134. Dealing with Holiday Stress
Do you dread the holidays? What do you find most stressful? Is it organizing the family get-together, trying to cook a huge multi-course meal, staying up late to wrap presents, tidying the house, or maybe dealing with challenging relatives?
Holidays are an intense microcosm of what happens throughout the year, and it tends to be extremely hectic and busy, especially for women. The notion that we could have a completely stress-free holiday is unrealistic for most of us. However, if you’re ready to save yourself a little mental drama and exhaustion this year, listen in.
Join me on this episode as I give you seven reminders for navigating and reducing your stress during the holidays. You’ll hear why this time of year tends to be particularly stressful for women, how you have more agency and choice than you might think, and how to offer yourself the opportunity to make aligned decisions for you.
Do you want to stop working late and working through lunches? Do you want to have more control over your time? Click here to download my FREE Top 5 Calendar Tips! They are simple and effective, and you can implement them right away!
What You Will Discover:
Why the holidays can often be so stressful.
How the holidays tend to be more stressful for women.
What to do when you find yourself drawn into a perfectionistic ideal of the holidays.
How life is always 50/50, even during the holidays.
7 reminders for navigating holiday stress.
Resources:
Thank you in advance for subscribing to the Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you listen! If you have a moment write us a review, I love learning about what resonates.
Sign up for a Curiosity Call to find out if individual coaching can help you!
Learn more about my 1:1 coaching program here!
Follow me on Instagram!
Questions? Comments? I'd love to hear from you! Email me at info@mckoolcoaching.com
Let’s stay connected! Interested in having me do a free webinar with your organization?! Sign up for my mailing list.
70: The Power of Decisions to Create Mental and Emotional Rest
131: 5 Ways to Prevent Public Health Burnout
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey you all, I’m Marissa McKool, and you’re listening to the Redefining Rest Podcast for Public Health Professionals. Here we believe rest is your right. You don’t have to earn it, you just have to learn how to take it and I’m going to teach you. Ready? Come along.
Hello, everyone, how are you doing? What are you doing? Are you listening to this as you fold laundry, walk your dog, make dinner? What are you up to? For some of you, it might be Thanksgiving week if you’re listening when this episode comes out, or maybe you’re listening to this at a different time in the year as you prep for Christmas or Hanukkah or Ede or any other holiday you celebrate.
This week, Jared and I are driving to Utah to meet his family, who lives in LA. So we’re meeting halfway for Thanksgiving. They rented a house. It is a long drive. And that’s something we’ve had to come to terms with since moving out of California into Colorado. It’s a long drive, especially to bring our dog. It’s a choice of flying and making it quick and easy and having to board our dog who struggles with that and it’s expensive or driving, which takes longer, but we can bring our dog. But as much of a headache as that piece is, it’s going to feel really good to connect with family.
One of the things I’ve struggled with since moving from California is creating community in Colorado and not for the lack of trying. I think working remotely at home, having your own business, employee of one basically makes it difficult. But I have tried Bumble friends and we’ve tried meetups and I’m taking ceramic classes and it still hasn’t been easy. I still haven’t found a solid group of friends or even just one or two solid friends that I didn’t know before moving here. And part of that is because there are people with different priorities in life.
I don’t have children. So someone who does have young kids, we have a different amount of time available or interests potentially. It’s also you’re not in a work office or in school. You’re exposed to people that probably have some same interests or some similar age potentially and can have time to get to know them.
Also I’ve been thinking about this a lot and if you’re on the email list, you got an email from me, I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago about this. Which is since I’ve really, the past, I don’t know five to ten years worked on no longer people pleasing, no longer conforming to what other people want me to be, it really limits who are the people who want to be your friends or who you want to be friends with.
In my journey of no longer people pleasing, I have chosen to walk away from certain friendships, but also some friends have chosen not to continue their friendships with me, and that’s okay, that’s part of it. Because I want friends who are friends with me for the true me, not the people pleasing, masking, conforming version of me that society, particularly the patriarchy wants women to have.
