ASK the THERAPIST: Holiday Hell? It Doesn't Have to Be...

Q: I absolutely hate the holidays (I'm a 32 year old single gay man). It's so religious based, and family based, and I feel totally left out and stressed out. Every year I go through this, where friends go away and I'm counting the days until it's all over. I do spend a few days with family but our family doesn't get along, it's dysfunction central! How can I find some holiday joy when I just don't seem to fit into the holidays?

A: Lots of us grew up in families that viewed the holiday season as a license to make misery.  You are associating the holidays with your family and those miserable times and you continue the problem by spending time with them and telling yourself that it is based on someone else's religion.  Rather than escaping "dysfunctional central," you are continuing it wherever you go by seeing yourself as "left out" and making yourself "stressed out."

If you want to find holiday joy, then it is time to start looking for it in some different places.  One of the great things about being an adult is that we can choose a life that was different from that of our childhood.  We can spend time with the people we care about, we can do the things we want to do, and we can make a place for ourselves at our own table, rather than lamenting that there is not a place for us at someone else's.

It's time for you to start a new holiday tradition.  Rather than doing things you think you should be doing, find the things you want to do.  Maybe you can take a trip by yourself or with a friend, maybe you can arrange a holiday meal with some new "family" rather than your blood-relatives, maybe you can go to one of your friends' houses that is more joyous during the holidays, maybe you may want to do the traditional "movie and Chinese food" with people who don't celebrate Christmas day, and maybe you can serve a higher purpose and use this time to serve others less fortunate than yourself (such as volunteering at a retirement home or sending presents to boys and girls who are disowned by their parents for being gay). 

This is an annual event, so think about something you can look forward to rather than something you dread.  It may be difficult at first, but after a while you will find that the holidays don't have to be about your family or someone else's religion, but about time you can do something special for yourself -- and, hopefully, others in the world -- then you will find true holiday joy.-- Greg Cason, PhD

Comments

[health and fitness clubs in san diego]

The advice that you've got was great, i also apply that for myself. New traditions, I think can also make me new.

-Harold

[Tim]

I agree I totally need a whole new plan when it comes to the holidays, one that I choose for myself, thanks for this...

[Blama]

What an awesome way to explain this-now I know erveything!

[Eduar]

Hey there, man you are sotrng, and stay sotrng! ignored all these H Females?, judge you, For this reason, for this reason . fuck em No one is free of HIV . Gay couples, heterosexual couples Can Get It Anyone Can .. To stop, all F? lle people ..

[Tatiana]

No, it's not totally dfrfeient . Stop trying to side step the issue. The issue here is personal responsibility.Are you suggesting that a teenager who kills one of your family members is responsible for murder but they have no idea what they're doing when they fuck someone? LOL!

[Fabiola]

One of those rare instances when I just haeepnpd on a box cover at the local video store, and it ended up being something I'd never heard of but had to see and then to own. I've seen just a couple of other films from director Rouben Mamoulian, but though I've liked them a lot the real draw here was lead actress Ida Lupino, in Hollywood for just a couple of years at this point and still looking very young and fresh at 18 or 22 (depending on the source her birth is still a source of some dispute). Lupino has become an absolute favorite for me, but I haven't looked really hard at her early years, and I had no idea that this obscurity was on video. It really shouldn't be so unknown, though I can see how it wouldn't appeal to an enormously wide audience, or even to a large subset of those willing to watch 30s films. Basically what we have here is a Mexico-set western-gangster-musical-comedy, a crazy and wonderful mix of genres that I'm coming to believe was especially popular in the Depression/early sound era of the early-to-mid 1930s. The previous year provided one of my favorite examples of genre-bending, the science fiction-western-musical THE PHANTOM EMPIRE, and the musical-western, musical-gangster film and other mash-ups that seem pretty odd today were commonplace during this era. Anyone thinking that BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER invented the idea of mixing seemingly disparate styles and stories into one narrative really needs to take a look at this era's films. THE GAY DESPERADO begins in a movie theater (so there's also the self-referential back-lot theme going on, think Busby Berkeley or some of Mamoulian's own earlier films) somewhere near the border, with a group of desperados watching an American gangster movie, their leader Pablo (Leo Carillo) deciding that he wants to be more professional like the Americans. For some not very well explained reason he thinks that capturing a radio singer, Chivo (Nino Martini) will help his cause. He tries to teach Chivo the ways of banditry and have him become his own personal singer and then captures an American couple, Bill Shay (James Blakeley) and his fiancee Jane (Lupino) and tries to ransom them to Shay's rich father. Many songs, car chases and horseback chases, escapes and recaptures follow. The songs are a mix of operatic classics and Mexican folk songs and are all nicely done; Lupino is just gorgeous and charismatic and talented enough to pretty well dominate most of the scenes she's in; and it's nice to see the Mexican bad guys eventually decide that they don't really want to be like the more ruthless and humorless American gangsters that they eventually run up against, instead turning the American public enemies in. So all in all we end up with a light satire on Mexican bandits, American gangsters, and the Hollywood musical form, reasonably fast-paced despite some of the songs feeling a little awkwardly placed; a frothy, weird and fun concoction that has to be one of the most pleasant surprises I've had this year.

[Melchor]

One of those rare instances when I just hpepaned on a box cover at the local video store, and it ended up being something I'd never heard of but had to see and then to own. I've seen just a couple of other films from director Rouben Mamoulian, but though I've liked them a lot the real draw here was lead actress Ida Lupino, in Hollywood for just a couple of years at this point and still looking very young and fresh at 18 or 22 (depending on the source her birth is still a source of some dispute). Lupino has become an absolute favorite for me, but I haven't looked really hard at her early years, and I had no idea that this obscurity was on video. It really shouldn't be so unknown, though I can see how it wouldn't appeal to an enormously wide audience, or even to a large subset of those willing to watch 30s films. Basically what we have here is a Mexico-set western-gangster-musical-comedy, a crazy and wonderful mix of genres that I'm coming to believe was especially popular in the Depression/early sound era of the early-to-mid 1930s. The previous year provided one of my favorite examples of genre-bending, the science fiction-western-musical THE PHANTOM EMPIRE, and the musical-western, musical-gangster film and other mash-ups that seem pretty odd today were commonplace during this era. Anyone thinking that BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER invented the idea of mixing seemingly disparate styles and stories into one narrative really needs to take a look at this era's films. THE GAY DESPERADO begins in a movie theater (so there's also the self-referential back-lot theme going on, think Busby Berkeley or some of Mamoulian's own earlier films) somewhere near the border, with a group of desperados watching an American gangster movie, their leader Pablo (Leo Carillo) deciding that he wants to be more professional like the Americans. For some not very well explained reason he thinks that capturing a radio singer, Chivo (Nino Martini) will help his cause. He tries to teach Chivo the ways of banditry and have him become his own personal singer and then captures an American couple, Bill Shay (James Blakeley) and his fiancee Jane (Lupino) and tries to ransom them to Shay's rich father. Many songs, car chases and horseback chases, escapes and recaptures follow. The songs are a mix of operatic classics and Mexican folk songs and are all nicely done; Lupino is just gorgeous and charismatic and talented enough to pretty well dominate most of the scenes she's in; and it's nice to see the Mexican bad guys eventually decide that they don't really want to be like the more ruthless and humorless American gangsters that they eventually run up against, instead turning the American public enemies in. So all in all we end up with a light satire on Mexican bandits, American gangsters, and the Hollywood musical form, reasonably fast-paced despite some of the songs feeling a little awkwardly placed; a frothy, weird and fun concoction that has to be one of the most pleasant surprises I've had this year.