We know where you are right now: scared, hurt, alarmed, uncertain, excited, and frustrated. We know—we are there too. This election has been tough on all of us, regardless of where we fall on the political spectrum. It has been polarizing, dividing, and agitating. But, above all—it has been exhausting.

It happened. You are blind-sided, side-swiped, disoriented and bewildered. Whether your change was intentional or surprising, happy or sad, scary or exhilarating—one thing you can be sure of is this:

The change is in charge now.

By Amanda Craig, PhD, LMFT

I’m waiting for my son to get home from school.  It’s a beautiful day and I know he is going to want to play soccer, then football, and then play hockey with lacrosse sticks and a soccer ball.  Brutally honest, I am thinking about the couple of e-mails I would like to send and loose ends I’d like to wrap up before the end of business day.

By Alex Peskin, LMFT

The best magicians make us think we are seeing something that is hardly possible to believe. Really, unless we are lost in Hogwarts or Westeros, we know that what we are seeing is actually a sleight of hand.

Distraction and misdirection lead us to focus somewhere else while something significant is still happening right in front of us.

You might not realize it, but some of the best everyday magicians are those of us who are lacking in motivation. 

By Cliff Schuman, MS, LMFT

Let’s face it: we all want to be liked, approved of, respected, admired and found pleasing. So, we ask a grocery checkout cashier how their day is going, smile at our neighbor, volunteer to bring juice boxes to our kid’s preschool party, bake cupcakes for the bake sale at work, doggy sit for a friend, help a relative pack and move, take a sibling to the airport on the same day your big project is due…

Contributed by a reader

In our house, for many years we referred to the anger, exhaustion and general feeling of overwhelm before Christmas as “Christmas Piss.”

It got to be a joke after a while and helped ease the strain we had over trying to shop for the right presents, send cards, go to holiday parties (why is it that everyone entertains at Christmas?), find the perfect outfits for every event, and yet maintain a warm and glowing family Christmas.

Revised

Oh, the Holidays! We have a love-hate relationship with them. We look forward to them all year only to begin complaining about the stress, the over-the-top schedule, pants busting at the seams, and budget chocking on the dust of runaway spending.
 
We yearn for the perfection of holidays of our childhood, when Christmas (or Hanukkah or Festivus) was about BEING, having fun, family, and care-free wonder of what’s next. There was room for boundless joy, surprise, awe, tradition AND newness, doing AND being. Surely it wasn’t perfect (remember the time when you got your holiday outfit dirty before you even left the house and got the full doze of Mom’s wrath?), but it was to us.