Why are we so stressed during the holiday season?

With the holiday season starting, professional women like you are either starting to feel stressed or will be there soon. This is partly because you are already busy balancing your home and work lives so adding additional tasks can make it overwhelming.  But more things come into play during the holidays. I have a list of 8 tips that can help reduce your stress but first, I want to provide you with some insights on what causes the stress.

The cause of the stress is a combination of 3 things

As a recovering holiday stress recipient myself, I have noticed that there are quite a few emotions tied to the holidays for me. For one, I have happy holiday childhood memories but many holidays since that have not been so great. I love all of the holiday street scenes, shiny houses, and trees, spreading joy to those who are suffering this time of year, and sharing love with my family and friends. So every November, I start dreaming about what I want to do for the holidays in hopes that it will be one to remember. But, as the holidays get closer, several things tend to go wrong, causing me to feel stressed and I start losing my enjoyment of the holiday season. In reflecting on writing this blog, I narrowed down the reasons for holiday stress to a combination of 3 things.

1. There are things about the holidays that you value

We as humans tend to put more importance on the things that we value. This causes some pressure, but it is ultimately good because values help us to understand what actions to take. Studies have shown that when we act on our values, we are the happiest. The evidenced-based therapy Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is based on this notion. 

We get our values from many different sources, such as our culture, our life experiences, our family traditions, our personality, and our spiritual beliefs.  Because of this, we all have values that are uniquely ours, which is pretty awesome.

2. You have a vision for how you want the holidays to go   

The value you place on the holidays is one of the things that informs your vision of what you want them to look like.  For example, if you value them for spiritual reasons, your vision may include attending religious services.  If you value them for cultural reasons, your vision may include cultural decorations and food. 

You may want to use the holidays as an outlet for your creativity, such as recreating a scene from a favorite holiday movie or decorating with the latest trends.

You may want to use the holidays for practical purposes, such as to market your business, take a political stance, celebrate a great year, or comfort yourself or a family member after a difficult year.   

3. Things will come up that will sabotage your vision, guaranteed!

So Let’s say you have decided how you want the holidays to go and you present it to your family. To your horror, instead of reacting positively, they respond with groans, negative comments, and alternative ideas.  After you come down from your disappointment, you realize that this is because they also have their own values and vision for how they want the holidays to go.  And it is likely to be very different from yours because our personalities and experiences are different. Now you find yourself in conflict with your loved ones.

Then, life doesn’t stop because of the holidays.  So next you get assigned a large project that is due before the end of the year, requiring you to work long hours.  Now you have less time to create your vision.

Then your old car finally dies and you have to spend money to get a new one.  Now you have less money to create your vision.

But that’s not all:  

• You may start to question whether or not your holiday plans are adequate due to advertisements you see on TV or in stores or when you see what your friends and family members are doing.  You get hit with FOMO and jealousy, ugh. 

• You realize that a decision you made earlier in life has sabotaged your plans, which hits you with guilty feelings.

• You get triggered with memories of loved ones who have died, relationships you have lost, and other past hardships.

Do you feel more stressed reading this?  Well, I do just by writing this! 

But there is hope.  Just being aware of these things can lower your stress.  In addition, I put together a list of 8 things you can do to lower your stress so that you can have a meaningful and satisfying holiday season.

8 Holiday Stress Relief Tips:

1. Treat holiday planning like a business project where your family is the team.

   • Start off the first meeting by having everyone talk in turn about what they liked most about past holidays.  Have fun talking about good memories.  End the meeting by giving everyone an assignment to think about what their ideal holiday would include within a certain financial and location limit.

   • Come back together and have everyone share their ideal holiday.  Celebrate each other's great ideas.  End the meeting by giving everyone an assignment to pick three top favorite things from their ideal holiday.  

   • Come back together a third time to combine everyone’s top three things onto a master list and have each person choose one or more tasks that they agree to implement or help with.

2. Spend time thinking about your main objective for the holidays.  For example, it might be showing love towards one another, or lots of laughter, or connecting with your ancestors.  Then, remind yourself of this objective when you need to drop activities due to time or money constraints or you get distracted by what other people are doing. 

3. Spend time reflecting on feelings of grief from past losses and guilt from past mistakes.  Allow yourself to acknowledge the grief when it comes up and forgive yourself for your past mistakes.   

4. Lower your normal use of social media to give you time to fit in your holiday tasks and to keep yourself from getting distracted by what others are doing.

5. Put aside non-holiday home projects until the new year

6. Consider doing activities alone that only you value.  It may be even more meaningful to do them alone.  As a matter of fact, how about planning to do one thing alone that you know you will really enjoy?

7. Focus on gratitude for what is going well.  You could even make it a practice to end your day by listing out what you are grateful for.

8. Set stricter boundaries than usual with co-workers, friends, and family to free up your time and emotional bandwidth.  

I suggest you (and I) try one or more of these things and see what happens.  Then after the holidays are over, take what you’ve learned and tweak your stress reduction plan for next year.  Start off each season with a commitment to care for yourself as you prepare for the holidays. 

Stress of the holidays is very common and it is sometimes hard to deal with alone.  If you are struggling with managing this on your own, consider seeing a therapist like myself who specializes in working with professional women.

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