So with all that said, it will feel really good to connect with family and have that sense of community. But today I’m talking about why the holidays can be so stressful and sharing seven reminders for how you can navigate your stress, reduce your stress, support yourself during the hectic busy time that you might be having.
Let’s first talk about why are holidays so stressful. And I want to be clear, they aren’t necessarily stressful for everyone. They tend to be more stressful for women, whether you are a mom or the organizing have it all together oldest daughter or the middle child that’s always tasked with keeping the peace at the dinner table or anything else. And part of the reason it tends to fall on women, I think is because holidays are just an intense microcosm of what happens throughout the year.
Where women are expected to do everything for everyone else, to be the house manager, to carry the mental load, to take care of the emotional needs of everyone else. And that doesn’t just create stress on the holidays, It does the whole year, but in the holidays it’s so concentrated and it’s amped up. That doesn’t mean you don’t love the holidays or find joy in it or have great memories, I’m not saying that but it means it can be hard.
You can end up feeling overwhelmed or dreading the family get together or overworking or staying up late to clean or wrap presents. And holidays come with its own set of challenges to navigate and deal with, from difficult family members, trying to cook a huge meal, multiple courses, accommodating everyone’s needs. Participating or not in the holiday sales bonanza, putting together holiday cards, getting a family picture together, who to send it to. Maybe drinking more than you want to or having alcohol around more than you’re used to and feeling pressure to drink.
Or having to decorate or always keep a tidy, clean home more than normal. Or dealing with employers who maybe don’t understand your holiday or your holiday traditions or needing time off. So here are some important reminders of how to deal with all of that and the stress that comes with it. And also I’m sure there’s some stressors that I overlooked or didn’t mention, but these seven reminders can help you no matter whether you’re feeling overwhelmed or dread or exhausted or stressed or anything else.
The first is that everything is optional. Yes, everything. It’s all a choice. It’s a choice to cook a full multi course family meal. It’s a choice to invite whoever you invite over. It’s a choice not to do the holiday cards. It’s a choice not to drink. I’m not telling you what to choose or not to choose, but to remind you that only you decide and you have that choice. You have the power to participate or not, to say yes or no.
I remember this story that Susan Hyatt, who is a life coach pulled on a podcast. And she talked about how a couple of days before Thanksgiving where her whole extended family was supposed to come over and they were traveling. A couple of days before she’d decided to completely cancel it. She texted everyone and said, “Thanksgiving’s not happening.” And she went on a solo weekend without her husband, without her kids, with no family and she left for the weekend by herself. She said no to being the only one doing it all, to doing anything.
Now I’m not saying that you should do that, let me be very clear. But just to point out that you have choices and I thought that example, her sharing that was such a powerful one. Because I think for many of us the idea of just canceling a couple of days before and taking off, immediately we’re like, “That’s so selfish. What is everyone going to think? She’s ruined everyone’s holiday.” Which is such a patriarchal thought pattern that we have absorbed.
You might not want to make the same choice as her, but she utilized her choice. Are you utilizing the choices you have available to you and that you want?
Number two, decide in advance what you truly want and do not want to do. Be clear with yourself first. Do you want to try to get all the presents for Christmas on sale and dealing with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and doing all the research and the time that comes with that? Do you want to have your sexist uncle come to dinner? Do you want to explain to your boss why you are fasting? Do you want to make everything from scratch? And be honest with yourself what your answers are. If it’s a no, that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you for feeling that way.
And if it’s a yes, even if you know it will come with stress, that’s okay too. And we’ll talk more about this in a second because this is one of my other reminders. But the idea that we can have a completely stress free holiday for most of us is actually unrealistic. It’s not about achieving a 100% stress free holiday, it’s about setting parameters and boundaries for yourself. And you get to check on the balance of how much stress you are operating under and give yourself a chance to opt out. And give yourself the opportunity to make those decisions.
Making decisions and being clear in advance will help save you so much drama and emotional, mental exhaustion and decision making. I have a whole episode where I dive into how making decisions ahead of time actually creates so much rest for you. You can go check it out. We’ll leave a link in the show notes, it’s episode 70, called The Power of Decisions to Create Mental and Emotional Rest.
