• Finances. Not enough money or the fear of not having enough to buy gifts leads to sadness and guilt. The stress of financial hardship during this economic downturn is often compounded by shame. When you can’t afford to celebrate it can feel devastating.
• Stress. The stress of shopping and planning family dinners when you’re already overworked and tired can be overwhelming.
• Loneliness. A whopping 43 percent of Americans are single, and 27 percent of Americans live alone. When others are with their families, it can be very painful for those who are alone. Seventeen percent of singles are over 65, when health, age, and mobility can make it more difficult to enjoy yourself.
• Grief. Missing a deceased loved one is painful at any age, but seniors have more reasons to grieve.
• Estrangement. When you’re not speaking to a relative, family get-togethers can usher in feelings of sadness, guilt, resentment, or inner conflict about whether to communicate.
• Divorce. If you’re newly divorced, the holidays may remind you of happier times and accentuate your grief. It’s especially difficult for adult children of divorce who have to balance seeing two sets of parents. The stress is multiplied for married children who have three or even four sets of parents to visit.
• Pleasing. Trying to please all of your relatives – deciding what to get, whom to see, and what to do – can make you feel guilty and like you’re not doing enough, which leads to depression.
• SAD. Many people experience the blues during gloomy weather due to decreased sunlight, called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Much of the planning, shopping, and cooking is done by women, so they carry the greater burden in preparing for family gatherings. Women are at twice the risk for depression than men. After heart disease, depression is the most debilitating illness for women, while it’s tenth for men. To read more on this, see Depression in Women.

Some measures you can take to cope with the holiday blues include:

• Make plans in advance, so you know how and with whom your holidays will be spent. Uncertainty and putting off decision-making add enormous stress.
• Shop early and allow time to wrap and mail packages to avoid the shopping crunch.
• Ask for help from your family and children. Women tend to think they have to do everything, when a team effort can be more fun.
• Shame prevents people from being open about gift-giving when they can’t afford it. Instead of struggling to buy a gift, let your loved ones know how much you care and would like to, but can’t afford it. That intimate moment will relieve your stress and nourish you both.
• Don’t allow perfectionism to wear you down. Remember it’s being together and goodwill that matters.
• Make time to rest and rejuvenate even amid the pressure of getting things done. This will give you more energy.
• Research has shown that warmth improves mood. If you’re sad or lonely, treat yourself to a warm bath or cup of hot tea.
• Spend time alone to reflect and grieve, if necessary. Pushing down feelings leads to depression. Let yourself feel. Then do something nice for yourself and socialize.
• Don’t isolate. Reach out to others who also may be lonely. If you don’t have someone to be with, volunteer to help those in need. It can be very uplifting and gratifying.

The signs of depression are feelings of sadness, worthlessness or guilt, crying, loss of interest in usual activities, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability, social withdrawal, and changes in sleep, weight, or appetite. If these symptoms are severe or continue for a few weeks, more than the holidays may be the cause. Seek professional help.

After weeks, maybe even months, of decorating, shopping and wrapping, baking, visiting and being visited, the whole thing is over in a day or two. Suddenly, the display that seemed so essential to get up on the house looks just wrong. The tree is dropping needles. The house that was so sparkling clean before Christmas now decidedly needs a good vacuuming. How’d that happen? Yeah. Kids and dogs and visitors are a household demolition derby. If that weren’t enough, you’re trying to make peace with the fact that your sister gave you soap when you gave her a lovely sweater and the uncle you spent so much agonizing time making a vegan dish for decided not to even stop by. It’s hard to stay in that twinkly holiday mood when it feels so over.

It’s not that unusual. Some studies show as many as 25 percent of Americans suffer from low-grade to full-blown depression after the holidays. The hype and excitement and, yes, expectation, for jolliness buoy up many in the buildup to the Big Day. But then expectations hit reality. Relatives aren’t always kind. Gifts aren’t given and received in the spirit intended. The fantasy that maybe this year will be different is dashed yet again. It’s hard for even the most resilient not to feel a letdown. For those who are prone to depression anyway, the weeks after a holiday can feel like the emotional rug has been pulled out from them.

Yes, there are some things to do about it.

If you are taking antidepressants: This is not the time to stop. You may feel they aren’t doing their job but it’s also possible that things would be much worse if you weren’t taking them at all. Confer with your psychiatrist.

If you are in therapy: Make sure you talk about what is bothering you. Your therapist can’t help you if you skirt around issues or if, in some misguided attempt not to bother the therapist too much, you don’t tell her how bad you feel. If things are feeling really grim, you might want to ask for an extra appointment.

Whether in treatment or not:

Take care of yourself. From Halloween to New Year’s, Americans tend to redefine the basic food groups to sugar, fats, sugar, and sometimes alcohol. “Enough” is redefined as “stuffed.” Get back to a healthy diet with reasonable portions. Add a walk at least once a day and a more regular bedtime. Regular routines of self-care may have disappeared over the past month but you can reclaim them.

Take a meditative few minutes a couple times a day. Focus on what did go right over the holidays. It’s an old-fashioned idea but “counting your blessings” is an antidote to the blues.

Kids home for the week? They may be exuberant. They may be demanding. Kids are. Often their overactivity is a bid for attention. If you give them attention in a way that is pleasant for you as well, they may well settle down. Get down on the floor and enjoy kid time. Play with the blocks and Legos. Help the kids make a fort or tent with the couch cushions. Read together. Mostly be grateful that they are OK and want to play with you.

Call a friend. Steer the conversations away from a festival of complaints and commiseration to a lively conversation of what has been going well and what you can laugh about. Sharing humor is a great way to lift the spirits.

Make a pact with yourself to do something small but positive for yourself at least five times a day. Stay in that hot shower a few extra minutes. Get nicely dressed and comb your hair. Make the bed up clean. Straighten up your kitchen. Make yourself a cup of tea and let yourself have 10 minutes to savor it.

Give yourself the gift of giving to someone else. It’s transformative to do those random acts of kindness. Whether it’s a call to one of the older relatives who doesn’t get much attention or taking food to a shut-in, focusing on someone else’s needs has the paradoxical effect of helping the giver.

Arrange things to look forward to. The holidays aren’t the end of life as we know it. They are only the end of the holidays. It’s time to shift the focus to everyday things that give us pleasure. Make a coffee date with a friend or a movie date with your spouse. Turn the kids’ thinking to what will happen in school over the next few months.

Give yourself an attitude transplant. If being one of those who looks at the world through mud-covered glasses has never worked for you, why continue it? Take charge of your life and your mood by doing any number of the ideas listed above and adding some of your own.

Still grieving the holidays? Wait a week or two. The stores will be filling up with Valentine decorations and candy. Start planning a Valentine’s blowout now.

• Terminology. When you think about goal setting, you realize that it’s a process and that requires effort to reach your target; a resolution is a decision or intention. It has to be more than a wish, but it’s only the first step in reaching a goal. There’s no implication that planning or effort is involved. It’s as if saying it makes it so. Naturally, it doesn’t. Change isn’t easy. Instead of making several New Year’s “resolutions,” make one you can keep, and it will give you confidence that you can do more.
• Motivation. Change requires work. To be motivated, your heart has to be in it. To realize your goals and resolutions, you must be inspired and really want to make the effort necessary to leave your comfort zone. Inspiration infuses you with energy and power. It stimulates your creativity, promises a better future, or connects you to a larger purpose. It fills you with positive emotions that overcome fear and inertia. Love mobilizes parents to work hard and protect their children, disregarding their own comfort and safety. For change to last, make sure your motive expresses your true self and fosters your highest good. Your goal must be congruent with your core beliefs. Resolutions to make changes for someone else’s approval, for monetary gain, or because you think you “should” are hard to sustain.
• Self-Discipline. In addition to desire and motivation, you need self-discipline. It’s been said that success is 99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration. Change requires focus and sustained effort before results are noticeable. The process is not a straight path, but a spiral of movement forward, slips, stagnation, and leaps ahead. It’s easy to get discouraged and be swayed by the pull of habit. Expect to feel discomfort. You may feel confused, awkward, or anxious. Studies show that on average that changing habits requires at least two months of vigilant monitoring, and they still sneak up on you. Be patient. Continue to exert your willpower, and over time your persistence will pay off.

For years, every January I’d make resolutions and set goals for the coming year. Twelve months later, I’d see if I’d accomplished them, never considering the “how to” middle part. Of course, “good intentions” didn’t get me very far. Here are five tips that I’ve learned:

1. Create an action plan. I’d get overwhelmed and lose confidence when I thought about a major goal. Break it down into smaller steps by month, week, and daily to-do lists. Actionable steps become manageable and doable.
2. Heighten self-awareness. People often seek therapy to raise their self-esteem or overcome addictions and codependency. If your resolution is to change your habits, self-awareness and vigilance are needed in order to interrupt old patterns. Daily meditation and journaling are potent and helpful tools in monitoring and changing your thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
3. Encourage yourself.Discouragement is normal. Become a positive coach, and continually give yourself positive feedback, praise, and recognition. Look for small signs of progress and celebrate them. If you have low-self-esteem, you may talk yourself out of your desires and think you lack the skill, worth, or ability to achieve them. Underlying depression does the same thing. Self-doubt and negative self-talk paralyze you in a past expression of yourself. They sap energy and motivation, and can easily persuade you to give up.If you aren’t making progress or slip into old habits, don’t dwell on your “mistake.” Rather than stay stuck in self-judgment and guilt, admit what you did or didn’t do, and quickly get back on track. Stay solution-oriented. Ask yourself, “What am I going to do about it?” Self-forgiveness improves both self-esteem and future behavior.
4. Have a vision. To create a powerful motivation for change, picture yourself as you’d like to be and see yourself happy and confident behaving in the new way. Rather than focusing on what you don’t want, focus on what you desire. Here are some suggestions to manifest the new you:
   • Draw the future you.
   • Imagine what it would be like if you were the future you in this moment. See yourself carrying out your New Year’s resolutions. Notice the expression on your face, and experience how you would feel in your body. See the future you as having accomplished your goals. Experience yourself feeling proud, happy, and confident. See people in your life responding favorably to you.
5. Get support. Some changes entail facing the unknown or a perceived danger, such as life after a divorce, moving to a new city, or standing up to intimidation. They require courage, and support can be a great help. Addictions and habits are hard to break, especially if they’re driven by temptation, like drugs, food, and sex. Support and encouragement from friends, family, a mentor, support group, or therapist are vital until new patterns are established as part of your self-definition.

Many people make changes on their own. If it’s been difficult for you, or if you find it hard to muster motivation and self-discipline, it may be that an internal shift is required before anything external can permanently change. Sometimes, unconscious beliefs about yourself and what’s possible hold you back. Consider that therapy can lift depression and move you through the challenges outlined above. It can raise your self-esteem, facilitate insight, and guide you in facing the unknown and maintaining new behavior.

As with most things, generally accepted “rules” don’t always generally apply. There is more to re-gifting than simply passing the trash.

I like to make a distinction between re-gifting and re-giving. Re-gifting often is an effort to meet an unwanted obligation. Re-giving, on the other hand, is passing along something that suits the receiver and is given with thought and care. Re-gifting is about the gift. Re-giving is about the relationship between the giver and receiver.

The plethora of “shoulds” around holiday gift-giving can strain many folks’ budgets and spirits. As much as they’d like to participate in the office Secret Santa or the family exchange, it may be just too much. For some, the solution is obvious: give away the gifts they got at another Secret Santa, from that package sent from a distant relative or from gifts received last year that have never been used and have been languishing in the bottom drawer. Done in the spirit of “let’s just get this over with,” it’s re-gifting. Done with heart, it can instead be a genuine gesture of friendship and love.

Turning Re-Gifting into Re-Giving

Here are some basic rules for transforming a re-gift into a true gift of giving.

Re-giving is thoughtful. It takes into account the receiver’s likes and desires. Let’s say, for example, that you got a blue sweater from your sister who lives 1,000 miles away. You never wear blue. You never wear sweaters. But a dear friend does. She’d love the sweater that, if you kept it, would join the other unworn sweaters on your closet shelf.

Re-giving means being careful. Being in a rush can cause mistakes. Take the time to be sure there isn’t a card from the original giver still in the box. Never pass along anything with your monogram on it unless the receiver has the same initial. Be sure to check the inside cover of a book in case the original giver put a thoughtful message and a signature inside.

Re-giving doesn’t have to mean “new.” One of my most prized possessions is a brooch my grandmother wore for years. Her mother had given it to her when she was 20. When my grandmother was quite old and on a fixed income, she wrapped up the brooch and gave it to me. When pressed to take it back, she was adamant that it would give her great pleasure to see me wearing it. Was it expensive? No. Was it worn? Yes. But the heart in the gift made it special.

Re-giving takes the original giver into consideration. If you know she or he will be offended if you’re discovered, don’t do it. It’s not worth the resultant drama. But some friends are close enough you can actually tell them what you’re doing, saying something like, “I love that you still think of me as someone who can wear a sweater with a risqué neckline, but my current soccer mom life doesn’t include events where I’d wear it. Let’s think of someone we can give it to who would enjoy it.”

Then again, there are some people who live so far away and you see so seldom that they’ll never have occasion to see that you’ve passed it on. Thank the sister who gave you the blue sweater. Tell her you appreciate that she thought of you and went to the trouble to send it. All true. Then pass it along with no regrets.

Been Re-Gifted?

If you think you have been re-gifted, consider the source and the intent.

Recognize that not all holiday giving is from the heart. For at least some people you may be one of the “shoulds” (like those famous office Secret Santas). If that’s the case, just say “thank you” and keep your peace. It isn’t worth the hard feelings that would result if you gossip about it at the office coffee pot.

Think about whether the gift did come from the heart even if it didn’t come directly from the department store. When I was 18, my grandmother sent me a perfectly horrible sparkly gold dress that was four sizes too big. Although she was barely getting by on Social Security, she wanted to give me something. Who knows where she found that monster! Being 18 and stupid the way 18-year-olds sometimes are, I was hurt and mad.

Fortunately, I had a roommate who was wiser and who reminded me that it was something my grandmother probably picked up at a thrift store because that’s what she could afford, that it was meant to be a bit of holiday sparkle, and that she probably had no idea what size I wore. Chastened, I wrote Grandma a thank-you note and put the dress in a local clothing bin. P.S. When Grandma asked me how I liked it when I next saw her, I lied. I told her I really loved it for holiday parties and she beamed with pleasure. Sometimes a white lie is its own kind of gift.

Consider whether the giver is too overwhelmed (or depressed or preoccupied) to participate meaningfully in gift-giving this year. When such people somehow pull it together to re-gift, however badly, it’s important to give them the gift of compassion. Express gratitude that they somehow found the energy and time to remember you at all, regardless of the gift.

Laugh it off if someone else is tactless enough to “out” the person who gave you a re-gift. Some people are mean-spirited enough to say something like, “Oh, she got that from her mother last year and now she’s stuck you with it.” Such people shouldn’t be rewarded for upsetting you. Instead, make a joke, change the subject, or derail the meanness with a comment like “Isn’t it wonderful that she thought of me?”

Then again, there are people who delight in being the Scrooge of the season. They may pass along things they don’t want or don’t care about just to get the whole giving thing over with. Say “thanks” and let it go. There’s no point in getting into it with them. Scrooges like being Scrooge. Don’t let it dampen your own Christmas spirit.

Exchanging holiday gifts is intended to be a way to honor and please people in our lives. When we give gifts, whether new or a pass-along, it really is the thought that counts. When we receive a gift, someone had to pick it out, wrap it, mail it or deliver it. All that effort deserves our appreciation even if we think it might be a castoff; even if it isn’t something we want or like. After all, being a thoughtful giver and a gracious receiver is what the season is all about.

The most? This wasn’t a competition.

The best? All the eggs were the same ubiquitous plastic eggs you can get at any discount store.

The biggest? Nope. The eggs were all the same.

And what difference does any of that make anyway? Most-best-biggest wasn’t the point. The point was for little kids in a small town to have fun on a spring morning. With 18,000 eggs out there, there were plenty for all. A few too-eager, too-competitive parents tramping around in a kid event was an example of parents gone wild.

Oh, these parents meant well. They meant to help. They meant for their kids not to have to suffer disappointment. They wanted to protect their children from any anxiety about getting their share. But such good intentions played out in this way have unintended consequences. As they watch their parents intrude, the kids learn things that their parents may regret.

Kids really do learn from what they see and feel as much as from what we say. In psychology, we call this meta-communication — the message that underlies the verbal message and may even contradict it. It’s like sarcasm. “That’s a really pretty dress,” said with sincere warmth, is a compliment. Said with a sarcastic sneer, the same words mean the opposite — something like, “That dress isn’t pretty at all and you’re a fool for wearing it.”

Telling kids that it’s important to share, that they should watch out for those smaller than they are, that it’s not who wins but how they play the game all sounds great.

But when parents couple those messages with behaviors that contradict the words, the kids read the actions. The kids who watched the adults snatch up eggs at the Easter Hunt were taking note, especially if the adults were the kids’ own parents.

They got a clear message that getting the most is more important than all the other values adults might talk about. They learned that the rules aren’t really the rules if you’re big. They learned that their parents had little faith in their ability to even pick up a few eggs.

My guess is that the parents who were scrambling to get the plastic eggs are the same parents who will jeer the umpire at a Little League game, do their kids’ homework, and write their teens’ college admission essays. Their kids may end up with the most “toys” in the guise of plastic eggs or A’s on homework or admission to an elite school, but they also learn that winning by cheating is okay, that they don’t have what it takes to accomplish things on their own, that they can count on their parents to do the work.

Lessons from an Easter Egg Hunt for Parents

There are better lessons. Consider these:

• Children who collect their own eggs (or A’s or entrance into college) learn that they are capable human beings. With each success, they become less dependent on their parents and more able to stand on their own two feet. They learn to take initiative, to be responsible, and to work independently. Perhaps most important, they learn to take pride in what they do.
• When children master challenges over time, they develop confidence in their own competence. With each success, the competence grows, which then leads to even more self-confidence. This competence to confidence to competence cycle will help them develop the positive self-esteem that is necessary for taking on new challenges throughout life.
• Children whose parents teach them the importance of doing things honestly, whether by collecting their own eggs or struggling with math homework, are children who will continue to live their lives with integrity.
• Children who respect the rights of others, who make way for the other guy, who maybe even give some of their eggs to a kid who didn’t get many, are kids who will become good citizens in the world.
• Children whose parents help them strategize before taking part in an event or doing an assignment or writing an essay learn to think ahead, to consider alternatives, and to plan. These are all important life skills.
• Children who are helped to understand what went well and what didn’t after an event or a homework assignment or a college interview master the art of learning from mistakes. When parents make such conversations a learning opportunity instead of a scold, their children learn that mistakes can be a source of information, not shame. They learn that there is value in the process as well as in the end result.

After this year’s debacle, there were adults who were ready to give up this annual tradition. To their credit, the recreational services staff refused. They aren’t ready to let a few rotten apples, er, eggs, ruin the event for all. After sitting with some disappointment and anger for awhile, they regrouped and vowed to make next year’s event even better.

Sadly, they can’t count on the parents who were so inappropriate this year to either reform or to stay away. Instead, they will have to recruit more volunteers to cordon off the field and be stricter about the rules. Hopefully, it won’t take riot police to keep order. We certainly don’t want little kids to learn that some parents only obey rules and let kids have their own fun when someone with even more authority is watching.

That would be a sad meta-communication indeed.

It makes sense if you think about it. Our little ones, even when not so little anymore, live in our hearts. We want them to know it. Valentine’s Day gives us a reason to show it.

That’s why parents of young children not only buy cards but do things like put a red tablecloth on the table, serve heart-shaped pancakes at breakfast, slip little notes into lunch boxes or present a heart-shaped cake at dinner. For tweens and teens, parents often send a Valentine’s text message or an e-card as a low-key way to convey love without inducing embarrassment. For adult children, many of us send a card or flowers or at least make a phone call to let them know we carry them in our hearts no matter how far away they’ve flown. Celebrating a day dedicated to love makes us all smile.

To nurture the heart and warmth of a family, the rituals around Valentine’s Day — actually saying and doing loving things for those we love — is something that we parents can and should do regularly. Little ones need a daily dose. Grown kids need reminders of our love less often but with just as much heartfelt emotion.

Yes, February 14 gives us all a special day to do things up in a big way. But kids who get daily deposits in their emotional bank accounts are kids who develop and sustain the resilience to manage the stresses of life. They are the kids most likely to have the emotional vocabulary necessary to make good romantic choices of their own someday. They become the adults who work through the rough spots in a good relationship and whose self-esteem in strong enough to avoid or get out of a bad one.

For many parents, actively loving kids is second nature. For others, especially for those who weren’t well-loved themselves, it’s sometimes more challenging. I’m sure this has been done before, but I’m going to weigh in with my own version of what L-O-V-E stands for as a friendly reminder of the basics for parenting well:

L is for setting loving limits. Both the loving and the limits are important. Love without limits doesn’t give children the training they need to manage the world. Love without limits teaches them the world owes them a living. They feel entitled to get what they want without respecting the rights of others. Limits without love does control kids’ behavior but it doesn’t teach them self-control or self-respect. Limits that are arbitrary and harsh teach the kids to be scared of their parents, not to respect them.

Done well, limits do provide safety and show kids what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. Love is the ingredient that determines whether limits are about teaching our kids or only about controlling them. Limits that are said and done in a loving way let a child know we’re on their side, that we’re there to help, that we understand they need our guidance. Limits that lovingly adjust with a child’s growing sense of responsibility help our children grow into responsible adults.

O is for observing. The most frequently repeated phrase of normal childhood is “Look at me. Look at me.” Children are always checking for the grownups’ reactions. They want us to see their successes. They want and need our approval. They want us to really, really see them for who they are.

Kids who feel invisible to their parents either become withdrawn in discouragement or act up in order to be seen. Neither strategy works well in the family or in the world. Kids who are watched with love and approval keep trying to master new things and become confident that being their best selves is the way to get attention and inclusion.

V is for verbalizing our love. What makes Valentine’s Day so special is that it gives people the opportunity and permission to say what they feel. Kids do need this kind of affirmation every day. They need to be able to rest in the assurance that they are worthwhile and worthy of our love. They especially need to hear they are loved when they aren’t doing very lovable things. When they are regularly shown and told they are lovable and loved, kids and teens can accept correction and redirection without needing to be defensive. Kids who receive regular “I love yous” are kids who grow up knowing how to express love to their family members, and eventually, their own partners and children.

E is for enjoying our children. Kids need us to enjoy them as well as to care for them. They need us to play with them, joke with them, and generally be delighted with their efforts and little successes. They need us to want to spend time with them and to spend a little of life on their terms. That means reading the same story for the hundredth evening in a row with enthusiasm. That means getting out in the sandbox or down on the floor with the blocks and getting into the game. That means listening to our teen’s music with interest instead of criticism.

When kids feel like a burden or a disappointment or a major inconvenience in adult lives, they start to see themselves as defective and unworthy of love. Such children are vulnerable to depression. Some live down to the expectations of their parents and become unlovable by getting in trouble or being rebellious and difficult to manage. Kids who are enjoyed, however, are more likely to develop a strong self-esteem and self-confidence in the social world. Being a joy to parents feels good so they are more likely to be enjoyable.

By all means, make Valentine’s Day special. Any excuse to celebrate our families is fine with me. But let’s not forget that we can make valentine-ing into a verb; an action word for the many ways we provide L-O-V-E to our children every day. When we do, we both nurture them and draw more love, warmth, and affection into the family as a whole.

With a big family and a small budget, it’s the best way I’ve found to make Christmas special. Quite apart from practical considerations, I love how it makes the spirit of Christmas last the whole year. When I see something I know someone would like (at a store, at a garage sale, at a fundraiser, wherever), I buy it and put it in the back of my closet for Christmas. Being on the lookout for special things for special people throughout the year allows me to savor the experience of gifting. Instead of being a December have-to-do, it’s a pleasure. Instead of feeling pressured to find the perfect something in crowded malls during the holiday season, I’m delighted by the surprises I find as I just go about daily life.

Getting a family ready for the holidays also is something that can happen throughout the year. In fact, it should happen all year long. Families are inevitably complicated. You may be blessed to have a stress-free, loving family that is perfect in every way, in which case you don’t need to read further. Most of us, though, have someone or maybe even several someones who make the holidays hard to thoroughly enjoy. If you’re lucky, you only have a Scrooge or two to humor through a dinner or holiday event. If you are unfortunate enough to have a whole family of Scrooges who humbug through the holiday season and who seem to enjoy making other people as miserable as they are, you have your work cut out for you.

