– Individual Counseling in Nashville, TN and the Holiday Season

Last Updated on September 14, 2015 by Chris Roberts

HOW DOES THE HOLIDAY SEASON IMPACT INDIVIDUAL’S LIVES?

People employ individual counseling for many reasons and during many different seasons in their lives, but the holidays are an especially important time for understanding the impact “family” has on our lives.  Christmas and Thanksgiving are usually the two most significant times when people return home to their family of origin for gifts, and celebrating, and cheer.  These two holidays are no less than festive and fun and entertaining.  But they also can carry a minefield of unexpected feelings and emotions.  The holidays are “supposed” to be fun and sometimes we can get so focused on creating that fun that we forget there are other possibilities of experiences we might feel.

Individual counseling can be most helpful in the places where we are blind to the possibilities of unwanted feelings.  As we have discussed in previous articles about individual counseling, particulary in the south, including Nashville, Tennessee, there is an ultimate dictum to be nice and hospitable and pleasing towards other people.  This, of course, is a lovely trait, but if it requires that we suppress other “ugly” feelings beneath the surface for long periods of time, it can lead to unconscious acting out at other times.  For example, as a middle aged, married man returning to his parent’s home to celebrate Christmas with his family and children, he may be unaware of pressure from his own parents to exhibit behaviors that he once did when he was a little child in their home.  Oftentimes, neither the man, nor the parents are aware of this unintended pressure.  What happens however, is that man is stuck between pleasing his parents and not upsetting his wife or children.  This hypothetical man, in an effort to “honor” his parents, may do and say things that place him comfortably back in the role he played as a child in his parent’s home, but are foreign to his wife’s and children’s normal experience of him as a father and husband.  This “conflict of roles” will inevitably produce tension within the man, and usually anger or frustration will begin to brew.  Again, in an effort to “honor” his parents, this man will typically subdue his frustration and anger at his parents, and in turn, it will become directed at his wife and possibly children.

This is a common occurance during the holidays in individual counseling.  Nothing in the above example is necessarily wrong, or bad.  The problem becomes when no one is willing to talk about what is actually happening and no one is able to name the elephant in the room.

Individual counseling becomes an arena where the man (or any hypothetical woman) can openly and freely discuss the conflict and tension the person might be feeling and be able to put a better understanding to what might actually be happening.  The more people are able to get out in front of tenuous situations like this, the better they will  be able to function inside of them.

As an individual counselor in Nashville, TN, this is one of the most important things I want to accomplish with people.  I want people to be able to enjoy and thrive in situations like the example given above.  I don’t want people to have to fear these situations, nor simply find ways to avoid them.  I want people to gain better insight in to how these situations occur, and then work WITH their important loved ones to figure out better ways to engage.

If you have noticed similar patterns like this in the past, and are looking for individual counseling in Nashville, TN, please feel free to give us a call at Two Trees Counseling Nashville at (615) 800-9260 and see if we can be of help.  Chris Roberts is an individual counselor in Nashville, TN who enjoys working with people around issues like these, and others.  We wish you the merriest of holiday seasons!