Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr. Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in three continents, he has been training with Dr. Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.

Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr. Holmes and Mr. Baer:

My father left my mother on New Year’s Eve 37 years ago. It was as if the world stopped for all of us starting then. Mostly for my mother and me, although it took my two other siblings many years to stop being sad during the holidays.  

We all felt like our whole pitied us. They pitied my mother who could not hold a man despite being legally married to her. They pitied us for growing up without a father to protect us. It was awful. I hated their looks of pity then. I still find people’s stares and silent messages to each other very triggering.

My mother died two years ago and never got over my father leaving her. My two other siblings used to be as sad as me, but have gotten over it. They are now both married and have families of their own.   

So it is only me now. MY mother and I used to live together. Now I feel so alone. Each sibling invites me to their own Christmas parties, one on Christmas Eve, the other on Christmas Day. When New Years is about to come, it is the same thing. 

I tried going once, many years ago, but it was too painful. I thought seeing my first niece that first (and only) Christmas I went would make things easier. It did not. I felt foolish thinking sadness could lift that simply, that quickly.

 When I hear Christmas carols in the shopping malls, restaurants, coffee shops, I feel like running away.  In fact, I actually rushed out of a mall once, it was that painful.   

If my siblings can get over it, why can’t I? 

Please help,

John

Dear John,

It almost seems as though your world stopped 37 years ago and you have since become resigned to a half life. Just as your mother never moved on, nor have you. You are still overwhelmed by your father’s defection and its association with Christmas tarnishes any of the joy that others experience at this time of the year.

Yet your siblings have followed a different path and are seemingly flourishing (at least by comparison), despite sharing the same upbringing. Does this perhaps owe something to living apart from your mother and/or having the support of a spouse and children?

You ask how to move on. Therapy would definitely help you address both your aversion to Christmas and the family dysfunction that still weighs so heavily upon you. In addition, there is a suspicion that you may be suffering from depression which should also be investigated.

The internet is a source of help for combating both Christmas blues and depression. You can review numerous studies which offer support in these situations.

The literature on depression is even more extensive. Studies also show that combinations of exercise, diet, socialization, etc. can be very beneficial not only for dealing with depression but for overall health and increasing longevity. 

Finally, since your siblings have managed to move on, it would perhaps also help not only to spend time with them but also to experiment and try the coping techniques that have worked for them.

One or more of the above may hopefully prove of use.

All the best,

JAFBaer

Dear John:

Thank you very much for your letter. Mr. Baer suggested therapy as a possible way to deal with what is obviously a depression and I agree with him 100% that therapy would be immensely helpful for you. 

It is possible your therapy might take some time, given that your depression seems to have started when your father left your mother 37 years ago.  

However, it may also take merely one or two CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy sessions) to alleviate the same depression, especially if it is based on faulty beliefs that CBT is known to examine and help demolish.

Let me give you an example of why it may take a much shorter time than you and most people would anticipate.  

While your depression seems to be more continuous and more complex than a mere “anniversary depression” it is possible that this anniversary that triggered your mother’s and your major depressions might be relieved by understanding what this is all about.

You have already figured out the original trauma that caused the family depression you all experienced – your father’s leaving your mother during the holiday season.

In that sense, the cues that would ordinarily bring joy to other people — Christmas decorations and carols throughout almost any place you go to, for example — are trauma-related cues for you and could even be amplified because they are expected and thus bring anxiety, even dread, way before the fact.  

When one is depressed, one tends to judge oneself more harshly and the fact that your depression has lasted so long, especially compared to your siblings who seem to have overcome theirs, can make yours even worse, triggering questions like: “What the hell is wrong with me?!!?” or “What is so wrong with me that Ate and Kuya have gotten over theirs and I have still not been able to?”

The above feeling of possible shame or anger about your now being the only one who has not been “cured” of your depression brings us to another point.

OO ng apala! (My goodness, come to think of it, you’re absolutely right!) Why are you the only one who has not overcome this?

This is a good time to remember that trauma is not the objective fact of what actually happened (Your father leaving your mother, your family now being “broken”); trauma is what happens to you. In that sense, trauma is subjective, filtered through your personal circumstances like age when it happened (and thus how impressionable you were), temperament, gender, etc. 

Were you your mother’s favorite so you unconsciously may have felt that to truly support your mother, you had to take on her actual and never ending pain? 

The fact that you lived with her all these years might have exacerbated this need to support her as best you could.

Forgive me, dearest John. You may suddenly feel you have been barraged by all these reasons for your depression. And none of them might make any sense!! But then again, they might and this is one reason therapy could help you immensely.

At the risk of sounding mayabang (inordinately proud) I feel that, instead of merely being overwhelmed by the holidays, you wrote to us. Putting pen to paper and trying to make sense of all that has been happening all these years could be the first meaningful step to confronting your problems. 

Indeed, I hope that this alone is encouragement for “happy holidays,” or perhaps, more realistically, “Not-as-sad-a Christmas as it has been for the past 37 years.” Mabuhay ka, dearest John, and if you can, maybe give your siblings a chance to help lighten your spirit this year? 

All the very best to a fellow “sufferer” during the holidays,

MG Holmes

– Rappler.com