It can be done. Holidays don’t have to be hell-days if you take a running start and begin the work of changing how family members treat each other now. It all begins with you. It’s just plain true that you can’t make someone change. But you can change how you act and react in relation to your relations. Since families are like any ecological system, if you can change your responses to snipes and bites, you can begin to set the dominoes of change in motion.

11 months and counting:

• January: A time for reflection. It’s important to take stock of the successes of Christmas past. Those are the foundation for more positive experiences. What worked this past year? What went well? Were there any pleasant surprises? What do you want to be sure to repeat next Thanksgiving and through the December holidays? Think about how to continue whatever was positive and relaxed. A good start is to share pictures and stories that remind others that there were some bright spots even if things were generally tough.

  Then there’s the down side: What stressed you and others over the holidays usually isn’t new information. The same people tend to do the same less-than-wonderful things at family gatherings. Make a list of the three things you most want to change. Next to each one, make a note of one small thing you can do regularly over the next 10 months to change how you react to it. A resolution to follow through is a resolution worth keeping. Start now.

• February: Valentine’s Day is the perfect occasion to set something new in motion with the grumps in your family. Find something to love about each one. Failing that, find something to admire. For example: Someone who always manages to be late can be admired for their consistency. Someone who unfailingly makes a comment about people’s weight can be admired for their predictability. By admiring negative traits with a sense of humor, you put yourself in a place that is less reactive. Practice thinking this way and you’ll be strengthening your resistance to getting snared in the usual family drama.

  Now send everyone in the family a Valentine. Send them two. Let the people you love know you love them. Let the people you wish you loved more know they are important in your life.

• March: Don’t you just love the name of the month? You’re on the march now to make your family more what you want it to be. St. Patrick’s Day isn’t only for the Irish. St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. Work on driving the snakes (negativity, criticism, putdowns) out of your family. Find little reasons to make contact with family members with little tidbits of information, jokes, or forwards. Politely decline any invitations to fight. Find excuses to send a little loving their way.
• April: Be an April Friend, not an April Fool. Make a promise to continue what you’ve begun. Surprise people with compliments and cards. Catch the kids being good and right as much as you can. Make sure you make positive physical contact with each member of your family at least twice a day. A pat on the shoulder, a little squeeze of the hand or a hug lets people know you notice them and love them.
• May: Spring. A time of renewal. Get back to the list of the family strengths and positives you made in January. Send people spring flowers in the form of notes and emails, letting them know what you appreciate and like about them. Deliver flowers to elders. Put little notes in the kids’ lunchboxes. Be as sappy as you like. It’s that time of year.
• Summertime: Vacation time. Summer months are a perfect time to start rehearsing for the holidays. Make short visits with the people you spend the holidays with. Practice reacting differently to any negativity. Someone starts drinking too much? Simply give them a hug and tell them they’re entitled to drink if they like but you are so uncomfortable with it that you’ll see them another time. Someone criticizes your kids or tells you your bathing suit makes you look fat, tell them how much you appreciate their concern and move on. No sarcasm, please. You’re working on modeling a different kind of behavior.

  By the way: This is a great time to get the kids involved in making things they’ll give as gifts for the holidays. Craft projects keep little hands busy and secrets make the tasks even sweeter. This is also the time to enlist the kids in discovering “finds” at garage sales and summer sales. Finding that special something for relatives, teachers, and friends can become a family game.

• September: New school year. New starts. The time to talk about any major change in how the holidays will be spent is now. People need time to work out compromises and to get used to change. If you’ve always gone to your in-laws’ but it’s become too burdensome to get the kids and gear rounded up to go, start talking about what might work better. If the older generation is getting up there in age, think about ways to make the holiday travel, meals, and celebrations easier on them. Talk about it with everyone. People who feel left out generally act out. People who feel included will generally do their best to be helpful.
• October: Don’t be tricked. Family holidays can be a treat. The secret is to plan ahead. Early in the month, sit down with a calendar and plan out the holiday season. By spreading tasks over the next six to eight weeks, you’ll feel in control when Thanksgiving rolls around. Plan a budget you can commit to. Plan ways to keep your own stress down.
• November and December: Here they come! The holidays! Stick to your schedule, budget, and lists. Think ahead about how the family gatherings generally go. Practice scenarios in your head or talk with your partner about positive ways to manage whatever usual stressors usually stress you. Come up with a number of ways to handle them more gracefully. Remember that flexibility is the key to managing competing needs. Make sure you have an exit plan if things get too hard during a holiday visit. Emphasize the positive. Focus on gratitude. Practice those random acts of kindness. Even if family members don’t respond as you’d like, you’ll leave the holiday season feeling good about yourself and your role in the family scene.

If you’d like more specific suggestions for how to make your holidays bright, my e-book, Tending the Family Heart through the Holidays is chock full of advice for nurturing the family through holiday celebrations. PsychCentral makes it available to you for only 99 cents for either Kindle or Nook e-readers.

The coming of the New Year is a fantastic opportunity for you to energize yourself toward achieving your goals. If you are a big procrastinator, you may be skeptical of resolutions; for you, resolutions might be just one more way to feel bad for getting stuck and unable to move forward — even toward goals that you really, truly want to achieve. So, this one year, all of you experts in procrastination get your own special No. 1 New Year’s resolution: Free yourself from the bonds of procrastination.

There are a variety of procrastination styles. Some of you may struggle with starting a project (task initiation). Some of you may have a hard time sticking with a project (focused attention). Some of you just can’t seem to finish a project (task completion). Some of you have trouble every step of the way.

Everyone does some procrastinating. People naturally put off and avoid doing things that cause them discomfort, distress, or trigger challenging emotions. Even if you are very much in favor of reaching a particular goal, there are often parts of the process of getting there that you just do not want to do.

Procrastinating becomes a problem when your internal battle between the part of you that knows you should do something (your inner ‘do it’), and the part of you that just DOES NOT WANT TO (your inner ‘I don’t want to’), drains your energy and causes problems in your home life, your relationships, your work, or your self-care.

This battle can be a war of aggression, with your inner ‘do it’ attempting to bully and threaten your inner ‘I don’t want to’ into submission, saying things like ‘what is WRONG with you, why aren’t you doing what YOU SAID you wanted to do? You are so lame, just do it, what is your PROBLEM? Other people finish home projects, what is wrong with YOU? WHY are you eating that brownie when you KNOW you want to lose weight?’

The battle can be a war of avoidance, as your inner ‘I don’t want to’ shuts out your inner ‘do it’ through busyness and distraction with other activities or by zoning out with food, alcohol, TV, or the Internet. The inner war can get so depleting that you end up curled on the couch, unable to do anything at all, or frantically expending adrenaline-charged energy to meet deadlines, and then crashing again with exhaustion.

7 Self-Talk Tips to Help You Stay on Track

So, if you find yourself stuck, rushed and tired, getting in trouble with your spouse or boss, or feeling like a failure for not honoring your self-care goals, then you may be interested in a trying a new way to motivate yourself. As you cower under the dark cloud of something you ‘should’ be doing, tune in and listen to that part of you that is saying ‘no, I don’t want to.’ What it is afraid of? What is it angry about?

Then, use these seven self-talk tips to speak nicely but firmly to that inner ‘I don’t want to:’

1. Empathy.

‘I know that you don’t want to sit down at the computer and work on your resume.’ ‘I know that your vision for this project isn’t turning into reality. I know you just hate having to accept that time has run out and you need to finish up and have an imperfect result.’ ‘I know that it causes you distress to face the truth of your finances and start budgeting.’ ‘I know that you’d prefer to avoid dealing with your body and starting an exercise plan.’ ‘I know you thought that finishing this project would happen much more quickly, and you are frustrated with how long it is taking.’ ‘I get it. It makes sense that you feel frustrated, worried and annoyed.’

2. Encouragement to explore different practical strategies for motivation.

‘Why don’t you start exploring the wide range of practical hints and strategies available from counselors, in books and online to help you get going and stay on track toward your goals? Just pick one and give it a try. Try scheduling your workout on your calendar, try using an alarm clock to keep yourself moving from task to task, try using inspirational quotes taped on your mirror. Just try it. If it doesn’t work for you, try another until you find one that does help.’

