The Rural Voice, 1999-12, Page 20Corn and soybean prices
have bottomed out.
Pork has recovered
somewhat from last year's
unprecedented disaster but
still not to profitable levels.
All this, loaded on top of the
normal strains of the holiday
season. can magnify stress
for families say two
counsellors in charge of
helping farm families cope
with the the current situation.
Stress in a rural
community is a particular
problem, says John Field. a
St. Marys counsellor who
has been working with
OMAFRA and the Perth
County Pork Producers
Association to help families
caught in the vice of last
year's pork price collapse.
Field says people in rural
areas aren't as apt to seek
help and talk about their
trouble as urban people. It's
taken 10 or 11 months to
build a trust that allows
people to come for help. he
says. Often. rural people
leave it too long until
they're in real crisis
situation.
Problems are compound-
ed at Christmas, Field says,
because so many of the
resources people need to combat stress are in short supply
at Christmas — like time to be yourself.
Similarly, a counsellor usually advises people suffering
stress to get Tots of sleep and eat proper foods, but most
people don't do that at Christmas.
Still, whether you're pressed for money or you have no
economic worries but feel pressed for time, there are steps
you can take to lighten the Toad and make Christmas mor
enjoyable say Field and fellow counsellor Gabriel Del
Bianco of Innerfit Counselling Centre of Auburn who has
been working with the Huron County Pork Producers and
OMAFRA to help farmers battling stress.
If you want to relieve the stress that's heightened at
Christmas time "simplicity" is the key word, Del Bianco
says.
The so-called Y2K problem, the concern that there will
be great dislocation because computer systems that control
so many areas of modern life won't be able to deal with the
changeover of their clocks to the year 2000, has awakened
many people to the fact their lives seemed to have
decreased in value, says Del Bianco who has been
counselling for 17 years. Too many people have found that
they were filling their week with just doing things, rather
than getting value from what they were doing.
Christmas ups the ante of stress, because people expect
DEALING WITH
AT CHRISTMAS
The idealized vision of what C
additional pressure on familie
for yourself and your family, c
hnstmas should be puts
s at Christmas. Take the
ounsellors urge.
16 THE RURAL VOICE
time
so much of it — and not just
in terms of gifts. The
pressure comes from the
whole baggage that comes
with the way perfect
Christmases are portrayed in
the media.
"At Christmas we're
supposed to be a family."
Del Bianco says. We're
supposed to have a closeness
to all our family members.
even if we don't like some
of our relatives at other
times of the year."
Field agrees. saying
that at Christmas we put
family pressures on
ourselves we wouldn't feel
other times of the year.
Because families are
"supposed" to be together
at Christmas, in the popular
Lion of the holiday.
people often feel a pressure
to visit a family member
that they wouldn't feel if it
say, February.
It becomes a double-
edged sword, Field says. If
you make the time to visit
someone, you feel stressed.
If you don't make the time
to visit, you may feel guilt.
You have to give
yourself permission not to
feel you have to visit if it's
going to add stress to your life at Christmas, Field says.
That's difficult in a rural society where family ties are so
highly valued.
Those societal pressures about the perfect Christmas
create high expectations of the way the holidays should be
the counsellors say.
"We're all commanded to have peace on earth, even it'
we don't feel it," says Del Bianco.
In counselling people at Christmas he tries to help
people keep proper boundaries on their lives, he says. He
asks people to sit down and write down on paper what they
want Christmas to be. "What do you value about
Christmas'?" He asks people to define the kind of
Christmas they want rather than trying to react to what they
think Christmas is supposed to be.
Part of the problem, he says, is that Christmas is like a
wedding: it's something you plan for weeks and it's over in
an hour. People worry and fret about buying and wrapping
"perfect" Christmas presents and within a few minutes of
opening, it's all over.
One of the things his family has done is to slow the
process down, Del Bianco says. Under the tree may be only
two or three gifts each. But the wrapped boxes are not the
real present: they just hold the first clue in a hunt for the
real present. That clue leads to another and that to another