Selected Columns
Kaleidoscope of the Heart: Make your New Year's holiday a holiday
As the end of the year approaches, I often find myself asking people at my clinic, "How are you going to spend the year-end and New Year period?"
I have no real interests that allow me to enjoy the different seasons, and on my days off I often stay inside playing video games or reading comics, and so I feel that talking to my patients somehow gives me a sense of the four seasons.
I've heard that this year, due to the economic downturn and the timing of the holidays, fewer people are traveling afar. This isn't great news for the travel industry, but from a psychiatrist's point of view, doing nothing over the New Year is also a good thing.
It's not uncommon for people to fall physically or mentally ill when they go out of their way every year to go on overseas trips or travel to far-off hot springs and other locations. It's also quite common for people traveling at this time of year to go with their families, and to travel in large numbers, including, for example, their parents who live in the countryside or the husband's mother.
If the feeling of relaxation from the trip outweighs all the stress involved, then it's not so bad, but I often hear of people always being mindful of the others with them during the trip, and coming back exhausted.
When I consult patients who come to me at the beginning of the New Year saying, "I went out with my husband's parents and now I'm all tired out," and see their dull faces, I sometimes think it would be better to have no New Year's holiday at all.
There are probably also people who really wanted to go to Hawaii, but after examining the state of their wallets they decided to take a trip to a local public bath complex instead. I want to tell these people: "Staying at home over the New Year or relaxing somewhere nearby is the best way to spend the year-end and New Year period."
I also want to tell people who are planning to travel afar: "A holiday is something to relax the body and mind, so you shouldn't go out of your way to cram in plans here and there."
I'd also like people to avoid being overly mindful of relatives whom they don't normally see. People are going too far if they try to score 100 percent as a wife or 90 percent as a son in the eyes of relatives.
People can probably consider to have reached just the right level when they think, "Hmm, I guess I would give this year's holiday a score of about 60 percent. Is that about right?" (By Rika Kayama, psychiatrist)
Click here for the original Japanese story
(Mainichi Japan) December 20, 2009