Wide-Ranging Stress Defenses

There is general advice, and then there is specialized advice. For instance, the website MSFocus.org offers holiday season tips that are particularly helpful to people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, a potentially disabling and (so far) incurable autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. The wide variety of symptoms can ebb and flow for no discernible reason, and stress can certainly have a worsening effect. Any warning that can improve matters for people with such a serious and unpredictable illness will certainly help those with a relatively less severe stress reaction, like overeating. What kind of advice is given to MS patients?

An extreme degree of foresight is certainly helpful, especially when it comes to travel arrangements. Long trips and long waiting periods between stages of travel can be annoying to a healthy person. They can be excruciating for anyone who has trouble with such functions as balance, coordination, medication side effects, impaired vision, and general uncertainty about how seriously one’s symptoms might flare up within the next hours or days. Writer Matt Cavallo gives this advice:

If something isn’t on your list and you don’t think you can make it, just say no.

If something is outside your budget even though you think it would be a perfect gift, just say no.

If traveling for a holiday obligation leads to unwanted stress, just say no.

The extra piece of pie? Just say no.

These are precautions that work for everyone! So, in fact, does the advice collected by counselor Jessica Maharaj, tailored for people served by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Make a budget, she suggests, and don’t forget to figure in shipping costs if you do your own gift-wrapping and packaging. Even if you are flying to visit someone, try not to carry gifts, but send them ahead of time or better yet, have the merchant send them.

Sew that pocket shut

Many therapists agree on the importance of curbing the impulse to overspend. You don’t want to be paying off Christmas bills until next December. Set a realistic budget ahead of time and adhere to it. Try giving something personal like a hand-painted greeting card, a poem, or a cute video greeting. Consider giving an experience instead of a thing. Tickets to something would be nice, in a normal year, anyway. The recipient could go to the event with you or with another person.

Designate a certain sum for spontaneous discretionary purchases, because “the holidays tend to bring out the generosity in us.” So, allow for that extra bit of giving spirit, and then stick to the number you allotted for it. And budget the personal appearance time, too. This year, saying no to massive hospitality is easier than ever, because a lot of people have learned to use software that does not require showing up in person.

The temptation to overcommit is huge but it can be resisted. When filling in the calendar, remember that your plans could be disrupted by surprise visitors, phone calls, emergency grocery runs, or foul weather. There are no guarantees.

Hit up the post-holiday sales for deals on cards, gift-wrap paper, ribbon, and any other accouterments you know you can use next year. This is a great opportunity to stock up on cut-rate candy canes, which last forever. Maharaj writes,

The reality is that potential hazards exist at every turn during the holidays. These situations can trigger heightened difficulties for people suffering from depression, anxiety, PTSD and other mental illnesses. The holidays can also introduce additional stressors such as complicated relationship dynamics at family gatherings, grief over losing a loved one or simply trying to live up to the unattainable expectations of the “perfect holiday.”

Next time, we will discuss in more detail the particular challenges faced by people who are also dealing with grief, Seasonal Affective Disorder, or fear of COVID-19.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “5 Tips for Managing Holiday Stress with MS,” MSFocus.org, undated
Source: “Avoiding Holiday Stressors,” NAMI.org, 12/03/18
Image by Liz West/CC BY 2.0

Be the Change You Want to See

In a family or a friend group, the older humans influence the ones who haven’t been around for quite as long. That is simply how things are. The youngsters learn from us every minute of every day — how to solve problems, how to handle conflict, how to offer and ask for help, how to deal with frustration… how to navigate through stressful holidays without doubling our weight and ruining our health.

As we have seen, list-making and delegation are powerful tools. Their combined strength can be shown by creating an efficient roster of tasks and details to be offloaded into someone else’s responsibility basket. A lot of us feel like we have to compulsively clutch the reins at all times. Dr. Jennifer Barton has plenty to say about the wisdom of releasing our grip:

Many people will need to let go of the “if I want something done right, I have to do it myself” mentality or “I don’t want to bother anybody else.” You need to take a deep breath and just let go. Realize that when you delegate something, it’s now out of your hands — and that can be a good thing. As hard as it may seem, wait until the final product before judging how the delegation is going.

Excellent results might come from letting others demonstrate how competent and responsible they can be. Another choice that can be made about a task is: Delegate it to nobody. Toss is onto the pile of things you have decided will no longer be allowed to ruffle your majestic serenity.

How to catch a clue

Do you send out Christmas cards? Great. Must you make time to go to the post office for special Christmas stamps? No, that is not required. You can use any stamp of the correct denomination. Don’t worry, the world at large will not find out about your lapse. People may display your greeting card, but it is doubtful that they will hang up the envelope too.

If you just can’t get comfortable with omitting the seasonal postage stamps, make a deal with yourself: Skip it this year, and print it in capital letters at the top of next year’s list. In 2022, buying Christmas-themed stamps in a timely manner will be your first priority. What the heck, go ahead and promise the same for every succeeding year, too. Then relax and forget about it for 10 months, okay?

Here, from Jessica Maharaj, is a gem of a shopping tip that is valid all year round:

[T]ry to go during the day and park farther away from the stores. Your time in the sunlight walking to or from your car can boost your serotonin levels.

This habit will also, of course, help a lot if you happen to be trying for the recommended 10,000 steps per day.

Miscellaneous coping strategies

Nutrition counselors have handy suggestions like, during holiday time, keep sweets and alcohol out of your own home, because you know you will encounter plenty of them elsewhere. And make sure to get enough fiber, Vitamin C, and Vitamin B; for digestion, the immune system, and stress response, respectively.

Next: If you can possibly afford to, spare yourself the ordeal of putting together a thing. G. Gaynor McTigue, author of Why Make Yourself Crazy?, says if the assembly is required, deputize an experienced assembler, even if there is a fee. They can do it fast, they can do it correctly, they can do it in their sleep, and you can’t.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “10 Tips to De-stress During the Holidays,” JacksonHealth.org, undated
Source: “Avoiding Holiday Stressors,” NAMI.org, 12/03/18
Source: “40 Easy Tips for a Stress-Free Christmas,” WomansDay.com, 09/20/21
Image by artistmac/CC BY-SA 2.0

Plan, Delegate, and Reduce Holiday Stress

Let’s face it, handling all the various demands of preparatory house-cleaning, gift-buying, card-addressing, entertaining, being entertained, church and school events and obligations, fetching visitors from airports, grocery shopping, cooking, and on and on… Well, it’s a lot. This year, of course, the whole picture is complicated by a widespread belief that no gathering should be done at all. These are things to remember when less dangerous times come back.

We have listed some concrete ideas for handling certain problems to reduce the amount of stress that seems to accompany the holiday season, and also discussed the adjustment of mindsets in ways that could smooth some of the rough edges. This may be fanciful, but one suggestion is to develop the skills of a secret agent. In any major intelligence-gathering project or operational effort, meticulous planning occupies an important space.

What do you call yourself doing?

Like a master spy, create a plan. Sit down and figure out how to handle all the demands of the season, with the cunning and precision of a team planning a bank heist. One advantage of having a plan is that it provides the illusion of being in control, and sometimes that little bit of faith is enough to raise a person’s spirits. Writer Jessica Maharaj wrote, “Spread out your errands, so you don’t become overwhelmed with too many tasks at once.” Included in the plan, by the way, should be time dedicated to relaxation.

For PsychologyToday.com, Connie Bennett even suggested creating two separate to-do lists, called “Nice To Do For Me” and “Need to Do For You” (meaning, the rest of the world), and then hit them alternately. The list of things to do for others can even be subdivided into gifts, social events, school-related chores, work-related gatherings, phone calls, guests who will be visiting your home, cards to send, groceries needed, and so forth.

Some people scorn lists, but that attitude only sabotages their own peace of mind. In life, there are few actions we can take that are as small and quiet, yet as satisfying, as crossing an item off a list. A useful list is one of those things of which it can truly be said, “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

The beauty of delegation

If video conferencing will be part of your holiday scene, sign up for the service well ahead of time, and watch a tutorial, so that when everybody else is ready to go, you don’t harsh their mellow. For shopping, study up on the prevalent patterns. A store’s website might contain a little graph, showing customer traffic at various hours of the day, and you can pick the least busy time to shop there. Or call up and ask. Here is the most important part. Both of those chores can be entrusted to someone else.

If you will be hosting a gathering, plan ahead. What chores can somebody else do? Figure it out in advance, so if someone offers to help, you can put them to work chopping veggies or whatever, and at the same time keep them from interfering in parts of the prep you don’t want anybody to mess with. Dr. Jennifer Barton recommends:

If the very thought of delegation makes you uneasy, you should start by delegating a single, low-priority task. As you see the job can be completed successfully without you, you’ll gain confidence in the process and can move on to delegating another task, and then another.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “7 Tips to Relieve Holiday Stress,” PsychologyToday.com, 12/01/09
Source: “Avoiding Holiday Stressors,” NAMI.org, 12/03/18
Source: “10 Tips to De-stress During the Holidays,” JacksonHealth.org, undated
Image by Jamie/CC BY 2.0

In Search of Holiday Sanity

One thing we know for sure about the winter holiday season is that people tend to blithely toss aside whatever prudent dietary habits they might have maintained throughout the year. They put on weight, which is their own business… but as a sideline, they also set a regrettable example for any children who happen to be around. Kids learn from grownups how to become obese. Childhood obesity is exemplified, endorsed, enabled, and empowered by adults.

By assessing our own behavior and making efforts to change it, we can influence the young toward a good direction. At this time of the year, the behavior we might want to work on includes anything having to do with the holidays. If we can learn to de-stress ourselves, we will do less destructive eating. Consequently, there have been several posts here about how to avoid, or at least alleviate, holiday stress.

Treat yourself with consideration

On behalf of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, writer Jessica Maharaj had some things to say that are helpful to people who struggle with mental illness, and also have the potential to help anybody. Probably the most important is, “Be kind to yourself. All you can do is your best and your best is good enough.”

Maharaj reminds the reader that it is “impossible to please everyone,” and even trying to is harmful enough. But then, we run out onto the field and commence to cheerlead the team that is trying to bury us! We beat ourselves up over stuff that maybe other people haven’t even noticed, and that’s no good.

Here is a short and sweet hint for anyone who will entertain guests for a home-cooked meal. Treat yourself right by sticking to the tried and true, dishes you have successfully served before. If you are hosting a dinner for 12, this is not the time to experiment with a tricky new recipe.

… And your animal friends

Cats pretty much take care of themselves, but host families have noticed that if there is a dog in the home, things may go more smoothly if the pet can work off some energy before company arrives. In a list of anti-stress tips compiled for WomansDay.com, Alesandra Dubin suggested,

Take your dog outside for some playtime before your gathering. A tired pooch is a lot less likely to jump up on guests or bark incessantly every time the doorbell rings.

This is a job that could be delegated to another family member, or give the cook a short break if the kitchen can mind itself for a bit.

Be the difference you want to see

In addition to yourself, it is also important to be as kind as possible to others. For Psychology Today, Connie Bennett advised readers to “put on rose-colored glasses” — in other words, make the effort to assume that other people’s motivations are benign, and to put the best possible construction on any interactions:

For instance, before you get annoyed at Aunt Jane, who keeps urging you to try a piece of her apple pie, or your co-worker Frank, who keeps trying to fill your glass with booze, first take a deep breath. Then, step into their shoes and realize that Jane is just showing that she loves you, and Frank is merely trying to be convivial.

It may require the skills of a secret agent to do that much creative pretending, but sometimes making the effort can be spectacularly rewarding.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Avoiding Holiday Stressors,” NAMI.org, 12/03/18
Source: “40 Easy Tips for a Stress-Free Christmas,” WomansDay.com, 09/20/21
Source: “7 Tips to Relieve Holiday Stress,” PsychologyToday.com,12/01/09
Image by Virginia State Parks/CC BY 2.0

Take It Easy on Yourself

There is a difference between an expectation and an intention. An expectation implies that you are owed something. An intention implies that you are going to try for something, or at least leave the door ajar in case something wants to come in. Writer James Baraz encouraged people to set an intention to enjoy the holiday season as much as possible:

By making the conscious decision to open yourself to true well-being and happiness, you’ll be more likely not to miss those uplifting moments and even begin to have your radar out for them. Psychiatrist Dan Siegel argues that by setting your intention, you “prime” your brain to be ready for positive experiences.

We have said a lot already about expectations, and what false prophets they can be. Dr. Amy Meyers offers four specific suggestions that can turn expectations into friends who help us, rather than tyrants that rule us:

— Anticipate something will go wrong.
— Know that you will feel tired after staying out late at a holiday party or with friends and don’t make any taxing plans the next morning.
— Set your expectations for just you. You cannot control other people.
— Focus on what you can control — your time and yourself.

If one must entertain expectations at all, it is best to keep them within the realm of the realistic. If someone believes that a shoe she lost at the Snowflake Ball will be found by a prince who will spare no expense to track her down and ask her to marry him, and expects this to happen, well then, there could be a problem. High expectations often pave the road to frustration and disappointment. Dr. Jennifer Barton wrote,

We set our expectations and we can choose to set them idealistically high, unintelligibly low, or somewhere in the middle. In certain circumstances, having no expectations can be exciting, because it means you have no idea of what’s coming next. You leave yourself open to being pleasantly surprised and you can’t be disappointed, but equally, you have no motivation.

Expectations are difficult to give up, but we could work on modifying them a bit, to fit more comfortably with the unfolding reality’s probable course. The website BFRB.org has many helpful suggestions, starting with the abandonment of perfection as an ideal. Not many aspects of life are perfect, and it’s pretty certain that the holiday season will not be.

How can we make it easier for ourselves? For one thing, we could accept no longer having access to the people or the material objects needed to observe old traditions. It might be better to let them just slide away into memory land. On the plus side, we could take part in creating new traditions that will be loved a hundred years from now. The BFRB.com writer leaves us with one last thought:

Sometimes, our expectations for the holiday season do not match our reality. Hollywood, and our own memories or daydreams from childhood, leave us with images of friendly family get-togethers, perfect gift exchanges, and romantic moments by the fireplace. But honestly, when was the last time you roasted chestnuts with a loved one?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “6 Simple Practices to Handle Holiday Stress,” Berkeley.edu, 12/09/10
Source: “A Guide to Managing Holiday Stress & Anxiety,” AmyMyersMD.com, undated
Source: “10 Tips to De-stress During the Holidays,” JacksonHealth.org, undated
Source: “10 Tips to Manage Holiday Stress and Avoid Pulling or Picking Overwhelm,” BFRB.org, undated
Image by GPA Photo Archive/Public Domain

Save Us From Holiday Stress

The topic has been expectations and their fragile and unreal nature. Generally speaking, the person with fewer expectations is actually prepared to harvest more happiness, whereas someone with a lot of them will often reap disappointment.

To play host to expectations is to set ourselves up to feel deprived, or even cheated. When our expectations are not fulfilled, it gives us an excuse to hold a grudge, nurse a grievance, and eat our way through one holiday event after another like some kind of avenging angel of doom.

The thing about an expectation is, until a person knows how the scenario will play out, there is the constant tension of anxiety, because the outcome is unknown. Of course, self-imposed mental torture is not the only cause of seasonal discomfort. Dr. Elizabeth Scott wrote,

The problem with the holiday season is that we often experience too much of a good thing. While stress itself is necessary for our survival and zest for life (researchers call this positive type of stress “eustress”), too much stress has a negative impact on our health, both mental and physical.

A very large majority of people react with overeating, emotional eating, comfort eating, etc. The finer points could be discussed all day, and still, the end result is a lot of consumption that has nothing to do with supplying the body’s nutritional needs in the most optimal way. You are surrounded by people you might see annually at most, and this encounter will inform their mental picture of you until next winter. They will remember you as the 30-pounds-overweight cousin who never stopped eating.

To make it all worse, the relatives, friends, and businesses who supply the holiday party snacks or full-course dinners are of course operating at the top of their game. They want you to swoon and brag all year about the fantastic things you ate. It’s as if their sole mission in life is to vanquish your good intentions and sabotage your health program well into the next 12 months.

