Have Your Holidays Become A Survival Mission?
by Trish Whynot, D.C.Ed

The holiday season is filled with etheric gifts for growth and healing, but we need to be able to see them in order to receive them. The emotions that surface from within during the holiday season present for us an opportunity to resolve some unfinished business. We know that our business is unfinished when it still has a charge to it. The emotion is the charge. The memories will always be there, but when we have resolved the issue, we will associate with it what we have learned rather than the pain that we experienced. With this resolution comes the gift of healing from the past. As we are able to process and release these suppressed emotions that have resurfaced, our resonance will shift to a higher vibration that will open us to an array of more optimal futures than are present to us in this moment. As we are able to release the anger and pain, we can stop attracting life experiences that will trigger these stored emotions. This does not mean that we will never experience anger or pain again, these are human emotions and we came here to experience our full range of emotions; what it does mean is that we have healed a wound and will be able to handle anger and pain more consciously and with greater understanding in the future. If your holidays aren’t as full of ‘tidings of comfort and joy’ as the song says, it may be time to look at your holiday season through ‘new eyes.’ Rather than merely surviving this season by making the best of it or doing your best to make it through, this year, why not take advantage of the opportunities for personal healing that are presenting themselves. Below are some tips for taking the focus off of survival and onto opportunities for growth and healing.   

Keep your energy field clear from outside influences by surrounding yourself in white light. Close your eyes and sense yourself completely encased in an egg-shaped bubble of white light with the intention that this bubble will only let in the good and will screen out any negativity that is sent your way from others. This is a great little exercise to put into practice on a daily basis.  It can be used prior to answering the phone when challenging people call, venturing out on the road, going to the mall, visiting a restaurant or pub, or being in any public place or gathering. We have enough of our own stuff so why take home someone else’s. Please note this exercise does not make you invincible and is not a substitute, but an adjunct for doing personal growth work.  If you find yourself needing armor and boxing gloves to go visit relatives and friends you may want to look at who you are choosing to surround yourself with and why you are allowing them to treat you the way they do.

Remember that your negativity is your responsibility. Cranky sales clerks and less than courteous drivers may be signaling for you to explore some anger that you have hidden. Any emotion that is unexpressed is negative, even love. Emotions that are not expressed in an appropriate and responsible way are stored. If you are currently working on your anger issues, these people may be coming into your life so you can practice your new methods for appropriately expressing anger. Like attracts like so if you are attracting friendly drivers and courteous sales clerks this holiday season, they may be reflecting back some of the wonderful work that you have done around expressing emotions appropriately. In this case your love is attracting more love. Be aware of the whispers, they are meant to help you, not to punish you.

Breathing is always important, but can be a godsend around the holidays. If someone ruffles your feathers, take 3 deep breaths prior to responding, and you may find that you have just bought yourself some time that saved you from saying something that you may have regretted later.  Sometimes we will see a situation through our wounded eyes and take it personally. 3 deep breaths can clarify our perspective.

Oftentimes the things that irritate us most in other people are the things we don’t like about ourselves. Frequently during the holiday season we find ourselves looking in the mirror that others are holding up for us. When our eye is trained to see our reflection in them, this can present a wonderful opportunity for personal growth. Most often the mirror is magnified and is not telling us that we do exactly what the one holding the mirror is doing. What it is more likely to be telling us is that we have our own flair for doing what they do that irritates us so. If we can see it in ourselves we can either accept it or change it. If we can accept it in ourselves then we will be able to accept it in others and if we change it in ourselves we can have compassion for others because we know we used to do whatever it is too, but either way it won’t bother us any longer. What a gift!

Anger can come out in hidden forms. During the holidays we see many people that we do not see throughout the year. Pay attention to your behaviors toward others and theirs toward you, there may be messages here. Lateness, sarcasm, forced smiles, embarrassing others, and humor at someone’s expense are all signs of hidden anger. Anger can be like a hot potato; no one wants to hold onto it so they toss it around.  If it is not yours, don’t take it. Gently give it back to its sender and put an end to the game so no one else will get burned. Awareness is the first step toward healing so put on your multidimensional glasses and find those gifts!