3. Encouragement to ask for help.

‘I know you think you should be able to do this on your own. I know that you think it’s silly that the hardest part of this task is formatting your resume. How about asking for help from your spouse with that one part?’ ‘I know you think that calling your insurance provider about that medical bill should be easy. But it’s just not easy for you. Why don’t you ask a friend to sit with you while you pick up the phone and dial the number?’

4. Permission to go one step at a time.

‘You don’t have to do this all at once. You get to go at a pace that is healthy for you. Just take one step at a time. Today can be the step of writing down a few notes about what you want to include in your resume. Use five minutes and take this one step.’

5. Insistence on starting TODAY, even amid uncertainty.

‘You don’t have to wait until you are completely sure of the whole process before you start it. You don’t have to know whether you want a new job before you start working on your resume.’ ‘You are not committing to anything by putting on your walking shoes. Just put them on. Now.’

6. Permission to change course if necessary.

‘You get to change course if the project or routine becomes too much for you, or turns out to not be a good fit for you. Everyone has his or her own ‘overwhelm threshold,’ and though you may wish your threshold were higher, it is what it is. You also do not always know in advance if something will be a good fit for you. It may be uncomfortable to have to reroute yourself, and you may feel disappointed in yourself and you may disappoint others. But if you try to force yourself forward with something that you fear may become too much for you or may turn out to be wrong for you, and imprison yourself with the idea that you have to follow through no matter what, then you are going to end up not taking any steps forward. So you have got to remember that you can change course if necessary.’

7. Reminders that you are human.

‘You, just like all humans, need help, have uncertainty, move slowly at times, move sideways, move backwards, try and fail, feel foolish, have regrets, and must adjust plans as new information becomes available. You, like all humans, have limitations and vulnerabilities. You, like all humans, get disappointed in yourself and disappoint other people sometimes. You, like all humans, sometimes struggle with the letdown of grand visions turning into imperfect realities. And yes, ‘all humans’ includes you.’

I know you wish you didn’t have this issue with procrastination, and could just magically become a person who is able to easily ‘just do it.’ But you are a human, and this is one of your issues, and it takes energy and time to make changes in your self. Just experiment with this new way of talking to yourself. Right now. Pick one thing you’ve been procrastinating about, choose one of these seven points and try it for five seconds. See if it helps. Just try.

Holidays typically recreate old family dynamics as adult children reunite with parents, creating pressure from the original family system to replay the same patterns as before. This pressure invites conflict as new boundaries, competing with earlier ones, are tested and challenged. How the scene unfolds, and the outcome, depends on the level of differentiation achieved by the man from his mother, and the security of the boundaries he has established around his marriage and new family.

Loyalty binds are part of a common dysfunctional family dynamic which occurs when mothers use their sons to make up for previous loss, and lack of connection with — or anger at — their husbands. In such families, mothers often have a history of unresolved trauma, loss, or insecure attachments with their own mothers. This leads to a parallel and compensatory style of attachment with their sons. Instead of the mother tuning in to the child’s emotional states, the reverse occurs, requiring the child to adapt to the mother’s needs.

The Insecure Attachment Style

“Good enough mothering” involves a delicate dance of noticing and attuning to the child’s own rhythm, and adjusting one’s own rhythm to be in sync with the child’s need for closeness or distance, stimulation or retreat. Healthy attachment requires mothers to be secure enough to allow their children to safely differentiate from them without pulling them back in with the threat of anger, withdrawal, or guilt. Unresolved issues from the mother’s own childhood, particularly around separation and loss, can impede her capacity to allow the child’s needs and rhythms — not their own — to guide attachment.

As the child becomes an adult, a mother with this anxious, insecure attachment style may refuse to let go, secretly needing to remain the primary love attachment. This may not become apparent until her son finds a romantic love partner and devotes himself to her, allowing a competitor to enter the scene. The situation is then often enacted in full drama around family events and holidays when the mother’s explicit demands, and [unspoken] expectation of “loyalty” (i.e., exclusive love) from her son, conflicts with his role as a husband.

Jason’s mom required a possessive, symbiotic union with her son to guard against experiencing buried feelings of loss and abandonment. Losing her hold over Jason as he shifted his loyalties to his wife was the ultimate threat to her sense of security and control. When Jason married Kelley, the split he felt as a boy when he had to choose between his mom and dad was recreated between his mother and his wife. This split became most apparent during their first holiday season together, when Jason’s mom made him feel guilty about how he divided his time, accusing him of abandoning her, and directing hate and blame toward Kelley.

Jason’s parents divorced when he was a very young boy. Growing up, when he was at his dad’s, his mom called him frequently, asking him if he was OK — even when he was happy — and reassuring him that he had other people (her family) who loved him. She communicated to him in a variety of explicit and implicit ways her hurt and betrayal over his dad, which made Jason feel responsible for taking care of her.

Jason coped by developing a pattern of emotional detachment and blunting his feelings with both parents, so as not to let on that he was having too good of a time with either. He experienced muted enjoyment with his dad in particular, often acting as if he were less excited than he was, especially when his mom phoned him, which was often. He felt particularly protective of his mom, the “abandoned one,” often hiding the nature of his relationship with his dad, though it was secretly vital to him. He felt guilty for leaving his mom alone. Jason’s father, in turn, took his son’s blunted reactions at face value, worrying that Jason did not like him or enjoy their time together, often reacting by pulling back or becoming angry.

Jason was in the dark about how he felt because both parents imposed their own feelings on him. No one helped him understand what was happening or gave him a safe space to experience his own natural reactions, which went underground. Without help articulating their own and other’s states of mind through words and emotional resonance, children do not develop a “sense” of themselves. This self-awareness or inner wisdom is needed to guide ourselves. It allows us to gauge what is happening in our relationships and make decisions that are true to ourselves.

In place of authentic experience, Jason developed an adaptation to relationships in which he was detached and “other-directed.” His reactions were driven by fear and dread of his mom’s unhappiness. When she was angry or hurt, through a process of “projective identification,” he took on her feelings as if they were his own, experiencing the weight of her depression, and the related feelings of guilt and badness she projected onto him.

Projective identification is an unconscious psychological process occurring in relationships whereby one person’s disowned feelings are put into the other. The recipient identifies with these projected feelings as if they were his own and both enter into a shared delusional cycle. In this case, Jason experienced his mom’s rageful accusations of abandonment as an emotional truth, feeling depressed, guilt-ridden and mad at himself for not looking out for her.

Using guilt, as Jason’s mom did, to control others in relationships disregards boundaries and disrespects the other person’s autonomy. This approach to relationships replaces mutuality and negotiation with greed and emotional blackmail, presuming a lack of faith that others would give of their own free will. It is typically an unconscious process whereby the guilt-tripper feels self-righteous, entitled, and innocent of any misdeed. Emotional manipulation through guilt can be costly — breeding resentment, limiting authentic engagement, and hijacking initiative and genuine desire.

In cases such as Jason’s, the lack of differentiation between mother and son is so complete and unconscious that the man may be unaware of the source of his resentment, easily displacing it onto his wife, usually a safer target than mother. This pattern leads to unintended collusion with the mother, causing the marriage to become divided until the man “owns” his unexpressed conflict with his mom, and recognizes that she is the source of his anger. An absence of anger toward his mother, or the inability to come forward with it likely is a sign of re-experiencing a once adaptive, but now instinctual, response to danger experienced as a child for any such emotional separation from mother.

Jason needs to see what is really happening in order to disentangle himself from his mother’s projections and find a space to think and feel for himself. Awareness of his internal conflict and anger over the emotional burden and manipulation he has had to bear will allow him the courage to set limits with his mom. Standing up to his mom will reduce his fear and avoidance, creating a space for him to act of his own volition and desire and choose his wife as his primary loyalty and partner in life.

Tips for the Woman

• Stay aligned with your husband.
• Communicate feelings and requests clearly, without anger and without acting out.
• Don’t demonize or badmouth his mom.
• Refrain from holding or playing out conflicts that reside between your husband and his mom.
• Don’t behave like his mother and try to control him.
• Allow him needed autonomy.
• Be mindful of the burden he has had to bear and that he is reacting to survival instinct.

Tips for the Man

• Recognize that your primary allegiance is to your wife.
• Set boundaries with your mom to protect your marriage. Learn to say no to your mother and not give in reflexively. Call your mom out on inappropriate behavior and demands.
• Never collude with mother’s complaints about your wife or confide in your mother about your wife.
• Present you and your wife as a united front that can’t be split.

