How to Deal with Holiday Stress

Everyday life is full of stress, anxiety, and pressure, but the holiday season places additional demands on parents (shopping, cleaning, decorating, baking, cooking, hosting, and wrapping).  So much so, that the additional stress/anxiety can  interfere with a parent’s ability to enjoy the holidays, which, of course, impacts the kids as well, because they have exhausted and grumpy parents.  What do we do?

Dr. Erin Leonard, Psychotherapist, breaks down the best ways to tackle the stress/anxiety in a positive way.

Anxiety is like a glass of water.  Anxiety is the water.  You are the glass.  Everyday life fills the glass up with water, but as adults, there are things we do that dump a little water out as we go, to keep the water from overflowing, i.e: working out, Netflix, a glass of wine with a friend, or getting a massage.  Yet, there is far less time for these activities during the holidays, so what can parents do?

Get more bang for your buck.  A mind and body practice, like yoga, tai chi, martial arts, and meditation are activities that allow you to feel whole, grounded, centered, and soothed.  In other words, a mind and body practice dumps the most water out in the shortest amount of time.  This is key during the holidays.

Mind and body practices do the following:

• Alleviate anxiety and stress, and allow you to feel soothed and present, so you can enjoy your kids during the holidays.
• Provide you with a workout so you can feel good and eat without worry.
• Allow you to remember the deeper meaning of the holidays, which is love, not obligation. (It’s okay to say no to holiday invites in order to stay home and spend time with your family.)
• Are easy to do because you can do a mind and body practice anywhere: close your office door and do 3 yoga poses, do 15 minutes of tai chi while you’re waiting for your holiday cookies to cool, meditate for 10 minutes while you wait for your kids to get home from school.

A mind and body practice requires the mind and body to intricately collaborate toward a common goal.  This collaboration allows the person to feel whole and centered, which is a great feeling during the holidays.

Part 2:   How to Deal with Difficult Family Members during the Holidays

Everyone has a difficult family member who seems to create tension and ruin the holidays for everybody.  For example, an overly critical mother-in-law, a know-it-all cousin who dominates every conversation, an uncle who takes every joke too far, or an aunt who can’t keep her political opinion to herself.  These characters can induce anxiety in people’s days and weeks before the holidays.  So, how do people prepare?

• Expect bad behavior. Hoping that these characters will behave leads to anticipatory anxiety which is the worst.  Don’t hope they behave.  Expect that they won’t and plan a polite escape to the restroom or the car to get a “forgotten” present.
• Don’t engage. This cast of characters thrive on pushing people’s buttons and getting people riled up, so do not let them have the chance. Do not engage or respond to below the belt comments.
• Realize that they lack the capacity to understand that their words and actions negatively impact others. In other words, they can’t see beyond their own noses.  So, perceiving them as immature children trapped in an adult body sometimes helps.

Visit www.drerinleonard.com for more helpful tips! 

SEGMENT IS SPONSORED BY DR. ERIN LEONARD