YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

December is that special time of the year that either brings great joy or great sadness. I'm grateful for my family chipping in to help me out this year, but in years past I've been incredibly depressed and alone. Anyone want to talk about it?

pyreblaze wrote:Anyone want to talk about it?

Sure.

I used to really, really love the holiday season. Now it makes me really, really sad, anxious, and angry. This year I am shutting down even more than usual about it. We haven't put any decorations up yet, and honestly, I'm kind of waiting for my wife to say something about it, because I don't really feel like initiating it.

There are two related issues for me. In a nutshell, my life thus far has not turned out to be the way I wanted it to be or expected it to be in many ways - and that makes me sad. There are things that I would like to have and do around the holidays that just aren't going to happen right now and I realize may never happen. And that sucks. And a lot of good memories of past holidays are tainted and ruined because of changed family dynamics. Plus, the holidays are one of those times of year where you can reflect not only on how much your life sucks, but how little it has improved since this time last year.

I know that the healthy answer to both problems is to create new holiday traditions that differ from the ones in the past or the ones that I hoped/expected to have and find joy and satisfaction in those. But it feels like the latest in a long line of settling for less than I want, need and deserve and so I am resistant to it.

Oh yes, sure.

I'm temporarily working retail. When you work retail, you don't get holidays. You pull 60-70 hour weeks to cover the insane flow of merchandise. When you get home you're too exhausted. You don't get to see your family or friends much. You work Thanksgiving, Christmas, NYE, New Year's Day. Everyone is stressed out and cranky because of how much there is to manage. Seriously - I worked from 6pm on Thanksgiving Day until 12pm on Black Friday.

Really kills your holiday spirit.

of course that's not meant as a disrespectful post towards the people who help keep the world going on holidays....firemen, medical people.....I just don't see a need for retailers to work so much. It's just shit. that's it. we shouldn't be killing ourselves to try to manage thousands and thousands of toys.

I always get scared when the holidays approach. I know there will be good moments with my family and returning back to where I grew up, but I am scared of the down time, when my parents are not home, or my father is working, or my sister is out seeing her friends who still live in the neighborhood, and the bottomless terror that I have sculpted the routine of my life to avoid will seep in. I want the holidays to be a time when I can let my guard down, but that's asking too much. My advice is enjoy the time with your family, bring a lot of books and run when there is nothing left to do, then at least you can say that you got through the holidays and you are in better shape and a little smarter than before.

Holiday depression is what drove me to finally join the conversation here after a year of listening to the podcast.

Most people I know including my fiance and my best friend feel sad at the holidays because they miss the joyful magic of their childhood holidays with extended families. I didn't have that experience. I never had holidays without emptiness and sadness. My parents both treated holidays (and birthdays, too) like a burden and something they did for "the children" - a seriously messed up message taken together. I want to do better. Kids or no kids, I do believe celebrations, rituals and traditions are important to the human soul. I dream of one day learning the true happiness of the holiday. My heart would grow like the Grinch. I don't have kids and, at 32 with a history of infertility, I might not ever have kids. If I do, I want to give them a better experience than I. If I don't, I want to have happy holidays for myself. If I can't manage some sort of holiday spirit, I envision there will be far more eggnog consumed each subsequent Christmas and eventually the straight bourbon will win out. Once my fiance's parents are gone - may it be many years, but they are 70 and 68 now - it'll be the two of us and his brother.

Today I trimmed the tree and put up lights on our patio. My fiance is blue and unmotivated about the holiday, so I wanted to surprise him. He'll get home from work at 3 am to find our still messy apartment decked out. It depressed the fuck out of me in the end because I don't have anything of my own or from my childhood to put on the tree baring the ornament I bought for our first Christmas in 2010 and a couple My Little Pony ornaments we picked up a few weeks ago. It is an ugly reminder of the losses I suffered in the form of all my earthly goods. I feel really shallow about mourning still three years later.

