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December 03, 2004
Gift Anxiety
Do you suffer from "gift anxiety?"
Last year about this time, I was talking to a friend about how stressful it is for me to receive gifts. I asked her if she experiences "gift anxiety." Until that moment, I had never heard of nor considered the phrase "gift anxiety"--it just rolled off my tongue. And as soon as it did, I realized how apt a phrase it is to describe what I feel about receiving gifts. To my surprise, Martha knew exactly what I meant. Amazing. We went on for several minutes, waxing poetic, about strategies we've employed to deal with this "gift anxiety." Strategies such as scouring the house looking for gifts before Christmas day so that we'd be prepared to feign an appropriate reaction, or thanking the recipient profusely for a lovely wrapped gift and saying that we'd put it under the tree--we couldn't possibly open a gift before Christmas Day, or protesting at the suggestion that someone should want to give us a gift.
I think I can trace my "gift anxiety" back to early childhood days when my reaction to gifts wasn't what the gift-giver was looking for. Wanting to please others, I had to develop a way of giving the gift-giver what she wanted. And in so doing, I buried part of myself. And developed a severe case of gift anxiety. Which now I can laugh about. As I open gifts. In front of the gift giver. With sweat beads on my upper lip.
Posted by Kerry at December 3, 2004 09:28 PM