The Therapy Edit - Confessions - I'm dreading Christmas this year, the first since my husband left

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Today Anna tackles a new anonymous Confession from the Therapy Room;"I am dreading Christmas this year. My first since my husband left. My kids are already counting down but I want to go to bed, open my eyes, and it be over."Anna replies with some compassionate advice and tips that will help everyone, regardless of whether they can relate to this confession or not.Do you have an Ask Anna question you'd like to submit for future episodes? Or an anonymous confession? Visit the website to learn how Please note - the names and voices of some of the Ask Anna/Confessions contributors may have been changed at their request.

Welcome to The Therapy Edit. I'm your host, Psychotherapist and author Anna Martha. I will be bringing you bite-sized episodes twice a week full of tips, wise words from expert guests and insights to support your mental well-being. Hello and welcome to today's episode of The Therapy Edit where I answer one of your confessions from the therapy room. These are anonymous confessions that you type into my website. You don't have to put your name. or anything, a little space for you to share the thing that you don't necessarily feel comfortable sharing. And in this 10 minute episode, what I do is I share some of my therapeutic thoughts for you because as it always is, despite the fact that so often it does not feel this way, you will not be the only one. And also, even if people listening do not necessarily relate to the certain

circumstances that we share in this confession, there will absolutely be tips and insights that feel really relevant to you. So the confession that I am going to talk through today is this. I am dreading Christmas this year. My first since my husband left. My kids are already counting down, but I want to go to bed, open my eyes and it be over. Now, oh, I think my heart just felt that heaviness for this person, that heaviness and that expectation of just feeling like you have to present yourself in a certain way. Maybe you have to put on a happy face, join in with things that actually you really do not feel like doing. You just want to hit fast forward.

You just want to climb into bed. The weight of wearing a mask is really heavy. sometimes and maybe you do not resonate with this particular situation but perhaps you're facing Christmas this year knowing that actually you're really missing someone and it's just going to feel so evident that there's an empty chair around the dinner table maybe you're facing Christmas this year and you are feeling burdened with stress or overwhelm or sadness or just just life being too much. And actually, it just feels like Christmas is going to be a time where

you have to pick self up, plow on through, regardless of how you're really feeling. Well, I'm going to share some thoughts with you. First of all, know that lots of people are going to be feeling this in ways that grief, exhaustion, the complexity of relationships. Maybe you know that you're going to go into Christmas and there is a certain relationship that you're going to have to navigate that requires you just to keep the peace and internalize feelings, maybe sit there whilst you're feeling quite misunderstood and there are so many things that you would quite like to say, maybe you're having those conversations in your head as you go to bed, but you know that it will just disrupt Christmas for everyone. So you're choosing to internalise

those things. So lots of people are going to be feeling this in some way in that pressure to feel exciting, excited and festive and maybe to be excited and bring the excitement. That feels really heavy sometimes. So first of all, I really recommend that you amend expectations in an age appropriate way. Maybe you choose to feel honest with your kids. Maybe you say something like, know what? I'm feeling quite sad because everything feels different. And it can be hard to feel excited sometimes. So this year, we're going to have a slightly quieter Christmas. So what this does, it just removes the pressure to fake it. And it actually allows us when we do that when we remove the pressure of ourselves to bring the joy, bring the excitement, bring the energy,

it actually allows us to be a little bit more where we are, be a little bit more authentic. And as we remove the pressure of ourselves to be a certain way, it actually has this amazing side effect of allowing us to be more open to those joyful moments. Because when we're tensing ourselves against the reality of what is, we're also bracing ourselves against allowing us to soften into and lean into the moments that are joyful. This actually reminds me of time of grief. where it just felt so hard to be happy.

So I just allowed myself not to be happy when I wasn't happy. And the best thing about this was that it actually enabled me to experience more joyful moments because I wasn't just trying so hard and putting on a front and, yeah, and actually it meant that I was just more honest and open with people. And as what happens when we do that is we release some of this emotion and instead of just internalising it and shoving down some of that grief or shoving down some of that overwhelm as you're talking it through,

you're letting it go and it can feel excruciating sometimes. It can feel like talking about it, it's going to change nothing. But emotions really are energy and we can choose to internalize them and push them down, but they then sit within us. Think about how good you can feel after a good cry. And that really is because when we let go of emotion, there is a chemical, there is a chemical response. You know, we are letting go. And as we release some of this stress and this cortisol and we talk things through, what we're paving the way for is some of

the hormones that come with connection. Maybe it's oxytocin because you've actually offloaded to a friend or someone who really cares about you. Maybe you've just had a good cry and you're paving the way for serotonin and some happy hormones because it really can feel better. So lean in to those moments and know that they will be more, they will come across more often when you are releasing that pressure of yourself to be happy and put on that mask, that heavy mask. Another tip that I want to share with you is outsource the joy. Who in your life has capacity at the moment to bring the excitement that you can't bring? Maybe you look around for some kid-focused Christmas events that you can go to or family that you can visit, that uncle that

is just constantly, he's like the big kid. Let other people bring the joy. Outsource the joy remove the pressure off yourself to bring that joy. We love a Christmas event. We're going to one at the weekend. We've started earlier. We've already done our school Christmas festivities in the middle of November. Actually, when you're going through a hard time, just going to play a This is where your kids can get all festive and do fun things, and you could just sit with a cup of tea and just have a moment. You know, it's okay not to be the bringer of joy all the time. So the next one is making sure that you have time to process the big things.

Grief, and that grief, it might not be around losing someone. It might just be around grief. You know, for this person that has confessed that they're dreading Christmas this year, it might be grief that actually things are not as you hope they would be at this point in your life or at this point in the year. And it takes time to grieve. And actually when there's so much going on, we don't have the time and the space to process stuff. So make sure that you are allowing yourself space to reflect. You're allowing yourself space to feel without always numbing it or without always distracting yourself because it just does not feel appropriate in the moment.

Where can you process things that you tuck away when the kids are about? Who can you call? Can you journal? Can you have a time in the evening where you just let yourself be? Cry if you need to. Rant to a friend if you need to. Make sure that you are having pockets of time to process and not have to wear that mask.

The next tip is thinking about what do you? you need and how can you get some of that as you are probably the one that is providing normality and stability for your children what do you need is it familiarity is it a calm Christmas as we've already said managing those expectations and remembering that it doesn't have to be that just because this Christmas feels calmer this is how it's going to be forever sometimes we need to remind ourselves and our children that sometimes life is just challenging and it means that we have to hunker down a little bit and just do things a little bit calmer and quieter and that's okay because what we're doing is we're getting through this and next year it might feel really

different. It might feel really different. We might get to do more things and but actually sometimes this is just what we need to do for this season of our life. So what do you need? Do you need to cut corners? Are there things that you can outsource, outsource roles, tasks? You know, friends and family at this point will probably hopefully want to do things to support you. So how can you actually allow them to? We know how hard it is to watch as people that we love go through those challenging times and it makes us feel really good to help. So if you've got a family member or a friend that say, you know what, come and just come and spend Christmas with us. It can feel so easy to say no. It can feel so easy to fear being a burden on people, but we have to trust that if people

are offering, it's their responsibility to be offering authentically. So what might it be like to actually accept some of those offers of support? And my final tip is as you take the pressure off yourself to enjoy and be happy and bring the excitement, as you find ways to amend expectations and outsource it and find those pockets where you are able to drop the mask. Just be open to the little glimmers. The little glimmers of joy that actually might feel quite unremarkable. And maybe in years gone by, as things have felt like a tornado wrapping paper in family or just excitement that actually were overlooked,

just be open to those little glimmers, the moments of just joy that you've seen of children's faces or maybe that little moment where you're just on the sofa wrapped up in a blanket. And you look around you and you think, you know what? This is good right now. Right now. This is good. Instead of looking for the good all the time, look for the good in the moment.

And what that happens, it just inspires a little bit of joy that can fuel you on. So I'm sending love to anyone who is approaching this Christmas season, wishing they could hit fast forward, wishing they could just yeah we're all into bed I hope that those little tips are helpful for you thank you for listening to the therapy edit today if you enjoyed it please do take a sec to like and subscribe so we can share the words further and wider if you have an ask anna question or an anonymous confession for the confessions from the therapy room episodes head to annamartha.com

and click on the podcast tab to submit want more grab a copy of my most recent book the uncomfortable truth. Change your life by taming 10 of your mind's greatest fears or enjoy some of the video and downloadable resources on my website, tackling everything from burnout to driving anxiety. So until the next episode, goodbye.