This time of year, you turn on any talk show, read many a blog or even a newspaper article and you hear about stress, sadness and the holidays. This is certainly understandable because it is a stressful time of year filled with pressure, and more than ever, a financial drain.
Having said that, I can certainly discuss the urge to drink and drug (in an effort to self-medicate or act on your disease). I can discuss the breathing techniques and meditations, the guided imageries, and mindfulness exercises that certainly help - but let me try something different this time around. Let's try some reality therapy.
Look folks, we have tremendous stress around the world and troops in dangerous places. We have what still feels like a recession to this clinician and yet we need to be cheerful and fill our hearts with joy and happiness in the name of "peace on earth - good will to man." Let us try a dose of reality which always seems to work.
You have every right to feel stressful and worried and want to escape with a drink or a drug - the problem with escaping is you always have to return to reality sooner or later and if you have an addiction then you have a primary, progressive, chronic, and if not treated fatal disease.
So let us try reality from the start. Let us really listen to what the lyrics in the songs we sing truly stand for - what they attempt to convey.
I am sorry to say that man has always known war, worry, doubt, fear, anxiety, depression, rage, etc., we always will in this author's opinion. Yet, and it is indeed a big yet, we must try to get in touch with our inner spiritual consciousness - that magical sphere of a larger understanding of the world and our place in the world.
I for one truly love life. I love the spring, the fall, the summer and the winter - and when the air becomes crisp and the snow starts to fall in my neck of the woods, and the various cultural entities celebrate their respective holidays which each come with their own wonderful customs, I become like a kid in a candy store.
As a practicing Jew, I love potato latkes and dreidles. More recently, I've enjoyed that funny song about the holiday by Adam Sandler. But I also love Christmas lights and store windows and candy canes and trees and all the other holiday traditions that come with this time of year.
Do I get depressed and anxious - stressed out and sad this time of year? Yes indeed!
My father died 14 years ago -- two days before Christmas and during Chanukah. However, it became such a symbol for me.
Every time the holidays roll around I think of how much I miss him, but also what I miss. This is a metaphor for the secret of reality therapy to deal with all your woes at this time of year. Deal with reality - like the reality of loss - but try to remember the good things that make you regret the loss and then go on to rejoice. This is true mindfulness.
Go with reality! Don't push it away with alcohol and drugs or acting out behavior. Look at the reality of the world and realize that you are alive and that you need to be grateful because you can feel - don't be afraid of your feelings. Let your feelings wash over you and watch how your mood will change - don't give power to your anxieties, but let go and watch them fall as you become joyful in simply "being."
