Protecting Your Mental Health During the Holidays

The holidays are a challenging time for most of us.

The pressure to stay in the “holiday spirit”, interact with family members that trigger us, buy a ton of thoughtful presents for family and friends, and keep up traditions can deplete us of our energy and stir up anxiety and stress.

Giving ourselves a hard time is one of the ways we might be adding to our holiday anxiety or stress.

During the holidays, our inner critic might be criticizing how we’re managing our time or how well we’re handling our budget for gift-giving. That harsh inner voice might be showing us how we’re not acting in line with your values during family gathering when we’re set off by certain people’s behaviors. We might be judging ourselves for drinking or eating more than we planned. We might be frustrated with our own reactions and difficulty shifting out of negative feelings.

Self-critical talk can ruin our mood and make us feel more anxious.

What can we do?

To start, you can remind yourself that you are worthy of prioritizing your own needs this holiday season. Your inner peace, joy, and happiness matter. Your well-being, rest, and sense of ease matter, too.

Holiday anxiety can come from our big efforts to please friends and family at the huge cost to our own peace and well-being.

It’s okay to say no to an event you don’t want to go to or choose to go for a limited time. It’s fine to want privacy when your aunt asks you personal questions that make you feel super uncomfortable. It’s okay to ask for a new approach to gift-giving — like a white elephant exchange — when your finances are stretched.

The more you practice speaking up for your needs, making requests, and setting empowered boundaries to courageously protect your peace during the holidays, the less anxiety and more freedom you’ll experience over the years to come.

Look for the Glimmers

It’s easy to feel triggered by people and environments. Instead of focusing on our triggers, we can focus on the opposite – “glimmers”. Deb Dana, a licensed clinician and author, coined the term ‘glimmer’, which refers to a micro-moment that sparks joy or peace, which cues your nervous system to feel calm.

During times of stress, you can actively look for glimmers that bring a spontaneous moment of peace on the spot.

Glimmers are all around us.

They could include the warm smile on your aunt’s face, the smell of your morning coffee, stroking your pet, or listening to your favorite song.

As you go through your day, it can be helpful to keep track of your glimmers and then purposefully incorporate them into your life.

Self-Compassion Exercise for Anxiety

(Adapted from Dr. Kristin Neff’s Mindful Self-Compassion Program)

Practicing self-compassion means being kind toward yourself when you fail, make a mistake or are focused on something “wrong” about you. It’s acknowledging that making mistake, experiencing difficulties, or falling short of your expectations are all part of what makes you a human being, and is something we all experience. 

Here are some phrases you can use when you’re feeling anxious and/or aware that you’re criticizing yourself.

1. Anxiety is here. This is painful. This is a moment of suffering.

2. Imagine other people in the world experiencing the same pain in the same moment. Suffering is a part of life. Other people feel this way. I’m not alone.

3. May I be kind to myself. May I accept myself as I am. May I forgive myself.

Simple 4-4-4 Technique for Stress & Anxiety

4-4-4 Breathing Exercise:

 Practicing a regular breathing exercise can be a useful tool for achieving a relaxed state of mind and reducing anxiety. When you’re feeling anxious, you might notice your breathing becomes fast, shallow, and from your diaphragm.

By breathing slowly and from your belly, you can switch from fear and anxiety to a state of calm in only a few minutes. You’re engaging your parasympathetic nervous system, which induces a relaxation response in the body (opposite of “fight or flight”).

Exercise:

Find a comfortable position, sitting or lying down.

Breathe in slowly, through your nose, to the count of 4 seconds, allowing your abdomen to expand.

1-2-3-4

Hold your breath to the count of 4 seconds.

1-2-3-4

Exhale slowly, through your mouth, to the count of 4 seconds, allowing your abdomen to contract.

1-2-3-4

Third Wave of CBT: What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)?

Created by psychologist Steve Hayes in the 1980s, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, pronounced as the word "act") is considered part of the “third wave” of cognitive behavioral therapy.

 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) gets its name from its key objectives: accept what is out of your control, and commit to action that improves your life. The goal of ACT is to create a full, meaningful life, while accepting that life will always include pain and suffering.

The goal is not to reduce or eliminate your symptoms. In fact, trying to directly control, lessen, or suppress your symptoms is not only ineffective, but often makes things worse.

 What is “psychological flexibility”?

ACT defines as “psychological flexibility” as being able to stay in contact with the present moment, despite any painful and uncomfortable feelings, thoughts, or body sensations that come up. Rather than try to suppress or avoid our negative feelings and thoughts, we can accept them as a more adaptive response to our challenges.

Mindfulness Skills

In ACT, there are three types of mindfulness skills that are taught to help you deal with difficult feelings, thoughts, and sensations effectively, so they don’t hold such a strong grip.