You know how it goes: The oldest starts acting bossy. The kid who never helped with the chores still heads for the TV instead of the kitchen or yard where others are helping out. The guy who now runs a substantial business goes back to being the family screw-up.

Meanwhile, the parents oblige by being more parental than they would dream of being with other young adults in their lives: more critical, giving more advice than is appreciated, issuing orders to clean up their language or pick up the coat they dropped on the floor, and treating their adult kids like, well, kids.

Old patterns of behaving die hard. As a high school basketball coach I know frequently tells his players, “Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect. It makes permanent.”

Think about it. The family is our first experience with the social world. Each kid who comes into the family reacts to those who came before, looking for a way to be unique but also to be part of the group. One kid becomes the “smart one” or the “smart one in math” while the other becomes the “smart one in history.” One becomes the athlete, another gets known to be the funniest, or the best or worst with money or the best or worst at organizing. For each family member, finding a unique identity means strengthening particular attributes and talents.

At the same time, belonging requires some level of conformity to our family’s idea of the family identity, at least some of the time. In the normal shuffle and scuffle of daily life, we learn what wins acceptance from our family and what will get us put in the timeout chair or sent to our room; what ensures our membership in the family and what will risk rejection. For almost 20 years, we spend some part of almost every day as one of the dancers in the elaborate dance of family life. Our roles become as choreographed and familiar as the opening number of a well-known show. Twenty years. That’s a whole lot of practice for making the family style and our role in it permanent.

Our roles may be modified considerably when we move out into the larger world. But get us together with the original group and 20 years of practice bubbles back up to the surface. Never underestimate the seductive draw of what is familiar. It just feels natural to snap back into our well-rehearsed part. The “responsible one” volunteers for more than she really wants to do. The “baby” goes back to playing the cute card in spite of herself. When with her dad, the independent woman can slip once again into the “princess” role she had as a child while her brother starts to swagger a bit like his former teenage jock self.

As we grow to adulthood, we expand our repertoire of skills for interacting with others. Feedback from friends, classmates, and colleagues shape us in new and important ways that may not work as well in the family. It’s normal and okay to regress a bit when in the bosom of family but it’s important to hold onto the adult we’ve become as well. Being mature means catching ourselves when we start to slide into old roles that are self-centered or over-stated or less balanced and actively deciding to relate in the family with the same dignity and maturity we use with others.

As parents age and become the parents of adults, they need to treasure the memories of these big people as the children they once were and at the same time validate and appreciate who they’ve become. It’s normal and okay to regress to a bit to being parental when adult kids come home but it’s important to step out of that well-rehearsed role as well. Being mature means not treating them as children and actively deciding to move to a more adult-adult relationship.

When both generations make the effort, moments of regression to the past can be sweet because they are nested in a larger appreciation of who each person has come to be in the present.

Avoid Getting Stuck in Regression

Most families can and do make the transition into adult-adult relationships. Here are a few ideas to help you avoid getting stuck in regression when pulled by the familiar family dance:

• Regression can be sweet if it’s kept in bounds. You don’t need to hold so tight to your new roles that you can’t enjoy and take comfort from revisiting the old ones. It’s OK for grown kids to enjoy Mom’s cooking or to sit on the couch with Dad to watch favorite sports. Those moments can be treasured – as long as adult kids then pitch in and contribute in some way to rebalance the relationship.
• Resist the impulse to correct, criticize, or give advice unless it is asked for. That goes for both generations. Parents don’t need to revert to being parental. Adult kids don’t need to regress into their teenaged critical selves. No amount of good advice or arguing is going to change things in a holiday weekend. Bite your tongue unless someone takes you aside and asks what you think. That’s a genuine request for help and support you can respond to as long as you do so with tact.
• If your family has always been contentious, promise yourself not to regress to bickering, arguing, or responding in kind to putdowns or critical comments. A fight can happen only if both sides engage. If you use humor instead or simply say, “Let’s not. It’s Christmas,” the other party usually will drop it too. (By the way: It may take a few tries. Sometimes people are so perplexed by a former adversary’s refusal to engage that they try again to start the familiar fight. Stay calm and just continue to decline in as friendly a way as you can. They’ll usually get the message.)
• Pro-gress instead of re-gress. It gets more and more complicated to go “home” when young adults find partners and start having kids of their own. At some point, it may no longer make sense for some or all of the adult kids to travel back to their parents’ home for every family celebration. The older generation can make this transition easier by being flexible about how and when they spend holidays. The younger generation can make it easier by remembering that parents and older relatives who love them are interested in their lives and need to see them – or at least hear from them – during the holiday season. Advance planning is the key. When there are careful and loving conversations about who needs to go where for family holiday events, it’s possible to maintain a sense of family togetherness while accommodating new realities.

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The Turkey Trail: Which Home for the Holidays?

The lists do help us stay on track when we’re adding the busyness of the holiday season to already overstretched lives. But the demands, requests, and requirements for what it takes to make the season bright were getting to me today. In a moment of rebellion, I came up with a holiday “Not To-Do” list. Yeah, it’s still a list. But it reminded me of some things I need not to do if I’m going to be pleasant to be around and it helped me put things back in perspective.

To reduce stress and increase my holiday cheer this year I promise (in no particular order):

• Not to bake 12 kinds of cookies when two will do. Yes, it’s nice for the kids to come home to the smell of cookies in the oven. It’s even nicer to come home to a mom who isn’t stressing out over something as dumb as whether the cookies crumbled.

• Not to overspend. It’s so tempting to spoil our kids, but paying down the credit card can spoil the next 6 months.
• Not to add unnecessary stress and expense by sending out cards to people I see every day. Cards are great for friends and relatives who live at a distance and for whom a note or letter is an important way to catch up. But saying and meaning a cheerful and heartfelt “Happy Holidays” to people I see regularly is enough.
• Not to give in to the kids’ pleas for the biggest tree on the lot. (We’ve been slow learners on this one. Too often, we end up cutting off 3 feet when we get home. ) I’ll remind everyone that a 6-foot tree can look puny on the lot but impressive in the corner of our living room.
• Not to put kids I know on Santa’s lap to get one of those iconic pictures unless they ask to be there. I’ve been telling the kids not to talk to strangers all year and now I want them to get cozy with that big guy in the red suit who they think is kind of scary? Nope. However cute those pictures can be, they’re certainly not worth traumatizing the kid.
• Not to start a new diet. Oh, I’ll stick to healthy eating and balanced meals but this is not the time to torture myself and everyone around me by trying to lose 10 pounds by New Year’s. Being rigid about food this time of year is often an exercise in self-defeat. Talking about it triggers all kinds of not-so-cheerful feelings in other people. January 1 resolutions will come soon enough.
• Not to run around trying to find the perfect material presents when time together is what most of my friends and adult relatives want most. Most adults I know don’t need more stuff. We all do need to have more full conversations, to share experiences, and just to have the comfort of being in the same place at the same time now and then.
• Not to ask my husband to go to my office party. There are few things as boring as listening to other people talk shop about something you’re clueless about. I’ll go and enjoy some down time with my colleagues. He can take the kids sledding or shopping or out for a treat.
• Not to neglect said husband in our efforts to make the kids happy. We’ll make at least one adults-only date during the holiday season. It can be as simple as going for a walk in the neighborhood to look at lights or as elaborate as a dress-up date to a special restaurant. The point is to put our relationship where it belongs – first in our priorities.
• Not to become a slave to lists – even this one. I promise to stay flexible, to cross off things I don’t want to do, can’t realistically do, or know I won’t get around to anyway. I think I’ll cross off a few more things for good measure.

There. That feels better.

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

Of course, we did go on, as people do. But that year our conversation was more subdued than usual because we were all so aware of the empty chair at our table; the absence that couldn’t be denied.

As the years have gone by, the loss has become less painful. Now our memories of David and others who’ve passed out of our lives are laced with humor and nostalgia. The chairs are empty. But the relationships with the people who once occupied them continue on in our shared memories and stories.

Negotiating through the first holiday season following a death is seldom uncomplicated. Although the traditions that evolve in subsequent years may be fine in their own way, holidays without our loved one will never be quite the same. The holidays after a recent death highlight the absence and often throw people into confusion. Grieving people know they should “move on” – whatever that means – but aren’t at all sure they want to and don’t know how. Those who care about the person in mourning want to be helpful but are equally confused about how to do it. It’s a situation that is poignantly human.

