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The Holidays are here...what do you do?? · Head Shrink Inc.

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's Doc David with another episode of Head Shrink Inc., and today the holidays are upon us, and we are going to talk about um what to do in the holidays with all the crazy family stuff that happens.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Listen in.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: You all listen to your ancestors to life.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Relationships.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Daily living.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's Doc David again with Head Shrinking.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening in.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the holidays are upon us, and Thanksgiving just happened, and um all the crazy stuff that happens with that, food, lots of family coming over.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: At least in my house, lots of family comes come over.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, think what is it, Thankful Tuesday?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, Tuesday, then everyone's wanting you to give money to donation donate places.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so inevitably I get questions related to the holidays, and what should we do?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And these questions range the gamut, so it's usually related to it's usually about relationships and gift giving.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted to address um three specific things presents, where to do holidays, and who to invite for the holidays.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the here's the question that I got from Jennifer uh today.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So on my sister's side of the family, um, I have a niece and nephew who are both married, and and the niece has two kids.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have bought gifts for all of them and they exchange with me.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: On my brother's side of the family, I have two nieces and one nephew who are married with children.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: In the past, I gave the adults gifts too, but they don't give me a gift.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I do buy all the children and both families gifts.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a tight budget right now.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is we are having a big family get together instead of getting together Christmas Day.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is it okay to give my sister's family their gifts when my brother's side is there too, or do I need to buy everyone a gift or a couple gifts or what?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, exclamation point times four.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um so what I said to Jennifer was, you know, I I would I would suggest you simply give gifts to the kids and then a card with maybe a gift card in it to the adults.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I would imagine that if you um let your siblings know that things are kind of tight, that they would understand because everyone often goes through um times like that.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um you could also find a private time to give gifts when the other adults don't um know that it's happening.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: But uh as I got this and as I was answering in and thinking about it, I think it gives this a a bigger idea to me because a lot of times I'll get a question, it it relates to birthday gifts as well.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the the kind of general idea is I give gifts to so-and-so or this family member, and they never give me gifts back.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, is it okay if I stop giving giving gifts to them?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and so for me, I think okay, this uh this that's kind of a surface question because uh what I often think of is why are you g are you giving gifts to somebody um in order to give gifts in return?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I have an aunt and uncle, so I have lots of kids, as you may have heard in the past in a past podcast.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I have lots of kids.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so um if I were to get gifts from every member of my family, um I would make people poor because I have so many kids, and my house would be cluttered with stuff.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have an aunt and uncle, for example, that um they have no kids, but they give gift cards to all of the cousin, all of their nieces and nephews.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the nieces and nephews um probably amount to um actually let me let me step that back.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be nieces and nephew when we were not married, but we got married, and so now my family gets gift cards from this from my aunt and uncle, and I only assume that they send out these gift cards to all the other um great uh nieces and nephews, I guess is the easiest way to explain it.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of gift cards, and we don't give anything in return to them.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do I feel guilty?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a part of me, but I've never um started that I'm not a gift giver type person, and um I don't my wife kind of takes the care of that area, but we do mostly gifts for like immediate family, and it's usually related to the to our nieces and nephews, and even then it's just the nieces and nephews that are close to us, and so one of the things I would suggest to people that are kind of struggling with this idea of uh wow, I'm not getting gifts, but I keep giving gifts, is why are you giving these gifts?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I give a gift to somebody, I generally don't expect them to give me a gift back.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um because I'm doing it out of the goodness of my heart.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like I want to show this person that I care about them, so I'm giving a gift.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't give a gift hoping that they, you know, are gonna reciprocate and give me a gift back.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say, as a general kind of rule of thumb, if you are giving gifts to someone this year, really check your attitude and and see if you're doing it just to be kind or if you're doing it because you're hoping to get something back.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're doing it just be kind, um you have no expectations, and so if you don't get a gift, you're not gonna get uh upset about it.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're doing it because you're wanting to get something back and you don't, then I would suggest that that's a wrong reason to be giving gifts.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um it definitely like this quote unquote spirit of Christmas, excuse me, um is not about oh, who can get the most gifts.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what's happened in our society often is um just culture, commercial uh consumerism, and and you know, oh, the look at all these toys you can get for your kids.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's kind of overwhelmed this kind of spirit of Christmas thing.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: So another uh question that I often get is where to do holidays?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is more difficult for newly married couples to do because um they have competing sides, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you have the the wife's side of the family that wants to do the holidays with you, and then you have the husband's side of the family that wants you to do holidays with you.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so where do you where do you land?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's hard because if you live close to a family, if you live close to your um wife's family, chances are you're gonna do most of your holidays there.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: But then that potentially makes the husband's side of the family feel left out and upset and and creates some resentment and distance.