Number three, recognize when you want to people please. This is definitely going to come up throughout the holidays. And it probably already has where you feel bad for not inviting someone or you feel guilty for not making it ‘as memorable’ as it could be for the kids. Or you feel obligated to do holiday cards or you feel worried your friends will think you’re lame if you don’t drink. Remember, you don’t cause other people’s thoughts and feelings. Your actions don’t make them think anything about you. They choose to think whatever they want.
Your decisions don’t cause their emotions, their thoughts do. Don’t get stuck in the people pleasing trap of me or them. Everyone else, specifically the adults, which are most of the people you’re probably worried about and people pleasing around are responsible for their own thoughts and feelings. And even if we think about if you have kids, trying to do certain things because you’re so worried they’re going to be upset or not going to have as memorable of a holiday or this or that.
Trying to prevent your kids from feeling a normal life emotion, whether disappointment or anything else, actually doesn’t serve them in the long run. And I want you to think about whether you want to model people pleasing, if you have kids for them. Or you want to model how to make decisions that are best for you and how to communicate that and how to show up when maybe other people don’t agree.
Number four, delegate. Now, I know some of you, regular listeners every week for a while now are probably like, “Oh, here she goes talking about delegation again.” Because this has come up so many times this year. I’ve been encouraging a lot of you to delegate and to change your perspective of what delegating is. It isn’t necessarily authoritative or hierarchical. And it isn’t necessarily just about delegating to other people. It can be putting something in the no pile or the not now pile.
A few weeks ago, I talked about this in the Burnout Prevention episode. Delegation is really about distributing the work, the tasks. Jared, my partner and I delegate to each other all the time, sometimes it’s by asking or by suggestion or by telling. Sometimes it’s by discussion and negotiation.
You can delegate by saying no, by asking someone else, by assigning to someone else, by discussing the distribution of work with your family. And this doesn’t mean you have to be carrying all of the mental load and be the manager of everything. That’s where the delegation piece of having a discussion and a negotiation and using those tools.
Number five, remember what matters most to you. We all try to have the most perfect magical, best, seamless holiday ever. And for some of us that’s because maybe you grew up with your holidays not being great. Or on the flipside, you only remember the good parts about the holiday and your brain’s kind of, control alt delete any negative memory of past holidays. But either way, you’re creating this fantasy and this ideal of having a perfect, seamless stress free holiday where everyone’s happy, everyone’s pleased. That adds so much pressure and is impossible.
You can’t please everyone, not everyone is going to be happy. There is going to be conflict. There are going to be things that go wrong. There are going to be challenges to the schedule and that’s okay. It’s okay if not everything’s homemade. It’s okay if the [inaudible] is a little dry, mine always are. It’s okay if you don’t visit every family member or if the kids don’t get every gift they wanted.
It’s easy to get drawn into this perfectionistic ideal of the holidays but come back to what matters most to you and decide what that is ahead of time. Is it being present with your family? Is it slowing down? Is it your faith and spirituality? Is it spending time giving back? Come back to these core things when you notice yourself drifting into believing everything has to go perfect.
Number six, prioritize you and the things that will help you. As we have discussed, the holidays tend to become about everyone else but you, but you need to prioritize yourself too. The routines, the habits, the things that help you manage stress or be present or feel like you. Maybe it’s working out. If normally you work out four times a week and that’s not feasible during the hectic holiday week, can you get one or two workouts in, even if they’re shorter, even if they’re a different type of workout?
Maybe you know that alone time really helps you be less reactive. How can you get just 30 minutes of alone time, walking the dog, getting up a little earlier to drink coffee alone? Perhaps you know you’re better able to manage your stress when you don’t drink. How can you prioritize that for yourself? Is it buying non-alcoholic drinks or having mocktails at a bar you’re at or if you’re hosting not having alcohol served at all. What is it? Figure out what you need as a baseline and how you can make that happen.
