Its Christmas - so why aren’t we happy?

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Picture by Orange Domino - Deviant art

It’s December and after two years of lockdown, Covid and fear, we have finally made it to December and Christmas is around the corner. So, after hoping and wishing for a pre-Covid Christmas like this, most of us are still low or scared.

What has replaced the fear of Covid is the fear of scarcity and for a lot of us that is a real fear. We are facing a winter of energy poverty, food price rises and strikes. And if that sounds political, well it is. Everyone has the right to have their basic needs met and if that takes protest then I guess that’s what has to happen.

Good mental health is based around security of food, a home, warmth and basic human rights, or just a lack of fear to be honest. MIND and The Rowntree Foundation have done some fascinating research on this.

A quarter of people who are experiencing a common mental health problem also have financial problems which are 3 times more than the general population.

The groups most likely to have been negatively affected by the pandemic are people who were already experiencing mental health problems and living in poverty.

So Christmas is a real mental health issue for some of us and just difficult for many of us.

Three years of fear has impacted everyone’s mental health, and we have become more aware of threats and implied threats. We are more likely, and more quickly, going into fight or flight or even worse freeze. But during the pandemic and lockdown we could not use the fight or flight response, so we are used to being in the freeze state.

Long term freeze feels like lack of motivation, withdrawal, immobility, brain fog, shut down, disconnected, lost and even invisible.  We are just dis-regulated and our brain, well the logical part of it, is not fully online – remember in lockdown for some of us even the easiest decisions became quite difficult. The lack of cognition leads to us slowing down and we then blame ourselves for not being able to react like we could before.

This Christmas we need to be really aware of our mental health and our boundaries.

This includes how much we spend which means setting a budget that does not put us into debt. Debt creates blood pressure issues, conflict, guilt and depression. The perfect Christmas does not exist and is a media fantasy but a good enough Christmas is exactly what it says – good enough.

Have strong boundaries with family and friends for this period and not allowing ourselves to be triggered. Maybe that’s no talk about politics, religion, weight loss/gain or relationships. Or it could be spending just enough time with people for it to be a positive experience.

Boundaries with food are important too. We don’t have to prepare a full Christmas dinner if that’s not what we want or we cannot afford. Have a fuddle, eat what we normally do and just add a few Christmas extras. If we have food allergies or are not a meat eater make sure we make family and friends aware of that and we can even bring our own food if that’s a boundary that people ignore.

We need to have time to be ourselves so we don’t change to fit in to anyone’s Christmas, so if we are an introvert, we do not have to go to all the parties or any of the parties. If we feel sad or are grieving at Christmas, that’s ok, as we must allow ourselves to feel what we feel, and we do not have to be happy or be the life and soul of the party.

Some of us will be alone at Christmas and it can be really lonely time. We need to have a think about what we want to do before hand and that may be a reading a good book or watching a movie or even a taking holiday. But if we want to be with people we can always volunteer for a charity and we will be with others on the big day.

So, this year whatever we do, we need to be really aware of the heightened anxiety we have been living under since 2020 and try hard not to increase that.

Remember it is just two days of the year and they will soon pass.