Coping with Holiday Stress and Anxiety
The holiday season can be a joyful time filled with family traditions, parties, gifts, and good cheer. However, for many people, the holidays also bring unwelcome guests - holiday stress, anxiety, and depression. Whether it's financial pressure, family tensions, sadness over lost loved ones, or a general sense of feeling overwhelmed, the winter holidays can easily end up being more stressful and anxious than festive.
The good news is there are many proven, effective ways to help prevent and manage holiday anxiety and stress. With some practical self-care strategies, mindset shifts, communication skills, and perspective-taking, you can minimize the angst and maximize the comfort and joy this season.
Understand the Causes
The first step in developing strategies for holiday calm is understanding the common causes behind increased seasonal anxiety and worries:
Financial strains - According to a 2021 Statista survey, 38% of U.S. adults carry holiday debt. Shopping expenses, travel costs, party budgets, gifts, tips, and holiday-specific needs like new formal clothes pile up fast. For lower income families, these financial burdens weigh heavily.
Unrealistic expectations - Marketers and movies paint idealized visions of perfect, magical, conflict-free holidays full of happiness and togetherness. Yet for most, reality falls far short, which causes a let-down response and anxiety.
Family complications - 65% in a 2021 American Psychological Association survey said spending time with extended family increases holiday stress. From judging comments to political debates to discussing delicate issues, family friction easily flares with routine derailments, strained relationships, disagreements over childbearing, or clashes in values.
Grief triggers - The absence of departed loved ones can be acutely felt during tradition-centered, nostalgic holidays. 22% of U.S. adults dread winter holidays, according to a 2022 poll by Cigna Health Insurance.
Physical stress - Disruptions in sleep, exercise, and healthy eating from hectic schedules and holiday indulgences can worsen mental health. Higher alcohol intake, common during celebrations, aggravates anxiety as well.
With awareness of these common underlying causes, you gain insight into what fuels your personal holiday worries. You can then customize stress prevention and coping methods accordingly.
Mindset and Perspective Shifts
Often, altered thinking patterns and attitude adjustments help decrease tension and increase holiday ease more than specific techniques. Consider adopting some of these psychological mindset shifts:
Accept imperfections - Let go of comparing your holidays to unrealistic media portrayals or remembering past holidays through rose-colored glasses. Flawed gatherings with imperfect people are normal; embrace the humanity.
Focus on relationships - De-emphasize commercialism and luxury. Instead, truly cherish time-shared with precious people you care about. Slow down and be meaningfully present with loved ones.
Practice realistic generosity - Set holiday spending and gift-giving budgets you can actually afford without incurring debt. Thoughtfully crafted, homemade gifts often hold more heartfelt meaning anyway. Extend generosity through volunteerism and acts of service, too.
Allow others their traditions - Avoid judging how extended family members choose to celebrate if different from your own. Respectfully appreciate diversity.
Limit news intake - Take brief news fasts to avoid trigger topics. Savor the restored sense of holiday spirit once inflammatory content is removed from focus.
Let go of control - Release rigid insisting that everything goes exactly as you envision. Flow flexibly with others’ preferences and unforeseeable variables.
Balance obligations and self-care - Don’t overpack schedules. Make time for soothing alone time, even briefly, amid socializing to regroup and de-stress.
Cultivate gratitude - Compile specific written lists of current blessings to counter the tendency to dwell on difficulties, losses and less-than moments. Reread your inventory of gifts, however humble, when you feel worries rising.
Practical Stress Management Strategies
Healthy daily lifestyle habits form a strong anxiety and stress resilience foundation ahead of high-demand seasons. Additionally, purposely weaving in more of these beneficial strategies through the hectic weeks around holidays directly calms neurological stress responses:
Exercise moderately most days - Just 30 minutes daily of walking, yoga, cycling or other gentle workouts relieves tension, regulates stress hormones, boosts energy naturally, and improves sleep quality at night.
Prioritize good sleep - Allow yourself to turn in earlier than normal. Maintain comforting pre-bedtime routines. Keep the bedroom dark, cool and screen-free. Consider temporary melatonin supplements if needed.
