One of my favourites is the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy by Ursula Le Guin, These tell about a land where mages/wizards can move things and do magic of all kinds and concerns the life of a powerful young mage called Ged. Power comes from knowing the true name of things, During his training, Ged allows a shadow out of the underworld and has to leave the mage school as the shadow is following him and too dangerous. The first book in the series concerns Ged’s growing up and his attempts to defeat or escape the shadow. Right at the end of the book, he is sailing a boat using a magically induced wind, but the terrible shadow is catching up with him. In desperation, he turns to face his shadow and as he does so he and the shadow both say the same word, naming the other as Ged. The shadow is part of Ged and he is part of the shadow.

We all have our shadow side and facing it is one of the things we may try to do in psychotherapy. Acknowledging, even welcoming, the bits of ourselves that we find distasteful or even hateful is a way of gaining power and agency in our own lives.

Although this is a children’s book, I first read it as an adult and immediately loved it, but it only became meaningful to me in this way when I started on the path of counselling and psychotherapy. Le Guin writes for adults as well, but for me this children’s trilogy (as it was originally — actually, like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, now four books) stands out as the most powerful.

But I was struck, this year, by the New Year’s resolution of a friend, who wrote that she has resolved to try to value the things she already did and not try to do more. This seemed to be a way of, in Adam Phillips’ book’s title, Going Sane. Valuing what we already do may seem easy, but it is, in practice, difficult. So many people are used to undervaluing themselves and/or not being valued by others. And trying to be better, thinner, more efficient, trying to ‘turn over a new leaf’ may be, in part at least, an attempt to make others look after or love you more. We feel unloved, unattractive, unwanted, uncared for and we blame it on ourselves — so we make a New Year’s resolution. I’ll become more like that, we say to ourselves (though maybe not consciously), because then maybe we’ll be more loveable.

What we mean, underneath, is that perhaps if we change the self that we dislike, or even hate and detest, then maybe we could love ourselves more.

Maya Angelou, the black American poet, quoted an African saying, ‘Never take a shirt as a present from someone who has no shirt him or herself’. She elaborated on this saying, explaining that it means that if you can’t love yourself then you can’t love another person.

There are different kinds of love, however, and it maybe that not loving yourself does not prevent you offering love of a kind to another person. That love may be in the form of looking after them, trying to second guess their needs, or it may be in the form of clinging to them asking them to look after you. Both these may be ways of trying to fill in the gaps in your own self-care. If you look after someone else enough, then maybe they will realise that you need looking after too. If you cling to another person, maybe that person will protect you in your vulnerability.

But love for others in relationships of equality, when you can love yourself comes from a different place, from a kind of expansiveness, an adult version of yourself when you can take care of yourself and that gives you space to care for others and to be simultaneously dependent on them while they depend on you.

And this brings us to the question of self-care — can you be said to love yourself if you can’t take care of yourself and here I am talking about taking care of yourself in the fullest sense. Finding the time and space just to be rather than to do is an important part of this, but doing that, paradoxically, doesn’t need to take up all your time. The odd moments in a day when you can be mindful of what you are doing, the smells, the sensations, the flavours, the colours may be enough to be going on with. You can do this while you are doing some of the usually mindless things of every day life — drinking a cup of tea or coffee, brushing your teeth, or taking a shower, for instance.

But maybe even resolving to be mindful in small ways is falling back into the trap I started this piece with. So maybe the best thing we can do for ourselves, in caring for ourselves and others, would be to learn to value not only the things we already do, but also our own, unique ways of being in the world and connecting with others.

So why is it that counsellors and psychotherapists find themselves receiving more calls and referrals than usual immediately before, during and after this holiday period?

It is partly these very expectations. Life seldom lives up to idealised expectations. We get together with our families and friends and expect our differences to disappear, but in practice, the time can become very stressful and actually bring out all the tensions that were there, perhaps out of our awareness, already.

It can be stressful to try to produce that perfect Christmas meal for a larger number of people than one would usually cater for. It can be devastating to feel inadequate to the occasion. The work of having a houseful of visitors or of being a good visitor in someone else’s house can take its toll on patience and calm.

Being mindful and present, in the here-and-now, is not as easy as it might sound. But focusing on where you are now, what you are feeling and experiencing at this moment, rather than worrying about or planning for the future, or remembering past mistakes, embarrassments and hurts, can help. Finding the joy or even recognising the pain of the moment offers the chance to really experience your feelings as they are, without hiding from them, pretending they are not there, or even running away from them.

Meg Barker, in her blog, has written about the importance of being truly present not only at Christmas, but perhaps especially at this stressful time of year. She suggests that:

“something we might commit to over the festive season and beyond is to be present to ourselves and to other people: to gently bring ourselves back from past-ruminations and future-planning to the present moment, however it is.”

In the meantime, as the days start to get longer, and we start looking forward to the spring and the summer, rather than wishing the dark winter days away, I want to experience them for what they are, whether this means enjoying the winter light or hating the rain and cold.