Step By Step, Fiji, Existential Issues, the Most Depressing Time of the Year & the Deb Does Therapy Donation
It's gone to the dogs this year
Hello everyone,
I started writing this piece on my phone at the weights gym, in the gaps between sets, where you rest your muscles a little. I don’t love the gym. I do it because I believe it’s essential for my healthy ageing goals. So I just do it.
Working my muscles feels good once I get the habit rolling, I know that, but I’ve recently had some time off, so it’s currently a bit of a drag. I’ll get there.
Step By Step Self-talk
I have mantras to help myself with just about everything in daily life. I don’t do affirmations like “You’re doing so great” because I find them unconvincing and a bit ridiculous personally (happy if they work for others), but I also refuse to surrender to the unhelpful self-talk that’s always been with me.
Keep going, I recite in my mind. This feeling will change. It will get easier, even start to feel good again. Just one foot after the other.
I love this quote from writer Sam Levenson:
Don’t watch the clock.
Do what it does.
Keep going.
That’s how I often think about life and dealing with tasks and challenges, even emotions - one step, one day at a time, breaking big things up into bite-size pieces.
It’s a friendly, chatty little gym and someone mentions ‘existential issues’, a phrase that can often lead to blank stares. Today, it’s just the opposite.
Almost everyone is chiming in, expressing how they too have moments when they struggle to make sense of their lives, to keep going in a way that means something to them.
“Why do I even do this?” someone laughs.
“I come for the s**ts and giggles,” someone else affirms.
“When I can’t cope I put it all in the hands of JC,” says a third, and for a second I think she’s talking about JT (Justin Timberlake).
Justin Timberlake, I think, Why would she bring him into this?
Then I realise she means Jesus Christ.
“You know what I mean?” she follows up when I look confused.
“Um, sort of…” I say.
Religion can be a bit of a minefield and I’m already singing Cry me a River in my head and thinking how Britney Spears wrote how she felt misrepresented as a cheater in that particular music video by Justin Timberlake.
Anyway, what were we talking about?
Doing one thing at a time…that’s right…
Fiji
What wasn’t a drag lately was Andrew and I having our second honeymoon and wedding anniversary in Fiji, on the same island where we originally honeymooned years ago.
The resort was basically a paradise on Earth, with a completely different way of life and very different sense of time. I found the warmth and slowness so pleasantly disorienting it was very hard to come back from.
Certainly goes a long way to explaining why I was back in the gym wondering why! Like many people, I hadn’t been far from home in years. It was strange, but in a very good way.
Our Charity Donation for 2023
If you signed up as a paid subscriber to this newsletter, you may recall that I said I’d donate some of each $70 annual subscription to charity. This year, the money went to a registered animal charity, specifically for saving and re-homing ex-racing greyhounds, called Greyhound Safety Net (GSN). It will contribute to sponsoring dogs in finding a loving family for life.
I chose GSN because it’s where we found our beautiful Charlie dog some years back. He has now passed and we have Mo, a big black dog who looks very similar but has his own sweet personality.
Thank you!
Paid subscribers are invited to submit questions for me to answer in detail in the newsletter, anonymously if you prefer. You also get extra content from time to time, like my Writing as Therapy course, which came out in my paid newsletter earlier this year.
So please send me your questions, and if I ever struggle to answer, I’ll ask the Brains Trust for input too - you diverse and wise readers out there receiving this newsletter, who have so much to contribute, and thankfully often do.
Are We Doing Christmas Wrong?
I want to finish by asking about a truth that is uncomfortable and inconvenient, but it’s so real for so many people - that Christmas is a flat, depressing and generally difficult time. This is the truth for more people than we might care to acknowledge.
It’s really great if that’s not the case for you. I hope it isn’t, but I want to sit a moment with those who are not loving their Christmas and Boxing Day holidays particularly, for any vast number of reasons.
I see you. I’m not sure I can be of much help from here, but I can acknowledge your feelings completely.
I read a thing on social media that said “It’s OK not to be merry and bright” and I thought, “Well I get it. That’s a normalising statement, the Christmas version of “It’s OK to not be OK” but TBH - It’s actually very shit not to feel at all “merry and bright” and have stupid, ancient, nonsensical BS like those words plastered everywhere for weeks.
I mean, the words “merry” and “bright” are not even in common usage these days to describe moods. Bah, humbug (although, neither is that.)
Maybe Christmas is in very serious need of an update - language, songs, images, customs. It might help if we worked on some real cultural change around the whole box and dice. What do you think? I’m interested in your thoughts…
Anyway, enough Christmas bitchin’! I do hope you get some satisfying time outs, revelling in a passion or two and feeling good, enjoying your groove, being you and ignoring any hype that gets you down.
Love to you,
The soundtrack to writing this article was a classic by a complicated and talented artist I adored.
Emailed by one of my dear longtime readers:
Dear Dr Deb.
Good on you for opening the discussion about the various layers of "hype" around Christmas. It's almost a taboo subject, but is worthy of (indeed begging for) rational, yet kind discussion!
The ancient notion of needing a sacrificial death of some animal, presumably came out of the Israelites' mistaken conclusions about being taken off into slavery - they must have been very wicked for god to punish them in such a way...
They felt they needed to give up (sacrifice) something important to earn his love again. That idea was so entrenched after centuries, that the Super-Jewish Paul drew the conclusion that Jesus' death was about the same thing.
It's interesting to note this same self-blaming at work in a young child's brain - as a way of making sense of the parents' lack of love. Things are bad; I must have caused it; I must earn their love....
The individual's psychological process and the wider communal/cultural interpretation are both equally untrue, and equally unhelpful!
The idea of Jesus coming for the sole purpose of getting sacrificed to "save" our sinful souls, is absurd and not worth our attention. In fact, it's extremely damaging to the self esteem that underpins a healthy contribution to the greater good...
I'd rather focus on the intelligent, insightful challenges to growth that the man Jesus put to people, and also his practical acting out of love that inspired and changed people.
So that's what I do with the Christmas season now:
give to the charities that take action in difficult situations across the globe
check up on people I know, to see how they're going
communicate openly about the values/qualities I see in them
showing kindness to self and others
and it's just acting from the "I'm OK" stance (not asking for approval from god or other people)
And surprise, surprise, it builds authentic, reciprocal connections that make a difference to life.
There's joy, peace and love in that...