5 Ways to Reduce Holiday Stress and Enjoy This Time of Year
Most of us can relate to the stress that accompanies the holiday season. Between the shopping, planning, and social events, it can seem like a lot to keep up with on top of an already existing schedule. While excitement and joy are often experienced during this time, heightened stress may also exist due to many different factors.
If you’re already feeling overwhelmed by what’s to come, it’s a great time to stop and reevaluate your approach to the holiday season. It’s helpful to take a personal inventory and explore what about this time is stressful for you. Building this awareness will help guide you in the direction of needed support and identification of specific coping strategies that can allow you to better enjoy your time. Let’s explore common sources of holiday stress and specific ways to reduce that stress.
Here are some common sources of holiday stress:
Finances: More often than not, people overspend in November and December and then find that they need to intensely restrict their budget come January. Financial stress is heavy. It’s also common. This stress touches upon our basic needs of feeling safe and secure. Money is an important means of survival. When the holidays come around we can experience increased spending in travel, food, and gifts to name a few. It makes sense that spending will increase around this time. If that increase leads you to acquiring debt or tapping into your safety net, it can become stressful.
Tension in gatherings: Around this time of year, family gatherings are more common. Whether this family is composed of relatives or friends, the amount of people coming together is greater. This can feel warm and welcoming when there is acceptance and little judgment. When the atmosphere feels tense or judgmental, it can lead to discomfort at the very least. Certain topics of conversation can become heated when there is a desire to defend your stance or when you strongly disagree with what someone else shared. More often than not, this can create anxiety around these social events.
Processing grief:Between the music, gatherings, and movies, there is often a focus on the people we love most during the holidays. If one of your loved ones has passed away, this time of year can bring up memories and a longing to have them near. This sadness can feel extra heavy in a time that’s promoting joy.
Overcommitting: Your to-do list and commitment to events can quickly become longer than what is humanly possible during this time of year. Areas of commitment can include: attending parties, shopping, decorating, crafting, baking, and sending cards. The pressure to commit to all of these events and tasks can feel overwhelming. Let’s not forget that life doesn’t stop during this time. Commitments to work, relationships, and household chores continue to exist. There is often a tendency to cram more onto a space that is already full. This feeling of always needing to do more and rushing through tasks to achieve them leaves little room for enjoyment and a lot of space for stress.
If you can relate to any of the common sources of holiday stress listed above, you’re not alone. The good news is that, with awareness, you can learn ways to better cope with your specific sources of stress or make adjustments to reduce their impact.
Here are 5 ways to better support yourself and reduce your stress load over the holiday season:
Stick to a budget: Take some time to sit down and establish what your holiday spending will look like. Consider the expenses of food, gifts, travel, mailing items, and/or holiday outfits. Identify priorities to your spending. Are there areas that you could cut back on? Of the categories listed, what area of spending is most fulfilling to you? Make sure your spending is going to places that are a priority to you. If finances are tight, it may be helpful to communicate that with those you share this time with. You are allowed to cut back on your spending, even during the holiday season. Communicating this can relieve some of the pressure you may be feeling.
Identify triggers and plans for coping in social gatherings: Are you aware of topics of conversation that only lead to discord? Are there things others say that get under your skin and make you want to leave the gathering or fight back? Take some time to think about some of your triggers. When you become aware of your triggers, you provide yourself with the awareness to pause and think before reacting. For example, if someone is commenting on what or how much you are eating and this is triggering, but you have prepared for it, you’ll feel safer in knowing your truth and how you would like to respond to or cope with these comments. When you’ve done this prep work, you are often able to better regulate and feel calmer in how you choose to act. The difference between a reaction and a chosen action is both empowering and liberating.
Give yourself space to grieve: Despite the continuous messages of joy and excitement, it is also okay to feel sadness during the holidays. Grief calls attention to those we love, miss, and want close during this time. Allowing yourself to feel this sadness as it surfaces is not only healing for you, but also honors the lives of those you’re grieving. Allowing yourself to recognize that this time may amplify your feelings of grief and then giving yourself space to feel that can take off the pressure. It’s often the judgment of our suffering that is more painful than the suffering itself. Let yourself be. Surround yourself with those who understand and can allow you to show up just as you are.
Boundaries towards commitments:Just as we addressed prioritizing finances, it’s also important to prioritize commitments. There seems to be little point in doing ‘everything’ if you feel stressed the entire time. How much do you really want to do? What is most fulfilling to you? Where can you cut back? Overcommitting leads to burnout and resentment because you end up giving more than what you actually have. Setting boundaries is hard. Those moments of boundary setting can feel awkward and rude when your natural tendency is to say yes. It’s important to remember that in those challenging and brief moments, you are enduring short-term discomfort for long-term benefit. When you begin prioritizing your time, you create space for authentic connection with others and joy in what you have committed to.
Challenge your perspective: It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle of the holidays. This can make it challenging to believe that there’s any other way to do it. Shifting your perspective can greatly help you relieve pressure and recognize what truly matters to you. Try to imagine yourself about 20 years from now. Look back to where you are now. What do you want to remember about this time? What would your wise, experienced self recommend to you now? Oftentimes, this experimental perspective shift can shed light on what you value and what you’d most like to invest your energy into.