It's supposed to be the season to be jolly but it's a virtual minefield, from the money worries of spending what we do not have in the lead-up, to Christmas Day which may be fraught with family tensions and high expectations of a wonderful time. Denise Carter speaks to psychologist Simone Fischer and finds out tips on how to make it through the season emotionally intact

1. Beware the comparison thought

Comparisons can be the foundation stone for misery. Unrealistic expectations whether they are brought to us courtesy of the silver screen or the neighbours can only spell doom.

Think of a traditional Christmas and you might conjure an image such as Jim Carrey and company in the movie Dumb and Dumber in an apres ski scene clad in woolly jumpers, laughing heartily in front of a log fire, while drinking mulled wine.

It was, and rightly so, a dream scene.

If our impending Christmas doesn’t measure up we may feel like making friends with the Grinch or grumbling over the cost of fuel while warming our bony fingers over a candle like Scrooge.

Psychologist Simone Fischer says humans are the only animals to compare themselves with others of our kind.

Take, for example, a dog.

"We’ll call him Fido," Simone says. "Fido, the workshop dog."

"He’s tied to a chain and gets the occasional pie crust on a good day.

"He doesn’t compare his experience to Fifi, the Edge Hill poodle, and say, ‘where’s my barramundi?’, ‘where’s my shampoo and massage?’.

"As humans we can ascertain relationships between objects.

"We don’t, however, only do it with objects, but with people."

We compare ourselves to other people, and our Christmases to images we have been bombarded with in the past.

Perhaps we may once have had what we regarded as the perfect Christmas and that is the Christmas by which all Christmases ever after are compared.

"We’ve been programmed with these images over and over again for years and years," Simone says.

"Christmas Day is a program."

2. Look at your family like a favourite movie

"If our family is big enough, we’re going to have a series of characters on Christmas Day," Simone says.

"We’re going to have our alcoholic uncle, our complaining aunt, critical grandmother, gambling sister, ADHD nephew, crying niece," Simone says.

"We quite happily go to the movies and watch families like the one in My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

"We sit back and are amused by them."

Simone says we shouldn’t compare our families with others, but rather look at our dysfunctional family as if they were part of a movie with a strange cast of characters doing weird things, and then we can simply smile.

3. Returning to the beginning

So you’re feeling tense because of your rocky finances and the thoughts of splurging on presents is sending you into meltdown faster than you can say "nuclear reactor".

Well, maybe you’ve forgotten what Christmas is all about.

"Let’s go back to the essence of Christmas," Simone says, "where we used to make things for each other, and when Christmas was about bringing something to the Christmas table."

"Ask yourself: ‘Can I sew something? Can I make something that will show that I’ve thought about this person rather than give in to the comparison idea and buy a big, flash present?’"

4. Lower your expectations

"Do you want to have high expectations accompanied by high disappointments, or do you want to minimise the expectations, and minimise the disappointment, and leave time for enjoying stuff," Simone says.

Don’t expect too much of others.

If, for example, your mother is never too fussed about presents and never reacts with gratitude, trying to buy her the best present ever to elicit a response, will no doubt fail.

"Focus your energy on what you can control," Simone says.

"Trying to change your family’s behaviour over Christmas is something you can’t control."

"All you can control is your reaction."

And don’t become unglued if everything doesn’t go according to plan.

5. Don’t self-medicate

Ah, it’s so tempting when faced with a tense day when you know relatives will gripe at each other and the scene may descend into mayhem, to self-medicate yourself into oblivion.

Yes, we’re talking about the temptation to find solace in the bottom of all the bottles available for consumption, and to eat enough mince pies and pudding to ensure you have to be rolled away to bed, much like Violet Beauregarde in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, who turned into a giant blueberry and was rolled away by the oompa-loompas.

"More functional self-medication would be going into the environment, taking ourselves for a nice walk along the beach, or going for a walk in the rainforest to sit by a creek," Simone says.

"Just excuse yourself and say you feel a bit full and are going for a walk around the block."

6. Treat your family with respect

There’s something about being with family which makes people think they can say and do whatever they want.

Christmas is not the time to recreate scenes from the 1989 movie, War of the Roses.

When is the last time you banged doors, shouted at, or criticised people in public?

"People say things to their family they wouldn’t dare say to most other people," Simone says.

"We need to treat our family with the same respect."

"Ask yourself, ‘is voicing this thought at this point in time going to help in the long run’."

7. Don’t make Dead Man’s Goals

You’ve made it through Christmas intact and you emerge like the swashbuckling hero of an action movie, ready to take on the new year.

Somehow, amid the melee of family commitments, you’ve managed to take stock and you are making resolutions to make life better. But what happened to all those resolutions you made every other year?

Making resolutions is just another thing we are programmed to do, Simone says.

"On New Year’s Day there are always heaps of people on the Red Arrow I’ve never seen before, in brand new sneakers – within a week, they’re all gone," she says.

Most of our problems with resolutions arise because we resolve not to do things.

Making "dead man’s goals" is folly and doomed to fail.

"I will not drink, smoke, or gamble well, neither will a dead man," Simone says.

"You can’t do a ‘not’," she says. "If I say, ‘you’re not going to see a green elephant’, you see a green elephant."

"When I offer an image, your brain will entertain it."

"That’s why as soon as I say, ‘I’m not going to have a drink’, the drink is my whole focus now and the image just gets bigger and bigger."

The solution is to change the inaction into an action a dead man can’t do.

"Say, ‘I will walk the block, or drink some water’," Simone says.Make a plan.

"Action precedes motivation," Simone says. "So make a plan and action it. Just do it."

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