Christmas as a trigger

[Muttly]

I've seen a few threads about Christmas, but not quite on this topic. Sorry if its a repeat. My hope is this could be a thread for anyone who has PTSD triggers around Christmas (not just me). I know that Christmas can be a stressful time for everyone and that "normal" families can show the stress. I also know that for some, like me, the holidays had/have very specific abuse associated with it

For me... some things were so small in a way, but so inescapable. I was the smallest so I was sent under the tree to water it. That as a good time for m dad to grope me. I also remember him sticking wrapping paper tubes between my legs in a sexual way. And then there was the day... my brother and I were made to wait in a bedroom and were then told to come out. It became a competition/race. Except my brother was 4.5 years older than me and physical big (people always asked if he played american football) and I was physically small. I'd get slammed into the wall, knocked down, tripped, etc. That was just part of it. Knowing I'd be hurt on my way to get presents. And likely hurt while waiting in the bedroom. Those are just a few things. There was always more though. The brother and I were out of school and the dad was off work (the mom didn't work), so all the normal bad stuff was more likely to happen too. And some of the worst stuff happened then too.

Add to that my grandma, who I grew close to as a teen/young adult, died on Christmas day. And as a teen, a friend of mine shot himself just after Thanksgiving and was in coma for the whole month of December and died shortly after the new year. I would look at the Christmas lights everyone had up and pray he'd live.

I've been told over and over to make it my own holiday. To find my own ways to enjoy and such. And maybe if I had kids, I would. As it is, I just wish I could sleep through December.

 

[ms spock]

f*ck yeah!

Yeah there is a lot of this bullshit about "making it your own f*cking holiday" - yeah an anniversary is an trauma anniversary - and for me personally I cannot be full of bullshit surrounding this, I tried one year and it went very badly indeed - I cannot afford to be complacent or any of that crap.

Xmas time is purely a time to get through without acting on suicidal ideation for me it starts on the 8th of October and it is a shit fight until the 20th of January. I have f*cking worked my arse off around this stuff. I really have, and yeah I mean one day when I actually live in a house/home that is safe it might be doable but really this year - just get it done and get the whole f*cking thing over - when I was a kid we had the refugees in my classes in primary school - and now we keep the f*cking refugees behind barbed wired fences - and it is all for big business - the year before the media started banging about being invaded by boat people we literally had three people arrive by boat per day I was sitting in the Immigration Law Course at Sydney University - facts and figures for anyone to find - and we have spent billion dollars of taxpayers money for big business to make a killing and then people pretend to be Christian and celebrate the birth of the original refugee Jesus Christ all without any f*cking irony. It disgusts me. We have been positioned to be consumers in a market place, rather than citizens in a democracy and it really f*cking pisses me off. The hypocrites the goddamned f*cking hypocrites and it is effecting our children there is this tsnami of anxiety goijng through the primary schools. And that is coming from all the fear in the media, fear and paranoia. So we are screwing ourselves as well.

f*ck Xmas is what I say. Nail all the hyprocrites to the cross. Jesus would have been killed after he was born because his parents wouldn't have been able flee persecution. f*ck it all.

 

[mumstheword]

He wasn't even born on Christmas. Christmas is more a midwinter cheer up and eat surplus animals that they couldn't afford to keep through the rest of the snowtime event. It's a Finnish/Swedish sharmanic festival about fly agaric mushroom consumption. The mushrooms are red and white. They were hung up to dry over the fire place. These sharmanic mushroom eaters would also drink reindeer pee, because the reindeer would eat the mushrooms and the psychoactive drugs would pass through the reindeer and people would "fly" when they consumed these magic mushroom drugs.

I'm pretty sure Jesus was born in January anyway. I think the Ethiopian Orthodox celebrate his birth on the 6 of January or some such date.

Christmas has been. really shit for me for a long time, but I don't really wanna be a grinch about it. It's just weird coz it's super hot here at Christmas and we still pretend it's a midwinter festival that's a mix of sharmanic pagan and Jesus worship but actually it's a buying, consuming and eating frenzy.

I think it's a time to be extra kind. Let your inner child feel a little treated. Eat especially yummy food but why over do it?

Connect with the ancestors and ritual in a way that's meaningful for you but just be extra kind to yourself, if you can.
Australians are weird and crazy at Christmas. It's boiling hot and we eat heavy "Christmas fruit cake and custard and shit"
??????

There is soooo much consumer hype. Damn capitalists. Con artists. Buy buy buy. I don't want to buy into the hype but I do want to have a peasant time, for once.

Make it a little fun for the kidlets. We have ten between us but most are young adults now.

 

[ms spock]

I thought Jesus was born in September, and it was a Pagan festival that the Catholics appropriated because they couldn't stamp it out?

We can't keep consuming and have a planet to live on so we are not doing the next generations any favours.

I don't expect to enjoy Xmas but I do expect myself to be responsible and take care of other people's Xmas's and meet my social responsibilities. I am an adult so I suck it up. I look to tend to those who have a lot less, or who have poor social connections, though my psychiatrist wants me to stop doing that and focus on being around people whose major concern in not mental health.

