Old painful memories seem to come up at the most inopportune times. Emphasis on joy and peace around the holidays is, for many of us, the opposite of how we feel. Triggers come in the form of songs, parties, decorations and everything else this time of year. For those of us from dysfunctional families, Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, along with Hanukkah or anything else we observe (my birthday is in here, 2 weeks before Christmas) were a time of pain, fear and disappointment. We may come from a family where our parents were heavy drinkers, if not alcoholic, and the holiday season provided excuses to indulge more, as well as more often. Maybe our parents were divorced and argued over where and with which parent we were to spend time; maybe they were not divorced and argued, over us and everything else. Or maybe we are from a single parent family and always felt “different’. As we got older, the holidays became a time we found relief in our drug and stayed loaded as much as possible. We temporarily escaped the chaos and dysfunction at home and began creating our own traditions: get as blitzed as possible, obliterate our pain and fill our emptiness. Alcoholics do this with alcohol, druggies pick their drug of choice or whatever they can find, compulsive overeaters use food, anorectics use the control over food, sex addicts use relationships, intrigue, sex and so on. Continue reading →
