How can you not blame yourself for what you ate during the New Year holidays?

New Year’s holidays are one of the most serious challenges for people who cannot yet connect with food. After all, it is often impossible to refuse traditional dishes from the holiday table. But you must admit, after the first of January it is even more difficult to stop finishing all the salads and sandwiches in the remaining days. Therefore, obsessive, frightening thoughts about how much you have eaten this week most often appear after the winter holidays.

It is useless to explain to relatives who spent the entire morning of December 31 chopping vegetables for salad that Olivier has too many calories and “Herring Under a Fur Coat” somehow contains too much mayonnaise. And if you are one of those who await the New Year holidays with trepidation, because they know that they threaten with long-term gluttony and feelings of guilt, read this material to the end.

For help in this matter, we turned to Yulia Tereshkina, a psychotherapist focused on psychoanalysis, and a psychologist from the Yasno service.

Why do you most want to eat like last time during the New Year holidays? Where does this desire come from?

Grandfather Freud, without whom not a single psychological interpretation is complete, said that inside a person there is always a struggle between the reality principle and the pleasure principle. Part of us obliges us to follow the rules and comply with general moral norms. The other, which is responsible for pleasure, allows us to realize our dreams and desires.

This is directly related to the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe New Year holiday. Because every person has the feeling that he can surrender to the pleasure principle at this time. During holidays and vacations, all problems and worries seem to be left behind, which means you can finally relax and forget about everything. The result is holiday overeating and excessive drinking.

With this action, the person tries to get the pleasure he/she lacks at that moment. And our culture in general contributes to this decline, because the New Year is a holiday that returns us to our childhood. Everyone wants to be a kid who doesn’t think about consequences.

Why do you feel guilty about the things you eat?

Guilt is associated with a controlling authority within us that we try to hide from like a child. When we overeat, overdrink, and withdraw into ourselves in every way possible, we enter a childlike position of escaping from reality. But then reality still catches up with us and we feel severe anxiety or guilt. On the other hand, it also has a useful function of telling us what is actually not so good and can be fixed. The parent in us says that even if something is not going well, you can always think about what the problem was and what precautions should be taken to prevent it from happening again.

How can you calm yourself down if you’re feeling guilty?

It is important to understand that any form of overeating or excessive drinking is merely a symptom of a global problem. Therefore, it is important to ask yourself: Why do such malfunctions occur? Most likely the answer will be some kind of deficiency that is constantly missing in life. Let’s say you rarely see your friends, or you generally lack human closeness, for example. And New Year’s holidays are organized in such a way that we constantly sit at home and watch movies, postponing all communication for later.

Try to fully develop all your desires, and not only during the holiday period. Make time for all your plans and dreams, even on the busiest days, so you won’t be completely overwhelmed in your free time. Try to be a parent who is understanding towards you and can prevent all problems in advance.

And remember that radically changing your life does not mean doing everything right today. Give yourself time to think about everything that’s bothering you. And you have enough time to realize everything you planned. And 2024 is the most suitable period for this.