Written by: Marja West, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The Holiday Season officially began post-Thanksgiving with Black Friday, followed by Cyber Monday. Kicking off the shopping preprogrammed madness were the countless email adverts in our inboxes hijacking our attention through cleverly crafted headlines whose sole intention is to engage our click-baited and scroll-away fingers to press the FOMO button and eventually commit egregious retail exploits.
Fortunately, although I adore shiny, beautiful objects, I’m not a shopper and am impervious to manipulative marketing ploys. As a former 1980s “Yuppie,” I’m not a fan of being all that you can be and Hustle Culture in any form, shape, or fashion, nor the coercive falseness of mass-consciousness programming of willfully going against Nature at this particular time of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere, Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, with Mother Nature calling us to slow down, go within to rest, get cosy and hibernate—metaphorically and literally. In the Southern Hemisphere, 21 December kicks off the Summer season, leaning toward less work, family vacations, and more enjoyment.
Still, regardless of which hemisphere we reside in, somehow Pop Culture has brainwashed our society to step it up, rev it up, go in the opposite direction of Nature, and go into overdrive—not just workwise so we can end the year with a productive bang, but onboard with the Holiday Season hysteria of obligatory shopping, gifts, celebrations and gatherings.
Cultivating The Art of Saying No
As a Trauma DeActivator of over three decades, the Holiday Season is my busy time for last-minute emergency sessions, handholding men and women all over the planet who are feeling bullied, anxious, guilty, and overwhelmed by helpless frustration regarding how they are doing it all again—and hate themselves because They Don’t Want To!
The palpable intensity driven by habituated seasonal insanity gives us the green light to bulldoze our sensitivities and exhaustion and do the things we’d rather not but are afraid to say. We overextend ourselves, over-eat, max out our credit cards, endure the nightmares of long shopping lines for gifts and groceries, party-prep, travel locally and abroad during the busiest travel season, and indulge our codependency by steamrolling over our basic needs for boundaries and practising The Art of Saying No without losing our shit.
I feel the over-the-top collective energies of that Hallmark-style of mind control beckoning the masses to holiday comply, in overt and beguiling means to go there with gusto. The tension of this toxic empathy is enough to make my heart pound and go into a panic attack filled with social anxiety hell if I’m not vigilant about staying conscious and away from the fray.
Ready or not, Christmas and New Year’s Day are underway. I call it The Holy Haze Daze Craze because I’m a tongue-in-cheek bah-humbug person, recovered from years of raising kids and getting caught up in the whirlwind of allowing myself to be bullied by the automaton holiday cray-cray of doing it all.
I quit a decade ago. Many of my friends did NOT like the new Me and desperately wanted her back. Of course, they did. If I could’ve cloned myself, I would’ve: I bought cool and thoughtful gifts and wrapped them artfully and festively. I’m also a great cook and entertainer. I’m the hostess with the mostest, and I delight in my guests enjoying themselves, but then they eat and run, leaving me alone to deal with a huge mess to clean up. The nerve of them all leaving without offering to help sort out the aftermath. Yeah, I know, my bad and my responsibility to own up to and ask for help.
We learn through contrasting experiences.
My studies of the Abraham-Hicks Law of Attraction teachings made this infinitely clear. I was a hot mess after hosting my final holiday soiree. The mixture of tears, exhaustion, anger, years of silent resentment, and hunger was a lethal emotional cocktail to swig down and digest. I sobbed for hours while putting leftovers into their properly-sized containers, picking up trash and dishes left behind strewn all over my home, scrubbing away the baked-on food from my numerous heavy Le Creuset pans, sweeping the floors, and then letting Roomba loose.
My self-talk was not very nice; the expletives ran wild and free in various languages. Suddenly, as I sipped the last bit of holiday cheer, Madonna’s rendition of Santa Baby skipping in the background made me laugh my ass off and spew my beverage, thankfully on the tile floors, not on my white carpet.
The absurdity and poignancy of that moment of epiphany made my processing and decision-making clear: A new strategy was being birthed!
Permission to Opt-Out
Although opting out of the Holiday Season isn’t for everyone, I’m encouraging all introverts and those who feel bullied and anxiety-ridden by the saccharin-ness of “Tis the season” to allow yourselves the option NOT to participate.
