Reducing Holiday Stress

by Mary Jo Kreitzer, Ph.D., R.N.

The holidays can be stressful. For many people, the holidays are a time filled with loneliness, depression, anxiety, or reminders of changes that have happened in a person's past - the loss of a loved one or a change in family circumstances. Even if you're feeling positive and healthy, getting together with family can be stressful due to family dynamics. It can be a joyful time, but it's also often a time of intensity. The holidays bring together older folks, young parents, babies, and kids, and the result can be chaos.

To monitor stress, keep track of your mind and body. Does your mood change quickly? Are you sleeping well? Feeling well? Eating well? Stress can sometimes be reflected in changes to the body. You may have tension in the body, a sense of muscle pain or strain. Or you may have digestive disorders that are indicative of stress, such as diarrhea or gastric distress. Stress can affect us on many levels, from the physical to the spiritual.

If you're feeling stressed, I think the first thing to do is to slow down and breathe deeply. Take a hike or a swim or go for a walk. 

Try your best to anticipate and plan for the holidays. Sometimes our stress stems from expectations - often expectations that we impose upon ourselves. There's the baking, cooking, buying presents, decorating - all the things that we think we have to do. One of the ways to counter the expectation-related stress is to simplify the holidays. You'll be less stressed if you minimize the jazz, the glitz, the trappings of the holidays and get back to the essence of the holidays: What's really important to you?

Family traditions and rituals can be very important. Often, they're more important than the gifts and the cleaning and sending out holiday cards. What are your values as a family? How do you like to spend time, and what are your traditions? Make those a priority. Reducing distractions and unimportant tasks will help to put the meaning back into the holiday.

Carving out time in each day for yourself is important too. You'll need downtime. You'll also need to set aside time to interact with those who are important to you. People often get so caught up in "producing" the holidays that they forget to enjoy them.

Concentrate your efforts on spending time with people. Don't just focus on meals. Don't get hung up on how to juggle gift openings and big sit-down dinners with family, in-laws, and friends. In my family, for example, we used to have a long traditional meal. But now we have a lot of little kids - grandkids, nieces, and nephews - and so we've invented a wonderful new tradition: We only have hors d'oeuvres, and people drop in and out. It's much more of an open house. Reinventing the holidays - and reducing stress means simplifying and focusing on flexibility.