New Year’s Eve is frequently a highly anticipated holiday. It is a chance for big parties, big nights out and, most importantly, a perceived opportunity to hit the “reset” button. There have been few years when this opportunity is as highly anticipated as this year. 2020 will finally be over. Many joke about this having been the longest year ever. Most are eager to put this “nightmarish” year behind us.
On a global scale, I have no doubt 2020 will be remembered as the year of the pandemic. We will remember the tragedies it has brought to so many lives. We will remember 2020 as a year of great political unrest and division. We will remember it as a year of senseless tragedy that highlighted the continued existence of systemic racism. It will be remembered as the year we lost so many influential people. 2020 has been a year marked by the entire world’s experience of fear and mourning.
On a personal level, I have been saddened and stressed by all of these events in the world. The pandemic has disrupted most areas of my life and those of my teenagers. Most notably, 2020 will also always be the year my marriage ended. A wonderful chapter of my life has come to a close and the process has been scary and painful in so many ways.
I think we all can understand the desire to say goodbye to 2020. We can validate each other’s urge to write it off as a bad year.
What I find less understandable is my urge not to. I will not look back on 2020 as a bad year.
When I began this blog, I explained that, despite the beliefs of many, my role as a psychologist has not freed my life of difficult emotions, relationship issues, or stress. This year has made that very clear!
At the same time, my training has exposed me to DBT skills that truly help me recognize these as part of my life and not my whole life. Though I will 100% admit I forget to use my skills at times!
At the core of DBT is the skill of mindfulness. In its simplest form, mindfulness means being fully present in the moment. One of its many benefits is the ability to experience the whole picture and not just the more salient parts.
As I often discuss with clients, we have all gotten to the end of a long day and described it as a bad day. Yet, it is the rare occasion when an entire day is bad. More often, we have days with bad segments interspersed with more neutral moments and even some positive ones. We fall prey to a common thought distortion wherein people filter out the positives when they are incongruent with some other negative experience.
This is a completely normal tendency. It is also one that can be minimized by mindfulness and teaching our brains to consciously process the whole picture.
2020 has had some REALLY bad moments. Yet, it has also been full of many neutral moments and many wonderful moments. While I will not gloss over the negatives, I do not want the negatives to force me into filtering out the positives. In fact, it is many of those negatives that have resulted in the positives.
In 2020 I have experienced moments of intense sadness AND moments of intense joy. I have lost relationships AND strengthened other relationships. I have experienced great stress AND moments of forced calm.
2020 has been a year of huge change. As I have said before “Change Involves Loss AND Gain.” I hope we can be mindful of both as we say goodbye to 2020 and welcome in 2021.
Click HERE to follow Psychdiary on Facebook and receive links to new blog posts
