No Light and So Much Light: Two Easy Practices To Calm Christmas Stress

the first part of a three-part holiday series

We were getting ready for an evening of decorating the tree. In my mind, snow lined the tree branches and all was winter wonderland outside; the sound of carrollers singing came to us from chilly night. (In reality, there was no snow, and I heard three cop cars blare by a few steps from our living room. I hoped everything would be all right.)

I wanted my husband to come into the room to be with my son and me as we decorated. But he didn’t want to. His knee was hurting him. (I asked silently, Why do you refuse to go to physiotherapy? To which he replied, also silently, Because I am trying to save money! The bills!) Young teenage son cleared paper and decoration-cluttered sofa and propped pillows so that his dad would have a place to put up his sore leg. I was still smiling, but already clenching my jaw, slipping into an internal narrative and a very old story that something is wrong, none of this is the way it’s supposed to be.

That story has its roots in my earliest childhood, when my parents battled it out at Christmas and other times of the year, but especially at Christmas, because my mother was a Jehovah’s Witness (so we were all going to die forever for getting presents) and my father was an alcoholic Catholic (do we were all going to hell if we didn’t get presents).

As you may know for your own private reasons, Christmas can be a time of crackling amounts of tension between beloved, damaged people and nonsensical, damaging ideas. Children’s brains are still developing, so eternal death vs. hell vs. even if it kills me, I really want some presents! is confusing. No, that’s an understatement: so much intellectual tension and polarity embodied in two different people is impossible to integrate. Actually, it’s impossible for adults to understand and integrate either, because, like I said, Christmas was a battlefield, with turkey. Like many other people’s, my first family home was a site of love and hurt.

Anyway, back in the present: my husband settled onto sofa and groaned. Great. (He has, of course, his own family history). Son and I continued to do things: untangle Christmas lights, hang a bulb here and there on our tree. I reflected, sadly, that the pretty ones that friends had given me were in truth more interesting and better made than all these crappy ones I got a few years ago, likely from Walmart. And the tinsel garland was thin. And the tree was fake. My husband picked up his phone. I tried to keep my voice calm, “Can you not spend this time on your phone please? Just remain present with us.” He set his phone down and groaned louder, put his head back on the pillows, and closed his eyes.

His beautifully acted-out discomfort and resistance tripped the switch to speed up my own internal narrative none of this is the way it’s supposed to be, you don’t really love me because you’re not doing what I want and need, this is all wrong, it’s not good enough, look at this stupid tree.

Feeling my displeasure, my son responded with some of his own. He had just finished patiently untangling the thick cord of Christmas lights, and plugged them in, but they did not spark into their twinkly burst of bright colour. He snapped, “These don’t even work!” It had been a long untangle. Tensions rose in the room as we wiggled the cord. Husband opened one resentful eye, then let his head drop back again like a 19th century consumptive. Son and I plugged and unplugged a few tiny bulbs: nothing lit up. “There’s no fucking light!” my son said angrily. I was struck by the swear word and ready to reprimand him. But instead I just sat with it for a moment instead and took a breath. Ah, the power of the pause. The thought came to me simply: he is describing decades of my holiday baggage. This bad mood has nothing to do with him.

The Power of The Pause:

Shift Perspectives

It was a small moment, stinging and beautiful, and it called me back to my own life. To him. To my husband and his tender, injured knee. I have my own family now; we live together in a safe place. Every year I do some fundraising for a clinic in Greece that helps refugees who need specialized medical treatment. They are innocent people, stranded, entangled in the political red tape of their harrowing courageous escapes across international borders. They live in tents during a freezing cold winter. In this world of over 60 million displaced people, many of them on my own city streets, my good fortune is dazzling; it is brilliant. So much light. My own and my family’s good health, our love for each other: a gift.

There’s no fucking light. There’s so much light. Ever since I was a child, perspective has been important to me. In times of great family stress, far worse forms of dysfunction than Christmas fights, I used to look out the window and think, Outside, everything is different. True: this was a form of dissociation, but like many forms of zoning or numbing out, it had a protective function. And it was also true. That little girl was right! She knew things could be different, though it often feels like I am still learning how to make them different.

Because in trigger-y moments, in times of stress, when I am tired or sick, phew, how things can often feel the same. Through our own unconsciously patterned responses and expectations, through our own insistent often early life body-brain-spirit-narrative, we can also nudge them to be the same. It helps to remember that our neural pathways encode and ‘set’ our behaviours. (This is how Christmas is going to be: hellish.) We have to force ourselves to do different things in order to . . . feel differently.

Even now, every year at Christmas, so many old tensions move through me, like a ghost in the body, along with many new tensions, for life is complicated. Yet a single moment, or a child, may call us back to ourselves: a moment can be a key that opens into a new view. A child is often honest enough to name things out loud.

My lovely son, absorbing my own grumpiness, halted my downward slide into Christmas PTSD. The swear word was like a splash of cold water in my face. He had said the words There’s no fucking light but I was showing them; I was being those words. I didn’t reprimand him. I sat on a chair, put my feet on the floor, and took four conscious breaths, ‘sending’ the breath out of one foot, then the other, simply following the breath with my mind.

Letting Go of Christmases Past and Touching in To the Present:

Bilateral Stimulation

That’s often enough for me to change the channel from the past to the present. But it can help to do more: So I touched my left hand to my right knee, my right hand to my left knee, a few times on each side, slowly and steadily, building a rhythm: bilateral stimulation is the basis of the trauma therapies that I practice as a therapist. I use these techniques to soothe with my own PTSD symptoms.

Generally speaking, the research shows that bilateral stimulation calms the nervous system. It’s one of the reasons why going for a walk often helps us to feel calmer: our arms and legs and feet, together, stimulate both sides of the body in tandem, ‘resetting’ the brain.

I found another string of lights and plugged them in first: they worked. “I’ll untangle these ones. You’ve already done so much work. And look, Appa’s tired.” (My husband is Korean: Appa is dad.) The groaning, grumpy man became my husband again, not a malingerer, but a person dear to me, suffering.

I said, “Sometimes I get so stressed out at time of year because I remember how things were during Christmas when I was little.” I explained that old tension to my son. My husband quietly listened. The new tension drained out of the room. Just like that. I drained it.

“I’m really tired,” the boy said, again expressing the relief and weariness that all of us were experiencing.

“We can do this tomorrow, in the morning, when we have more energy.” Appa let out a mock cheer. We both helped him stand, even though he said he didn’t need any help.

We left the tree without any lights in it, and went upstairs to get ready for bed.