Every year, my clients ask me for advice on how to preserve their sanity and mental health during these most hellish months. This year, the Gay & Lesbian Times has asked me to put these (alleged) words of wisdom together for its wonderful readers. So here, dear readers, is your guide to enjoying this festive season, no matter how many traffic jams, lonely spells or cranky relatives Santa sends your way.

Feeling sucked into the commercialism of the season? Want to avoid unnecessary anxiety and panic? Don’t wait until the last minute to do things. It’s crazy just to go out and buy something for the sake of having to. For the people closest to you, you may truly want to give gifts. But what about all those other people? You know, those “obligation” people? Why not get some funny, little (read: inexpensive) things for these folks? Consider some really nice socks, playing cards, candles, fancy marmalade, tea or coffee. Totally stuck? Gift cards, my dear. Almost every store, even Vons and Rite-Aid, has lots of those pretty little plastic gift cards, in amounts from small to large.

Make yourself happy – buy everybody’s gifts at once.

Some of you perfectionists are already calling me tacky because I’m not Martha Stewart-ing the holidays. Well, I want to enjoy my holidays, and that means making shopping as much fun for myself as possible. I may buy all my gifts in one store: a small shop on University or the biggest Nordstrom in town. Keep repeating: less stress, more fun. After all, who wants a gift with bad karma – one that you hated purchasing, hated wrapping, and will really hate paying for when your January Visa bill arrives?

If you are blessed with money, give expensive gifts to people on tight budgets. If you are blessed with talent(s), use those talents to make gifts for people who will appreciate them. If you are blessed with neither, then buy a few beautiful cards (for 99 cents at the 99-cent store) and write thank-you notes to your friends, thanking them for their friendship, telling them why you treasure them and are grateful for their presence in your life.

If you want to avoid leaving your home to do shopping, go online and have things delivered, gift cards and all.

Want to add some substance to the season? Consider a donation to a worthy cause in someone’s name. Since most of us have too much stuff anyway, a gift like this makes a difference to someone who really needs it.

Feeling grim already? Never fear, humor’s here. Here are two pieces of gift-giving advice from the fabulous (and openly gay) Simon Doonan of Barneys New York:

“What should you buy for your friend or relative who has everything and can afford anything? Give her a hideous handicraft made by your own loving hands: crocheted toilet-seat covers, for example, that she’ll be obliged to display. I promise you, next year, she’ll beg you not to go to any trouble.

“When a wealthy friend gives you an expensive gift, must you be as generous in return? In a word: No. It is quite legitimate to give a cheap gift, as long as it’s creative. And if your friend is outraged you didn’t match him dollar for dollar, you can always shame him down to earth by giving him a pile of dollar bills equal to the cost difference between your gifts”.

For your own sanity, keep laughing this season. Spend time with people who make you laugh and do your best to spread it around. Keep the season simple and personal. My advice for maximum peace of mind: consume less, have less, want less and work less.

That said (as the Zen moment passes), if you choose to give gifts, make your gift-giving count. Go for meaning, not status. Focus on finding something the person will love, not on whether it comes in a Neiman-Marcus or Tiffany & Co. box. It’s your intention that counts most. Look for gifts that provide comfort or amusement, or choose gifts as tokens that will sooth the soul.

Watch out for loneliness, especially the concealed, less obvious kind. For many of us, loneliness is a challenge at this time of year.

If you typically feel depressed during the holidays, aspire to spend as much time as you can with people you genuinely like.

But what if you’re new in town, away from family and old friends, and don’t know people you really like? In that case, put yourself in situations you are likely to enjoy, for example: going for walks, driving through the desert, walking by the ocean, renting funny movies, eating your favorite foods. It’s up to you to be your own Santa Claus/Hanukkah Hank/whomever! No one can do it for you; you have to do it for yourself.

Consider volunteer work to combat loneliness and isolation. Doing something good for someone more needy than you (shocking, isn’t it?) will reduce your self-centeredness and depression, replacing these emotions with feelings of self-worth and generosity of spirit. Look in this publication for a list of GLBT organizations that would welcome your energy now and all year long.

