feelings - Debbie Rivers

How to Get Through Christmas Being Single

Debbie Rivers — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 01:05:08 +0000

As if 2020 hasn’t been stressful enough, along comes Christmas! How do you get through Christmas being single?

You might feel the pressure from all your family and friends for being single at yet another Christmas!
Maybe you thought 2020 was the year you would find love and COVID put a dirty big stop to that.
Or maybe this is your first year being single after a breakup or a divorce.
It could be the first year you don’t see your kids – may be due to divorce or they have grown up and have other priorities.

2020 hasn’t turned out how anyone expected! Christmas may bring an extra financial strain you don’t need! Even if COVID didn’t affect you there is still the stress of buying presents, going to events alone, as well as having to deal with Christmas being different to what you are used to.

This can send even the happiest single into a funk!

I know the first couple of Christmases after my divorce was tough to deal with! We had to share the kids and come up with something that worked for both of us. I am happy to say that we came up with a plan that has worked well over the years. For me and my ex, that meant there were years when we had to spend Christmas without them. This meant dealing with Christmas being different and managing my expectations.

So, I want to give you some real-life tips that will actually help you in the lead up to Christmas.

12 Practical Tips to Get Through the Christmas Season

1. Don’t Judge Yourself for Being Single

It’s ok to be single if you want to be. If you don’t, it can often just be a moment in time where you are. It is easy to be hard on yourself but stop it. You are not a failure or less than anyone else because you are single.

You could be single for a number of reasons yet it doesn’t mean you will be single forever and believe me when I say your situation can be temporary. Make the most of being single while you can, this may actually be the only time you are. The right person for you could literally turn up at any moment so enjoy yourself in the meantime. Believe that when you are in the right place someone wonderful will be on their way – so enjoy yourself in the meantime.

It may be easy to look at couples and envy their happiness, yet they may be looking at you with envy. Not everyone is as happy as they seem. Try to look at the upside and not what you don’t have.

2. Be Kind to YOU

Other people can unknowingly say things that make you feel bad. As a result, you might feel the pressure from your family and friends about why you are still single and take it to heart. Don’t allow others to judge you and more importantly stop judging yourself. It can often be how you are feeling about being single that you project onto other people. Be kind to yourself, it is ok to be single and like I said many people may secretly be envious of you and your freedom.

3. Be Real

Christmas is a stressful time of year for everyone so acknowledge that rather than trying to ignore it. Be realistic about what you are feeling and take the time to feel your feelings – the grief, the sadness, the anger the regret, etc. When you stuff down your feelings and put on a brave face it is a little like trying to hold a beach ball underwater – you can only hold it down for so long before it comes flying violently out of the water. Take the time to feel your feelings yet don’t fall into the trap of getting stuck in them and going down the rabbit hole of guilt and regret. Instead of dwelling on all that is bad, look for what you can be grateful for instead. I know it may seem hard, but there will be something.

4. Think of the Hidden Benefits!

Ok, Christmas isn’t going to be how you want it to be. But think of the good points – like you don’t have to stress about finding that perfect gift for the person who has everything! You don’t have to rush around visiting relatives you didn’t even like and you can do exactly what you want when you want to do it. Look for the positives that you can find and focus on them, not on what you have lost.

5. Christmas is Just One Day!

It is easy to attach a lot of meaning to Christmas Day, yet remember that Christmas Day is only one day out of 365 days. When you look at it from that perspective it somehow makes it so much easier to deal with.

6. Make a Plan

Don’t leave the Christmas period to chance, make sure that you plan ahead of time. You might not be spending Christmas with your children or a romantic partner so make sure you have something you can do. That way you make sure that you aren’t spending Christmas feeling sorry for yourself. Organise events and spend time with people in the same position, just because you are single doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. Chose to do something completely different, something that is fun, spend time with friends in the same position, maybe you could invite people around and put a smile on their faces. If you don’t have anyone, there are often meetup groups who host Christmas events so you could even make some new friends. Try singles events to meet new and interesting people in the lead up to Christmas and look at being single as having more varied options.

7. Change your Focus to Giving

Christmas is the season of giving and when you focus on making other people happy, it ends up making you happy. So, embrace the joy of giving to others. This could be giving to people who are worse off than you are or just to people who matter to you. It sounds cliché but it really will make you feel better. During the month of December do 3 random acts of kindness each day to make someone else’s day better – call it your Random Acts of Kindness Advent Calendar. There really is so much pleasure you can have in making other people happy and planning thoughtful gifts for them. It is much better than focussing on what you have lost or don’t have.

8. Surround Yourself with Positive People

Take a moment and think of the people who bring a smile to your face then arrange to catch up with them in the lead up to the big day. In fact, get your diary out and make actual plans. This will instantly make you feel better and give you the energy to deal with those people you have to spend time with.

9. Get a Support Person

Having someone you can talk to during the holiday period will help you get through it. Maybe that is a good friend or someone in exactly the same position you are. Agree to support each other through the holiday period. Again, this is about planning ahead.

10. Do Something New

Be creative and use this time to try something new, something you haven’t done before! When I divorced, my ex and I decided we would alternative Christmas and Boxing Day each year. When I found myself having a different Christmas it was tough to start with but I used the time to do exactly what I wanted to do and it ended up being fun when I changed my focus. You can spoil yourself – do what gives YOU pleasure for once. It could be as simple as a movie marathon in your pj’s watching what YOU want or you could plan a trip to somewhere fun. Or like I said try some of the different singles events to meet like-minded people.

