The holidays, regardless of how you choose to engage with them, can be a highly enjoyable but also highly disruptive season for your mood. Maintaining your sense of balance can feel nearly impossible with overindulgence, obligatory traditions, and nostalgia begging for your attention.
Our team at Lotus Psychology Group compiled a short list of strategies & tools that may help you restore harmony in a healthy way throughout the holiday season.
Sensory Overload
Holiday seasons can be loaded with all things loud, bright, crowded, and intense. You might feel stretched in every which way by family, friends, changes in work or school schedules, travel plans, or financial pressures. This potential chaos can create feelings of anxiety, irritability, or emotional numbing.
- Prepare for the worst – hope for the best. If you are easily overstimulated by the crowds, music, etc. charge and bring headphones with you, eat a healthy meal before to reduce drops in metabolism, and create a list of what you need and break up your tasks to be as efficient as possible. This can be helpful for neurodiverse folks who struggle with memory or attention if overwhelmed.
- Be selective and realistic in scheduling plans. If you are traveling home and know that your time is limited – listen to your gut and choose events wisely. If certain loved ones always drain you of energy or make you feel bad about yourself, use your best judgement and keep some distance. Your self-esteem and mood will thank you.
- Use the day before you travel home to pack up, grab your favorite meal from a local spot, and reflect on your trip. When we intentionally set aside time to be mindful about our experiences – we gain a better grasp of who or what actually brings us joy. We can identify areas of our life that might need fine tuning like how we talk to our friends, how we problem solve, or what goals we want to set. If you like to journal this is a great opportunity to do so. This sets you up to have a less stressful trip home and you’ve given yourself real-time feedback of the important things in your life.
Connection within Community
There can be deep seated feelings of loneliness that get louder as the holiday season approaches. Finding genuine connection through acts of giving can ease those feelings.
- If you plan to donate things prior to the New Year, before you drop them off to a for-profit thrift store – create mini “care” bundles of extra hygiene products, beauty samples, or clothing/socks/gloves/jackets and hand them out directly to homeless individuals, take them to foster care homes to go with teens who may be aging out of the system, or find a domestic violence shelter and offer them to a family in need. You could even take them to local County hospitals to serve people who may be discharging and are without the basics.
- If you are a whiz at wrapping gifts or love crafting – find a residential care home or a memory care facility and offer your time to wrap gifts for residents. While you are wrapping or crafting – you can dive into meeting people who may have an amazing story or history about the community you live in.
- This kind of altruism is linked to increases in “feel good” neurochemicals and fosters a sense of connection with your direct community.
Sit At The Kids Table!
Kids have a way of living in the moment, creating fantastical worlds out of thin air, and finding the silly in the serious. The holidays can seem like a sea of kids and wrapping paper. There is opportunity within those moments to re-ignite your creativity and increase your energy.
- Build gingerbread houses with candy cane columns or bake sugar cookies and decorate them with every color frosting and mountains of sprinkles. Sidewalk chalk, board games, karaoke, learning a coordinated dance – all of these things bring loved ones together.
- Create a scavenger hunt that both adults and kids can team up and go on. Hide little candies or silly little gifts alongside clues and let the adventure begin. This activity not only stimulates your creative side but that memory will last much longer than any gift.
- If you are a history buff or understand your family’s ancestry – pull some of the kids together and tell them stories about their heritage or where family traditions come from. This can create strong connections with your family and story telling is uplifting and inspires the creative parts of our brain.
There is no doubt that the holiday season and the upcoming new year can be overwhelming. The key to managing your mood, balancing your time, and developing deeper connections (to both you and your loved ones) is intention. If you become intentional about creating harmony during the holiday rush, there is nothing stopping you from using those strategies to resolve conflicts or create new opportunities.
If there are aspects of your life that would benefit from balance or you want to learn how to challenge unhealthy emotional patterns and construct effective and healthy ones – contact us at Lotus Psychology Group if you live in the Metro Detroit area. Our team of dedicated licensed therapists are highly collaborative and experienced in helping people reach their desired goals.