Being “zen”

Whether it stems from bad stress or “eustress,” expectation anxiety does have an antidote, which is acceptance. The practice of acceptance is frequently recommended. This is of course a tenet of all 12-step programs, as described in the famous prayer, which asks for “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” When circumstances shift and are no longer what they were, the goal is to abandon the failure mindset and embrace the opportunity mindset. When the Universe fails to fall in with your plans, a good backup strategy is to try changing to cooperate with the Universe. It might achieve surprising results.

The most enlightened view seems to include the ability to stay serenely neutral. The famous parable of the farmer has been told in several versions that still have the same message. The whole point here is, we don’t have to let ourselves be jerked around like destiny’s marionettes. To entertain expectations, and then feel some kind of way about their fulfillment or lack thereof, is a constantly reactive state that leads to futility. By embracing a rigid attitude, the average human leaves a whole lot of personal power on the table, unused.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Managing the Seemingly Inevitable Holiday Season Stress,” VeryWellMind.com, 01/15/21
Source: “The story of the Taoist Farmer,” TheChurning.net, 12/07/21
Image by Priit Tammets/CC BY 2.0

Screens, Stress, and Expectations

Because we eat to escape stress and achieve comfort, the holiday season is a notorious obesity villain. One of the contributing factors is that other obesity villain, screen time. When they combine, Christmas is by far the overachiever. Television shows pour out powerful reminders of what a celebration of materialism the holiday has become, and that’s just the content.

The commercials that support the content are even more dangerous. In these pandemic days, many American families experience a shaky financial situation. The last thing we need is for the children to absorb constant reminders of all the stuff they are entitled to (according to the voices and pictures emanating from an electronic device).

In this situation, the clear winners are any parents who have been listening all along to the warnings about screen time. If this form of entertainment is limited throughout the year, as a routine healthful habit, it is much easier to maintain those strictures at holiday time. As a result, kids don’t sit around all day munching on snacks, burning zero calories, and salivating over tantalizing food and drink ads. Consequently, they are far less likely to become obese. Plus — bonus prize! — they receive less information about toys and other items that corporations hope to convince them they cannot live without.

Fantasy land

A website about body-focused repetitive behaviors issues a gentle warning:

Sometimes, our expectations for the holiday season do not match our reality. Hollywood, and our own memories or daydreams from childhood, leave us with images of friendly family get-togethers…

Examine your expectations for the holidays. Are they realistic? Perhaps some readjustments are necessary in order to meet your reality.

Many people will defend their presumed right to have their expectations fulfilled, a right that does not really exist. An expectation is a fantasy about something that has not happened yet. It is very similar to a wish, and there is a rather crude old saying about that: “Spit in one hand, wish in the other, and see which one fills up first.”

An aware person will self-interrogate: “Why am I more privileged to have expectations, or more worthy to have my expectations met than anybody else?” Usually, the realistic answer is, “I’m not.” When the talk turns to worthiness, pretty soon it strays into the thorny territory of entitlement. Like it or not, our wishes are no more precious than other people’s, and it is doubtful that, on any given day — even a holiday — the whole world will conspire to fulfill our desires. Dr. Elizabeth Scott wrote,

[E]ven the most close-knit families can overdose on togetherness, making it hard for family members to maintain a healthy balance between bonding and alone time. Many families also have roles that each member falls into that have more to do with who individuals used to be rather than who they are today, which can sometimes bring more dread than love to these gatherings.

Sometimes we need to be kind to ourselves, in terms of how much stress we are willing to put up with from difficult relatives. We can love them in our hearts without necessarily feeling obliged to endure their company often, or for long periods. Maybe a new tradition could be started, like getting together in the even-numbered years, instead of every year. We are allowed to set limits. We don’t need to announce them in a cruel or intolerant way, but we can set them. How? This might be a topic to explore with an in-person or online therapist, starting well ahead of time, to prepare for next year.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “10 Tips to Manage Holiday Stress and Avoid Pulling or Picking Overwhelm,” BFRB.org, undated
Source: “Managing the Seemingly Inevitable Holiday Season Stress,” VeryWellMind.com, 01/15/21
Image by guldfisken/CC BY 2.0