The January Paradox – restless yet ready to hibernate

I’m writing this today (1^st Feb) and thinking what a difficult month January is.  It’s not the dark nights and wet days (although they don’t help) but the constant push and pull I feel within.  The restlessness to do things coupled with the lack of desire to do anything other than hibernate and lie on the sofa. I loath and love the new year in equal measure.  The idea of starting again is enticing. Shrugging off the excess of December and jumping into the new year.  Yet, every year, I feel the same contradiction of my brain being wired and yet so very weary and unprepared for anything new.

It’s a month where we are encouraged to be all or nothing – dry January (no sneaky sips of beer or you fail); new exercise intentions yet no energy to actually turn up, feeling a failure and then delighting in not succumbing to the commercialisation of new year resolutions.  And so the list of paradoxes goes on…

This pressure creates a sort of internal ultimatum: Do everything… or do nothing.

And because “everything” is impossible (especially in winter) the overwhelm it creates means that often nothing gets done.  It’s so classic January – too many expectations vs too little energy.

The triangle of collision

It feels that there are 3 competing forces that we fight against in January

• 1) The Transform pressure – telling you to transform, it’s a new year, let’s go!
• 2) The Hibernation pressure –  telling you to slow down, it’s winter, time to hibernate.
• 3) The Perfectionism pressure – telling you to get it right or not at all

No wonder January feels like trying to sprint through snow, or wade through floods – pick a weather metaphor, we have them all in January too.

I really want to embrace the natural cycles of this time of year and give myself over to the hibernation pressure, but the voice of transform and perfection never really go away. Sometimes I feel my body is in winter mode and my mind is trying to inject some summer energy into it – we are seasonally mismatched, this body and mind.  Fighting two different rhythms – a classical playlist competing with heavy metal headbanging.

I talk a lot in therapy about acceptance and awareness – I wonder if it’s time to just accept that January will always be a push and pull sort of month, that I will always be restless and restful and give in to the January paradox of pressures.  Because we can always be and feel opposite emotions at the same time, and January offers no respite from this.

New resolutions

A little reminder to self that next January my resolutions could do worse than look like this –

1. Do not overhaul your life – but feel free to overhaul something if you feel like it.
2. Rest as much as you want – but also feel free to exercise manically.
3. There is no right or wrong way to ‘do’ January – just accept the restless irritation and sleep if it all gets too much.

I wonder what February will bring…

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash