Mindfulness & the Holi-daze
My sessions throughout the holi-daze season have several reoccurring jingle jangle themes. Many people feel overwhelmed by seasonal to do lists, experience familial stress and struggle with boundaries, and feel pains of grief and loss. Mindfulness is the practice of being attentive and aware of your internal and external worlds and paying attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them. Practicing mindfulness can help soften the symphony of seasonal depression, holiday anxiety, and relational stress.
Here are three ways to use mindfulness strategies to help you traverse the holiday season:
1. Last night I sat down with my wife and we wrote out what is left on our holiday to do list. The list was long…… we still need to take the yearly Christmas cat card, make our neighbors gingerbread cookies, and figure out what to get our dads! During our conversation, I noticed that my shoulders started to tense up, my chest felt tight, and the room seemed to heat up. When we start to feel our anxiety rise, pausing for a moment to notice and use our senses (sight, touch, smell, taste) to ground can help us feel more present and able to manage the here and now.
2. To be honest, we should rename therapy sessions during the holidays to “What did your parent/sibling/aunt/friend say this time?” When we get around our families during the holidays, many of us re-enact familiar (sometimes dysfunctional) patterns and become easily flooded. Mindfulness is an effective tool to notice what you are feeling and what your needs are. For example, if your Uncle Joe starts to rant about your vegetarianism and how not eating meat is offensive to America, take a step back and notice the emotion you feel. After investigating the emotion check in with the emotion’s corresponding need. Then, use an I statement to express how you are feeling and what you need in a respectful way. That might look like saying: “Dear Uncle Joe, when I hear you criticizing my choice to be a vegetarian, I feel angry and hurt. I would really appreciate it if you could please respect my values. If you continue to criticize my food choices, it will affect our ability to connect this holiday season.”
3. The holidays are a time that often creates waves of grief and loss. It is important to honor that you may experience both joy this holiday season and simultaneously feel guilty that you feel joyful. It’s amazing that we can hold so many seemingly contrary emotions at once. Self-compassion is important in validating the emotion you are feeling and reminding yourself that there is no “right” way to feel on a holiday.