Defusion is distancing from your thoughts.

Acceptance is making room for uncomfortable feelings and thoughts.

Being present is engaging fully and openly with the “here and now’. 

Taking Action

ACT methods encourage you to identify what is important to you in your life, as a way to motivate and guide you to make the positive changes necessary to have a meaningful life. Once you have clarified the underlying values you want to live by, the next step is to manifest these values by setting goals and taking action to reach them.

Clarifying Your Values:

Values clarification is a process in which we reflect on what matters to us, deep in our hearts.

What do you want your life to be about?

What kind of person do you want to be?

What do you want to do with your time?

Clarifying what’s important motivates and inspires us, and provides the roadmap for our actions.

Committed Action:

Committed action means “doing what it takes” to live by these values, even in the face of pain or discomfort. Committed action starts with setting goals, identifying obstacles, and persisting flexibly in achieving values-congruent living.

Transforming Perfectionism-Based Procrastination

As a perfectionist, you might have high standards and expect a lot from yourself.

Procrastination can be a symptom of perfectionism. When you’re afraid you won’t be able to complete a task perfectly, you might put it off.

You may fear how others will criticize or judge you. You may worry about disappointing people.

Dreading the thought of doing poorly can come from seeing your achievements as a measure of your worth.

You can get stuck in a loop.

You expect and desperately want a great outcome but doubt whether you can achieve perfection so you wait until you can do it perfectly.

It can become a frustrating loop since you end up wasting valuable time beating yourself for putting things off.

By freeing yourself from this habit, you can better use your time to accomplish more with less stress.

How do I break the pattern?

1. Look at what cognitive distortions are at play in your thinking and challenge them. Perfectionism usually includes some all-or-nothing thinking, ‘should’ statements, and overgeneralizing.

   Some examples are: “I should always push myself”, “I should always be productive”, or “If I can’t do something perfectly, why bother?”. What could you tell yourself to defeat those thoughts?

2. A driving force behind perfectionism is usually a desire to show people you are good enough to be loved and accepted.  It can be hard when your sense of worthiness is tied to your achievements, success and productivity.

   Are you still lovable even if you are flawed and make mistakes? Are you still worthwhile as a human being if you aren’t being productive?

3. Lastly, what would it look like if you changed your mindset about making mistakes? Do you look at your mistakes and use the experience and clarity to base your next decisions on or do they immobilize and embarrass you?

   It’s easy to feel discouraged and feel like a failure. It takes a lot of courage to accept a mistake, learn from it and move forward. What if you saw mistakes as opportunities for valuable experience and insight for future actions? What if experimenting and making mistakes were a necessary and expected part of the creative process for finding solutions?

   If mistakes help us learn and grow, how might that change thoughts about failure?

Perfectionism-based procrastination is a habit that can be transformed with insight and new actions. Using a Habit Log to examine feelings and thoughts combined with other CBT motivational methods, you can shift the way you relate to getting things done and how you talk to yourself along the way.

Could I Have Social Anxiety?

Everyone - even the most social people - has some degree of worry or discomfort about being around other people. 

When the discomfort becomes intensely distressful or starts to interfere with your life, it could be social anxiety. 

You might avoid social situations as much as you can. You might feel really uncomfortable or self-conscious talking to strangers, making eye contact, or entering parties.  Starting conversations or making small talk can be a nightmare. 

Most socially anxious people dread social situations due to fears about being judged by others, being embarrassed and showing it, or accidentally offending someone.  Some people dread performance situations in which humiliation or embarrassment could happen - ex. speaking in a meeting or giving a presentation. 

Some of the physical symptoms can manifest as nausea, sweating, blushing, or trembling.  Your heart may race, or you might get an upset stomach. 

Without treatment, social anxiety can continue indefinitely. Most people with social anxiety have experienced symptoms for over 10 years before searching for a therapist. Social anxiety can feel incredibly isolating, which can make it hard to find help. 

Treatment for Social Anxiety

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the "gold standard" for treating anxiety, encourages people to transform their negative thoughts and feelings. The main goal of CBT is to identify irrational beliefs and thought patterns and replace them with positive ones that are actually believable.  This is not just trying to "think positive", as friends may have suggested to you. If it were that simple, you would have kicked social anxiety to the curb years ago! 

Your brain has become used to thinking negatively and anxiously. It takes practice and repetition - every day - to train yourself to think in a new way.

As your core beliefs change, so does how you see the world around you. With more and more practice, you can expect to experience long-lasting improvement of anxiety symptoms and a stronger sense of well-being. 

A sense of belonging and connection are key human needs -  just like the need for food or shelter.  When you're able to overcome social anxiety, being with people can actually be fun and enjoyable. Your health and happiness exponentially improve.