For those of you who have lost a loved one within the past year, thinking about the empty chair at the holiday table may intensify grief in all its complex manifestations: sadness, anger, resentment, and maybe even guilt about the loss and, yes, joy and sweetness and gratitude that the person was in your life. For those who care about the grieving person, it can be difficult to know how best to honor the memory without contributing to pain.

Grief counselors generally agree on some basic guidelines that can help you manage a personal loss or help you support those in mourning during the holiday season.

If you are the grieving person:

• Allow yourself the right to grieve. American culture has a tough time with death. For some reason, there is pressure to get on with life within a year after a loss. That expectation is unrealistic and unfair. Most people take three to five years to fully accept the loss of someone they loved. If someone dear to you died during this past year, remind yourself that it’s normal and healthy to want to bow out of some of the events of the winter holidays that emphasize family and togetherness when you are feeling alone in a new and painful way.

• Take care of yourself. Discipline yourself to get enough sleep, to eat right, and to follow your normal routines – especially if you don’t feel like it. You’ll be better able to make good decisions about what makes sense for you to do over the holiday season.
• Plan ahead. Do you want to be alone or will being with those who love you ease the pain? Really think about it. Sometimes being alone makes the aloneness much too hard to bear. Sometimes being in a crowd is overwhelming. Only you know what is best for you. Talk to key family members and ask them to support you in whichever decision you make.
• Rethink hosting the party. If yours is the usual gathering place, think about whether you want to do it this year. Some people like getting lost in the details of planning and managing a dinner for twelve. But if you are one of those who finds it just too hard to make a party when in mourning, know that it’s okay to be “selfish” in times like these and to beg off. People who love you will understand. Those who don’t aren’t worth worrying about. At the very least, ask for help and accept all offers to spread the responsibilities around.
• Give people permission to share stories. Many people have the idea that the best way to help someone in grief is to avoid talking about the person who has passed. Most of the time, they are mistaken. When we stop talking about someone is when they are really lost to the family. Let people know that as hard as it is that the person is no longer with us, it’s important to remember the good times, to laugh about funny things they did or said, and to acknowledge that he or she is missed.
• Do things a little differently. For some people, doing the usual traditions and celebrations makes the loved one’s absence all the more painful. Think about whether doing things a bit differently or going to a different place would be helpful.

If you are a family member or friend of someone who is grieving:

• Allow the person the right to grieve. Everyone does it differently. Some people want to withdraw from the world and work through their sadness alone. At the other end of the spectrum are those who manage by carrying on as usual and tempering the pain through the distraction of people and parties. Carefully consider what your loved one needs, not what you would do in the situation.

• Take care. If you notice that your family member or friend isn’t eating, getting enough sleep, or functioning well at home and work, don’t ignore it. These are signs that the person is possibly getting clinically depressed. Invite the person to a meal. Talk to her about the importance of maintaining routines. If her inability to take care of herself is prolonged, do what you can to get her to a counselor.
• Plan ahead. Ask the person in mourning what he wants to have happen at family events. How would he like to acknowledge the loss and at the same time keep the holiday going for everyone? Some families literally set an empty place at the table and take a moment to share anecdotes about the person who has passed away. Others make a toast to the memories. Still others offer a prayer. Talk together about what will feel best for everyone involved.
• Offer help. If the grieving person is the one who usually hosts family gatherings, see if someone else can offer to do it this year. If she wants to keep up the tradition, get as many family members as possible to help with the shopping, cooking, cleaning, decorating, and whatever else needs to be done.
• Talk to the grieving person about the loss. Listen without judgment. Resist giving advice. Just be there. Understand that grief comes and goes in intensity and frequency for quite awhile. It is by talking and listening that we all integrate sadness and gradually move on.
• Try out a new activity that was never shared by the person who is gone. It’s helpful to do some things that aren’t shadowed by the fact that the last time we did them, the deceased person shared it. If people like the new ideas, they can become part of the family tradition. Or not. Leave that decision for next year.

Time does indeed heal most things. But everyone has his or her own sense of timing. If this is your first holiday season since the loss of a loved one, give yourself permission to feel what you need to feel and do what you need to do to get through it. Find ways to honor the memory of your loved one and to accept the support and care of those who love you.

If you are a friend or family member of someone who is grieving, give them support, love, and concrete assistance. By talking about their loved one and by listening to their stories and feelings, you help reassure them that the sadness may fade but our relationships with people we love never really end.

Watching a friend struggle to create an owl costume for her pre-schooler to wear this Halloween, I asked her why she didn’t persuade him to think of something simpler. “He says he wants to be an owl because it’s the scariest thing he can think of,” my friend replied.

Ahh. Precisely. Her little guy is wiser than I am. He knows instinctively what I had forgotten: From ancient times, the point of Halloween has always been to confront our fears of the dark, of death, of evil spirits and all the things that “go bump in the night.”

Death always has been and probably always will be a mystery and mysteries make people nervous. Our fears and anxieties about what happens next has driven the imagination of peoples probably since the beginning of time. Folk stories and songs and literature are full of both lovely ideas of angels in heaven playing harps and the opposite: demons dancing in the fires of a hell. As curious as we all are about what happens after death, we’re not lining up to die to find out. So we’re left to our imaginations.

Among the scariest notions of an afterlife that has been handed down to us are the beliefs and rituals practiced by the Celtic Druids 2,000 years ago in Ireland, England and parts of France. Theirs was a pagan religion with particularly vivid ideas of a dark and treacherous spirit world.

For the Druids, the turning of the year was celebrated on November 1 (called Sanhaim). It was a day to mark the death of summer and the beginning of a dark and forbidding winter. On the night before, they believed that spirits could cross from the world of the dead to the world of the living in order to look for a body to inhabit. The people wore costumes to confuse the spirits and made offerings to appease them. This is believed to be the source of our “trick or treat.” Communities built huge bonfires and made sacrifices to their gods.

All Souls Day was established somewhere around 1000 A.D.by the Catholic pope as an attempt to replace a pagan celebration with one that was sanctioned by the church. All Souls Day was also called All-hallows day and the night before began to be called All-hallows Eve. That evolved into Halloween. The celebration is believed to have been introduced to America by the waves of Irish and English immigrants in the 19th century.

By the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, Halloween had become more about entertainment and less about religion, superstition, magic, and roaming spirits. Nonetheless, kids today still relive some of the ancient roots of the holiday by dressing up as ghosts and goblins and marauding the neighborhood for sweets.

These days, adults usually celebrate the day vicariously by buying and making costumes for the kids and handing out candy. But adults, especially young adults, also go to masked balls and costume parties; frequent the “haunted houses” put up by entertainment parks; and show up at work decked out in witches’ hats and clown noses. Why? Because putting on a mask lets us be someone else for awhile.

The Mask: Recognizing Our Shadow Side

A mask lets us safely explore sides of our personalities we normally keep hidden from others. It’s not at all unusual for an otherwise shy young woman to play the vamp at the costume party or for the Clark Kent in real life to dress up like Superman. It’s also not unusual for the rich to dress as beggars and the beautiful to try on being an ugly witch. For one night, we get to be our opposite, or at least another, self. For one day, some workplaces give us license to show our coworkers that we can be funnier, scarier, more glamorous, or more or less successful than everyone thinks we are.

The ancient rituals were intended to master the evils without. Carl Jung, an early 20th century psychologist who was a contemporary of Freud, believed that we also need to master the darkness within. His theory suggests that we all have a shadow side, a part of our personality that is darker and hidden from the world and often from ourselves. Interestingly, the shadow is also seen as a source of creativity and power. An unacknowledged shadow explains the apparent paradox of the man who is a pillar of his community carrying on secret affairs or the woman who is always giving so generously to others unnecessarily depriving herself.

To be a mature and moral person is to recognize our shadow side and to manage the impulses and negative qualities we find there. Children work out their fears of the bogey man or ghosts or an owl by assuming its identity and playing out their fantasies. On Halloween, we adults do much the same thing. The holiday gives the shadow a legitimate opportunity to come forward. Make no mistake: Our choice of a mask isn’t an accident. It often exposes our shadow side or an inner desire we work to control. By transforming it into entertainment, we take charge of the part of ourselves that both fascinates and frightens.

