Your Holiday To-Don’t List: Key to Surviving OGD
Category : Women Lifestyle, Women Personality
The gods don’t ask for human sacrifice anymore, do they? Then why do millions of women turn themselves into burnt offerings each winter?
It hits about mid-November: Obsessive Giving Disorder. Turning ordinary women into Nurturing Ninjas in a Superbowl of Martyrdom where every shred of selfhood disappears into the Bermuda Triangle of Holiday Obligation.
SO YOU’RE SINKING IN HOLIDAY DOGMA-DOO
“Well, maybe if I just get organized,†you say. “Put my to-do list in order.â€
Careful–that’s the disease talking.
The Holiday To-Do list has a life of its own. It grows faster than a B-Movie mutation. Forget trying to contain it.
The only hope of surviving the Curse of Caring Too Much is to leave the monster alone and attack the lesser demons: the Beta stressors–those second-string compulsions.
You can start by turning your imagination around.
USING YOUR WHAT-IFS FOR GOOD INSTEAD OF EVIL
We’re great at imagining the family unit will go supernova if we make potatoes from a box.But imagination can be an ally when we ask:
Would the dinner table turn into Lord of the Flies if I didn’t sculpt every family pet out of marzipan this year?
Would Charlie end up in therapy for abandonment issues if I didn’t crochet his name onto that videogame cozy?
But when you’re up against Toxic Traditions, you’ll need more in your arsenal than just what-ifs.
Dogma-doers must minimize their exposure to the needs of others.
PINK LIES
Remember Little White Lies? They spare the feelings of others. Pink lies spare your own as well!
Need-meeters are obligation magnets. They cannot screen out the pleading eyes or the passive-aggressive demands.
There are three basic categories of Pink Lies:
Why you have to leave early.
Why you have to come late.
Why you have to leave in the middle.
EXAMPLES:
THE MEDICAL STAND-BY: I have: (pick one: allergies, female troubles, New Guinea Flu or if necessary: “some kind of oozing pussy rashâ€)
THE I’LL BE RIGHT BACK: “I forgot to get the sour cream—No, it’s a special l kind and I am the only one who knows where to find it.â€
THE NOT MY FAULT: My husband decided to go find his birth mother, we’re leaving for the Philippines tonight.
Pink Lies buy you a little separation from your demanding fans. But don’t forget you need to stay one step ahead of your internal Perfection Police.
It’s important to set yourself up for failure. Yes, for failure.
MAKING YOUR TO-DON’T LIST
An anal accommodator is incapable of limiting the guest list to three digits or stopping at sixteen sets of meringue crèche figures. She cannot spend less, do less, coddle less, say yes less. So she must look for something that she can eliminate. Naturally, it will be a non-holiday related task since the whole Yule area of the brain has been taken over by MARTIAL LAW.
Ask yourself: Where can I economize my energy?
If you were devoting extra hours to anther kind of winter disaster like clearing mudslides, housing the homeless, you would probably lighten up on routine domestic chores at home. Cut yourself the same slack.
Try out this delicious TO-DON’T LIST SAMPLER
Don’t change clothes for three days.
Don’t cook anything but microwave food on Fridays and Tuesdays.
Don’t help your son with homework on Mondays.
Don’t clean the refrigerator.
Don’t volunteer cupcakes.
Don’t change the sheets till New Year’s.
Be sure and WRITE DOWN your To-Don’t List
And when you have not done them, check them off proudly! You stole back a little time. That’s a rare achievement for a compulsive Dogma-Doer—truly something to celebrate!
Resource Box: Joan Bechtel, award-winning comedienne, early childhood educator and author of MOTHERHOOD CONFIDENTIAL, is a Personalized Parenting speaker, helping women out of the dogma-doo to find their own personally-correct answers. www.MotherhoodConfidential.com
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