Tag: holiday stress

Couple

Surviving Holiday Stress with In-Laws (II)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT
woman and man sitting on brown wooden bench
Photo by Vera Arsic on Pexels.com

No matter it’s Chinese, American, or Hispanics, etc.. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the partner by marriage saying: “You made me feel like an outsider;” while the partner who is biologically related to the extended family saying: “I am stuck in the middle between my spouse/partner and my parents.”

 

So, how do you unstuck from this situation? The key is to make your relationship and your spousal relationship as a priority and see your partner’s feelings is yours no matter you agree with him/her.

(The Part I of Surviving the Holiday In-Law Stress is here.)

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Depression/Anxiety

Coping with the Holiday Sree; Loving the Scrooge in You (III)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT

scroogeChristmas Spirit Past

So, what can you do to help yourself? Christmas past is the first stop. Take a look at your list with the items that you cannot change. Try to complete break down that list with: who, when, where, how, and why.

So, it might look like:
Who: mother-in-law
When: the first Christmas when we got married
Where: at my mother-in-law’s house
Why: the story is………..

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Depression/Anxiety

Coping with the Holiday Stress; Loving the Scrooge in You (I)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT

scrooge

Is there a Scrooge in You?

A couple of years ago, my friends and I went to see “A Christmas Carole.” I had a good time with my friends until the following day. A client mentioned that her husband complained that she was like Scrooge with no holiday spirit.

It got me to think about Scrooge’s story and the reasons that he didn’t have “holiday spirit.” He was a very unhappy person. He was mean and inflexible. On the surface, all he wanted was money. However, in the Christmas past, there was evidence that he was not born a cold blood person. He was a lonely little boy who was forced to learn to harden his heart. Gradually, he learned to bury his life with work. Can you blame him if you understand that, under his inflexible and mean behaviors, there was a lonely and sad little boy?

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