Avoiding Holiday Stress
Redemption and co-dependency
How many of us avoid going to church or temple all year, only to show up on a high holy day like Christmas? One of the emotional pitfalls of the holidays we all tend to share is using the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas to redeem a year of disappointment or shortcomings.
We reach out with holiday cards to people whom we’ve ignored all year. We buy expensive gifts to show our loved ones how much we care. We bake cookies for the neighbors, make gingerbread houses with the kids, adorn our homes and entertain ferociously to make everything perfect for everybody.
In addition, we cram all this into 30 days without much help from others. It’s as if you’ve decided to stage an extravaganza for a large audience with only one stagehand — you!
Normally we would know instinctively to avoid such a production, but during the holidays we tend to get swept away. As keepers of our family and religious traditions, women often feel it is their sole responsibility to create an idealized holiday experience — and our culture perpetuates this role.
Since life isn’t perfect, this perfectionism is bound to disappoint us. And the sad part is that by doing it all alone, we end up feeling all alone. This can manifest itself as resentment and bitterness towards the very people for whom we are putting on the show.
Inherent in this is a kind of co-dependency — a sense that in some way we are responsible for everyone else’s happiness. Women are conditioned from birth to think of others before themselves. As a result we tend to lose sight in adulthood of where we end and our loved ones begin. This is why knowing yourself and asking for help when you need it is so important. Moreover, allowing others to help (even if they don’t do something the same way you would) paves the way for the holidays to become a time of happy collaboration. It allows your family and friends to give back to you in a meaningful way. The art of graciously receiving such a gift is a wonderful thing to learn to do — now and at other times of the year.
Holiday depression
Death, divorce, absent loved ones, empty-nesting — these experiences create feelings of grief, sadness or loneliness that may seem out of place during the holidays. Most of us have had at least some happy holidays, and those tend to be the ones we long for when they’re gone.
It’s important to honor those feelings rather than trying to suppress or ignore them. Make time to remember lost or absent loved ones and enjoy fond memories. Trying to suppress or ignore those feelings may lead to compensating behavior like eating or drinking too much.
We know that social support — family and community — is a crucial factor in long-term health. Women who have satisfying relationships have been shown to ward off chronic diseases better. Those positive connections support physical and psychological health in profound ways.
It stands to reason then that one way to protect ourselves from some of these feelings is to establish meaningful ways to connect with others. Luckily, the wonderful spiritual aspects of the holidays can provide many ways to step out into your larger community. So honor the lost or absent connections, but make new ones, too.
Emotions and stress
In my personal and professional experience I have come to know, unwaveringly, that we have to look at a woman’s whole life picture to find the underlying causes of her health concerns. We simply cannot underestimate the importance of emotions and memories as a source of additional stress.
In the comprehensive Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, researchers found a direct correlation between emotional trauma in childhood and health problems in adulthood. The correlation was so strong that one of the authors observed that it called into question the conventional theory of disease.
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