I already got my Xmas present this year - Cardinel George Pell came back to face the multiple charges of child sexual assault, and I don't care about justice or him getting a conviction, convictions are rare, so grab those success as you can. He came back and people got to hold their placards and have their say, whether they get validation from an adversial justice system most likely won't happen, but they got their moment that he actually got charged, and not so long ago that was a one in a billion possibility.

 

[Sideways]

I haven’t been in hospital since April, which is my longest stretch staying out in years and years. I’m aiming for this to be the first christmas in 8 years that I don’t end up in hospital. But christmas-brain is setting in with the appearance of tinsel and santas everywhere, and I don’t know that I’m gonna make it.

I have a couple of anniversaries around new year that have nothing to do with Christmas. But the messages everywhere that I’m supposed to be joyful and jolly make it durn near impossible to just let the days roll past without attaching any significance to them. I’m happy for people who love this time of year, but I really do wish I had a cave somewhere that I could retreat to.

I’m with you that trying to turn the day into my own special holiday is really good advice from someone incredibly well meaning who, frankly, doesn’t have the slightest idea what it’s like. And they can go and stick their well-meaning advice where the sun don’t shine.

I’m aiming to get through without destroying myself or winding up in hospital. So let’s not pretend there’s much to celebrate right now.

 

[ms spock]

People with that type of insensitive f*cking bullshit advice can well and truly go and f*ck themselves as far as I am concerned. And I am not buying it. I am saying to people, hey maybe not go on about it so much hey? Like it is the worst time for suicide, and also for people to feel so profoundly alone and isolated, and a lot of people are saying yeah I am over it as well. And the wasting of money when so many go without. It is not okay. That is not socially just. You be real and people do respond and tell me the ways in which their social network is cutting down on the whole spending thing, and some people let you know they have no one for Xmas and you can then think about how to connect them up to some like minded people. I was asked to look in on one person, and initially I said yes, but I changed that to a no, without explaining myself away. I set a boundary and said no and the world didn't end.

 

[ms spock]

Great thread by the way @Muttly!

Sorry if I hijacked it a bit. I am trying to be better with this, your thread was just so to the point from my perspective, it just resonated with me so deeply that I responded the way I did. I can pare down my responses if that is useful to you.

That is great @Ragdoll Circus! Way to go! Please share your process with us in this thread.

I love it when people cut the BS, radically accept what is what, call a spade a spade, then rolls up their sleeves and does the best that they can in this now to address the situation. That is what recovery is all about for me.

I am moving very slowly, but each millimetre is never taken forgranted for me. I worked hard for each millimetre, and I am grateful to make the progress that I make.

 

[mumstheword]

Personally, I wish i could just get hospitalized now, and be in there for the time that we are referring to.
I can't though, not an option.

I have children too, so I pretty much have to try not to drag them into my shit fight.

It's my abusive mums birthday on the day too. First time for me, where I've totally cut her out. She may try and contact me, so I've got that to look forward, telling her I don't, under any circumstances, want to talk or have anything to do with her, no birthday present from me this year.. Maybe after a shit load of therapy I might be able to, in some minimal way, have something to do with her. She has Parkinson's now too.

I'm just trying to psyche myself into some nominal minimal level of not having a compete meltdown, for my kids sake, is all. Sorry if it sounded like I was trying to give advice. I'm just, basically, trying to psyche myself to finding a way for it to not break me up worst than I already am so I don't damage my offspring. I'm really into the whole "inner child" nurturing coz it seems one of the few things that's actually helping.

Again, sorry if I sounded preachy. I thought breaking things down to a slightly spesh meal might be nice, but it's really just a personal thing that applies to me, because I have children to think about.
Please utterly disregard, it doesn't apply to anyone but myself and I'm sorry I framed it in a way that sounds like it does. My bad.

 

[AnotherUser]

The Christmas build-up, which seems to start in September, is so toxic for me. But this year I am trying exposure therapy as part of the work I am doing with my T, so I have probably listened to more Christmas songs on a loop as I've walked through my Xmas-obsessed home city than someone working retail!

I'd rather try and conquer the season on my own terms than run away from it or live in fear of it (I even have negative anticipatory thoughts about Christmas in March).

I don't think I'll have kids in my life now, time has passed. But if I ever did, I would give them a great Christmas, the way people used to do in the 1950s - decorations go up no earlier than three days before, come down three days after, and no discussion about it all until it comes; get this absurd psychological pressure into some kind of proportion without alienating the kids from their own culture.

I'd also set a $10 limit on gifts, the way office Secret Santas do. I have more reasons to hate Christmas than this, but one of the things I always did hate about it was my damned family leaving the price stickers on and expressing disappointment about gifts they didn't want or like. It made the whole thing tense and horrible, like auditioning for a play every year and wondering if you'd be 'picked' for approval.

