Season of Hope - A Family Christmas in Recovery

I’ll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree.

Gannon & Kent – I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Family Christmas in Recovery

In the classic movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life“, the main protagonist, George Bailey, falls into despair and self-loathing after encountering failure in his life. It is Christmas Eve when he hits rock bottom and deicides that the world would be better off without him. With the help of an angel, he is able to see that despite his misfortunes, he has much to offer his family, friends, and society. This life-affirming tale can have particular relevance to those who have recovered from an addiction problem.

For those of us who have struggled with addiction, Christmas can be a particularly challenging time. Rather than contributing to family festive spirit, we can see ourselves more as a liability. Our family may agree. This time of year can become associated with stress, remorse, loneliness, despair and recrimination. Things can change once we break free of our addiction, and we can begin to look forward to this time of year.

The Ghosts of Family Christmases Past

Our minds have an impressive capacity to categorize and develop associations. This is useful for navigating life. Problems arise though when we take these categories and associations as written in concrete. Say you met a rude person from Thailand, your mind might begin to associate Thailand with rudeness. This would be grossly unfair to a country that is renowned for its hospitality. The same thing happens with the festive season, if we’ve had some bad experiences, we may want to just reject the whole thing – bah humbug!

Experience Christmas Through the Eyes of Recovery

Recovery means experiencing the world in a new way. Our world changes because we change. This means that we can get to reclaim the festive season. If we have previously associated this time of year with overindulgence in alcohol or other drugs we can now make it about something completely new. Something much better. Young children seem to be able to enjoy this type of year without drugs, and so can we!

Christmas is a time of hope, gratitude, focusing on others, and reflection. It is the perfect time for doing service in our community. These are also key aspects of recovery. The secret to a festive season is to make it more about the happiness of other people rather than on our own concerns.

Loneliness at Christmas

For various reasons, there are those of us who don’t have the opportunity to spend time with family at Christmas. What we can do though is find a new family. One that is made up of friends. A support group can be an ideal place to find such people in recovery. Here we find people who understand what we are going through, and are facing the same challenges that we are.

Getting Family Support at Christmas

Clear communication is vital when it comes to getting support from family at Christmas. It is unreasonable to just expect others to understand what we are going through. We have to communicate with them. There can be family members who just don’t seem to understand recovery (“what would be the harm in one drink?”), and here we need to be strong about enforcing our boundaries.

Please check out some of our previous Christmas posts:

A Christmas Gift

Reasons to Celebrate

Tips for Having a Fantastic Christmas (Podcast)

Staying Clean and Sober at Christmas

From all of us here at Hope Rehab Thailand, wishing you and your family a very merry Christmas and happy New Year.

Please contact us for more information about what we offer.