Thankful for simple things that I have

I was feeling sorry for myself given my current condition, especially given that it was another holiday.

(Mind you, I bet if I really told you my condition, you might be one of those who would tell me that I have nothing to complain about. I would likely then say: shut up mother.)

An Epiphany

But anyway, I was feeling sorry for myself about my humiliating situation that does not meet my expectations in this holiday season . . . and then I had an epiphany after listening to one of my senior citizen patients talk:

When they had Christmas as a child, they got one pair of socks and one other clothing item. Their family was dirt poor.

The epiphany was this: "You at least have the simple things that you need. You are better off than you consider" (yes consider--not realize).

Of course my life and my situation is not what I want. I have the simple things that I need.

Yes, there are some humiliating aspects to my situation, but if I choose to dwell on or consider feeling humiliated, I will feel humiliated.

We are not guaranteed everything

I am being theological here, but I conclude that God does not guarantee that you will have a Turkey or all the holiday trimmings that you want Thanksgiving. God will give people what they need--the feast is beyond need. Jesus said that God will take care of our needs (see Matthew 6--the first book of the new testament).

I also conclude that that God does not guarantee that your family will get together and play nice-nice. While the Bible wants you and me to live at peace with all people if at all possible--sometimes it just is not possible. The people we do not get along with in our families can truly be toxic, ugly, mean, vicious, dysfunctional, sick, mentally ill or psycho--we just have the problem of being related to them, and we cannot merely find new family members like we can find new friends.

Feeling ashamed

With the recession going on and on, and with 10 percent of the people unemployed and people on commission making fewer sales, many of us are doing with less and less. We want to be able to give to others the holiday gifts but many of us cannot, and we feel ashamed.

There is no two ways about it. Many of us have had the "shoulds" "musts" and "oughts" about getting things for other people for Christmas. There is the feeling that something is very much wrong with us if we do not have the money to get people things for the holiday.

Then there is the "shoulds" "musts" and "oughts" about other people. Our relatives should come behave and exercise good manners and self-control at our holiday gatherings. But the reality is that they don't no matter how much individual therapy you get.

Moving from feeling ashamed to feeling thankful

So, I have concluded at this moment in time that I can live in the ashamed feeling or the humiliated feeling or I can truly live in the thankful feeling.

How does one get to the thankful feeling? It starts with agreeing with yourself that you are surviving in this time. You tell yourself that . . .

this is a bad time, but it will pass.
When you are surviving the rules change.
The rules are that you cannot afford stuff so you don't get it.

One may have to say this hundreds of times of day.

I think that when it is an overall bad time you do not have much and are seeking to be thankful, you are thankful for simple things. When you are without, you appreciate what you have in addition to identifying what matters to you and what you want.

Yeah, my life is very much NOT what I want it to be. There is so much more that I feel that I should have and should be doing. But for me, I have had to make the gratitude list that many of us therapists tell clients and patients to make.

My beginning of a simple gratitude list:
1) I am in good health.
2) My wife is recovering from her surgery earlier this year.
3) We are managing to pay the bills on time.
4) The cars work
5) My kids are healthy and doing well in school
6) We have the food we need
7) I do have a job (even with a toxic boss) that pays the bills
8) We have the clothes we need
9) I live in a free country that is relatively safe and not torn up by war
10) My name is written in the lamb's book of life.

If you think this technique might work for you. Try it.

This is not perfect and will not make you feel all better, but if it can give you a few moments of peace, what is there to lose? Feel free to comment.

I wish you a tolerable Thanksgiving Day.

The Holiday Season: When you do not have money you have relationships

Today was a fruitful day for thinking along the lines of getting through difficult times.

The holiday season is coming. Or maybe it is here already.

What is likely going to make this holiday season worse this year is that money is tight for many people. Christmas is supposed to be a time for gift giving and extravagance.

There is such an intensity (especially in U.S. society) around the holidays. You are to have a cozy and warm Thanksgiving. You are to have a festive and merry Christmas. You are to have a happy new year.

