You know, at the holidays, the things that normally stress us pretty much grow to these gigantic proportions. It's kind of like that monster in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, you know, the Bumble. It's like he's so ferocious. That's kind of what our stress can do; can kind of feel so ferocious. Like with the Bumble, we kind of have to pull the teeth out of the stress and make it kind of harmless and let it just kind of bounce.
Letting our stress bounce like the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer's Bumble is really what I want to talk about because if we don't let it bounce, it will tear you. It will make everything less enjoyable. It will make perfectionism go through the roof for these unattainable goals that you have for what the holidays should look like, feel like how things should go, what people should be there, and how they should respond. It'll make things so much harder. Or if you let it go, it can cause you to shut down or feel overwhelmed such that you might get kind of fear paralyzed, kind of stuck, and not able to do as much. That can also weaken your immune system, and you can end up sick for the holidays, and we don't want any of that stuff. It also can just put so much stress on you that your mind won't settle down. You won't be able to get good sleep. You might mindlessly eat, and that causes more stress and body fatigue and just kind of feeling icky in your own skin.
So, we really want to rip those teeth out of the Bumble; take the teeth and the bite out of the stress. The first way you need to do that is to be aware of it. That means being aware of your body. Your body holds the truth about the state you are in. Your mind may think that you're doing just fine. Your emotions may feel totally okay, but your nervous system and your muscles in your body will tell you if you're working too hard, if you're stressing too much, and when you can relax. That tension in your body is when you're truly doing well. So, there may be some unreasonable expectations that you have in your mind. There may be over the top aspirations that you have for this holiday season. You may have demands on your time that you didn't have before, extra commitments, things that you're running to and from, gifts that you're trying to pick up, budget stressors, kids yelling or whining, relationship interactions that are more brisk than usual. It's time to slow down the body. Slow down the body and you will slow down the mind. Slow down the body and you will slow down your breathing. Slow down your body and you will slow down the stress and I can almost hear you right now, but Michelle, there's no time to slow down. That's easy for you to say. You can't know what I'm going through. Yes, yes, it's busy. Yes, it's a challenge. Yes, you can intentionally take time to slow down your physical body and calm it.
Tips for Managing Holiday Stress
- Pretend like you are walking through sand. Softly, gently. The more you force, the more it packs, and you can't get through, but if you just gently walk, it kind of melts away as you go through it. Just really gently slow down your breathing. Take a few moments to inhale for a nice deep breath and slowly release it out as slowly as you can and repeat that for several cycles.
- Take time to stretch. Do some wonderful stretching of your arms and your shoulders and your head. Just do some warmup kind of stretches or some cool down kind of stretches. Touch your toes a few times. Roll your neck, stretch overhead, reach behind you and lift up.
- Take a warm bath. Use some aromatherapy. Get some essential oils or a diffuser, or your favorite perfume, or your favorite fabric softener. Cuddle up with a blanket.
- Get your favorite drink. Oh, my husband said he's loving the Sheetz White Hot Chocolate right now. I have yet to try it, but I am going to. That's on my kindness to myself list for something to do very soon.
- Enjoy the specialness of the season but be mindful of what your body is telling you. If you're carrying stress in your shoulders, if you're carrying tension in your back, if you feel too exhausted at the end of the day or like you cannot get up or like you're driven by a motor and you can't stop, those are all signs that your nervous system is overly taxed and it's okay to relax it. Say no to some activities. Put some things onto a delegation list where you let someone else in your family take care of those things. Order out or order in. Let someone else do some of the things that they can do so that you can do the things that only you can.
At this holiday season, remember that there is only one you. And the reason for the season is not to stress. It's to feel grace, it's to feel love. It's to feel connection. It's to live in the freedom of salvation from Jesus. So, if it's all resting on your shoulders and you're trying to do it all, and you're noticing that it is taking its toll, or even if you're not noticing it because you've gotten so used to the stress that you're carrying, I encourage you to let it bounce. Let the stressors bounce away while you bounce over to something that slows things down and is better for you. Things and time and commitments can be rearranged. You only get this day, this season, this year, so make the most of it by slowing down and living loved.
Go take on the day!
I have a love hate relationship with something and I want to share it with you. I don't know if maybe you feel the same way. You can let me know either way if you want to go to the Facebook group or on Instagram and send me a direct message that let me know. How do you feel about Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol? How do you feel about that? I have mixed feelings about it. Every year I have mixed feelings about it. I suspect I actually like it, but I don't. Whenever my husband says, oh, do you want to watch this? I'm like, no, I don't want to watch this, but yet I do. It's so bizarre.
Here's why: I do love the messaging. I do love the many versions that I've seen of A Christmas Carol. I've read the book. I've seen it with Jim Carrey. I've seen it with Henry Winkler. I've seen it with cartoon characters. I mean, I've seen a Christmas Carol and I've actually read the Dickens story. There's value in all of it. The story is not missed. The story being that how we live impacts people's lives and being generous and helping people impacts them. We can impact them for good or for bad. The way we live our lives matters. In the end, what do we want to be known for? What do we want to have accomplished?
