how to take care of yourself first, so that what you give to others is given freely, without resentment or strings. Learn how to eat only when you are hungry, instead of when you are lonely, angry or tired, so that you will find pleasure in what you have eaten, instead of frustrating with the typical holiday weight gain.

Learn to love ourselves so that we can more fully love others is part of life's most important spiritual work. This work is about understanding the polarities, the black and white, within us, so that we can accept the whole of who we are, and discover how to balance. It's about figuring out what depresses us, so we can figure out what truly gladdens us. It's about figuring out what makes us want to scream, so that we can figure out what makes us have an uproarious belly laugh. And it's about figuring out what we are truly responsible for, so we can figure out when to let go.

This work is best done with a guide. As they say on television stunt shows, "Do not try this at home." Being objective about ourselves is hard, and it's easy to swing in an "all or nothing" direction. A therapist can help you find the balance that you weren't even sure existed. Like a pilot teaching a student how to fly, a therapist can teach you how to fly high, but not so high that you get burned by the sun, and to fly low, but not so low you're in danger of crashing.

Call us today, so that this holiday season you might find that your best present is peace of mind.

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