And lastly, try not to compare. I know it’s easier said than done. when you get everyone’s holiday cards and it seems like they have it all together, when everyone’s social media looks like nothing’s gone wrong in their sphere. When you go to a friend’s house to break your fast and you’re in awe of how organized and together they have it all. When you’re going to make homemade [inaudible] and you’re worried they can’t live up to your mother-in-law’s.
But when you get into comparison, you fall back into perfectionism and the further away you get from what matters the most to you and how you want to experience your holiday. Remember, no one is perfect and no one has it perfect. Everyone’s life is 50/50, including the holidays. Doesn’t matter what other people are or are not doing, how they are doing it. Doesn’t make you less than them and it doesn’t make them better than you. Come back to what matters the most to you. Come back to how you are going to prioritize yourselves. Come back to knowing you always have a choice.
I hope that at least a couple of these reminders will help you as you navigate whatever holiday you are celebrating, however you are celebrating it and I’ll talk to you all next week. Bye, everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
Hello, everyone, how are you doing? What are you doing? Are you listening to this as you fold laundry, walk your dog, make dinner? What are you up to? For some of you, it might be Thanksgiving week if you’re listening when this episode comes out, or maybe you’re listening to this at a different time in the year as you prep for Christmas or Hanukkah or Ede or any other holiday you celebrate.
This week, Jared and I are driving to Utah to meet his family, who lives in LA. So we’re meeting halfway for Thanksgiving. They rented a house. It is a long drive. And that’s something we’ve had to come to terms with since moving out of California into Colorado. It’s a long drive, especially to bring our dog. It’s a choice of flying and making it quick and easy and having to board our dog who struggles with that and it’s expensive or driving, which takes longer, but we can bring our dog. But as much of a headache as that piece is, it’s going to feel really good to connect with family.
One of the things I’ve struggled with since moving from California is creating community in Colorado and not for the lack of trying. I think working remotely at home, having your own business, employee of one basically makes it difficult. But I have tried Bumble friends and we’ve tried meetups and I’m taking ceramic classes and it still hasn’t been easy. I still haven’t found a solid group of friends or even just one or two solid friends that I didn’t know before moving here. And part of that is because there are people with different priorities in life.
I don’t have children. So someone who does have young kids, we have a different amount of time available or interests potentially. It’s also you’re not in a work office or in school. You’re exposed to people that probably have some same interests or some similar age potentially and can have time to get to know them.
Also I’ve been thinking about this a lot and if you’re on the email list, you got an email from me, I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago about this. Which is since I’ve really, the past, I don’t know five to ten years worked on no longer people pleasing, no longer conforming to what other people want me to be, it really limits who are the people who want to be your friends or who you want to be friends with.
In my journey of no longer people pleasing, I have chosen to walk away from certain friendships, but also some friends have chosen not to continue their friendships with me, and that’s okay, that’s part of it. Because I want friends who are friends with me for the true me, not the people pleasing, masking, conforming version of me that society, particularly the patriarchy wants women to have.
So with all that said, it will feel really good to connect with family and have that sense of community. But today I’m talking about why the holidays can be so stressful and sharing seven reminders for how you can navigate your stress, reduce your stress, support yourself during the hectic busy time that you might be having.
Let’s first talk about why are holidays so stressful. And I want to be clear, they aren’t necessarily stressful for everyone. They tend to be more stressful for women, whether you are a mom or the organizing have it all together oldest daughter or the middle child that’s always tasked with keeping the peace at the dinner table or anything else. And part of the reason it tends to fall on women, I think is because holidays are just an intense microcosm of what happens throughout the year.
Where women are expected to do everything for everyone else, to be the house manager, to carry the mental load, to take care of the emotional needs of everyone else. And that doesn’t just create stress on the holidays, It does the whole year, but in the holidays it’s so concentrated and it’s amped up. That doesn’t mean you don’t love the holidays or find joy in it or have great memories, I’m not saying that but it means it can be hard.
