Image courtesy of Nathan Fertig via Unsplash.
Every year from late November though January, I see my practice members’ health decline because of holiday stress. Tis the season when all of your well-earned habits and patterns get thrown out the window, resulting in stress and exhaustion.
Holidays are supposed to be a time to celebrate—to give thanks (AKA practice gratitude), and spend time with family. Instead, that often turns into high-stakes gift giving, overeating Jello salad (personally I think we’re playing fast and loose with the word “salad” here, but maybe that’s just me), and a mad dash to innumerable gatherings with family members we don’t connect with for the next 11 and a half months.
It’s not hard to see how any version of that can be a financial, emotional, and nutritional burden. So how can you avoid it? Let’s talk about a few reasonable solutions to reducing holiday stress.
Take Care of Yourself First
If you’re reading this then you, like many of my clients and fellow healthcare providers, are likely not a naturally self-centered person. It’s probably much easier for you to dedicate time and attention to the needs and wants of others than it is to give those things to yourself.
In business, this is the pay-yourself-first principle. On airplanes, it’s equivalent to putting your own oxygen mask on before helping others. In healthcare, this is me giving you permission—nay, giving you official, doctor-ordered self-care advice—to show yourself some love before distributing all of your energy to others.
What does that look like?
Keep up your self-care routines. If you normally go to the gym three days per week, don’t let that frequency slip. If you’re normally dairy-free, plan your indulgences for Thanksgiving and Christmas—and then plan your recovery / detox days afterward (there are plenty of guides for recovering from food indulgences in Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine practices).
Buy your present(s) first—that’s right, gift yourself and make it the most valuable gift you buy (it doesn’t need to be the most expensive, but it should be something that you truly value). You can really give this idea full force by making some extra self-care your gift to yourself. Get a long massage, visit your acupuncturist or chiropractor (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) an extra time or two, or have a spa day. Even in a normal holiday season, some extra self-care is in order. This year, after eight months of shenanigans, it’s more important than ever.
Simplify Everything
2020 is the perfect year to re-evaluate. So many people are already taking this time to cut back on things that are no longer serving them, or simply not adding things back to their schedule that were unexpectedly cut out by the shut-downs. Treat this as a COVID silver lining.
How do you choose what to keep and what to cut? Tune into your body. When you think about the event in question, how does it make you feel?
Does it make you feel expansive, light, joyful, relaxed? Then it gets to stay.
Does it make you feel heavy, anxious, worried, or burdened? If it does, then it gets cut. No questions, no comments, no ifs ands or buts about it.
Consider this your chance to Marie Kondo your holiday season. If it doesn’t spark joy, it’s out.
Simplify the Family Gatherings
The obligation of two Thanksgivings and 3.5 family Christmases, on top of a Friendsgiving and two office holiday parties can be a thing of the past. My advice—have one celebration per holiday. That’s it. No more, but possibly less.
If I’m being honest, the Thanksgiving where my sister and I made a small turkey, a couple of sides, and a single pumpkin pie, and watched The Muppet Christmas Carol (hands-down my favorite holiday movie) was one of my favorites. No over stuffing, no coordinating family members, no need to break out the holiday fat pants (I’m pretty sure we stayed in our pajamas all day).
If this terrifies you, if you’re afraid of the judgements that will come from shirking your social duties, then take the opportunity that 2020 has thrown our way: blame COVID.
Maybe it’s a little crass, but hear me out: Never in the history of the Millennial have we been given such a wide open pass on social gatherings. Try it out for just this year. If you really find that you miss all of the family functions and holiday parties, there’s no reason you can’t bring them back next year.
I want to remind you—holidays are not mandatory. Your life, career, financial well-being, and legal standing do not depend on your participation in these conventions.
Simplify the Gift Exchange
If gift giving is a way that you express love and gratitude, and it lights you up to give people gifts, then go nuts. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other if you give gifts to the mailman, each of your kids’ teachers, and that third cousin, twice removed who lives in Germany that wrote to you one time 10 years ago as part of a pen pal project—as long as it meets the joy-sparking criteria listed above (and doesn’t break the bank to do so).
Here’s what I suggest if that’s not the case.
The all-out version: Nix the gift giving all together. Extreme? Maybe. I haven’t exchanged gifts with my family or friends for several years now. (I make an exception for my mom, dad, and sister. Gift giving is one of my mom’s main love languages and it’s a good way to connect with them when I live more than 1,000 miles away.) It started as a way to save money when I was flat broke, but has turned into a way to limit holiday stress for myself and everyone around me.
The moderate version: Build in some limits. Maybe stick to only buying one gift for each person in your immediate family and switching to a low-maintenance white elephant style gift exchange for your extended family and friend circles.
Simplify the Food
Let’s talk about food. Between Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, this two-month stretch is a gauntlet of nutrition challenges.
I don’t believe that indulgence is bad. The holidays can be a great time to relax your normal food regimen, and enjoy some treats that you would not have otherwise.
The trick (just to reinforce it) is simplicity.
Ditch the casseroles and hot-dishes for their whole-food counterparts. Instead of green bean casserole, serve fresh green beans sautéd in garlic and butter or ghee. Instead of sweet potato casserole, serve baked sweet potatoes. Instead of making corn pudding (I honestly don’t know if that was a weird southern American thing or an all-over-the-place thing, but it was always on the holiday menu when I was a kid), serve corn.
This is an easy way to cut the processed canned goods and refined sugars and (by extension) a lot of the post-holiday bloat.
Instead of serving a turkey, a ham, a venison roast, 12 sides, and five desserts each on Thanksgiving and Christmas, aim to make it more like a normal dinner with a few special additions: Plan one main dish, one to three sides, and one dessert (or no dessert, but I know that may be considered blasphemy). This will quash the habit of overindulging, and save a ton of time, hassle, and dishes in the process.
Remember to Actually Give Thanks
One of the core ideals behind the holidays is to celebrate what you have and give thanks for it. In all of the hustle and bustle this part tends to get lost.
If you’ve even mildly perused a self-help book in the past 10 years, you’ve seen a section on gratitude. It may sound woo woo, but the science is becoming more and more solid. Practicing (really feeling and then verbalizing and / or writing down) gratitude works wonders on mental health (and by extension all areas of health). The brain activity can be scanned, the neurochemistry can be measured—this isn’t just a new-age feel-good routine.
Lean into this for the holidays. Challenge yourself to really feel the sensation of being grateful for the things and people you have in your life. Don’t just give it lip service. Your neurochemistry will thank you.
If you need a little extra support this season, give me a call. I’m here to help make your health journey a little easier, and help you take care of yourself this season.