Lynne S. Gots, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Holiday Survival Tactics
By Lynne Gots, posted on December 22nd, 2011.
purchase levitra My dog Baxter howls at sirens. My other dog, Freddie, isn’t a born howler. But when Baxter raises his snout skyward and starts to bay, Freddie answers the call of the wild and sings the bass line. There’s nothing I can do to stop them. If we’re out walking and the neighbors glare at me for creating a public disturbance, I just smile and give a sheepish shrug.
This is a good practice to keep in mind if you’re planning to attend a holiday gathering with a spouse, partner, or child who doesn’t behave quite as you’d like. I’m not saying you should tolerate boorish manners or rudeness. Even my dogs have learned to sit politely until I tell them they can eat. But fighting nature is simply a lost cause.
Consider this common scenario. You’re bringing home a significant other for the first time to celebrate the holidays. Your relatives are a boisterous bunch. It’s hard to get a word in edgewise around them, especially after they’ve emptied the punch bowl. Your SO is reserved. You love his quick wit and sharp observations, but it takes a while for him to open up. Noisy crowds make him retreat awkwardly to a corner. You’re afraid your outgoing family will mistake his shyness for unfriendliness, or worse, they’ll deem him boring.
What should you do?
You can make an effort to include him in the conversation, but don’t expect him to be anything other than who he is. If he’s an introvert who’s more comfortable with just a few close friends than in a large crowd, he’ll never be the life of the party. Get over it. You don’t need to apologize for him, and you shouldn’t feel responsible for his behavior. In fact, the more you try to coax him out of his shell, the more uncomfortable and self-conscious he’ll feel. So do as I do when the dogs start to howl: smile and shrug.
Oh, and enjoy the eggnog if there’s any left.
Tags: holiday stress
Posted in Acceptance and Mindfulness, Dogs |
Acceptance
By Lynne Gots, posted on December 3rd, 2011.
Read any good self-help books lately? If so, you’re sure to have come across the concept of acceptance. I’ve even talked about it myself in previous posts.
The idea seems self-explanatory. You accept an offer. You accept a gift. You accept a viewpoint. You accept the terms of a contract. If you check the dictionary for definitions of acceptance, the word “favorable” is often associated with it—as in, “a favorable reception,” or “ receiving favorably.” But I don’t think that accurately describes what cognitive-behavioral psychologists mean when we talk about acceptance.
Practicing acceptance doesn’t necessarily imply viewing a situation favorably. Nor does it involve resignation. It’s more a process than a finite state. You can’t make it happen all at once, just by willing it. You can’t force it. Sometimes it takes awhile to get there. And sometimes you’re there, and then you’re not.
Refusing to accept a loss, a breakup, a mistake, a personal trait, an emotional reaction, or a partner’s shortcomings is often what brings people into my office. Because fighting against what is frequently causes depression, anger, and anxiety. Before you can change something that’s making you unhappy, you first have to acknowledge its reality and accept it.
So why is acceptance so hard? I think it’s because people believe accepting something means liking it—receiving it favorably. It doesn’t.
Consider a woman who’s discovered her husband has been unfaithful (Mrs. Cain, say?). She’s hurt and angry. She thinks about how much she’s given to the relationship, the sacrifices she’s made, all she’s put up with over the years. It’s so unfair! She wants to exact revenge, cause suffering to match the pain she’s feeling. These are all understandable reactions. She’s furious over what’s happened to her. But if she refuses to accept it—and many people would—she keeps herself mired in the past and can’t move on. And in the long run, she’s only hurting herself.
So, you have a choice. Rail against the injustice of it all, nurse your anger, and remain stuck. Or say, “I hate this,” decide what you’re going to do next, and take steps to change.
Stay tuned. I’ll be writing more about acceptance in the coming weeks as we lead up to the new year. If you start working now on accepting what you don’t like about yourself or a situation you’re in, you’ll be in a better position to jump start your resolutions and build a solid foundation to support the changes you want to make on January 1.
Tags: acceptance
Posted in Acceptance and Mindfulness |
Holiday Madness
By Lynne Gots, posted on November 17th, 2011.
It’s that time of year again. Thanksgiving is barreling towards us like a runaway train, and the December holidays and New Year celebrations aren’t far behind. If you’re like most people, you have mixed feelings about the seasonal festivities, especially the self-imposed and media fueled pressures surrounding them.
The year after I completed my PhD and was starting to build a practice, several local news stations invited me to share my advice about coping with holiday stress. I’d done my dissertation research on stress and was working in the field of behavioral medicine, focusing on the mind-body connection, so I knew a little about the subject. But my knowledge was more academic than practical. So it was with some trepidation that I agreed to be interviewed on the air as an “expert.”
Thankfully the spots were short, and I managed to come up with some pithy sound bites. “Make time for yourself.” “Don’t overschedule.” “Keep it simple.” Good, common sense, right? Even today, with many more years of clinical practice and life experience under my belt, I’d offer the same tips. But I’d add one more: try to be flexible about your expectations.
Expecting yourself and everyone around you to live up to your idea of the perfect Thanksgiving feast, family gathering, or New Year’s Eve blowout is a surefire recipe for disaster. If you rigidly cling to an idealized vision of a Martha Stuart holiday, you’re setting yourself up to feel disappointed, or worse. So try to let go of your rules and image of how it all “should” turn out. You’ll cope better when your mother-in-law complains that the turkey is undercooked or your newly vegan daughter and gluten-sensitive sister don’t eat a bite of the family favorites you worked so hard to prepare. Who knows? Today’s holiday disasters may even become tomorrow’s memories.
I speak from personal experience. One New Year’s Eve, in preparation for a dinner party we were hosting, I went to great effort to make an elaborate chocolate torte for dessert, hoping to dazzle our guests. I left it to cool on the kitchen counter. When I came back to finish decorating it, I found an incriminating trail of crumbs on the floor leading to a chocolate-covered Golden Retriever. A huge chunk was missing from the cake. It was too late to make another, so I had to improvise. I cut it into slices and arranged them artfully on a plate. Nobody was the wiser, and the dog’s chocolate binge—which should have made him very sick but had no adverse effects whatsoever—became a family legend.
So be prepared to roll with the punches, and with a little luck, you’ll create stories of your own.
Tags: acceptance, expectations, holiday stress
Posted in Acceptance and Mindfulness |
