December 28th, 2008

Holiday Loneliness Antidotes?

» Posted in Love, Relationships at 9:57 am

This time of year the pre-holiday Madness can easily turn to Loneliness! I don’t like this time of year & usually apply an antidote by retreating & renewing my energies for the coming new year. This works for me and many people think ME mad! Despite that fact many people around me complain about this time of year & so I decided to put together a list of remedies to help prevent the Holiday Madness from turning to Loneliness.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. George Bernard Shaw

The Guardian ran a post titled ‘Lonely this Christmas amid holiday cheer’ in which they say:

Spending the festive season as a patient on a mental health service ward may be better than waiting out a stressful long weekend, writes Clare Allan

Christmas, as well as being a long weekend (four days long this year, in fact four days long for the next four years, I have just, with some horror, worked out) presents a cocktail of additional stresses. Few who have imbibed it can wonder at the fact that as well as being the season of peace and good will, Christmas is also peak suicide time, and a good sleigh length ahead of the rest when it comes to psychiatric admissions.

O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper. I would not be mad. William Shakespeare

Another post titled ‘Holiday Loneliness’ quotes:

While most of us can successfully weather a few hours or days of the holiday blues, some 20 percent of people roughly 60 million Americans feel sufficiently socially isolated for it to be a major source of unhappiness in their lives. In fact, many lonely people are surrounded by friends and family, yet don’t feel close to any of them. Such intimate isolation the feeling that no one understands who you are appears to be on the rise. A study by sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona found that between 1985 and 2004 the average number of friends with whom Americans felt they could discuss important matters had dropped from three to two. The number who said they had no one with whom they could discuss important matters more than doubled to nearly 25 percent.

In a mad world, only the mad are sane. Akiro Kurosawa

Whether you have a partner or not here a few tips so that you dont become overwhelmed during this time of year.

Take time out for yourselves in the run up to the holidays & identify what is important to you
Make sure that you action some of the points on that list during the holidays
Have some quiet time at least once a day, even if that means asking for it from those close to you
Dont contribute to the madness by putting yourself or anyone else under pressure to do anything they dont want to do from their heart

He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals. Miguel De Cervantes

Have unproductive time where you just relax and enjoy every day with no inner recriminations
Eat healthily & say no to all the food that you know disagrees with you
Have a deep & meaningful conversation once a day with someone who you respect
Have a good laugh once a day
Put YOU back into the Holidays rather than filling up the time with others, no matter how much they mean to you
Above all remember ALONE does not equal LONELY

These tips work for me, let me know what works for you in the comments below so we are all well prepared for next holiday season. I will leave you with a funny video from ‘Smack the Donkey’ about being alone on the holidays. Enjoy…..