That means if you’re tired of cooking for everyone or travelling or the holidays stress you out– don’t do it anymore. Simple. Open to the possibility of doing something different, like accepting an invitation to be an honoured guest, or plan a staycation and enjoy being home in your own space, alone or with select beloveds.
“Yeah, but.” I hear, “I can’t do that; they expect me to do it yearly.”
Okay, I understand, but what you do is dishonest, NOT sustainable, and unhealthy for you and everyone else.
Squares Journalling Exercise
Here’s a simple journalling strategy offering to process your anxiety of feeling bullied and burdened about the Holiday Season obligations so you can get clear next time around to either make a change or continue with a better attitude from a place of love, acceptance, and enjoyment:
General directions: Using one page of paper per heading, write down the title of each heading on the top of the sheet. Under each heading, write down everything that comes to mind and write, write, write until you feel complete-- do not censor or second guess or be concerned with grammar; let it flow in one word or phrase--a stream of consciousness-style, you may fill a page or two, allow whatever unfolds. Move on to the next heading and repeat the same process. Be curious and have fun playing with this.
Once you’ve completed all the headings, with your right hand on your heart and left hand on your belly, recite this Blessing/Prayer asking for the integration of all that you’ve written: Mother, Father God, Essence, Great Spirit, All that Is, I recognise these polarised states that exist in my mind and ego patterning. I offer them up and ask that they be merged into a place of oneness and clarity so that I may see who I really am more clearly and live my highest truth. I ask this with gratitude, knowing that my prayer has already been answered. ~ So mote it be.
Here are two Squares to consider or make up your own.
Square 1 Headings
Desire to Opt-out of the holidays.
Fear of Opting out of the holidays.
Desire to NOT Opt-out of the holidays.
Fear of NOT Opting out of the holidays.
Square 2 Headings
Desire to Say No.
Fear of Saying No.
Desire to Not Say No.
Fear of NOT Saying No.
You can utilise this brilliant exercise on any topic. The point of the exercise is to unpack and excavate all the polarities and possibilities/thoughts/outcomes onto the page; in writing, you will discover something interesting without labelling them as positive or negative/good or bad. This exercise illustrates the Totality of Human Experience as a thought moves from your mind, activating your writing and dumping it through your hand-via pen/pencil onto a page, releasing it from your mind.
Let us affirm the following to realign with Mother Nature and empower greater self-awareness and self-compassion during this emotionally loaded time:
I align with Mother Nature and honour her cycles as my own.
It is okay for me to say No to Hustle Culture.
I give myself permission to Opt-out of any activity that makes me feel bullied and anxious, especially during the Holiday Season.
I appreciate and honour my sensitivities as an invitation to deepen my self-care.
I enjoy discovering what is right and true for me.
I reexamine automated obligations and update them accordingly.
And so it is.
Thank you so much for reading along. I trust you’ve found this article helpful. For video How-tos and Do-It-Yourself Reality Creation and Self-Clearing processes, please visit my LoveTruth&Beauty YouTube Channel. Click here for the playlist.
Blessings to you this Holiday Season!
Until next time, here’s to Love, Truth, and Beauty,
Marja (mahrrr-ya)
Important Reading links:
The Art of Saying No Book by Damon Zahariades
The Marriage of Spirit: Enlightened Living In Today’s World by Leslie Temple-Thurston and Brad Laughlin
Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and visit my website for more info!
Marja West, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Marja (pronounced Mahrrr-ya) West is an author, mentor of The Hermetic~Natural Law Principles, and a leading expert in Energy Mastery, Reality Creation, and Trauma-Based Mind Control DeActivator focusing on handholding survivors of Human Trafficking, Rape Camps, Satanic Ritual Abuse, Cult/Tribal, and NSP Abuse (Narcissistic-Sociopathic-Psychopathic), to evolve from Victim to Victorious. Well-known for her zero-filtered-laugh-out-loud humour and disarming, electrifying presentations, Marja is the author of the book F'd Wide Open: The Rude Awakening of the Heart-Based New Humanity. She is also a medical intuitive, martial artist, singer, multi-instrumentalist-musician, dancer, and plant lover.