You can end up feeling overwhelmed or dreading the family get together or overworking or staying up late to clean or wrap presents. And holidays come with its own set of challenges to navigate and deal with, from difficult family members, trying to cook a huge meal, multiple courses, accommodating everyone’s needs. Participating or not in the holiday sales bonanza, putting together holiday cards, getting a family picture together, who to send it to. Maybe drinking more than you want to or having alcohol around more than you’re used to and feeling pressure to drink.
Or having to decorate or always keep a tidy, clean home more than normal. Or dealing with employers who maybe don’t understand your holiday or your holiday traditions or needing time off. So here are some important reminders of how to deal with all of that and the stress that comes with it. And also I’m sure there’s some stressors that I overlooked or didn’t mention, but these seven reminders can help you no matter whether you’re feeling overwhelmed or dread or exhausted or stressed or anything else.
The first is that everything is optional. Yes, everything. It’s all a choice. It’s a choice to cook a full multi course family meal. It’s a choice to invite whoever you invite over. It’s a choice not to do the holiday cards. It’s a choice not to drink. I’m not telling you what to choose or not to choose, but to remind you that only you decide and you have that choice. You have the power to participate or not, to say yes or no.
I remember this story that Susan Hyatt, who is a life coach pulled on a podcast. And she talked about how a couple of days before Thanksgiving where her whole extended family was supposed to come over and they were traveling. A couple of days before she’d decided to completely cancel it. She texted everyone and said, “Thanksgiving’s not happening.” And she went on a solo weekend without her husband, without her kids, with no family and she left for the weekend by herself. She said no to being the only one doing it all, to doing anything.
Now I’m not saying that you should do that, let me be very clear. But just to point out that you have choices and I thought that example, her sharing that was such a powerful one. Because I think for many of us the idea of just canceling a couple of days before and taking off, immediately we’re like, “That’s so selfish. What is everyone going to think? She’s ruined everyone’s holiday.” Which is such a patriarchal thought pattern that we have absorbed.
You might not want to make the same choice as her, but she utilized her choice. Are you utilizing the choices you have available to you and that you want?
Number two, decide in advance what you truly want and do not want to do. Be clear with yourself first. Do you want to try to get all the presents for Christmas on sale and dealing with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and doing all the research and the time that comes with that? Do you want to have your sexist uncle come to dinner? Do you want to explain to your boss why you are fasting? Do you want to make everything from scratch? And be honest with yourself what your answers are. If it’s a no, that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you for feeling that way.
And if it’s a yes, even if you know it will come with stress, that’s okay too. And we’ll talk more about this in a second because this is one of my other reminders. But the idea that we can have a completely stress free holiday for most of us is actually unrealistic. It’s not about achieving a 100% stress free holiday, it’s about setting parameters and boundaries for yourself. And you get to check on the balance of how much stress you are operating under and give yourself a chance to opt out. And give yourself the opportunity to make those decisions.
Making decisions and being clear in advance will help save you so much drama and emotional, mental exhaustion and decision making. I have a whole episode where I dive into how making decisions ahead of time actually creates so much rest for you. You can go check it out. We’ll leave a link in the show notes, it’s episode 70, called The Power of Decisions to Create Mental and Emotional Rest.
Number three, recognize when you want to people please. This is definitely going to come up throughout the holidays. And it probably already has where you feel bad for not inviting someone or you feel guilty for not making it ‘as memorable’ as it could be for the kids. Or you feel obligated to do holiday cards or you feel worried your friends will think you’re lame if you don’t drink. Remember, you don’t cause other people’s thoughts and feelings. Your actions don’t make them think anything about you. They choose to think whatever they want.
Your decisions don’t cause their emotions, their thoughts do. Don’t get stuck in the people pleasing trap of me or them. Everyone else, specifically the adults, which are most of the people you’re probably worried about and people pleasing around are responsible for their own thoughts and feelings. And even if we think about if you have kids, trying to do certain things because you’re so worried they’re going to be upset or not going to have as memorable of a holiday or this or that.
Trying to prevent your kids from feeling a normal life emotion, whether disappointment or anything else, actually doesn’t serve them in the long run. And I want you to think about whether you want to model people pleasing, if you have kids for them. Or you want to model how to make decisions that are best for you and how to communicate that and how to show up when maybe other people don’t agree.