11. Know that the First Year is the Worst

Your first year being single, especially if you are sharing custody of children will be the hardest to deal with. But trust me when I tell you it will get easier over time. I recommend that you create your own unique rituals and traditions with your children or friends to make Christmas new and special. That way you will guarantee a tradition that will bring a smile to your face and give you something to look forward to next year.

12. Get Excited

There is a new year coming, full of new possibilities get excited about those new experiences. I find having something to look forward to makes a big difference.

If You Want Help

If you are struggling to get over an ex, being single, finding the Christmas period tough or just want to know how to get back out there, I can help! All you need to do is to book in a free discovery call? Everything to gain and nothing to lose, right! Book your call here.

Debbie

The post How to Get Through Christmas Being Single first appeared on Debbie Rivers.

The post How to Get Through Christmas Being Single appeared first on Debbie Rivers.

Step 1 – Grieve – How to Move on After a Failed Relationship

Debbie Rivers — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 06:02:19 +0000

How do you move on after a failed relationship? The first step is to grieve the end of how you thought life would be.

Did you think you were living the dream and that you had met the perfect person for you!

You had gotten married or moved in together and you imagined it would be forever!

But it didn’t end up working that way.

It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were (death, divorce, walking away), the death of a relationship and of the dream is devastating.

You will feel like you have failed. It doesn’t matter whether it was your choice or not.

How do you deal with loss and move forward to the possibility of a new relationship?

I am going to answer that question in a series of blogs. Here is the first step.

Grieve the Death of Your Relationship

The end of a significant relationship is a BIG DEAL. Don’t underestimate the impact it has on you. A divorce or breakup leaves emotional scars that go deep into your subconscious. It is important to take the time to heal from the hurt/pain and grieve.

Did you know that a divorce is listed as the second most stressful life event? Divorce changes your whole life. You lose the person who was meant to be your forever, you often lose friends and are faced with children who don’t know how to cope.

People will judge your choice and that is stressful in itself. Whether or not you chose to leave your marriage you will feel a sense of failure. That is why taking time to grieve that loss is the key to moving on.

That is a lot to deal with!

To heal the pain, you need to grieve and you need to allow yourself to feel it.

You don’t have to do this alone either, it is the perfect time to work with a coach who specialises in this area.

Don’t Suppress, Grieve

The temptation will be to suppress what you are feeling. It may seem like a solution but suppressed emotions always come back to the surface and often at the worst possible time!

It is important to mourn the death of your relationship, of your old life and of your dreams. This will take time! The key is to give yourself permission to take the time you need to come to terms with your new life.

Be kind to yourself. Don’t pressure yourself to be ok or to rush yourself with how you chose to grieve.

You will go through the various stages of grief, allow yourself to feel them without judging what you should or shouldn’t be feeling.

There are Five Stages of Grief

1. Denial and Isolation

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

How you grieve does not happen in a particular order and not everyone goes through every stage. The timeframe with also vary, there is no right or wrong way of grieving.

Give yourself permission to feel awful at times, it is normal and natural part of the process.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to be continually positive either.

It’s not about changing how you feel but it is about listening to what you are feeling. Every feeling you have is there for a reason and the ones you suppress the most have the most important lesson to teach you.

Sadness won’t kill you! But ignoring it and trying to escape it rather than dealing with it, possibly will. By ignoring your feelings, you allow them no place to go other than deep into your subconscious mind where they will stay and control you. This will literally rob you of the good in your life. When you numb emotions, you numb the good as well as the bad.

There is nothing to be afraid of, in fact, when you allow yourself to feel your emotions you will allow healing to begin.

When you learn to feel all your feelings and then make rational choices, you grow.

When you feel your feelings, you are then more able to feel love, gratitude, and happiness.

4 Steps For Dealing with your Feelings

1. Sit with the Feeling and Breathe

When an emotion comes up for you instead of resisting it relax, breathe and feel it. What you need to do is to feel the emotion without judging it. This is not about positive thinking or changing how you feel; it is about listening to how you feel. Sit with the feelings and hear what the feelings are telling you.

2. Don’t Judge your Emotions

No emotion is ‘bad’. Feelings are just feelings and they are yours. They offer insight into your past. It can reveal an early coping strategy. What can happen is the feeling may not be a rational response now but it may have come from a coping mechanism from the past. It could be triggered by old suppressed feelings.

3. Be Curious

You can be curious about what you feel without being controlled by your feelings. Remember every feeling has a purpose; you miss so much by trying to change them or by thinking some are right and some are wrong or that some are good and some are bad. Don’t have expectations that you should feel this and you shouldn’t feel that. The feelings you most suppress are the most important.

4. Soothe Yourself

What this means is you need to feel the feeling but don’t indulge in intensifying it. For example, if you are angry you need to feel the anger but not spend time building a case of why you should be angry or exaggerating the situation.

Sit there and feel the emotion it may come in waves and take you from one experience to another. Let it, be curious, stay with it until it passes. Don’t’ be scared that you will be stuck as it will fade, it will lessen and pass. Then let it go. Don’t over identify with it or justify why you are feeling that way. When you allow the feeling, it will pass just like riding a wave.

The key is to feel all of the feeling without letting it distort your rational point of view. Some people worry that they will get stuck in their feelings but if they don’t actually take the time to feel them then they will stay stuck. There is a difference between dwelling on the feelings and simply feeling them.

Debbie

The post Step 1 – Grieve – How to Move on After a Failed Relationship first appeared on Debbie Rivers.

The post Step 1 – Grieve – How to Move on After a Failed Relationship appeared first on Debbie Rivers.