Holidays: An emotional mixed bag

This weekly column seeks to help educate our community about emotional healing through grief. People may write questions to Golden Willow Retreat and they will be answered privately to you and possibly as a future article for others. Please list a first name that grants permission for printing.

Dear Dr. Ted:

I feel like we just made it through Thanksgiving and now we are already moving into every other holiday. I really don’t see myself as a holiday person but I am amazed at the emotional toll it seems to be having on me this year. How do I work with this melancholy of holidays?

Thanks, Gary

Dear Gary:

I can relate to your sentiments of the holidays and maybe more this year than other years. This evening is the start of Chanukah which ends on the evening of Dec. 18, then we have Christmas Eve on the 24th followed by Christmas on the 25th with Kwanzaa on the 26th through Jan. 1, 2021. Oh yes, that would mean there is also New Year’s Eve and New Year’s. This quick list does not even include holidays such as the Winter Solstice, Boxing Day, Omisoka and others that I don’t know about that happen around the world. There is an amazing condensation of spiritual and chronological rituals and ceremonies as the year comes to an end. This year, 2020, has brought in so many different factors that have dismantled the rituals people have become accustomed to consciously and unconsciously. With the pandemic, time has become less tangible as it seems to move so fast and so slow at the very same time!

Gathering is such an enormous part of holidays and rituals, as it is a time to be a community, set aside differences and gather as human beings. Meals, shopping, embracing family, extended family and friends to show the celebration of life, spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally.

This year we have been caught in the bubble of COVID-19 and these common practices have become dangerous to a deathly level. What has been taken for granted, in the past, has been hijacked and everyday rituals have shifted to concerns for self and others.

Unconscious stimuli have a certain normalization in our psyche as well. Songs on the radio, advertisements, decorations and other stimuli that tells our conscious and unconscious, “tis the season” and sets an emotional atmosphere (positive, negative or neutral) of what you absorb from the environment around you, kind of like the leaves changing color and the temperature changing leading up to winter. As businesses have had to close and social engagements have had to be canceled, the usual stimuli of the seasonal holidays seems to have been muted, and many of your historical ways of navigating the holidays have had to shift.

These disruptions are loss and have their own grief process, in which many people are deep in the anger or protest phase with a high level of agitation as well as sadness. This year, more than any other year I know, there is a demand to be safe and conscious about how to navigate the holidays.

Finding new rituals, even if temporary, that are healthy for you and the community can help ease the discomfort of the void that is palpable right now. No matter whether you participate in these holidays or not, the environmental stimuli has shifted, being aware of these changes can help decrease irritation and anger, while also challenging us to create new ways to help us feel connected with the rest of the world. Honoring your feelings and then finding ways to ease the discomfort in healthy and safe ways is the job of all of us, as this year, being safe is at a crucial state.

I wish you well. Until next week, take care.

Golden Willow Retreat is a nonprofit organization focused on emotional healing and recovery from any type of loss. Direct any questions to Dr. Ted Wiard, EdD, LPCC, CGC, Founder of Golden Willow Retreat GWR@ newmex.com.