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Finding the best gifts for friends and family members, decorating, planning and hosting get-togethers, and keeping up with traditions — all those tasks can make the holiday season overwhelming.
Those events can bring much joy, but overplanning the holidays can cause more stress than the happy time they’re meant to create.
“Holidays have a lot of expectations that come along with them,” said Dr. Suzanne Degges-White, a licensed counselor and professor and chair of Northern Illinois University’s department of counseling and higher education in DeKalb, Illinois.
“People might pop in, the doorbell may ring, people want us to show up at events, kids have needs,” Degges-White said. “We can get sucked into doing too much, overcommitting, overspending, and we really begin to resent every day from November 15 until January 5.”
Don’t be surprised if you find yourself in a never-ending loop of overplanning and stretching yourself thin if you’re striving for the perfect idea of what the holidays should look like.
Instead, consider these five ways to reduce your holiday stress and increase your gratitude.
Choose which traditions are important
Holidays are steeped in tradition, whether it’s a handmade gift you give each year or the pressure to cook the holiday meal just how your grandmother used to make it. Traditions are meant to be a way of reconnecting with yourself and loved ones, but they can bring lot of pressure.
“When it’s our turn to carry out a tradition, we feel like we need to do it a certain way, and if we don’t do it that way, we may feel we’re letting other people down, not just ourselves,” Degges-White said.
Consider which traditions you want to keep and which ones can be dropped, Degges-White said. “Sometimes we have to make really tough decisions due to the limited supply of time, energy (and) money that we might have available,” she said.
Drop the need for perfection
People can have high expectations of holiday events and seek to make everything perfect, when most of the time those expectations aren’t met, said clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Firestone, director of research and education at The Glendon Association, a nonprofit that focuses on mental health advocacy in Santa Barbara, California.
“It partly stems from people not accepting themselves or not feeling like they’re enough,” she said. “The reality is that you can have a lot more enjoyment in life if you can take some of that pressure off and not be so focused on things having to be picture-perfect.”
Firestone recommended taking time to decide what matters most during the holiday season, including connecting with family and loved ones or spending time alone relaxing. Then focus on those goals instead of achieving perfection. Thinking back on past holidays can help you find what is most important to you, Degges-White said.
“Come up with five things you enjoy most, prioritize those things, and don’t feel that you have to do bigger and better than the year before,” she said, “because the harder we try to recreate these extravagant things, the less meaning that moment has in time.”
Ask others to participate
It’s worth asking other family members what’s important to them about the holiday season. Those handcrafted ornaments or specialty cookies may look (and taste) amazing, but it’s good to find out if it’s the activity of baking, the cookies themselves or the songs you listened to while cooking that’s special to them. Or maybe they just like doing something with you.
Know that you don’t have to do all the work alone. It’s important to let others help when you are feeling overwhelmed, Firestone said.
“People put a lot of pressure on themselves (and feel like) they’ve got to do everything,” she added. “But the reality is that people feel more included if you let them do things, too, and let them contribute.”
While you may feel as if things need to look or be done a certain way, letting others contribute their best efforts can curb holiday stress — and the group participation can be good for the holiday spirit, Degges-White said.
Schedule some discretionary time
There needs to be some time with no obligations or responsibilities, said Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director of the Greater Good Science Center — a research institute that studies the psychology, sociology and neuroscience of well-being — at the University of California, Berkeley.
Simon-Thomas suggested resisting the urge to overplan, which can stem from “FOMO,” or the fear of missing out.
“Just letting go and appreciating that other people can have really wonderful experiences, and we can savor the what I like to call ‘JOMO,’ joy of missing out,” she said, “and honoring and embracing discretionary time.”
Replace criticism with gratitude
If you find yourself in a ruminative, self-critical mind-set around the holidays, Simon-Thomas recommended practicing gratitude. Doing so might look like making a list and writing down a few things you are grateful for, or just reflecting on the good things in front or near you.
The more one practices gratitude, the more it can shift your habit of thought and get you to pay more attention to the goodness in life, rather than questioning whether you’re good enough, Simon-Thomas said.
“Instead of being worried or anxious in any mundane, ordinary moment, there’s like a fulfillment or a contentment in any given moment — so there’s this optimism, this positivity that comes with practicing gratitude over time,” she added.
“If you’re writing down, thinking about, reflecting on, dwelling in goodness repeatedly, that’s what’s going to come up for you.
“Those habits of thinking make us more capable of experiencing positive states, of relating to other people in friendly and supportive ways, and just managing and handling the difficulties and challenges and setbacks in life.”
