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First tweet: The holiday season is supposed to be the most festive and fun time of the year but sometimes it can quickly become a stressful and emotional time. All those plans and expectations of joy can turn tougher than they sound.

2: This is especially true for those of us who struggle with mental illness- be it depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other challenges. The holidays break your routine. Sometimes you’re forced to spend time with family you rarely see and don’t always get along with.

3: Or maybe you’re alone when everyone else is with family. Or you are off from work with more time to think troubling thoughts. Or you are at work and can’t be with those you love. Or you are thrust into party situations that tempt your demons. 

4: Or you aren’t invited to those tempting parties. In so many ways, the holidays can throw you off your game- and that can shake you. When you have a routine, it’s easier to manage whatever mental struggles you may be faced with,

5: and when that routine is broken, it can trigger things you may not be ready to face. I know it has for me. It was during the holidays when I hit a low moment and with the help of my mother decided to seek help for my eating disorder. 

6: Around the holidays, I often feel like I’m supposed to be everywhere, with everyone- all with the added guilt that it’s the season of giving. To fight this, I’ve developed a mantra: it’s not selfish to take time for yourself. 

7: Take a walk in nature. Talk to a friend you trust or a therapist. Sit out one of the holiday gatherings in favor of some personal time. Just do whatever helps you calm down and gives you a break from the stress. 

8: Download one of the many meditation apps for your phone. I particularly like “Calm” and “End Anxiety.” It’s not your responsibility to try to make the whole world happy. 

9: Especially since sometimes it’s not that easy to make yourself happy, either- even with all the celebrations and gifts and seasonal decorations, foods and drinks, which can only do so much. So don’t ask yourself things like “it’s almost Christmas, why am I not happy?”

10: That can turn into a shame cycle. It’s just another day- don’t put unrealistic expectations on it, and don’t beat yourself up. Trying to spend all of your time pleasing everyone else is not only exhausting- it’s impossible. 

11: And you know what? If you take a little time for yourself, you will actually be much better company for those around you.

12: This holiday season, I will be missing a beloved member of my family who passed away recently, but I have to remember to be thankful for the family that I do have and careful not to fall into an existential crisis downward spiral. 

13: And most importantly just remember to give yourself a break!

I WAS WRONG

So the standard “hide all your unsightly things by doing xyz” may look nice for the first week or so, but by the end of the week it’ll look like a tornado made of pure inhuman frustration ripped through the house as I try to find the fucking advil.

To give you an example of the kind of hell I’ve been fumbling my way through the last 20 odd years: dishes will be washed and left in the drying wrack but never put away. Which means I can’t wash more dishes, which means dishes pile up, which means I can’t make food, which means I don’t eat, which means my CFS gets worse, which means I don’t have the energy to put the dishes away, and so on so forth until I have a meltdown, cry to ETD (who also likely has ADHD but has never had it confirmed) about how I can’t cope with life, and then we fix it for a while, but inevitably end up back at square one within about a week.

Pinsky’s solution to this was “remove an obstacle between you and your goal, if that means taking all the doors off your kitchen cabinets to make things easier, so be it.”

And lemme tell you, fucking revolutionary.

Laundry never ends up in the hamper??? why???? is it a closed hamper??? Remove the lid. Throw it out the window. Clothes are now miraculously finding their way into the hamper??? Rejoice????

Mail ends up spread out over every available flat surface? Put a sorting station right where your mail arrives. Put a shredder or “junk” basket under it. Shred or dump the junk immediately. Realize you only actually have two real letters that need attention, feel less overwhelmed, pay your bills on time.

Like I’m not saying this book is miraculous, but it did help me realize that I was effectively torturing myself by trying to conform to certain ideals of “perfect house keeping”, and presenting a certain image rather than just allowing myself to live in my space as effectively as possible. And why? Why was I doing that? Cause people with different lives and capabilities are perceived as the norm? Fuck that. If this was a physical problem I wouldn’t be forcing myself to conform to an ableist standard, so why am I doing it with this?

In 1943, a team of ingenious Italian doctors invented a deadly, contagious virus called Syndrome K to protect Jews from annihilation. On October 16 of that year, as Nazis closed in to liquidate Rome’s Jewish ghetto, many runaways hid in the 450-year-old Fatebenefratelli Hospital. There, anti-Fascist doctors including Adriano Ossicini, Vittorio Sacerdoti and Giovanni Borromeo created a gruesome, imaginary disease.

“Syndrome K was put on patient papers to indicate that the sick person wasn’t sick at all, but Jewish” and in need of protection, Ossicini told Italian newspaper La Stampa last year. The “K” stood for Albert Kesselring and Herbert Kappler — two ruthless Nazi commanders.

The doctors instructed “patients” to cough very loudly and told Nazis that the disease was extremely dangerous, disfiguring and molto contagioso. Soldiers were so alarmed by the list of symptoms and incessant coughing that they left without inspecting the patients. It’s estimated that a few dozen lives were saved by this brilliant scheme.

The doctors were later honored for their heroic actions, and Fatebenefratelli Hospital was declared a “House of Life” by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.