Danny Davis
Causes Of Stress To Watch For During The Holidays
The holiday season is always a time of great excitement, thankfulness, and (hopefully) relaxation, but there are also a variety of reasons why the most wonderful time of the year may leave some feeling stressed out.
During the holidays, it’s important to monitor your stress levels and ensure that you’re having an enjoyable and restful time with your friends and family – not leaving yourself feeling frazzled! To prepare yourself for the holidays, it’s important to understand some common seasonal stressors.
Holiday Stressor 1: Entertaining Guests
If your house tends to be the traditional gathering spot for all your friends and family for a holiday celebration, you may find yourself in the throes of some major stress. Between preparing enough food, decorating, cleaning your rooms, and making sure everyone is having a good time, you may not have much time for yourself! If you’re the entertainer of your friend or family group, make sure to schedule some “you” time to recharge and relax.
Holiday Stressor 2: Living Up to the Hype
Often, people feel a lot of pressure to make the holidays a super memorable experience. You may want your kids to have the perfect and magical Christmas morning. The idea of your whole family gathering around a perfectly arranged Thanksgiving dinner table may seem like a vision you want to bring to life right down to each and every tiny detail.
When trying to make these moments turn into your exact visions of perfection, you may forget to actually participate in all the fun and memory-making! Instead of being involved in the events, you may find yourself in a stressful frenzy trying to keep all the details aligned.
Holiday Stressor 3: Dealing with Unpleasant Family Members
Sometimes the holiday season is the only time you may ever see some of your family members – and for good reason. While you may only see some of your family on occasion due to travel barriers, you may only see some family on the holidays because they’re unpleasant!
Many people have members of the family who cause them to feel stressed for a variety of reasons, and knowing that you may have to spend time around these folks can make the holiday season feel particularly stressful.
Holiday Stressor 4: Spending Money
Between the decorations, the elaborate meals, the office parties, the gift shopping lists, and the new family outfits….the holiday season can become incredibly expensive!
People tend to feel a lot of stress around the holidays because it means they’ll be spending much more money than usual. If it’s difficult for you to save extra cash for the holidays during the year, knowing that you may face expectations to spend extra money during this time can cause tension to rise.
Holiday Stressor 5: Experiencing Seasonal Depression
The holidays are often a bright spot to an otherwise depressing point of the year. During the holidays, many folks live in places that are much colder and gloomier. You may live in a place that experiences lots of ice and snow. On top of the colder and harsher weather, you are also facing shorter days with less sunlight.
Many people experience a phenomenon known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). This is a period of temporary depression brought on by shorter, gloomier days with less sunlight. Typically, people who experience SAD recover when the weather warms up again and the days lengthen. However, when you’re experiencing SAD in the heart of the holiday season, it can cause a lot of extra stress on top of an already-busy time of the year.
Mental Health Symptoms Of Holiday Anxiety
During the holidays, people can feel a host of positive emotions, but they can also feel stress. The increase in social gatherings, responsibilities, and busyness can find some people struggling with their mental health.
While it can sometimes be hard to identify signs of holiday anxiety, the following outlines some common mental health symptoms to be on the lookout for when it comes to holiday anxiety.
Nervousness: Persistent feelings of nervousness can be a sign of holiday anxiety, particularly when circumstances do not dictate a reason to be nervous. A person might find themselves constantly feeling on edge and uncertain about nearly everything.
This can make it difficult to engage with others, participate in activities, or be present at various events. It can also prevent a person from living in the moment as there is constant concern about what may or may not happen.
Sense of Panic or Doom: Somewhat on the same lines as nervousness is a sense of impending doom and panic. When a person constantly feels that something bad is going to happen, especially when there is no evidence of such, that tends to be related to anxiety.
Constantly thinking about what could go wrong can create high stress levels that lead to anxiety and prevent you from experiencing joy or pleasure. Additionally, this can create a fear so intense that it paralyzes you and leaves you unable to act.
Problems Concentrating: Another mental health symptom that can be related to holiday anxiety is trouble concentrating. If your thoughts are frequently jumbled and you find it difficult to focus on tasks or activities, anxiety may be the cause. As the source of your anxiety becomes the main focus of your thoughts, it drains energy away from other things you need to be focused on.
Depression: Depression and anxiety are heavily linked and one often coincides with the other. Generally, anxiety that is left unaddressed tends to transform into depression. Depression can look like feelings of sadness, irritability, mood swings, failing to enjoy things once enjoyed, and isolation among other things. When signs of depression present themselves, an underlying root of anxiety should be examined.
Emotional Reactivity: When a person is constantly anxious there can be problems with processing and managing emotions as well. As a result, people tend to be more irritable and upset, and thus act out of those negative emotions. The anxiety robs people of the ability to respond properly to stimuli and triggers, leaving them more susceptible to instances of acting out and behaving poorly.
Persistent Worrying: This involves a sense of dread that lasts for a prolonged period of time. Constant worrying about what will happen next can drain you of energy and lead to even more anxiety than what is already causing anxiety in your life.
Lack of Control: When you feel like you are not in control of anything in your life, you could be dealing with anxiety. Anxiety can often make you feel as though you do not possess the power to impact, change, or affect major things in your life. This is because anxiety can create a false perception of reality that you are then responding to. Dealing with such feelings on a regular basis should be assessed to see if anxiety is at the root.
By knowing the mental health symptoms of holiday anxiety, you’ll be able to spot potential trouble and address it right away. By doing so, you can manage anxiety properly and prevent it from making your holiday season less pleasant.
Physical Health Symptoms Of Holiday Anxiety
The holidays can be both a time of great joy and anxiety for many people. While gatherings and the season of the spirit can bring about feelings of happiness, increased responsibilities and activities can create stress that many find it hard to cope with.
Knowing the physical health symptoms of holiday anxiety can help you to spot and address it early so that it does not get the best of you. While one of these symptoms alone may not mean you’re dealing with holiday anxiety, noticing a pattern of a couple, or more arising during the holidays should be carefully looked into.
Insomnia: Problems with sleep can be indicative of anxiety. Sleep problems can include problems falling asleep, problems staying asleep, or nightmares. Each of these affect the ability to get restful and restorative rest that could help the body and mood. Thus, an onset of sleep problems during the holidays should be looked at carefully as a potential sign of anxiety.
Appetite and Weight Changes: If you find yourself suddenly experiencing a loss of appetite or a dramatic increase in appetite, you could also be dealing with anxiety. Some people deal with anxiety by overeating. Others are impacted by anxiety to the point where they lose their appetite and end up eating less. Either of these impacts can lead to an increase in weight or a decrease in weight (usually drastic) that can mean anxiety might be affecting you during the holidays.
Headaches: Frequent headaches or persistent migraines could also mean that you’re being negatively impacted by anxiety. When faced with anxiety and stress, it can cause mental strain that leads to regular headaches and migraines. If you cannot pinpoint another cause for a sudden onset or increase in headaches, anxiety could be at the root.
Heart Issues: When experiencing high levels of anxiety, it can take a toll on the heart as well. When anxiety levels are high heart problems commonly experienced can include heart racing and palpitations. If the anxiety is prolonged it can also increase the chances of heart attack.
Gastrointestinal Problems: Stomach problems can also arise in the face of high anxiety. Nausea, vomiting, queasiness, acid reflux, and diarrhea can be commonly experienced when a person has anxiety. Not only that, but more serious digestive issues such as GERD can also be experienced if anxiety persists over time.
Panic Attacks: The onset of panic attacks could strongly indicate the presence of holiday anxiety. These attacks often feel like an intense loss of control that leads to feeling faint, trouble breathing, heart-pounding, and nausea among other symptoms. Panic attacks often come on suddenly in response to certain triggers or stimuli. Experiencing such attacks, or a dramatic increase in the number of attacks could alert to the presence of severe anxiety.
Decreased Energy: Low energy levels, particularly when they are lower than they once were, can be a final physical symptom hinting at anxiety. When you suddenly find yourself lacking the energy to do the things you need to do or enjoy doing, it could mean that anxiety is draining your energy making it difficult to get things done.
There are more physical health symptoms that can denote a struggle with anxiety during the holidays, but those listed above are some of the most common. While a single symptom may not be a sign of suffering from holiday anxiety, a combination of these symptoms should be looked into. If you find that anxiety is at the root of your physical health issues during the holidays, take the necessary steps to address it so you can get back to enjoying the holiday season.
Dealing With Difficult Emotions During The Holidays
While the holidays can be times of great cheer and joy for many people, they can also bring up difficult emotions. Events such as loss (death or divorce) can trigger sadness, and feelings of depression or anxiety are often heightened during this time. Other negative emotions such as hopelessness, anger, loneliness, disappointment, regret, fear, and guilt can often be commonly experienced during the holidays.
Acknowledge How You Feel: Often, when experiencing negative emotions around the holidays, people try to push past their feelings thinking that is the best way to move forward. However, whatever negative emotions go unaddressed will reappear somewhere at some point. Pausing to acknowledge your emotions allows you to adequately process them so that you can truly move past them and avoid allowing them to wreak havoc on your life during the holidays.
Plan Ahead: If you are aware that the holidays are going to be a trigger for you, it is important to plan ahead as much as possible. This means knowing your triggers and making plans to avoid or manage them as much as you can. This also means surrounding yourself with the support measures you may need to help you deal with the negative emotions as well. When you are prepared beforehand you won’t be caught off guard by negative feelings and can be proactive rather than reactive.
Focus on the Present: Sometimes we can get lost in the past or become too focused on the future which allows us to tap into negative emotions such as past memories, regret, or anxiety. When you are intentional about staying in the present, it can keep you from veering too far into one direction so that those negative emotions don’t get the best of you. Focusing on the present can help you develop an attitude of gratitude that helps shape a more positive perspective and combats negative emotions in a healthy way.
Healthy Habits: Healthy habits are an important part of dealing with negative emotions during the holiday. The better your mental and physical health are, the better your emotional health will be which will aid you in your ability to deal with negative emotions. Healthy habits include eating healthy foods, engaging in physical exercise, and getting adequate amounts of sleep. These will help you stay in a healthy state so that your mental and emotional health remain strong.
Get Support: There are times when it takes more than our own efforts to deal with difficult emotions during the holidays, and that is completely fine. Being proactive and getting the support you need ahead of time can help you stay on top of your emotions so they do not get the best of you. This may be as simple as having a friend or family member on standby to talk through your feelings with. This might also mean seeking the help of a therapist or counselor who can give you tools and mechanisms to help you cope.
The assistance of a doctor might also be needed to provide medication if the root of emotional issues stems from mental health problems such as depression or anxiety. Getting the support, you need should be prioritized to help you remain well during the holiday season.
Don’t let difficult emotions rob you of the joy of the holiday season. