Aspire Therapy

The Pleasure of Christmas

Christmas can be a hectic time of year. The expectations we have of it are very high and those expectations can so easily come crashing down around us in shower of tangled tinsel and shattered fairy lights.

The build-up to Christmas is busy, prolonged and often intense and when the great day comes it can slip through our fingers as swiftly as dissolving snow, leaving us feeling that we haven’t actually stopped to enjoy the day.

Yet whether we are religious or not, at the heart of Christmas there lies a pleasure and a mystery which we should try to capture. The tradition of a mid-winter celebration is older than Christianity itself, which changed its significance to a story about the birth of a child. Before that there were pre-Christian winter festivals such as Yule and Saturnalia.

Loops of Thought

The ability to think self-consciously is the key thing that distinguishes humans from animals. To be able to reflect upon ourselves and the world we live in is a miraculous gift and one that may be unique in the universe.

And yet thoughts are also the things that can torment us most, particularly when we are tired, anxious, stressed, worried or depressed.

One of the most common things that clients suffering from stress complain about are thoughts which go round and round in their heads, tormenting and exhausting them.

The Problem With Work

Have you ever considered that what we call ‘work’ isn’t just the job we do to earn a wage? It is, more often than not, a way of describing those things we don’t like doing, or do reluctantly.

Adults go to work, school children are set homework, students do coursework and the person left at home does the housework.

When we enjoy what we’re doing, we don’t tend to regard it as ‘work’. We do it without thinking; without feeling any kind of resentment about the fact we’re having to do it.