The core idea of Christmas as expressed by Dickens is excellent, except we ought to flip it round and give ourselves a brief break from kindness and goodwill every 25th December.

 

[Tornadic Thoughts]

The season makes my skin crawl for so many reasons. The fakery and the f*ckery leaves me nauseated, literally. Up until this year, it's taken every ounce of energy my being could muster up to keep from losing my mind/life/the few threads of sanity remaining as I waded through the misery and resentful solitude that arrives this time each year like clockwork. It has become even more intense now that I live my life as a whole foods plant-based vegan consumer.

This year, I'm still not partaking in the usual/expected/highly celebrated typical reindeer games, nor do I plan to ever again, especially now that I've totally changed my entire lifestyle, but rather I'm sharing my own flavors of how I discovered my own well-being rather than continually sharing my heavily dis-eased being, both of which are perceived by most as being weird and shit, anyway, every chance I get. Some places receive me well, others not so much, just like everyday life. I used to feel I needed to hide and take cover so I could stay "safe", now I show up where I want to and make the moment as much of what I want it to be (as much as humanly possible) rather than try to simply continue to unhealthily endure and "fake it 'til I supposedly make it" amidst the stuff that took me under for many years.

I'm not making it my own helliday, so to speak, nor do I want to, but rather giving myself permission and the freedom to be something other than miserable for a change so that the festive little f*ckers don't pluck my nerves as badly as they usually do, and it feels pretty weird, but so far, so good. I'm doing more of what I really want to do in celebrating every damn day and every damn meal just because I'm still breathing and doing more of what keeps me grounded rather than remembering and marinating in how badly I've felt the other 4 decades. Although those feelings very much remain and can take center stage at any moment.

I still cringe when I hear the music, see the lights, smell the smells, hear the big fat alcohol-breathed retail santas saying ho f'n ho and remember being treated like one by a few, hearing the bells ringing every time I need something at the store, hearing adults continue to fill the heads of young ones with blatant lies and bullshit as they go deeper in debt and help build foundations of f*ckery and food disorders in the name of celebrating said bullshit, memories of so many personal boundaries being crossed in the name of all the fictional beings I was conditioned to believe in and fear with every ounce of my being, etc. etc.

The only difference I can see now is my conscious choice of energetic outlets, as are the energetic cords I allow to be plugged into them. I still f'n hate it, but I (finally) found I can love me more than I hate something else, and I guess somewhere in between all of those attempts I luck into a little balance on occasion. Perhaps one day the balance will get comfortable enough to hang around, but until then, may we all get through the best ways we know how.

 

[Deleted member 41765]

Perhaps one day the balance will get comfortable enough to hang around, but until then, may we all get through the best ways we know how.

Beautifully said, and I loved every word of your post.

Yeah there is a lot of this bullshit about "making it your own f*cking holiday" - yeah an anniversary is an trauma anniversary - and for me personally I cannot be full of bullshit surrounding this,

Yep!

but I really do wish I had a cave somewhere that I could retreat to.

And me as well!

Apologies to those of you who've heard this before, but Christmas this year, and I've struggled with this season for most of my adult like, marks a new trauma anniversary for me. One year ago, my oldest and dearest friend was murdered on her way to a Christmas dinner. Other friends of hers are making a big to do of setting intentions in her honor, "letting go of fear" (as if I haven't been trying to do that for a decade at least) and doing sun salutation poses daily in her honor (my friend was, among many other things, a yoga instructor) and I just cannot get on board with the bs!! More that anything I'd love to "make it a celebration of her life" but, if yesterday (a very bad, bad day) was any indication, I'm just not strong enough! Hibernation please.

 

[Freemartin]

To me, the biggest problem with Christmas is all the f*cking nuclear family happy-happy-joy-joy bullsh*t. Like, all of a sudden everybody just has this flawless, wonderful family that finds nothing more pleasurable than spending time together. :bored: Well, guess who doesn't fit in? I just f*cking hate that assumption that of the f*cking course everybody wants to spend the holidays with their DNA donors.

Needless to say, I don't have that merry family. I do have parents, and they are still alive. I won't be spending Christmas with them, because otherwise I might end up hospitalized or some sh*t along those lines.

My biggest Christmas trigger is, in other words, the family stuff that's so closely tied to the whole phenomenon. It really rings some bells (pun semi-intended) about getting abused and abandoned. And the fact that I will never have a Christmas-compatible family. It's not so much about what I've been through as it is about the things I never had. Like, let's say, parents I wouldn't have to be afraid of.

Oh, and for me this festival also has a religious meaning. The traditional, Christian one. But that's something very few people here (in my 3D circles) share. It's the one realm where I could actually fit in, but hey, Christmas? In church? It's this celebration of perfect families! :banghead:

I’m aiming to get through without destroying myself or winding up in hospital. So let’s not pretend there’s much to celebrate right now.

This, this I just love. Let's have it as a shared goal. No pretending, just an attempt at staying alive and in outpatient care. I'm in! :happy: