Eating your way through the holidays? You might be trying to eat your grief

For many of us, the holiday season isn’t the time of joy that we’re told it’s supposed to be.

When carols start playing on the radio, instead of making you want to go shopping and decorate the house with wreaths and tinsel, it makes you want to hide under the covers with a bag of cookies and Netflix instead.

Perhaps you find yourself eating more, or drinking more, or distracting yourself from the heavy feeling inside however you can. You might be more short-tempered than usual and, rather than finding harmony, you snap at your kids while they decorate the tree.

If you had to describe your feelings, you’d say you’re stressed out.

The ghosts of Christmas past

Confession time: I have done this. I’ve turned what I fantasize should be a happy, joyous time – decorating our Christmas tree while carols play in the background – into misery.

As we unpack the ornaments and decorate the tree, all those memories of Christmases past came flooding back.

The first Christmas in Barbados when we didn’t have any of our things from England yet, so we bought a few packages of ornaments for our scrawny little tree.

The year in North Carolina when we were so broke, we nabbed a discarded tree from a Christmas tree farm and I made ornaments for it from scraps of wrapping paper and sliced up old CDs.

The ornaments from my ex-husband’s family.

The tiny angel my Kindergarten teacher gave me.

The ornaments the kids made when they were little, when life seemed both harder and simpler, and before my youngest came out as transgender and changed their name.

The ornament my Mum gave me, before she died. Well, the special box for it anyway. I think the ornament broke last year when it fell off the tree.

So many memories. So many hopes, dreams and expectations about how things could have been different, or better or more in some way.

So much unresolved grief from past losses.

No wonder I’m “stressed out.” What I really am is grieving. Perhaps you are, too.

How we cope with our unresolved feelings of loss

And when you’re grieving, even if you don’t realize it, you have certain coping mechanisms you come up with to help you muddle through.

The Grief Recovery Institute calls these Short Term Energy Relieving Behaviors, because they temporarily relieve the uncomfortable energy (or feelings) you’re experiencing as a result of unresolved grief.

Here’s a list of most of them. You can probably think of some more.

  • Food
  • Alcohol
  • Drugs
  • Shopping
  • Exercise
  • Overwork
  • Fantasy/escapism into books, TV, movies, video games
  • Social media

Some of the behaviors aren’t good for you at all: food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc. Some of them, like exercise, can be beneficial.

The problem is that, while they may help you feel better, or be distracted from your feelings, for a little while, when you stop doing them, you’re left with your unresolved feelings.

So what can you do about it?

Finding a new way forward

The holidays are going to happen every year. Sometimes you can crawl under the covers with a couple of STERBS (cookies and movies, perhaps). But many times you can’t. I know I’ve got a houseful of people who still expect Christmas to happen, no matter how I feel.

Awareness of your feelings is the first step.

Then it’s discovering what’s underneath that feeling.

When memories from the past overwhelm me, it’s because I remember having such awful Christmases as a child and want my kids to experience something entirely different. Yet I worry the decisions I’ve made mean I’m not giving them the childhood I wanted for them.

What is it for you?

Do you miss someone you love? Or is there someone you had a difficult relationship with that this season reminds you of? Were your childhood Christmases difficult?

Write it down. Let it out. Be honest with yourself about your feelings.

And then, perhaps, make a different decision about how you’re going to distract yourself from that feeling the next time it comes up. Perhaps instead you can breathe into it and just be with it for a while. Acknowledge the feeling. Be with it, just for a little while, because the intensity of it will pass.

Take another breath. You’ve got this.

If you’d like some support around this holiday season (no matter what holiday you celebrate, it’s certainly not limited to Christmas), watch this video of a recent webinar about grief during the holidays and how you can learn to better cope.