Take note of the dynamics of your relationships. Have you shifted your relationships with parents and family members to an adult-adult level or are you still playing out the rebellious adolescent or so and so’s little sister, etc.?  Age difference may have given someone authority during childhood, but as adults, we are all deserving of equal honor and respect regardless of occupation or lifestyle. Many of us fall into old patterns when surrounded by family. When we can take this opportunity to explore old patterns, we can see some destructive beliefs that we formulated about ourselves during our childhood in efforts to make sense of circumstances that we were experiencing. These destructive beliefs may be long forgotten, yet active in our subconscious and still playing themselves out in our adult lives. If you can create an abundance of less than optimal life experiences then recognizing, processing through, and changing old beliefs to beliefs that will create an abundance of the optimal experiences that you do want is definitely within the realm of probability. The holidays can bring these beliefs to the surface for you to address.

As a child, if your parents said “no” to your request and on asking “why?” their response was “because,” you were left to fill in the blanks. You may have come up with because “I am unlovable,” because “I am flawed and defective,” because “I am not worth giving an explanation to,” because “I don’t deserve it,” or because “I am not supposed to have fun.” You will store your ‘because’ in your subconscious and it can wreak havoc in your adult life as you attract life experiences that will demonstrate your belief.  Anyone coming from a place of ‘I don’t deserve,’ will have major difficulties getting or sustaining what they really, truly want. Please remember this when you are tempted to give this response to your children. Taking the time to explain why you have made your decision is the most loving thing you can do for your child’s self-esteem and for your relationship with them. Think of how differently you would view yourself today if your parents could have said, “because I love you and want you to be safe,” rather than “because I said so.”

When we have difficulty receiving gifts from family and friends this may be signaling that you have trouble receiving from your higher self and God/Goddess/All That Is. Perhaps you were taught, “it is better to give than to receive.”  We would all look pretty silly at the holidays if everyone was trying to give and there was no one willing to receive. If you can’t graciously receive then you can’t truly give because receiving is giving, giving someone else the opportunity to experience the joy of giving, so don’t insult him/her with “you shouldn’t have,” or “you spent too much money.”  This is your unconscious attempt to put down the giver so you don’t look so bad receiving.  In essence you are telling them that they had bad judgment, made a poor decision or that you are not worth giving to. This response pushes their love away. The gift for you here could be to resolve your issues around giving and receiving so you can open to receive divine love from your Creator. 

When we do all the giving then we are in control, when we receive we need to relinquish control. The feeling of being out of control can be scary. Try graciously receiving this holiday season. Ask your higher self to help you to find a new way to pace love so that you don’t have to control it. Put a smile on someone’s face that has thought of you in a loving way this year by graciously receiving his/her gift and give yourself permission to receive his/her love. Rather than pushing your fear away by pushing love away, try embracing the part of you that is fearful and giving love and validation to this part of yourself that is coming up for some healing. This will make receiving much more comfortable; it’s not supposed to be painful. Receiving is a wonderful experience once we can move through the fear. And don’t forget to graciously receive the love that comes back to you when you give a gift out of love. 

The holidays present us with an opportunity to practice receiving. Try to graciously receive your gifts this year and assume, until proven otherwise, that they are all given with loving intent. Give this year, not only by giving tangibly, but also by giving energetically with love.

Are you dreading the relative that pushes your buttons?  Those who push our buttons the most can be our greatest teachers and often are our soulmates. We are the ones with the buttons. Try taking responsibility for being the button owner rather than blaming the button pusher this year. If you can heal your button then it will no longer be there for the pushing. Isn’t it more comforting to know that we don’t have to wait around for cousin Anita to change so we can be happy? Your button is a wound and the person pushing it is merely the trigger. If you can go inward and process through the unresolved issues that are underlying the button, the etheric gift may be a map to happiness. Once you’ve got the map you can begin your journey toward happiness. Please note that some things that people do are wrong and hurtful and this in no way diminishes their act. What we do with a situation is our responsibility and when we can turn a bad situation around and receive the gift that is there for us; we can create a wonderful opportunity for growth and healing. This doesn’t mean that things always happen for the best, what it means is that you can turn a negative situation into an opportunity for healing so give yourself a pat on the back when you make it happen for the best. 