Eat regular balanced meals - Avoid big spikes and dips in blood sugar levels that exacerbate anxious moods. Include a lean protein source, complex carbs, and veggies or fruits with each meal. Stay well hydrated too with herbal teas and water.
Limit alcohol intake - Alcohol exacerbates anxiety, despite being seen as social lubricant. Imbibe only in moderate amounts if at all to prevent hangovers and interaction regrets.
Engage mindfulness practices - Even just 5–10 minutes a few times a day of meditative breathing, Grounding 5-4-3-2-1 census exercises, gratitude journaling or relaxing yoga nidras reduce tension markedly. Apps like Calm, Headspace and Insight Timer offer excellent quick guided practices.
Play uplifting music and funny videos - Music has potent anxiety-lowering effects. Seek out favored playlists from your youth, perhaps. Laughter literally reduces stress hormones. Watch silly pet trick videos for a quick boost.
Take mini-breaks - When socializing or running errands, build in brief 5-10 minute respites alone in your car or a quite separate room. Recharge before continuing.
Accept help - Delegate tasks to willing friends and family. Hire service providers like housecleaners, dog walkers or grocery deliverers as reasonable. Receive offered hospitality and support.
Healthy Communication Skills
Beyond logistics, infusing your holiday conversations with empathy, boundary-setting, and emotional intelligence defuses interpersonal tensions:
Listen reflectively - Seek first to understand others’ perspectives before being understood yourself. Confirm meanings by paraphrasing their statements using tentative language to allow correction: “It sounds like you feel I don’t value our holiday rituals, right?”
Own your experiences - Use “I” statements rather than blaming “you” language. For example, “I felt excluded when the gathering plans changed unexpectedly,” rather than, “You were so rude to exclude me.”
Avoid labeling and judging - Rather than harshly categorizing loved ones as callous, unreasonable, thoughtless, unfair, etc. use neutral descriptions of specific behaviors that bothered you factually when sharing impacts calmly.
Validate them problem-solve - Express genuine empathy and validation of others’ feelings first before asking to have your own needs met. “I can totally see why cancelling when you weren’t feeling well-made sense. And I also was really looking forward to our quality catch-up. Could we identify another time this season to connect?”
Set kind boundaries - Non-defensively clarify what healthy boundaries and positive agreements will support both parties’ needs in gentle, yet unambiguous language. “I’m requesting we avoid discussing religions or politics at Grandma’s dinner to keep the atmosphere pleasant for all.”
Highlight common ground - When disagreements arise, re-focus first on the fundamental values, caring, hopes and yearnings you genuinely share despite surface-level conflicts. Build outward by identifying mutually agreeable practical solutions.
Intentionally releasing perceived slights and hurts from your mind liberates you from continued suffering - a gift to yourself. Extending forgiveness mentally and emotionally (not necessarily continuing toxic relationships or tolerating abuse) further lightens your spirit during a season meant for uplift. We all blunder in clumsy attempts to get validation for our own insecurities and needs at times. Empathizing with the humanity in us all allows warm connection to flow.
When to Seek Professional Help
Despite best solo efforts to prevent, contain, and self-manage holiday-exacerbated anxiety or depression, consultant professional support if:
- Worrisome symptoms last more than 2 weeks
- Worrying thoughts begin spiraling out to catastrophizing what-ifs
- You contemplate self-harm or feel life is no longer worth living
- Excessive fatigue, agitation, or feelings of being emotionally numb and void of joy persist
- Previously effective calming strategies no longer alleviate distressed moods
Therapists, counselors, life coaches, psychiatrists, and other qualified helpers provide confidential sounding boards, teach healthy coping mechanisms, offer fresh perspectives, pinpoint unhelpful subconscious beliefs for re-framing, and generally help halt anxiety cycles. Medications may also assist short-term, if prescribed. Support groups build solidarity, too. Know excellent options for well-timed assistance exist.
The holidays spark magic and wonder for good reason. By understanding common holiday stress triggers, aligning expectations and mindsets closer to reality, strengthening self-care capacities and communication skills, while allowing some imperfections as part of being human, anxiety and depression lose their grip this season. May clarity, hope and cheer fill your holidays and new year ahead.