Instead of berating yourself because you’re not doing the holidays “perfectly”, why not crank up your self-care instead? At this time of year, you need more time to rest, to relax, to work out, to eat well and to be with people who love you. Why not give yourself big dollops of patience and kindness for Christmas? Why not give them to others too? This, more than another item of clothing or household gizmo, is what we all really want. This is the antidote to loneliness and our insidious habits of comparing ourselves to others who, we imagine, do everything better than we do.

To make it even harder on our fragile self-esteem, the media continually offers up endless ideals of holiday perfection. Reality check: No one measures up to these. If you find them amusing, enjoy them. If they bring you down, don’t watch or read them! Edit them out of your life. The idealized childhoods we see in magazines or on TV are illusions. Even memories of our own childhoods are rarely accurate. If you had fun at Christmas or Hanukkah when you were 8, don’t expect to replicate it at age 28. Good times cannot be replicated. We all change, for better and for worse. People die, move away or take on partners you can’t stand! For some of us, traditions should be broken; for others, they bring comfort and joy (cue the Christmas carols). Know what works for you and stick to it: Your sanity depends on it!

The moment we step into our parents’ home, we regress to the age when we were the most miserable. If you hate spending the holidays with your relatives, don’t. Stay home and have dinner with your best friend, or buy a plane ticket somewhere fun, or drive to Palm Springs for a day or two… it’s your holiday. You’re an adult. You get to be Santa now.

During the holidays, many of us think of all the friends and family members who are not here this year. As we age, fields of gain start to become leveled by loss. And that’s life for all of us.

Gratitude is the answer. And don’t kid yourself that it comes easily to any of us. It takes work to be grateful and to remember to be grateful. Think of gratitude as a muscle that can be developed just as you build your body with exercise or expand your mind with reading. When you are overwhelmed and unhappy, start your day over by writing down something, anything that you are grateful for.

It doesn’t matter what you are grateful for. This is about refocusing. It’s the basic principal behind cognitive psychology: what you think about creates how you feel. So, dear readers, if your thoughts totally suck, guess how you’ll feel? As conscious beings, we can intervene in our pessimistic, dour thoughts, and replace them with thoughts of gratitude. Often, we can’t change our external world: our cranky boss, nasty clients, homophobic neighbors or critical parents. We rarely have control over the externals especially at this time of year – so take control where you can and switch your cynical, bitter thoughts for ones of gratitude.

Sounds easy, right? It isn’t. But it works. It takes practice to turn a traffic jam on the 163 into five minutes of gratitude. But try it. Start small. On the freeway, when some jerk cuts you off by changing three lanes in two seconds, be grateful you are alive, your car wasn’t damaged and you don’t have to sit by the side of the road with your cell phone waiting to report your accident.

In summation, a few ways to thrive, not just survive, during this time of year:

• Simplify. Do less. Enjoy more.

• Learn to say “No” to obligations you used to say “Yes” to.

• Get a massage, a facial or a manicure/pedicure; work out at your health club and then sit in the jacuzzi until you melt.

• Drink less alcohol, do fewer recreational drugs and feel better more often.

• Find a spiritual or religious component of the season that means something to you.

• Don’t compete with others in gift giving, decorating or any other activity. Make yourself happy – that’s what counts.

• Go walking more often: park your car somewhere central and walk to shops, stores and restaurants. Surf or hike on weekends. Swim at a local pool or at your gym. Enjoy the endorphin-based natural anti-depressant power of exercise.

• Take a yoga or pilates class to chill out and center yourself.

• Avoid malls, crowds and jammed parking lots as much as possible. Shop at smaller, local stores where you get good service from nice people.

• Spend time with people in non-party situations: have lunch or dinner with one friend, or a couple of friends at most.

• Go to the movies with a friend; see a comedy (or two).

• Patronize GLBT-owned and friendly businesses whenever possible (good karma and a good investment in our community).