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Slay Your Anxiety During the Holidays

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SVLOne of the challenges of the Holiday Season is that we often lose sight of caring for ourselves.  When we try to make everyone happy and everything perfect, our energy gets zapped. When we’re low on energy, it’s easy to get dragged around by our inner critic and other people’s agendas. In this article you will find supportive holiday self-care tips so you can slay your anxiety and get the most enjoyment out of the days ahead.

Carve Out Moments for Self-Care

If the holidays have you stressed and on the run, create 15-30 minutes each day to quietly do something you enjoy. If you have guests coming to stay with you, plan to get up a bit earlier than everyone else and read or sip your favorite tea by the tree. Suggest a walk during the day, or have an early night and listen to a guided relaxation in bed.

During this busy time, carve out small amounts of time to balance out the energy you are giving away. Enjoy a warm bath, do some inspirational reading, play some music that helps you feel calm and happy, fill your home with fragrances that you find relaxing or uplifting.

Protect Your Energy

Extroverts get a positive energetic charge from social gatherings. Introverts can find it draining to be with people for long periods of time. Many introverts say social gatherings make them nervous or anxious.

If you have a busy social holiday schedule ahead of you, and you fall into the introvert or anxious category, you’ll want to get clear about how you prefer to best care for yourself. Do you need some alone time, or a walk?  Give this some thought and allow yourself some space when you need it.

Taking a walk after a big mealtime gathering allows for space, even if a few people tag along. Being outside will help you digest your meal and clear your head. It’s easy to lose track of time over the holidays and miss out on fresh air and natural daylight, both of which are essential to feeling healthy and energized.

Keep Warm and Nourished

Hot spiced apple cider and herbal teas will keep you warm and hydrated without the stress to your nervous system that coffee and alcohol bring. Make sure you get enough lean protein and nutritious greens each day along with all of your favorite holiday pies, cookies and traditional meals.

Free Yourself from Expectations

You can plan meals and social time to an extent, but holidays are much easier if you can let them unfold naturally. You can’t control the opinions, moods or priorities of others. Set an intention to enjoy your family and friends. Then show up as yourself, and the rest of the experience will play out as it will.

Remember to Breathe

Practice being aware of your body and tension levels. If you notice yourself feeling overwhelmed by noise, crowds, family excitement, etc., make a conscious act of dropping your shoulders and exhaling slowly. Then take a couple of minutes to take some slow deep breaths, no one will notice, and you will feel more relaxed.

You can slay your anxiety during the holiday season by carving out moments for self-care, protecting your personal energy, staying well nourished, freeing yourself from expectations and remembering to breathe.

Wishing you the very best of moments and memory-making this holiday season.

Be Genuinely Grateful

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Banner for SSRC…For what you already have in life and tearing up the list of what you do not have will be gratifying.

“It’s the thought that counts,” my mom would say as I opened a Barbie Doll when I really wanted a G-I Joe. Growing up I often heard this sentiment. But as a child I did not understand the concept of gratitude, for simply being thought of fondly in someone’s heart through a gift or for all that I did have, compared to what others did not have.

There was a time when my focus was negative. The grass always seemed greener on other people’s lawns. A co-worker’s relationship seemed better than mine. The job I really wanted went to someone else. My life view was that my glass was empty. I was wallowing in an attitude of lack. But an ungrateful attitude did not once result in my grass turning green, or my relationships improving, or the dream job to magically appear. Yet, my lack of a grateful attitude persisted until I was taught a very hard lesson by being downsized from an executive position right before 9-11.

Without any prospect of a job in the city where I’d lived for twenty years I had to move away. I was forced to sell the new home I’d moved into only two years earlier. I had to leave the beautiful English cottage garden I’d built stone by stone and plant by plant. I lost my relationship. It seemed overnight I was involuntarily removed from the familiar, from friends, from the life I knew. With a master’s degree I thought finding a job would be a piece of cake. The reality was far from that. In fact, for almost 18 months the only work I could find was picking up trash and cigarette butts for a lawn mowing crew.

In the end, I lost almost everything. In the process, I learned one of the most important lessons in life – the energy I put out returns to me. Being ungrateful for all I thought I did not have caused me not to appreciate all that I did have. I took everything for granted, always focused on getting something better or bigger. I was so focused on how what I had was not enough, I could not see the warning signs that it was all about to be taken from me. So the lesson I needed most, at that time, came in the form of overwhelming loss.

You can bet I was grateful for the executive positive – once it was gone. For the house, when it was gone. For the garden, once it was gone.

