Depression during festive season in diaspora

Let's be honest - even if you're not suffering from clinical depression or the holiday blues, the holidays can be stressful and often disappointing. We run ourselves ragged buying gifts, cooking, decorating and entertaining. Tempers flare as we're thrown together with relatives whom we see infrequently, and don't necessarily enjoy spending time with. Expectations are high that this season will be magical and perfect as we try to recapture the anticipation we felt as children waiting for Visitors from town or wait for a rush of emotion as we ponder When those feelings don't automatically well up, we're disappointed.  Festive seasons are times when the family unity is reignited and  family relations are strengthened.  Its normally a time when children will put on their new dresses and make a beeline to the shops to show off their new wardrope.  

Those who receive nothing will break down in tears while trying to juggle visits.
The sheer stress of the holidays was just too much for parents  and children but it was a welcome stress.
Being abroad these festive seasons mean nothing.  There is no close family to visit. Some do spend all the holidays in doors.  

Festive seasons are times when Diaspora really feel home sick.  
When you are away from home it's like Dante created your own private circle of hell. The idea of doing all this holiday stuff while you're alone is beyond overwhelming. Shop for Christmas or presents turns your head in. You're having trouble getting out to shop for food! Decorate the house? You don't even know why you should go an extra mile to Send out Christmas cards to 50 of your closest relatives and friends? What would you say in them - "Doing awful.

It's miserable to be away from home during the holidays. One reason is that you know that you really should be enjoying all the wonderful things that come along with them. As down as It sounds on the season, abroad one  do enjoy a lot of Christmas-sy things - decorating the tree and the house, giving and receiving presents. Enjoying the whole rest and even time to re align your programme.

But when You are alone the fact that you can't enjoy relations these things makes you twice as miserable, and You berate yourself for not partaking fully in the joys of the season and mixing up with relations catching up with old friends.

The second thing that makes it so hard to be away during the holidays is that doing the holidays right requires planning and organization. If you're alone and away you're so far from having those capabilities that it's pathetic. You can't even plan past the next five minutes, let alone a whole holiday season.

You feel like bursting into tears when someone asks you to join in singing a Christmas carol. Worst of all, you're overly sensitive in general - to noise, to anything sad, like the other reindeer teasing Rudolph, to really garish decorations that make you really feel home sick. So you have to try to act normal while all this turmoil and pain is going on inside you, instead of being able to cry and scream or stare at the ceiling like you can do when you're alone. It is not a nice experience to be abroad and away from family during festive holidays.

On the flip side, being alone at the holidays (not by choice) can exacerbate depression also. You're being bombarded with images of happy family gatherings that won't be part of your holidays.

Even if they're at the end of their rope trying to get everything done, they will be telling you what a downer you're being. You know you should be happy and having fun. No one has to tell you that. But they do anyway, and you just want to slug them and burst out crying at the same time. Yes, they "mean well." But they're not making things any easier for you.  
Being surrounded by friends and relatives is the theme of a holiday.

You have to be willing to throw away all the "shoulds" that come with the holidays, though and enjoy the things you are faced with at that moment.

Diaspora must learn to Self permission. Permission to drastically cut back on holiday preparations, permission to feel emotions other than unqualified joy and happiness and permission to gently but firmly say enjoy what is there.

Remember - you are not a loser for scaling back. Other people would probably love to do it too, but there's major peer pressure to "enjoy" holidays to their fullest.

Being abroad at this time of the year is a true test of patience.  
Holidays are meant for families but when there is no family indeed there is no holiday.  

Vazet2000@yahoo.co.uk