And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be.

I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols and this episode is titled Anniversary Reactions.

And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

Ho, ho, ho, everybody! Christmas is coming. I expect you noticed. Hard to miss it, really.

Once Halloween was out of the way,

the TV didn't shut up about it. Whether that's John Lewis making me cry a little bit,

because the dad in the advert wants to learn to ride a skateboard so he can bond with a foster

child, or Tesco's weird parody of a party political broadcast. Christmas is everywhere, and it's

inescapable, and that's fine for most people. But what if Christmas is a bit of a sore subject?

Now, I'm not a fan of the consumerism that comes with Christmas. It's tired and cliche and has absolutely nothing to do

with what most people pretend to be celebrating. Is it about the birth of Jesus? Well, no, because

Jesus wasn't born in December, that much is obvious from everything written about him.

Is it about celebrating the life of Jesus then instead of the birth?

Well, no, I'm not religious, and even I know that Jesus was massively against materialism and money lending.

So, let's forget about the whole Jesus thing and just say that it's the winter equinox,

a pagan festival celebrating the beginning of longer days and shorter nights. Well, fine, but that's still got nothing to do with a fat man in a red suit giving away presents. That song by Mariah Carey is already getting on my nerves.

So it's easy for people to not like Christmas.

But what if it's taken another stage further?

What if Christmas actually triggers some really very unpleasant emotions?

You see, there's a psychological process that we call an

anniversary reaction, which sounds nice, but anniversaries aren't always a happy thing.

...