Spend Christmas holidays your way — Part 3
This past week I’ve been writing about why sometimes we feel obliged to spend Christmas holidays in a specific way. In part 1 of this three-part series, we discussed how comparing ourselves to others can prime us to feel dissatisfied and anxious about our holiday plans. And in part 2, I covered how difficult it can be to break traditional patterns and stay attuned to our needs and wants during this period of the year.
Today I will provide a third reason why it is sometimes hard for us to spend these holidays the way we would like to.
3. It is hard to manage other people’s reactions
Sometimes we prefer to do something we don’t like and stick to it, than to speak about how we truly feel or ask for what we need. We’d rather sacrifice one more year and spend Christmas with our in-laws than have a honest conversation with our partners. We’d rather pay with a credit card what we can’t afford than tell our parents that we can’t spend the same amount of money on presents this time. We’d rather suck it up than tell our friends that we don’t want to host Christmas dinner this year because we end up super exhausted afterward.
Normally this happens because we anticipate that the conversation will be uncomfortable or bitter, we don’t want to cause trouble or hurt other people’s feelings, or we might be scared of being judged or misinterpreted. In sum, we don’t want to damage our relationships or feel like a failure. What we don’t realize is that by sacrificing ourselves, we slowly start building up resentment and dissatisfaction.
It is, indeed, a difficult situation because some of us are not used to voice our needs. Some key points to notice:
- Although some of our fears might come true, the opposite could also happen. Maybe, after voicing our message, our significant others could show some understanding. In fact, we don’t have the power to predict the future at all, so we might as well give it a try.
- Even if we are very careful with how we express our needs (our words, tone of voice, our feelings), we can’t control the way others will feel, what they will think and how they will react to what we are expressing. Those reactions are entirely up to them, and that’s OK. They might feel sad, frustrated or upset, and they will have to manage that.
- It is OK to feel uncomfortable sometimes. This feeling is temporary, and the gains for voicing our needs and staying true to ourselves might be higher than the costs.
Final remarks
Christmas holidays can be very stressful. A lot of the stress comes from comparing ourselves to others, finding it hard to break traditional patterns and having to manage other people’s reactions. I hope that the questions and remarks made here can help draw attention to ourselves and our own inner voice so that we can remember what we need, what we want, how we feel and live these holidays in a more intentional way.
I hope this information was helpful. Stay tuned for new articles coming twice a week! If you like my content, please feel free to share, like and comment, or consider buying me a coffee.
