Dead Serious #022 “When Christmas ’sucks’ and how to handle it”
Dead Serious #022 (MP3-17.1 MB- 49.514min)
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This week’s episode explores the enigma of Christmas and ‘the holidays’.
My guest this week is J. Shep Jeffries, a psychologist who specialises in grief and loss and end of life issues.
Shep has a private practice and is assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and teaches pastoral counselling at Loyola College in Maryland, U.S. He trained with the ‘trailblazer’ of contemporary grief and loss theory, Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and has experienced loss first hand when his eight year old son died.
Shep talks about the difficulties people face the first Christmas after a significant loss. Do you have a tree? Do you celebrate? Do you need to compromise?
Shep talks about celebrating when you still feel sad. “Don’t do nothing” he says.
How long does grief take? How long till things return to normal? Are they ever normal again? WHAT IS NORMAL?????
HOW DO PEOPLE MANAGE THEIR GRIEF?
We talk about ‘allowing’ yourself to experience your grief. Being sensitive to yourself and others. How we can experience continued connections with people who have died. How we can carry on the legacy of significant people in our lives. How we can ‘reclaim’ our lives after a significant loss.
How Christmas can highlight the grief we feel over people who are still alive, but aren’t available to us any more, maybe due to illness (dementia, coma etc), estrangement or geographical distance.
The importance or remembering is discussed as is crises that split families apart and how ‘blended’ families divide their time during the holiday season.
We talk about ’seasonal effective disorder’ and how Christmas can equal “disaster’……..what to do when you ‘hate the holidays’, how to ‘externalise’ and when denial is useful……………how to find resources and empower yourself by using ritual.
All in all a very informative and motivating program!
Music is provided by Dave Keifer and recorded on Skylook.
I hope those of you who are dreading Christmas will find this program a comfort and that the Christmas’s to come get easier……………