It makes a kind of sense that the one of the hottest Halloween masks this season is of Casey Anthony. Assuming the face of someone accused of murdering her own child lets people acknowledge the part of themselves that understands the desire to be freed of parental responsibility and to even think about infanticide as a way to return to the freedoms of adolescence. When they remove the mask, they return themselves to “normal” and reassert their ability to master the darker and more impulsive urges within.

“I was scared silly!” That figure of speech captures all that Halloween is about. By making our fears of the dark side “silly” with costumes and parties and by sweetening them with candy and other treats, we exercise some control over them.

By holding onto this odd remnant of an ancient festival of the dead, we give ourselves an opportunity to teach our children that monsters and witches and ghosts, however fearsome, aren’t real and that fears are something we can master. Just as important, we adults remind ourselves that to be a full adult is to master the darker and impulsive forces within us and to accept that death is part of the cycle of life.

Related Articles

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• Halloween: Thoughts and Suggestions (for parents of kids on the autism spectrum)

I give him credit for saying it like it is. Life is difficult. The universe has a way of throwing logs in the road of life for most of us at least some of the time. Sometimes it feels like all of the time. Since changing or stopping life’s challenges is not always in our control, the key to reducing their impact is to increase our coping skills. That is within our control.

Over the last 20 years, psychology researchers have been working on refining our understanding of what makes some people more resilient than others. It turns out that the skills necessary for growing from adversity, for bouncing back from traumatic experiences, and indeed for just making it through a difficult day are skills that can be taught and learned. They come down to these three:

• Willingness to engage with the problem
• Connecting with others
• Knowing how to calm oneself when there is plenty of reason to be anxious.

As the New Year approaches, consider making a resolution to increase your ability to handle life’s challenges more effectively. Enhancing these skills will help you feel more self-confident and be more competent when life is hard.

Learn to Engage

People who manage stress are people who don’t hide from it. Yes, it’s tempting to pull up the covers and suck a thumb when the going gets rough. But when we stick our nose out, the problem is usually still there, waiting with a club in its hand. People who manage stress manage it. That means taking it on. That means making active decisions about priorities and figuring out what can be fixed or worked around. It also often means deciding that some things can be purposefully and intentionally dropped, with apologies if necessary. In short, engaging with a problem means stepping up, taking responsibility, and doing the best we can.

• Resolution: Identify three problems or issues in your life that you would like to solve or at least improve. Prioritize them. Start with the easiest. (Why not increase your chances for some success?) Now get busy. What’s one small step you can take to make just a little progress? Once you check that one off, move to the next step. It’s not so hard if you keep the steps small and doable. Chipping away at a problem can cut it down to a manageable size. Let yourself feel good about what you have done instead of beating yourself up for what you haven’t. Pretty soon that problem will look less scary. Even more important, you’ll feel better about yourself for having taken something off the “to do” list.

Connect with Others

A key to resiliency is having social supports. The caring of friends, colleagues, and family often gives us the inner strength to handle life’s trials. Seeking and accepting practical help from professional helpers, support group members, and people who share our lives in clubs, organizations, and religious communities provides the outer support we may need when we’re feeling overwhelmed.

• Resolution: Reaffirm old friends. Facebook and email make it easier than ever to stay in touch, to stay in the loop about each other’s lives, and to stay in ongoing conversations. Make it a point to meet up with someone face to face for friendship’s sake at least once a week. Arrange to have coffee, to take a walk, or just to drop in. If you don’t have enough friends, go back to step 1: “Engage.” You won’t find friends (or potential partners) sitting in your place feeling sorry for yourself. Join something where there are likely to be people who share your values or interests. Get out of yourself and help make a difference by volunteering. Go regularly and you’ll soon be accepted as a member of the group. Show up for activities run by your community. Make a commitment to get out there at least a few times a month.

  Don’t forget the other part: Seeking professional help when you need it. There are still families and individuals who think that asking for help is a weakness. It’s not. When we’ve done everything we know how to do and things aren’t getting better, we need new input. Seeking help is an affirmation of self-worth. It’s engaging with the problem. Refusing to ask for or to accept help is an act of stubbornness that will only keep you stuck.

Practice Calming Skills

It’s much, much harder to solve problems and to be connected with others if you are a nervous wreck. Anxiety often breeds more anxiety until we’re in such a spin that we can’t think straight. People who are resilient have found ways to slow down, to breathe, and to create moments of calm in the storm. Having developed a practice of calming, they can relax into it in times of stress.

• Resolution: Commit to a practice that is calming for you. Mini “timeouts” from stress don’t have to take a lot of time or cost a lot of money. Prayer, yoga, meditation, or simply visiting a “happy place” in your mind can give you the moment of calm you need to clear your head. If you’re the type who needs to actively discharge anxiety or anger, go for a walk or run, boogie to some loud music, tense and release those muscles. Take lessons in art or music, join a gym, or participate in a regular basketball game or join your church choir to give yourself a regular break from your workaday life. You’ll get the benefit of the activity and you’ll be connecting with others as well.

Engage. Connect. Calm. These are the tools that can make life much more manageable. This year, consider making a resolution that can make all the other resolutions possible. Develop these three skill areas as a gift to yourself. You’ll feel good about yourself and you’ll be much better prepared for the inevitable challenges that will come your way.

Happy New Year.

Holidays can be meaningful, enriching times for both the person with Alzheimer’s disease and their family. Maintaining (or adapting) old family rituals and traditions helps all family members feel a sense of belonging and family identity. For a person with AD, this link with a familiar past is reassuring and builds self-esteem, i.e. “Look at the beautiful family I created!”

Learn to set your own limits early, and be clear about them with others. You do not have to live up to the expectations of friends or relatives. Your situation is different now.

It may help to encourage family and friends to visit, even if it’s painful for them. Keep the number of persons visiting at one time to a minimum, or try a few people visiting quietly with the person with AD in a separate room. Most people with AD can pull it together for brief periods, if they have adequate private rest in between.

Try some simple holiday preparation with the person with Alzheimer’s disease  several days ahead. Just observing your preparations will familiarize him/her with the upcoming festivities; if they participate with you, they experience the pleasure of helping and giving as well as the fun of anticipation and reminiscing.

It may help to prepare potential quiet distractions (a family photo album or a simple repetitive chore like cracking nuts) to use if the person with AD becomes upset or over-stimulated. Over-stimulation can be a common concern amongst people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Try to avoid situations that further confuse or frustrate many people with AD:

• crowds of people who expect the person with AD to remember them
• noise, loud conversations or loud music
• strange or different surroundings
• changes in light intensity – too bright or too dark
• over-indulgence in rich or special food or drink (especially alcohol)
• change in regular routine and sleep patterns

Try to avoid scheduling activities — especially outdoor exercise — early in the day to avoid the fatigue from added activity at the end of a long day. Familiar holiday music, story-telling, singing or church services (even on TV) may be especially enjoyable.

If you receive invitations to holiday celebrations which the person with AD cannot attend, consider going yourself. Enjoy the chance to be with friends and family who love you and enjoy your company, with or without your relative.

Preparing Your Guests Visiting the Person with Alzheimer’s

1. Explain as clearly as possible what has happened to the person with AD. Give examples of the unusual behaviors that may take place: incontinence, eating food with fingers, wandering, hallucinations.
2. Explain that it may not be appropriate behavior but the person with AD has a memory loss and does not remember what is expected and acceptable.
3. Remind the visitor through phone calls or letters to be understanding and not to shun the person with AD.
4. If this is the first visit since the person with AD became severely impaired, tell the visitor the visit may be painful. The memory-impaired person may not remember the guest’s name or relationship.
5. Explain that memory loss is the result of the disease and it is not intentional.
6. Stress with the guests that what is important is the meaningfulness of the moment spent together and not what the person remembers.

Preparing the Memory-Impaired Person

1. Begin showing a picture of the guest to the person with Alzheimer’s disease a week before the arrival.
2. Spend more time each day explaining who the visitor is while showing the picture.
3. Arrange a phone call for the person with AD and the visitor. The conversation may help both. The call gives the visitor an idea what to expect and gives the memory-impaired person an opportunity to familiarize him/herself with the visitor.
4. Keep the memory-impaired person’s routine as close to normal as possible.
5. During the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, guard against fatigue and find time for adequate rest.