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Christmas 2021 The good the bad and the ugly.

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Mach123

MyPTSD Pro
I like Christmas. It’s very emotional and my cPTSD gets tweaked but I’m used to most of that. We have no money this year, not that we ever did.

The tree is up though at least partially and the lights are outside partially.

This is for a discussion or comments or a place to vent about how much you hate it if you do, and who you’ll have to put up with or not this year and so on. Some people skip it all together but it’s hard to avoid.
 
I’ve always liked Christmas, but this year I’ve been so dysregulated and I’ve been dealing with more suicidal ideation than I ever have before, that I don’t have it in me for Christmas this year. The thought of seeing my family (who I do very much love) sounds exasperating. I don’t want to have to pretend I feel okay and I definitely don’t want to go into my trauma issues with anyone in my family right now. My small Christmas ‘saving grace’ is I’ve had a little fake tree up (since before Halloween lol) and I got a poinsettia plant. So I’m not 100% a grinch 😂
 
i'm at a crossroads. for most of my life i've preferred to be called, "grinch" because the the grinch has wa-a-a-ay cooler toys than scrooge. in personal fact, december is one long string of trauma anniversaries. with much support from my therapy network, somewhere in the 80's i declared december to be therapy month. the ploy worked and it has been a goodly while since that fat guy in a red suit has triggered me to flashbacks but i had grown quite comfortably with the grinching ways. and a happy bah humbug to you, too, my friend.

in 2018, my 2 eldest grandchildren (ages 5 and 2) were thrown into a fierce domestic storm that had me worried about their mental health. i threw them a therapy christmas to distract them from the grownup yaddah blahs that were tearing their world apart. that domestic nightmare worsened to where they are have been with me since 2019. the situation has stabilized, but healing takes time.

the tree is already up and i'm not quite ready to call myself a convert, but? ? ? the stage is set?

part of me wonders if i am betraying my fellow grinchians.
 
I used to hate Christmas with every fiber of my being. Then I had kids and I changed my attitude. Christmas is really for children after all.

Last year was a horrible Christmas, but the upside was that we put up and decorated a tree for the first time ever. The downside is that was because our family tradition is always to visit my parents a couple states over and decorate their tree. Looks like we'll get to do that again - although we had to cancel Thanksgiving this year due to illness, so anything's possible.
 
For people who want to be festive but for various reasons cannot bring themselves to can I recommend a battery powered cavas with a picture of a Christmas tree and flickering lights? They also make good gifts for people stuck in hospital etc .

I was really worried I had lost my festive spirit this year having felt it a bit for the first time since 2017 but we got a tree earlier - just a little one- - and I’ve been slowly decorating it. And it feels better .

We usually have a tree in our sitting room and then the smaller tree in the kitchen but I suggested we just have the kitchen tree this year . Not sure . But - it’s just us, we are unlikely to use the sitting room but rather snuggle in the kitchen - seems a waste ( even if I love those decorations so much) .


Already decided I’m not doing the traditional meal ( probably going to have a nut roast) and it’s quite exciting. We are having some of the normally expected side dishes in the run up instead .
 
Christmas is very messed up for me. I used to detest it as it would be the chosen time for my dad to get drunk and get sinister and terrible and I'll have to leave with other family members and pissing everyone off.

In Brazil with my mom I really do like it though. It's Christmas in the tropics with fake trees and fake snow everywhere and it's like 35 degrees Celsius outside with a raging sun! It's really funny and people get imaginative with plastic trees or decorating local trees like auraucarias or banana or palm trees, blinking lights everywhere you go. People would make barbecues and you would smell the food and the smoke and you'd gather in the garden, in the dark but with the whole blinking decor. And hear the birds and the dogs barking.

So now I just spend Christmas on my own normally and avoid the whole thing. My uncle would have kept the habit to kind of save the thing and order something nice so I can make my own thing with my friends.

This year however my family is blasting with a secret Santa and I'm just so tired and depressed. And they're so many of them we'd have 3 or 4 Christmas nights. And my roommates want to organise a dinner too. Help!

So my Christmases have kind of been centered on food and decor I think. Sometimes we would go to the mass, when dad decided to suddenly get religious. Overall it's been chaotic and changing every year, I try to keep people at arm's length.
 
Covid is so rampant right now where I live. Over half a dozen family members are sick with it right now(and most were vaccinated),one seriously ill and hospitalized. All plans have already been cancelled and that's fine by me. All I care about is family getting well and preventing further spread.

It's also the first Christmas since my son passed away. I'm not feeling very festive anyway. I'm still not 100% functioning but I am trying.

All that matters this year is my loved ones. All of this holiday frenzy,trying to find perfect gifts,the chaos,the nonsense simply doesn't matter to me this year.
 
My daughter and I are home and mom is out with the other one. Tonight is trimming the tree. I miss the kids for occasions like these. It’s a pattern that was established as they were born. Every year their mother made them or had them make Christmas ornaments many with pictures . So every year the kids all searched for “their” ornaments and we’d all remember and laugh . Plus there had always to be eggnog and Christmas cookies and hot cider. So we will take pictures and call them and so on. They’re cute when they’re little lol. Those were good years.
 
I have so many triggers and horrible memories around Christmas and this whole holiday "season." It starts in October and goes through the new year. It's not a time of year that I celebrate. I just try to survive it. I don't go to Christmas parties, and people wishing me a "Merry Christmas" bothers me a lot. Once or twice isn't too bad, but after a while I just want to tell everyone F Christmas and STFU! Then what's almost worse, is afterward everyone feels they must ask me "How was your Christmas?" I want to say, "It was f**ked Karen, and I don't care how yours was either." So I plaster on a fake smile and try to survive.
 
We went to church this morning or rather we tried . Our daughter who is so severely handicapped poor thing, has developed a routine around the local church and gives us a LOT of oppositional defiance trying to get out the door at 8:30 am. So we make it through you know but everyone is so nettled by the time we get home we all have to retreat to neutral corners and decompress . They sang one Christmas carol. There is a Christmas Eve “shirt message and sing Christmas carols and I’d like to go. I like going to church on Christmas Eve . We have had years in churches where we didn’t hear a single Christmas carol, and the church is locked up on Christmas Eve. I felt grinched or scrooged.

I’m lying down lol.

And the tree didn’t get trimmed yesterday and there’s some doubts about today .
 
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When I was a little kid, for a couple years christmas was cool. It was neat, but I have very few memories of it, mostly just the sense that it was cool and amazing.
And then christmas disappeared, for me, for awhile. Poof, gone.

And years later when I knew I was going to have a "real" christmas again, I was excited, secretly, crazily excited.
And then it was pure shit. Worse than shit.

It's not until my kids were born that it became something okay. I try to make it special and 'Christmasy' for them but I dont care for it or about it myself.
 
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