Gifts of Psychological Gift Giving This Holiday Season
Dec03, 2012 by Barbara Morrison
Gifts of Psychological Gift Giving This Holiday Season
To parents: give the gift of your own happiness to your children.
To all adults in a committed relationship: take care of your own business before you blame your partner for his or her shortcomings.
Give something to whomever that requires some imagination. Think of who you are giving to and what that person loves.
To yourself: Join the Mindfulness movement. By bringing awareness/mindfulness to our daily living, we have increased capacity to stop knee-jerk reactions and think of how we want to respond to someone, rather than just reacting. (There are plenty of books out there to read about mindfulness and there are mindfulness classes in many communities – personally, I love the work of Pema Chodron, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Michael Stone + Jack Kornfield)
This gift isn’t wrapped in a box – it’s an extension of yourself: give the gift of kindness and compassion to others.
The gift of letting go: “letting go” happens in different ways and in different circumstances, but the value of letting go is that we will have freedom from our own suffering. For example, we can choose to let go of past hurts and injuries – that does not mean we need to stay in relationship with someone we do not respect, but it does mean that if we hold onto anger, resentment or bitterness, we are the only ones who suffer. When we do stay in relationship with someone because we choose to, we learn to “let go” because it frees us up to be more loving to our partner and to be loved more fully by our partner.
The all-important gift of repair work: it is common for individuals to carry around hurt from an action that went unrepaired by a partner; unfortunately, however, this builds a wall between two people that keeps them emotionally, physically + sexually distant. It is the responsibility of any partner who has caused injury to their loved one to take on the task of repair work. The most important piece of repair work is to attempt to not only understand how your actions have affected your partner, to but vocalize to your partner, how you have hurt him or her. For example, “when I called consistently don’t show up for you when I say I will, you begin to feel that I am unreliable and you don’t trust me to be there for you when I say I will. That must feel lonely for you.” (And then you consistently work toward changing that particular behavior, in order to build up trust with the other person.)
The gift of active listening: Active listening can take many forms, but primarily what is meant by active listening is paying attention to what someone is saying and inquire about how the other person is feeling or what they are thinking – get more clarification. Imagine what it is like to be in the other person’s situation and offer empathy. When you are listening to someone, it is not about you. It is about the other. For example, when someone says something like “I think I want a day off from being a parent because I am so tired and frustrated,” what you don’t want to say is something like “well, I’m tired too – when I get home from work, I just want to relax and do nothing.” In this example, you have made what your partner has said about you. He or she will feel shut down. You could offer up something like this: “I can understand why you would want a day off – you work hard and having a day off would allow you to take care of yourself. “ Notice in this example, the listener has “solved any problem,” he or she has simply provided empathy. After providing empathy, you could say something like the following “would you like to figure out how we could make this happen or did you just need to vent?” Alternatively, active listening sometimes means simply just being with someone and sitting silently, particularly when they are grieving. Bearing witness to someone’s grief without thinking that we have to solve it or fix it, is an invaluable gift to someone. Our presence in these situations, makes another feel comforted and not alone.
The gift of picking up your socks: this, of course, is a metaphor for being responsible for all of your own “stuff.” It may mean, literally, putting your dishes away, helping vacuum, clean the toilets, shovel the walks, etc., and it also means taking care of your psychological well being.
The gift of laughter and humor: develop a sense of humor – not in a way, of course, that disparages another or that is dismissive of another, or used as a way of getting out of something, but as a way of lightening the mood and making your life more interesting and vibrant.
The gift of security and of novelty: okay, there’s two gifts here. We all have a need to feel secure in the world and we also have a need for mystery and aliveness. It’s like when a child of the age two is in a playgroup with children and parents, he or she will go off to play with the other children and have fun and then touches base with the parent to make sure he or she is still there. We need this as adults too. To be reliable to our partner and for our partner to rely on us provides some security. To be creative, imaginative and have fun provides our relationship with some excitement. They are both vital to a healthy, vibrant adult relationship.
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