(This blog was originally posted on December 7, 2014)
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| Photo courtesy of Microsoft |
For
me, nothing says the holiday season like inclement winter weather. Perhaps I am
simply suggestible to the cozy images of houses covered in snow and icicles
depicted in Hallmark advertisements, but
I just can’t seem to get into the holiday spirit when the sun is shining. Southern
California is not known for the blizzards and heavy snow that occurs elsewhere
in the United States in December through February—let alone most countries in
the Northern Hemisphere. Consequently, I often have trouble reconciling what I
want and think the season should look and feel like compared to what it is
actually like. I remember temperatures soaring into the eighties and even
nineties (degrees Fahrenheit) on many Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. My
friends in England would be ooh-ing
and ahh-ing with envy while all I
wanted was to be watching snow fall outside my window.
Of
course, the symbolism of and sentiment behind these holidays has nothing to do
with what the weather is like. People who live in Brisbane, Australia will open
Christmas presents on December 25, just like people in Berlin, Germany will do.
However, citizens in Australia will likely be wearing lightweight clothing to
stay cool in their hot summer weather, while celebrants in Europe will probably
be bundled up in warm clothes to stay warm and protect against freezing
temperatures. In both cases, these scenarios will be comfortable and familiar
for the people who live there because they know what to expect from the weather
where they live. It is what they know.
As
I explained in my December 25, 2013 blog titled “Venturing
into the Unknown,” Hypnosis Motivation
Institute founder John G. Kappas, Ph.D.
and his brother, Alex G. Kappas, Ph.D., observed that the subconscious mind identifies
and integrates your experiences as “known” or “unknown” phenomena. Also, we get
our suggestibility from our primary caretaker—usually mom—whose attitudes and behaviors
we imitate and integrate into our own behavioral repertoire during early
childhood. Once the subconscious mind recognizes an event or stimulus as a known entity, it
becomes comfortable and an accepted part of your experiential repertoire. In
fact, this familiarity often induces an initial subconscious resistance to and
rejection of anything different (i.e., “unknown”) until the SCM integrates that
new stimulus as a known and is therefore comfortable or safe for you to enjoy,
as well.
Since
I grew up in Southern California, where the weather is often mild in the
winter, I can only guess that I learned to identify and prefer cold and snow
during this season from my parents. They both grew up on the East Coast and
told me and my sister plenty of stories about snow days off from school and even
having to dig their cars out from under a snow bank following a storm. I heard
those stories so often, and even though my own experience of snow was so rare, the
note of nostalgia I perceived in my parents’ anecdotes made me yearn to get
snow days, too. One of my favorite early-childhood memories is of feeling warm
and cozy after waking up at my grandparents’ home in New York, the entire
neighborhood covered under a thick blanket of winter snow during the night.
When I lived in England, to my delight, I got quite a few snow days of my own.
Now
that I’m living in Southern California once again, it is unlikely that I will
wake up to icicles on my rooftop this winter. However, recent weather forecasts
are predicting rain on Christmas day, and I have heard several mentions of a Godzilla
El
Nino heading our way. But rain is
one of my knowns, and if this is true, I can’t wait.
It’s
beginning to feel a lot more like the Holiday Season, now.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in
Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in
2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®
and to set up an appointment, please
visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2014
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