Number four, delegate. Now, I know some of you, regular listeners every week for a while now are probably like, “Oh, here she goes talking about delegation again.” Because this has come up so many times this year. I’ve been encouraging a lot of you to delegate and to change your perspective of what delegating is. It isn’t necessarily authoritative or hierarchical. And it isn’t necessarily just about delegating to other people. It can be putting something in the no pile or the not now pile.
A few weeks ago, I talked about this in the Burnout Prevention episode. Delegation is really about distributing the work, the tasks. Jared, my partner and I delegate to each other all the time, sometimes it’s by asking or by suggestion or by telling. Sometimes it’s by discussion and negotiation.
You can delegate by saying no, by asking someone else, by assigning to someone else, by discussing the distribution of work with your family. And this doesn’t mean you have to be carrying all of the mental load and be the manager of everything. That’s where the delegation piece of having a discussion and a negotiation and using those tools.
Number five, remember what matters most to you. We all try to have the most perfect magical, best, seamless holiday ever. And for some of us that’s because maybe you grew up with your holidays not being great. Or on the flipside, you only remember the good parts about the holiday and your brain’s kind of, control alt delete any negative memory of past holidays. But either way, you’re creating this fantasy and this ideal of having a perfect, seamless stress free holiday where everyone’s happy, everyone’s pleased. That adds so much pressure and is impossible.
You can’t please everyone, not everyone is going to be happy. There is going to be conflict. There are going to be things that go wrong. There are going to be challenges to the schedule and that’s okay. It’s okay if not everything’s homemade. It’s okay if the [inaudible] is a little dry, mine always are. It’s okay if you don’t visit every family member or if the kids don’t get every gift they wanted.
It’s easy to get drawn into this perfectionistic ideal of the holidays but come back to what matters most to you and decide what that is ahead of time. Is it being present with your family? Is it slowing down? Is it your faith and spirituality? Is it spending time giving back? Come back to these core things when you notice yourself drifting into believing everything has to go perfect.
Number six, prioritize you and the things that will help you. As we have discussed, the holidays tend to become about everyone else but you, but you need to prioritize yourself too. The routines, the habits, the things that help you manage stress or be present or feel like you. Maybe it’s working out. If normally you work out four times a week and that’s not feasible during the hectic holiday week, can you get one or two workouts in, even if they’re shorter, even if they’re a different type of workout?
Maybe you know that alone time really helps you be less reactive. How can you get just 30 minutes of alone time, walking the dog, getting up a little earlier to drink coffee alone? Perhaps you know you’re better able to manage your stress when you don’t drink. How can you prioritize that for yourself? Is it buying non-alcoholic drinks or having mocktails at a bar you’re at or if you’re hosting not having alcohol served at all. What is it? Figure out what you need as a baseline and how you can make that happen.
And lastly, try not to compare. I know it’s easier said than done. when you get everyone’s holiday cards and it seems like they have it all together, when everyone’s social media looks like nothing’s gone wrong in their sphere. When you go to a friend’s house to break your fast and you’re in awe of how organized and together they have it all. When you’re going to make homemade [inaudible] and you’re worried they can’t live up to your mother-in-law’s.
But when you get into comparison, you fall back into perfectionism and the further away you get from what matters the most to you and how you want to experience your holiday. Remember, no one is perfect and no one has it perfect. Everyone’s life is 50/50, including the holidays. Doesn’t matter what other people are or are not doing, how they are doing it. Doesn’t make you less than them and it doesn’t make them better than you. Come back to what matters the most to you. Come back to how you are going to prioritize yourselves. Come back to knowing you always have a choice.
I hope that at least a couple of these reminders will help you as you navigate whatever holiday you are celebrating, however you are celebrating it and I’ll talk to you all next week. Bye, everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
Enjoy the Show?
Don't miss an episode, follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Previous
Previous
135. Imposter Syndrome in Public Health
Next
Next