There is all kinds of talk about what you are going to do, what you are going to buy, and where you are going? There are all kinds of decorations and clothing. There are special foods for Thanksgiving and Christmas. There are all kinds of special events.

The intensity is fueled by nonstop Christmas muzak in all kinds of stores starting after Halloween. The countless broadcast commercials and print advertisements seem to start earlier and earlier each year. A neighborhood store put out its Christmas displays three weeks ago before Halloween.

The intensity adds pressure to the expectation out there is that you should have a merry Christmas. The problem is that most people do not expect a merry Christmas for one reason or another.

The holiday season is a sad and depressing time where there are actually a lot of suicides. People feel abandoned and alone.

I have likened holidays to hurricanes. Everyone gets ready for weeks to run home, lock the door and wait for the storm to pass. They talk about it and get all kinds of survival gear to make sure they have what they need. Holidays have not exactly been joyful.

I have been analyzing the holiday season for some time. Why has it become the un-ignorable monster?

My first thought is a rather Marxian one: it has been exploited in the name of economics. Too much of the retail economy has become dependent on Christmas sales. Christmas is no longer holy or set apart as a sacred time.

However, my first thought is counter-acted by the second thought. Even if it is a sacred time, Christmas is not a magical time that is going to provide fulfillment to erase all of the pain we feel in this world. I have came to the conclusion that many people are nostalgic and looking for magic. Little children in their limited cognitive ability see the magic. Adults want that magic feeling, but the sad tragedy is that there is a bliss in the ignorance that little kids have.

Third, no matter how much nostalgia, the reality is that most of us have family members who are highly dysfunctional who will ruin holiday gatherings and any shot at nostalgia. We get tense and they get tense as we have ruminated over our fears that the other family member is going to just wreck things.

Anyway with all of those problems, to get a feeling of magic, people spend money. Maybe there is a sense of magic in the giving and getting of presents and feasting. We gain weight and usually pay credit card bills way off into April or May. We will buy the cans of diet shake power that are out there front and center in the stores in January where the Christmas candy used to be the month before.

Well, this year the money will not be there. If at best we will have the relationships. The relationships matter where you can have them.

I move that we all start a tradition that is cheap. It would be best that the tradition does not cost money.

The traditions that we have are not about themselves, but about the relationships in which we share the traditions. Good traditions exude love and laughter and meaning. Good traditions honor our relationships.

If your family is not going to be available for traditions this year, find someone to do something with to start a cheap tradition. When you do not have the money, you have the relationships--that is if you look for them.

More to come . . .

Of course it could always get worse

Things at work have been difficult to say the least. There are multiple aspects and layers and I could discuss it all in detail, but I just had a conversation with a schoolmate today that helped me get perspective.

My schoolmate was truly clinically depressed. His thoughts were depressing.

My former schoolmate was divorced and his ex-wife in his words is a master manipulator. He discussed feeling suicidal due to all of her maneuvering and games. He felt hopeless. He talked about hating that he had few alternatives.

He had a new job that fell through. Some of the problem was that his ex-wife created some legal stir that took him out of work for one week that was part of his getting terminated shortly after taking the job.

His house is getting foreclosed on. He cannot get enough money together to get payments caught up.

He talked about being sabotaged in parenting his three kids.

He talked about his considering a federal job in another country. He had applied for two different jobs. The problem is that he would be abandoning his children, but he needs to preserve himself.

I empathized with him.


My thought to him was that he was essentially engaging in harm reduction. There was going to be pain either way with or without him given his wife's behaviors. He was just choosing over how his kids were going to be mad.

I told him that I would support him in any way I could. I discussed my concern for his safety, but I tired hard to be the friend and not the therapist.

There were limits as to what I could do to help him. He had some pretty crappy choices to make and it was a matter of deciding between which smelled less offensive.

My message to myself is that yes, it could always get worse. You may indeed have the greener grass in the situation. It may just not be as green as you think it should be. Sometimes you are reminded of the fact.