There was a couple who had recently gotten married and were celebrating their first holiday by having everyone over for dinner.

As she was preparing the ham she cut off the ends and placed it in the pan to cook. Her husband walked in and saw the ends sitting there, he asked: “why did you cut the ends off?”

“I don’t know, it’s just the way my mom always did it.”

As the ham was cooking the young wife calls her mother, to ask why she cut off the ends of the ham.

Her mother chuckles, and says, “because I didn’t have a pan big enough to cook the ham”.

Traditions and trip ups- Not allowing PTSD, anxiety and depression dictate your holiday.

In 2011 I was the target of a gang attack. As a result of the attack, I was offered counseling, and therapy.  During this time, I was diagnosed with PTSD, but I was also opening lots of worms from my childhood and the abuse I endured as a teenager.

Through all of this, I realized that I was allowing traditions to trip up my holidays by triggering my PTSD, anxiety and depression.

So where did this start:

Growing up I used to love Christmas. Christmas was filled with snow, lots of it.

It was filled with a fresh tree and lots of homemade sugar cookies with homemade frosting.

It also was more importantly filled with Grandma, Grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins.

You would wake up to see what Santa brought you, then rush to grandmas house.

There was piano playing, singing and the cousins would get our ice skates and head to the swamp to skate on the pond.

There were no cell phones or technology just the outdoors and a “be home by dusk”.

The evening was finished with homemade chocolate malts.

Then my childhood as I loved, came to a crashing  HALT!

My mom and dad got divorced, my mom remarried and my grandmother (who I did EVERYTHING with) at age 55 was diagnosed and died of leukemia in less than a month.

Now, Christmas looked like this:

No laughter, No one hurrying to grandmas, and to top it off pack your bags before we go because your dad is coming to get you.

It went from bad to worse….fast forward to my getting married and moving 600 plus miles away.

We went home once and never went back. I couldn’t explain it, but I had no desire to be pulled here and there.

Now that I have kids who have kids, I so badly wanted to replicate my memories of the “Norman Rockwell” Christmas traditions that I grew up with, but that came at a price…my anxiety and depression were at an all time high and worse yet, I could not wait for January 1st so this “Scrooge like” person would go away.

Epic fail every year. Again not knowing that I was allowing my yearning for a tradition to trip up my holidays by triggering my PTSD, anxiety and depression.

So what started the change was 3 years ago…. We finally decided to go home for Christmas.  The kids all had places to go and be so we went home to Michigan.

On the drive back  home to Tennessee,  I told my husband we can go home again, but NOT during the holiday season. That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks.  As I was trying to recreate traditions and make everyone happy during the holiday, I was made painfully aware that I CANT do that for my own well-being.  And I have to be OK with NOT being at every family function or worse yet trying to recreate the tradition.

Two years ago, we became empty-nesters, and I had to make a conscious decision to no longer allow the traditions to trip me up, become full of anxiety, fall into deep depression and a SCROOGE.

I had to give myself permission to start over with NEW TRADITIONS.

So here are a few ideas I have come up with:

Don’t keep yourself so busy that you don’t have to think about the holiday

Do come up with new things for you and your family to do

Acknowledge the holidays, but be OK with the change that you want to do

Don’t feel guilty for NOT doing a tradition; especially if that tradition creates a trigger for your PTSD, anxiety and or depression.

Realizing that boundaries are a key part of keeping your sanity

Learning what your triggers are and saying “NO” to those things that flare up your anxiety, PTSD etc

Start NEW traditions.

As a woman who speaks life into women all day, why can we advise, instruct others to change and live life free, but we have a hard time granting ourselves the same freedom?