This is good, deep stuff, especially for someone like me who has a therapy background where it's like, well, of course I love talking about the stuff that makes life really important and significant. I don't do small talk. I do deep talk. I really love deep talk. Yet this is dark and it's inspirational. It's like when I read Holocaust books not because I like reading about the Holocaust, but because I like reading about how the human spirit and faith in God and people under the direst of circumstances caring for each other is inspirational. It's both awful and inspirational. Dickens' A Christmas Carol is both dark and inspirational because life often has more than one feeling at the same time, more than one observation at the same time.
It got me thinking about if I'm feeling this way, where, oh, I remember these things of Christmas past that were so good and you might be too. If you're feeling nostalgia towards the things of the past and you are sad because they're not here today and you wish that they were, I want to encourage you that it can be both. It can both be that it's not like it was, and it can be that you can enjoy today as well. It can be that you can make good memories today for tomorrow, so when you or your kids or grandkids look back, they can see these were the good old days for them. That doesn't mean that the future days in their present or your present in the future won't be good for you too. Both can coexist.
I want to talk about that today in the sense that, just like with a Christmas Carol, I can have both a love/hate relationship with it. I can take the good from it, and I cannot like a lot of the stuff that makes me sad or want to cringe when I watch it, right? We can do that with our lives. When we look back and we think about how great things were or even how bad things were, I mean, some people did not have a great Christmas historically. If that's you, you can do this kind of in reverse of what I'm saying as well. You get to places where you look back and things either aren't like that now and you wish they were, or they're better now and you're glad they aren't like that.
What do we do with it when we feel like we're remembering something and it's bringing up something unpleasant, like longing or sadness or regrets or a hope for something that we can no longer have, like people to be with us that can't be here anymore. I want to encourage you to look at those things as something you can do something about in the present. Because when we get wistful, when we look back, we're forgetting that those things help contribute to who we are today. When you can see who we are today. Just like Scrooge, right? He was able to look back with the Ghost of Christmas Past and go, that's how I live my life. That's what led to this stuff. I can change it going forward. Well, it's the same thing with good stuff, but we can't get stuck in the past wishing for those good things and missing out on today's good stuff.
I want you to realize, just like with me and having both a love/hate relationship with A Christmas Carol, you can have both feelings. You can have feelings of nostalgia and longing and grief and loss and sadness. And at the same time, hope and excitement and new experiences and new traditions can await you as well. It's not the end of the story whether the past was good or the past was bad.
If it was good, you can carry it with you. Bring Grandma's favorite recipes to the table. Play a game like you used to play when you were a kid. Bring out the old movies for a little bit.
If it was bad, do something to gain what you didn't have back then. Maybe you didn't get toys, so take yourself out and get yourself something nice. Maybe you didn't have a church family, so go to a church service today. Maybe you didn't have supportive network, so find a support group somewhere.
Don't let the past or your emotions, whether positive or negative, whether abundance or lack, take away from the fact that you are a human being who can experience all of the awarenesses, positive and negative, good and bad, abundance and lack, and they can coexist. Today you get to acknowledge the fact that, yep, that's your experience. Simply part of the human experience, right?
The Bible says to forget the former things, God is doing a new thing. It also talks about remembrance, and I think that's indicative of a place for both leaving behind what is past and pressing forward to the goals in Christ Jesus, but also being informed. We have scripture to look back so that we know the story of where we came from and where we are today. Both are important, but it's the story that you and God are writing today that is where you have your power.
Don't be like the one relative that I have who lost her mom and then all of a sudden didn't go out for special occasions on holidays like, oh, no, I'm not going out. Her mother's the one who died. She acted like she did. She still had time to enjoy, and yet she wouldn't celebrate with anybody because she just wanted to stay home. I get that sometimes you feel like staying home, but this was almost like she set up a shrine and said, my mother died, so I can't go out for the holidays. I want to encourage you that that is not how you have to live. You can both honor somebody or honor a memory and bring the life they lived or the good things from the memory with you into the future or learn from it and do something with it in the present, in the future that makes it good or helps you remember or makes you feel better and honors somebody's memory without losing your present power, your present self. Because the future, when you look back, these are going to be the good old days or the days that you're like, oh, that was really rough.
What you do today becomes tomorrow's past. Just be real about it. It can coexist and that can give you peace. Because you don't have to try to pretend everything's perfect. You don't have to get everything perfect for the holidays. Holidays are not perfect. They're human things. Humans are involved in them; therefore, they're not going to be perfect. The fact that they are perfect is the fact that they're imperfect. We know that the holidays are going to have some highs and some bumps in the road, and that's okay. When we can accept that both exist and we don't have to get stuck, we don't have to make it like, oh, everything's ruined because the turkey got burnt. So what? That becomes a good memory.
Going forward, don't take yourself or life too seriously. Enjoy today and be wise about the story you tell yourself. It's not often either or. Highs and lows can coexist. Good memories and sad memories and present hopes and futures of hope can exist, as can stressors. It's okay to know that this is just part of the human experience. It doesn't have to throw me, but I can grieve when I need to, I can celebrate when I want to, I can remember as I wish, and I can move on and do new things. It's all healthy, flexible empowerment. I hope that helps lighten your load today for the holidays!