I'm determined to enjoy what I can about Christmas. I do like giving gifts. Giving something unexpected but utterly perfect is such a cool feeling. Honestly, I could do without getting gifts. It makes me slightly uncomfortable. I like lights especially colorful ones. I need to get some colorful lights, because the white ones I put up aren't "me" at all. Still, better than another year of nothing.

@fifthsonata - I can relate to working holidays. I work in a call center dealing with warranty issues. Everyone is pissed off by the time they talk to me. It's so depressing. I'm hoping I don't have to work on Christmas Day, but I will be working through any pretty much all the gatherings anyone is having otherwise.

@pyreblaze - Life not turning out as planned is a big issue in my thought patterns. I feel like I've wasted all kinds of time and I can't undo some of the choices I've made. You didn't specify what you'd want to do that you can't do over the holidays. For me, the most noticeable thing is not having kids like I wanted/expected, but I also don't have ties to family or community to get me doing things. A choir would be something or a volunteer project. I don't even know. Something to make my holidays seem more like the Pillsbury crescent roll commercials.

I hate Christmas with a passion. I try not to. Last year was the happiest I have been since I was wee and that was just because I could distract myself with my dog. New Years Eve is hard too. All that pressure of a new year. Will it be better than the last? Why am I still alive another year? I used to have a ritual of toasting in the new year wishing I will be dead before the year end. That never worked out. All that time to reflect on the failures of the past.

I hate the fake Christmas cheer that goes around. How my family is suddenly incredibly close and full of feelings that they have been denying all year (heck, all my life long). It really is a struggle when you look around and everyone is presenting themselves as this happy loving family and society. I end up resenting everything to do with it.

This year I'm trying to be accepting of it. I suppose I could put myself of service to others but then I think everyone does that only at this time of year and I'm no better than faking the whole cheer thing.

For me December is the most manic-depressive time of year which is just another way of saying what OP said, "December is that special time of year that brings either great joy or sadness". Thank you for starting this thread. I alternately go all over the city to photograph decorations and then have days of sadness. I try to ignore or scale down the holidays. I will not decorate at all, gifts will be given without Christmas wrap. We got through Thanksgiving okay. Stayed home and cooked a small turkey breast which was just right for my boyfriend and me to have leftovers once. Then we laughed at late night TV--Letterman, Kimmel and the like.

I decided to just stop sending cards and gifts to out-of-town friends and relatives. I haven't seen them in several years and my attempts at inviting them to get together have been rebuffed for some time. So I plan to concentrate all my energy locally. Our favorite New Year's Eve activity, live organ accompaniment to silent movies at a cathedral, has been moved into mid-January so maybe we will toast the New Year at a restaurant. And celebrate the end of the season at the mid-January silent movie concert.

May all on this thread find a way to enjoy and/or cope with this season.

I feel like I'm dying!!! I don't know what to do. I don't usually feel this way around the holidays, or maybe I do, I can't be sure because in past years I've either gone away on long backpacking trips or drowned any feelings in drugs. This autumn has been drug-fuelled too, only minor class C stuff, the "fun" stuff, so maybe that's why I'm feeling so awful now, like a big fucking come-down. Or maybe it's this friggin' 2012 shift, I've been riding it like a goddamn rollercoaster for two or three months, when will it be over?

I haven't felt this bad for many years....feels like I'm 16 again. I'm cancelling everything I can and cry my way through the chores I can't cancel, such as work and its horrifying commute. I sit on the train squeezed in by all the other passengers and hyperventilate and try to hide my tears, during a half-hour train ride plus a change to yet another train ride. It's dark and cold and everything seems incredibly pointless to me. Then I come home and I can't be nice to my lovely boyfriend cos I'm too fucking sad, and I can't face all the house chores that just NEVER FUCKING END!! On top of that I have to feed myself three times a day and it's fucking tiring. I wish someone would lock me up in an institution and feed me opiate dreams until April, and see how I feel then... And if I'm still the same, they have my permission to throw me off a cliff.

WHY THE FUCK AM I FEELING THIS WAY???!??!?!?!?!? I have no idea, but I'm so sick of crying.