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not it's just by virtue that's by virtue of my uh my mileage.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't every holiday travel 2,000 miles for three days to visit um a family, and that gets more difficult the more kids you have.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: But what do you do if you have families that live all in the proximity of one another?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a couple things you can do.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can decide that, hey, we're going to try to do a big family get together with both sides of the family.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's difficult to do, especially if the families don't really care for one another.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not ideal.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think the ideal is to try to split it up as fair as possible.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um so, for example, we had Thanksgiving at our house this year, and so then Christmas will be um at my in-laws potentially.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is if I was newly married, right?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd go back and forth as uh to be as fair as you can.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: But so we I've been married for about 20 years, and we have some at some point, and I can't remember when, but at some point we started a tradition of um Christmas uh Eve, we have my wife's family over, and um we open presents just with grandpa and nana and papa, is what they are, and then Christmas Day, um my family does it just amongst ourselves, and if my parents are in town, um that's when my parents will come up for the day, um, or we'll go down there.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we've been doing that for several years.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's gonna be times where things happen that are out of your control, and so for example, this year my sister's coming to my my home, so she'll be there for the New Year's Eve kind of tradition.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And my I anticipate that we're still gonna be doing our you know thing with my um in-laws, but my sister will be there.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that'll make it maybe a little bit different.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it'll make it awkward, it'll just be different because these people tend to be in, and so uh, or my sister's gonna be around.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that there's trestablishing traditions is important, but then being flexible within those traditions is also important because you don't want to get so rigid with your traditions that you um push relationships away.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually know people that um they're so rigid in their tradition of going to get pictures or going to this person's house on this particular day, and nothing else can get in the way of that, that it it potentially um limits the kind of relationships that they can have around the holiday times.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's not a good idea because holidays in my mind are about relationships and loving people and showing care and concern.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I want to do that all throughout the year, but I think something with the holidays, there's a there's a special connection to that in family and relationships.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um a third issue that often comes up is who to invite.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this gets to be a challenge because typically for holidays, you're having um family, you're having family interactions and interacting with people that you would never interact with throughout the rest of the year.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh drunk alcoholic uncle, who you never see and who always annoys you and who you avoid purposefully, now is going to be sitting at the same dinner table with you.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what are you going to do?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or felon brother uh who just got out of the slammer, who you had put out of mind and out of sight, is now coming for a Christmas dinner, and so you may have to sit by them and and what are you gonna do?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or Trump or Hillary supporter, who just really annoyed you by all their Facebook posts, is gonna be sitting across the table from you.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: So now what do you do?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the question of now what do you do is I think you recognize this holiday is bigger than you and all your little issues that go on.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you and I are strong enough and um have enough kind of emotional control that we can interact with a person for two hours if we have to.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a time in my life where I would um to prove that my parents didn't control me, I would they would suggest something and I would simply say, No, I don't want to do that.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it wasn't anything unreasonable, but it was just I was immature and I wanted to show, hey, I'm in control of my own life.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's gotten to the point now where I realized that loving somebody and doing something for somebody um that you don't want to do for a short period of time is is loving them.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if I it means I have to sit next to my my drunk uncle alcoholic uncle, if it makes my mom happy, if it shows my mom love, for example, then I'm willing to do that for two or three hours.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um if sitting next to a felon brother-in-law is a way to show love and care and concern to my dad or my mother-in-law or whoever, then I'm willing to do that for a couple hours, bite my tongue if I have to, and just kind of recognize I'm doing this because I love another person, not because I'm trying to be okay with this person I don't like.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you're able, I I think we should all be able to do that because um we all love other people.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if we put ourselves in front of other people, we're not gonna be able to do that.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, my suggestions for you this holiday season, one of my suggestions, is to really carefully consider um who you are caring about.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you care more about yourself, you're not gonna be able to do any of these things.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna be able to easily not accept presents from people, you're not gonna easily be able to do holidays at the place that you don't want to do.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're not easily gonna be able to sit by the felon brother-in-law.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's happening to you, my suggestion is you kind of sit back and do uh some self-awareness, um, kind of get some insight into yourself on what needs to maybe change in your life where you need to be more loving to a mom or a dad or brother or mother or father-in-law, um, because they have the same, a lot of times the same concerns that you do about different things, but they're willing to overlook those because of the holidays.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna encourage you to consider overlooking some things this holiday season is to show love to somebody else, and that could be your mother, it could be your father, it could be a mother-in-law or father-in-law.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, fill in the blank, it could be lots of different people.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're not the most important person in the world, and yes, this person that's really annoying you maybe did do something that's like outrageous, but I think in the holiday season, you can take two hours, show love to a mother or father, and spend some time with them.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for listening.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, you do have a good holiday season.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my name is Doc David.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can email me at headshrinkinc at gmail.com.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day.