Today I am grateful for having gone through that painful lesson. It was through great loss that I learned how much we truly gain from being grateful for what we already have. This makes the list of what we don’t have seem so less important.

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You Don’t Protect Your Heart By Keeping It Closed

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Banner for SSRC… but by learning to choose which people you let get close.

I was in the waiting room of a physician’s office when I overheard the receptionist ask a woman for an emergency contact. The woman flatly said, “Just call the morgue because there is no one to contact.” The receptionist kindly replied, “How about a neighbor, friend or co-worker?” The woman sternly said, “There is no one. I don’t want anyone.”

It hurt my heart that someone wanted to be that alone. Yet, there was a time when I felt the same way. I grew up in a dysfunctional family and screwed up society. Abuse, disloyalty, ridicule, and bullying seemed more acceptable than kindness, respect, trust, and support. Over time I retreated inward, into a fantasy world filled with imaginary friends – those who never hurt me. I thought distancing myself from my emotions, other people, and my heart would keep me from being hurt.

I am grateful that one day I woke up to the truth. Closing my heart did not stop stress, unhappiness, rejection, pain, and disappointment. Life is filled with challenges and people whose behavior is hurtful and unkind. But being distanced from the love and responsibility of my heart actually caused life to lose meaning, direction, and prevented me from having intimate relationships – with myself and others.

We are emotional beings. We are designed to feel our way through life. We cannot prevent each heartbreak or every hurt and pain of life. We are no longer children without power over ourselves and the choices we make. As adults we can dramatically lessen the likelihood of being hurt by choosing to surround ourselves with like-hearted people, those who value the same positive behaviors we do.

The saying, “birds of a feather flock together,” is true because the safest, most respectful, and supportive relationships are those based on shared values. That is, patient people like to be around calm people. Compassionate people seek out those with big hearts. Honest people like truthful people. Self-disciplined people relate to other people who share their level of self-control.

You can do your very best to screen the people you allow to get close to you. Determine what behaviors (honesty, kindness, acceptance, patience, forgiveness, etc.) are important in the relationships you have. Then work on establishing friendships and relationships based on the mutual exchange of the behaviors you value.

It is absolutely okay and necessary to protect your heart. The most positive way to do so is by creating your own group of loving, kind, and encouraging people who you call family; those who prove through their consistent behavior.

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Thanksgiving Anew

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Fotolia_51963380_Subscription_Monthly_MIn the last year, my husband lost his last immediate family member. Most years, our Thanksgiving was spent with his parents or sister, and now they are all gone. For a moment, for this first year, that left an empty feeling in us about this holiday…usually so full of family sharing and catching up…and laughter…and good food.

We don’t have children so there is no connection there…and for many who do have children, they start to go off with their spouses families as time goes by…so that isn’t always an available connection that can be counted on.

At first I was sad as I have big emotional expectations for that particular day. It my childhood, it was always a very happy day with no punishment or arguing. It was good to process that not having immediate family to share it with was a real loss, a genuine grief. I started wracking my brain to think of ANYONE we could invite to spend Thanksgiving with us so I could fill my house with the smell of a roasting turkey. But there are some events that must be genuine and can’t be “recreated” with a new cast of characters. So, what to do.

My brother has been going to an in-law’s house for the last several years with a HUGE group of people we didn’t really know. That didn’t feel like something we wanted to do. Technically we are distant family, but that is not the same as being with people who you know, that you have spent years with.

Then it occurred to me that we could go to the local soup kitchen and serve food to the homeless. THAT felt awesome…genuine good feeling…not recreated feelings. I asked my husband and to my surprise he thought that was a good idea! So the energy shifted. The sadness had to be processed to make way for a new light, a new joy. fotolia_23798303_Subscription_L

I think at this holiday time of year it is important to be honest with ourselves so we can move on to a new experience. If it makes you sad, then be honest with yourself about it, then let it go, and think of something NEW to do for this holiday that would make YOU feel good. The idea of serving people who needed a meal felt very, very good.

As it turns out, my brother is going to have Thanksgiving at his house this year, so we have a place to go after all. But even if we hadn’t had that offer, we were ready for a NEW Thanksgiving. Also I happened to see a cooking show about roasting just a turkey breast with gobs of herbed butter under the skin, so I plan to do that the day after Thanksgiving so we can have left over turkey…the BEST turkey!

The important thing about this special day is to be thankful for what ever we have in our lives. It may even be less that what we used to have, or more. But being in a state of gratitude, no matter where you have your meal, or with whom you have it, is really what this day is about…and it feels awesome. Enjoy!

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