Does everyone walk on eggshells around Aunt Gertrude? Are you giving your power to a family member? When we walk on eggshells around someone we are acting from a place of fear rather than from a place of love. Our silence is enabling them. We are telling them their behavior is just fine and we are giving them our power. You may want to look at who you are giving your power to and why, this holiday season. Aunt Gertrude may be calling on you to take your power back. She can’t use it, this is not the problem, the problem is that it’s not available for you to use when you are giving it away. We can sit in meditation with our higher self and the higher self of someone that we give our power to and see what gift is there for us, perhaps this will answer why we have attracted him or her into our lives or why we are so tired around the holidays. 

If you suffer from a chronic condition, there may be an emotional trigger that you have yet to explore and the holiday season could be attempting to bring it to the surface for your viewing. If we do not understand opportunities that are being presented to us we may suffer through the holiday season wasting a lot of energy keeping down what needs to come up to facilitate our healing; never receiving the best ‘gift’ that was being offered to you this season because you couldn’t see it. 

I used to suffer from chronic sinusitis. I used to blame environmental influences for my symptoms. In my search for health I learned that sinusitis was a signal that I had suppressed anger and unshed tears. The holidays brought these unaddressed emotions up for me to view every year and finally I was able to see and accept this etheric gift that had been offered many times before in various forms. As a child I had learned to sacrifice my feelings so as not to hurt others, anger and hurt were not acceptable for me to have and after years of suppressing them, they were affecting my health.  These suppressed emotions had become toxic in my system and my physical body was attempting to expel them through my sinuses. Your chronic condition may be attempting to contain or expel the ‘now’ toxic, unresolved issues and suppressed emotions that you have stuffed for years.

I had been practicing how to get around the stress and what I really needed to do was to take back my power and to move through it. Meditation was key to my releasing these old emotions.  Sometimes it is just not possible or appropriate to tell family and friends how we have allowed them to hurt us and how angry we have felt about it for years. As a child I had been taught that my feelings didn’t count, but as an adult I had chosen by default to continue this pattern. It was my responsibility as an adult to see that my old rusty tools around expressing feelings weren’t working and that it was time to get myself some new tools that would work for me in the adult life that I did want. Once I was able to do this, my sinusitis went away and has flared up only once in 8 years. Not bad considering what my doctor had said, “once a sinus infection always a sinus infection.” Not for me!  I now look at aches, pains, illness and less than optimal situations as knocks on the physical door to my Soul.  Meditation has given me a way to answer the call.  

Healing whether it is physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually, can remove our blockage to receiving and shift our resonance to a higher vibration. This new resonance will attract more optimal futures than are currently available, but we need to be willing to receive them so if mediocrity is something you are not willing to settle for in this lifetime you really don’t have time not to go inward to do some personal work. Giving and receiving are much more than an exchange of gifts. They are an exchange of energy and the gift is merely the form it takes. In order for us to truly express from a loving place, it is necessary to clear out what’s blocking us from getting there and the holidays can show us the way. If emotions come up for you this season, try to feel them rather than push them away. They are yours, they are real and they are coming up to be healed.  They may be triggering old memories that are ready to be explored through mature eyes. Meditation is a wonderful tool for deciphering our feelings, but sometimes we need some outside assistance to facilitate our process.  Give yourself the gift of healing and get back in touch with experiencing your joy. We all deserve it!  Rather than treating this holiday season as a survival mission try those multidimensional glasses and go for the ‘real’ gifts!   

Trish Whynot, D.C.Ed is a Doctor of C.O.R.E. Education, specializing in ASAT™ C.O.R.E. Counseling. She utilizes meditation, energy work, aromatherapy and crystals in her alternative approach to wellness in Middleton, MA, and can be reached at 978-314-4545 or visit her website at www.TrishWhynot.com.  This information is the opinion and experience of the practitioner and is in no way meant to be a substitute for diagnosing, treating or curing an illness.