The Christmas holidays are sold to us as a time of celebration, love and gratitude, and they come with the implicit expectation of being happy. However, these festive joys for many people are often accompanied by a cocktail of emotions which can inevitably lead to bad mood, anxiety and even depression.
A variety of factors and conditions can influence our mood during christmaswhich for many people appears to be a sad time full of nostalgia since feelings are on the surface because it stirs us emotionally. As indicated by Xavier Fàbregas Pedrell, medical director of MAS FERRIOL and doctor specializing in addictions and mental health disorders, Christmas reminds us of past times that we often long for when we were children, when there were moments of carefree, vacations and surrounded by the whole family.
«Christmas was a time of very excitedof gifts, of family gatherings, and now for many people it is a moment of alteration because feelings of loneliness, of yearning for those people who are not there and sometimes a certain sadness because there is a consumerist pressure that makes these festivals distorted,” he emphasizes.
In this sense, it is not surprising that it is a season that so many do not like. Apparently there are people who live with a feeling of discomfort by social interactions because “they are people who are not very given to that contact with others, or who have had bad experiences or who are going through a bad time. Imagine the families that have recently suffered the death of someone very dear to them, or someone who has just separated and did not want to be separated, or someone who has their children far away,” says the expert.
As we said, there are people who do not like these celebrations because represent consumerismthey are going to have to buy gifts, spend money, they are going to have to take trips…. Xavier Fábregas points out that we live in a time when those things that others do “sometimes make us envious, or bother us and we are exposed to that bombardment of information that we didn’t have before.”
Christmas sadness
The Christmas lights, songs and atmosphere don’t appeal to everyone: people who suffer from the Christmas blues will feel melancholy and out of place in this festive atmosphere that envelops us for a few weeks, and could develop a more serious form of anguish.
In reality, it has to do with those people who do not have or do not feel much pleasure in those social interactions, and feel bad when they feel obliged to participate in family parties…
According to the doctor, those who do not enjoy social gatherings and are going through a bad time are the ones who are not going to enjoy these parties. What will they feel? They will feel a feeling of discomfort more or less intense depending also on the degree of that uncomfortable situation. «There will be people who are not noticed and only if you ask them deeply will they tell you what they are feeling; there will be other people who are avoidant and that they organize themselves so as not to be right on these dates, that is, people who take a trip and who disappear a little from the map with any excuse and who perhaps have not perceived that there is this discomfort around these dates); and there will also be people who express it very openly, who tend to be the ones who complain, those who are continually ranting about consumerism, having to do things out of obligation, etc.».
These tend to remain a bit isolated because people who really enjoy Christmas try to live it in their own way while those who do not enjoy it often become ‘anti-Christmas’ characters, ‘Grinch‘, trying – perhaps in some cases without bad intentions – to “bust the well-being and happiness of others».
However, Xavier Fábregas points out that, probably, “when they have grieved or when those circumstances that make them feel bad have changed, they will feel that Christmas is once again an exciting time.”
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