Police Psychology | If I Can Just Get Through This Month

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

“…and I in my cap, had just settled our brains for a long winter’s…” fight!  Perhaps if Clement Clarke Moore would have written his poem in 2016 instead of 1822, this may have been the line in “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”  Many don’t find a serene “nap” on their schedule, in fact many “just want to get through it.”  Get through the holidays is the major sentiment that a psychologist sees in his office from mothers, and fathers, and cops and most people out there.  They often don’t let each other know in social relationships, but they sure do say it a lot in to a psychologist, even when we don’t ask.  I just want to get through this damn holiday season without “going broke,” “without ringing someone’s neck,” “without getting a divorce,” “without killing my kids…” “Maybe I’ll just work Christmas and Christmas Eve.”  The joys of the holidays!!

Holidays are a time when many people are happy, and quite a few are miserable or just powering through it.  If you have an overly controlling person(s) in the family, you have obnoxiously opinionated people in the family (you should have heard some of the stories after Thanksgiving this year, less than a month after the election), you have someone in the family who has a personality disorder, or you even have kids who missed the discretion and manners line on the way out of heaven, you could be in for a rough holiday.  Or if you have a family from Mars and you’re from Sheboygan, watch out, the Grinch lives in each of us and “his heart hasn’t grown 3 sizes that day” yet.  Well, Doc, can’t I just keep a positive attitude and get through it?  Bring a video camera, I want to see that solely for entertainment purposes.  Can’t I just avoid everyone this Christmas?  Do me a favor and make sure the battery on that camera is charged and please don’t throw it against the wall smashing it into a thousand pieces before I see. (more…)