Trying not to fear Halloween
Halloween is all about being a little spooky, a little scary...a way of being playful with some really frightening ideas. (There’s a lot of blood and gore!) But for some of us, Halloween brings with it a very different kind of fear.
When you’ve had a period in your life of counting every calorie, and of putting a value on your food--this food’s good, this one’s evil--all that Halloween candy becomes way more frightening than the sudden presence of a CVS-bought gravestone in your neighbor’s yard. Buying those giant bags of candy for trick-or-treaters starts to feel dangerous. Telling your kids how much candy they can or can’t eat brings back all those conversations about dieting you had with yourself. How can you enjoy this holiday when it reminds you of so many years of self-consciousness and self-management?
The good news is, you don’t have to opt out of the holiday spirit completely. The bad news is, participating means you have to take a really long look at what you’re comfortable doing--not just what you used to do, or what your family wants you to do. How do you feel, really feel, about Halloween? Does your resilience practice now have you feeling ready to take on some parts of the holiday--even if you aren’t ready to cope with the whole shebang?