Self-Care During the Holiday Season (a gentle perspective shift)
The holidays can be a time of feeling both festive and stress-tive.
Okay, stresstive might not be a real word, but the feel of it seems to encapsulate the unique blend of both festivity and stress that can come during the holidays.
Sometimes in the middle of all the celebratory gatherings and yule tidings, feelings of overwhelm, grief, of stress can surface.
Here’s a few reasons that might make the holidays feel a bit of an emotional roller-coaster:
End-of-year deadlines, extra get togethers, more activities can create added stress
Expectation of time with family, which can bring up challenges if we’re struggling with any kind of family-related discord, trauma, estrangement, or alienation
Financial stress/extra demands to spend money, time and other resources
Feelings of grief if we have suffered loss and miss the presence of loved ones or are separated from loved ones
Increased feelings of loneliness if we feel disconnected, isolated, or are having relationship challenges
Seasonal Affective Disorder and other feelings of sadness/depression related to environmental factors
Awareness that December means another year has gone by, which can sometimes bring up difficult feels if our lives aren’t where we’d like them to be
Phew! There’s a lot of challenging things on that list, and chances are we all relate to at least one.
So how do we keep perspective and take care of ourselves?
While the answer to this question is going to be different for each, based on who we are and our unique way of being, here’s a few gentle ideas and perspective shifts that might help you move through December with a bit more ease and grace to help create a holiday season that feels authentic and self-caring for you.
1. Permission to listen to your needs and do you.
Check in with where you are at this year. Ask yourself what you need this month. Try to focus on doing the things that feel right for you and letting go of the ones that don’t.
If you have to do something out of obligation or tradition, and you wouldn’t feel in your integrity if you skipped it, then try and think about how you can approach it in a more authentic way that empowers the integrity of your choice.
Part of learning to live with more inner peace and wellbeing is learning to give ourselves permission to structure our life in a self-honoring way, which means learning to redefine things in a way that works for us.
If something isn’t working for us, it’s always helpful to be investigative and ask ourselves why and what aspects of something might we be struggling with or reacting too?
Once we’ve identified the source of the challenge, it helps us be more thoughtful in our approach so we can try doing something differently, taking a different approach, adopting a more empowering attitude or creating new solutions.
For example, I once bought a tiny pink tree the first Christmas after my divorce, because I still had too much sadness attached to my old decorations.
I made a conscious decision to reinvent my space for the holidays and create new memories, and while it didn’t take away some of the grief and sadness I felt that first Christmas, it did help me welcome in new opportunities for joy and shift my focus on the present moment.
2. Make space for all your feelings and aspects of self.
We are a multitude of feelings, sensations, moods and emotions. There is no right way or wrong way to be. Sometimes our mood doesn’t always match the expectation of an occasion and that’s okay.
During the holidays, it’s not unusual if we experience emotions that might feel lighter and easier along with emotions that might feel heavier for a variety of reasons.
Prioritizing self-care is about learning to have grace with ourselves wherever we’re at.
The key here is to remember that we are capable of feeling all kinds of emotions and we are able to hold both goodness and hardship within us at the same time.
Life is composed of both light and shadow. Beginnings and endings. Joy and grief. Harmony and discord.
The trick to working with our emotions is not to deny the challenging ones that exist within us, but to learn to make space for them and find constructive ways to acknowledge them, so we can move through them.
I could write a whole post on this - in fact if you want to dive deeper, you might enjoy this blog post on the topic or this video - but for the purposes of this post, this quote by Rumi beautifully sums up the perspective on welcoming the whole of our experience:
3. Create sacred meaning in your own way.
The word holidays is derived from an Old English word that means holy days. And holy can mean many things, but my favorite interpretation of it is something that is hallowed and sacred.
I’m a believer that we have to find ways to make the everyday sacred and extraordinary. To look for the magic hidden in life’s routine moments. To develop an eye for noticing joy and tiny blessings and little miracles happening all around us.
Any day is an opportunity for a holy day when we are staying in our hearts and working on creating light in the world. It’s a matter of learning to align our minds with what our heart already knows—
We are here as a soul on this human journey to grow, experience, and learn about love.
The onus of responsibility to create meaning in life falls on us: it is up to us to develop perspectives that nourish our souls, to seek the spiritual principles we resonate with, and to live our lives with authenticity and truth.
If there’s something about this season that doesn’t work for you, then gently think about how you could create your own forms of magic, reverence, and meaning this December.
How can you be a good friend to yourself and witness your journey? How might you create your own ritual or tradition around whatever holds meaning for you? How might you set a monthly intention that resonates with the visions you hold in your heart?
Small moments of meaning create a bigger composition of living in a way that feels authentic, real, and true to ourselves, and that is always meaningful.
Ultimately, self-care is found through the quality of intention we bring to all acts of self-solicitude.
Particularly when those acts are done with the aim of pouring something meaningful and nourishing into our cups.
Whether it’s changing how we approach something and redefining it in a way that works for us, making space to reflect on how we could live at a pace that feels right for us, or just doing something kind for ourselves - it’s all about learning to check in with ourselves and take care of our needs and unique being.
Hopefully when we do that, our holidays can become more festive than stresstive ;).
But regardless of where you might find yourself this time of year, please take good care of you and your heart.
And with that have a beautiful, self-paced holiday season and I leave you with this final quote that comes from a poem I wrote one December many moons ago…
If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy the blog Grace, Growth & Gratitude or this recent episode from the Your Heart Magic Podcast.
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