I feel like acknowledging that this time is not necessarily easy for many people, let alone anything but "merry", is a relatively new concept in society.
As with any irregular event or activity, it's sometimes hard to remember aspects of it compared to what we do repeatedly all the time, day in / out.
So, in some respects, I've felt like this 'allowance' to feel how we actually feel - whatever that may be - at this time, is perhaps something society as a whole needs annual reminding of.
As is the case with those of us who dislike this 'festive' season.
Perhaps we need to be 'allowed' again, each year, to be true to ourselves, feel however we feel.
One way that just worked for me is reading posts like these. Not the biggest fan of talking (or writing) being helpful in and of itself. But, in this case, simply reading that others feel similarly to me reminds me I'm not total abnormal and somehow helps me allow myself to feel and be the way I am. Not suffer all the pressures and expectations without any consideration for my reality. My truth.
As for strategies, pretty much every day is the same for me. That has its merits, and yet is not an absolute panacea. However, keeping the whole end of December / Jan phase as normal as possible is what I am going for.
Part of that is getting to a cafe, alone, on the laptop for a couple of hours. That's where I am at least met by familiar faces in the form of the staff. On dec 25, the regular cafe is closed but I'm pleased to see, of recent years, several other places are open. There's also gym, however minimally I can manage that at present, it's at least open.
Inevitably, for me, I get to 'the other side' - after all the clutching to whatever normality I can get, just wanting to avoid all those looking forward to big celebrations, etc - and probably will have some sort of reckoning. It's one thing to 'get through', and aiming for exactly that is perfectly legitimate. But I may then suffer feelings of frustration, at best, that such 'coping' mechanisms were required and that I didn't really "live" the days.
This time around I expect such regretful feelings might be less likely as I'm suffering chronic pain and that has a tendency, for me at least, to cut expectations down to zero. It's hard to regret what you know was not really possible. Feeling "merry" whilst juggling pain medications and their side effects is not really a reasonable expectation for me. So hopefully I'll allow myself to recognise there was little opportunity to feel merry and that will hopefully ward off regrets.That and having a bunch of medical appts, first thing in Jan, to consider.
