‘Tis the season of great expectations. And while many experience the December holidays with joyful anticipation and good cheer, many others approach the holidays with dread and depression. ‘Tis also the season for stress, anxiety and disappointment. There are undoubtedly many, many reasons for the holiday blues. But I think that one of the most significant factors that creates and sustains holiday stress centers on expectations. While we create expectations for ourselves and others throughout the year, the December holidays amplify them. Indeed, it seems that the holidays are especially freighted with high expectations. For too many people, the December holidays resonate with the word “should” (or words like it—i.e., ‘ought’, 'must'): I "should” buy XX a gift; I “should” bake holiday cookies for my family; I “should” attend the holiday party at my boss’ home; I “ought” to spend time with my family; my family “should” be happy; my partner “should” love me and show it by doing _____; I “should” get along with my parents or with my children; the money I spend on gifts “should” show how much I love my family; my family “should” be grateful for my generosity. There are enormous social conventions and familial pressures that reinforce all these expectations. (How well retail stores and advertisers understand and exploit this!) Unfortunately, expectations often collide with reality. And so, all those “shoulds” become imperatives, and the season that “should” be joyful turns into a season of drudgery and joyless obligation.
Alas, our expectations are not always reasonable. And so, when expectations are out of sync with reality (or what is reasonably possible), or when expectations have morphed into joyless obligations, anxiety, resentment, and disappointment seem almost inevitable. (Notice, too, how expectations remove us from the present reality into an unknown, inchoate future—a sure recipe for creating anxiety.)
It seems to me that most, if not all, the season’s expectations center on the quality of our relationships. The holidays amplify any anxiety we may feel about our sense of connectedness. Look at the list above; each statement reflects insecurity about relationship. And yet this is precisely where I see hope for changing our experience of the holidays: I think that our anxious expectations during this season are really expressions of our desire to feel connected, to love and feel loved—in the present.
From my vantage as a therapist, the holidays offer an annual opportunity to take a look at our desires for connection and relationship, and how our expectations express those desires (not that such work need be limited to the holidays!). The work of therapy, especially during the December holidays, can focus on examining the expectations we have for ourselves and others. Therapy can help us understand how we’ve come to have all those expectations; it can help us discern how our expectations impel or impede our growth and relatedness. Therapy can also help us determine whether those expectations are reasonable or in sync with the larger contexts and realities of our lives. Therapy can help us rid ourselves of or reconfigure those unreasonable or dysfunctional expectations.
In essence, the work of therapy is really about creating and improving our connections and relationships—work that acquires an urgency during the December holiday season as people struggle to cope and find some measure of deeper meaning and peace.
By looking at and by letting go of those expectations that impede growth and relatedness; by embracing the desire for connection; and by finding healthy ways to express those desires, we can experience the holidays as opportunities for connection. We may even find some small measure of serenity and peace.