The holiday season is here and so is the stress that comes with it! This time is often considered a period of quiet solitude mixed with stressful events and joy 🤞🏽. The holidays almost always rearrange our usual schedules and throw off the structure of our days and weeks that allow us to thrive.
Holiday Stressors
When I think of the holidays, several stressors come to mind. Let us know if we missed any in the comments!
- Family 🏠
- Worry about meeting expectations
- Sadness if you do not have an accepting family or anyone to spend time with during the holidays
- Masking who you are so as to maintain a pleasant visit
- Finding yourself acting not like yourself around family (sometimes this looks like feeling like you are a child again)
- Food 🦃
- Cooking
- Sticking to some sort of food diet/lifestyle
- Sugar intake fatigue
- Gifts 🎁
- Making sure you get the right gift
- Staying in budget
- Waiting in lines
- Money 💵
- Feeling pressure to spend more than you have
- Travel costs
- Equating the value of your gifts with the love you have for others and visa versa
- Daily Life
- Working extra hours for some
- Working less hours without holiday pay for others
- Traveling to different time zones
- Difficult time getting in regular workouts 🏋🏻🏃🏾♀️
- Hard to get alone time
Ideas to Help you Handle Holiday Stress
Anything that takes you out of your groove is sure to jostle you a bit, but pre-planning to manage your vulnerability factors can help you not only survive the holidays, but perhaps even get some of that joy we mentioned earlier.
Plan to Stay Active
If you enjoy going to the gym and you are traveling, look for a gym near your destination—sometimes you can grab a free trial for the week you’ll be there. If you prefer playing outside, be sure to look up local areas you could jog, hike, play, etc. that will help you keep your physical and mental well-being in shape while you are away. Another free option that might be accessible to you is to walk around the neighborhood after meals.
Plan Your Meals According to Your Needs
Some people are fantastic at giant holiday feasts and get exactly what they want without feeling overly stuffed. Others, like myself, put tons on the plate and then keep eating well past full. I used to make it a goal to try everything, but now that I am allergic dairy, I am usually pretty limited to what I can eat.
Try to find a smaller plate if you want to eat less and have trouble sticking to that goal. You can also go for a smaller fork if that’s available.
If you have a food allergy or intolerance, make sure you know where you can grab a quick bite that fits your dietary needs. Alternatively, just bring your own food or snacks, just in case the cook forgot about your dietary restrictions.
Plan To Do Activities For You
Alone time or just time away from the extended family can give you back the fuel you need to enjoy tomorrow’s dinner or trip to the mall. Put in your plans a few hours to do something like eat lunch at a nice restaurant, chill in the hotel room, sit back and enjoy a movie, or visit someone other than those at the big family get together.
Bandwidth! You need it and you are responsible for scheduling refueling activities.
Team Up
If you do your holidays with a close friend, siblings, or a partner, involve them in your plans to stay sane. You can plan to do some things together or just know that you will support one another in making sure you each practice self-care during the holidays. If you know your family is going to have an issue with something, talking out how you’ll handle the possible conflict with your special someone(s) can help you all feel secure about how to manage disagreements together.
Be Mindful
Pre-planning can get us pretty far in having a happy holiday, but sometimes we can get caught up in the stress of all the moving parts. Mindfulness can help us regroup after a stressful event. It can also help us turn off all the noise that comes with holidays.
Handling the holidays can take a lot out of us. There can be a ton of mental minefields to navigate when visiting family and dealing with travel and gift giving. Hopefully some of these ideas have given you the tools needed to enjoy some of the upcoming events in your holiday season. If you have more ideas or questions, be sure and leave us a comment.
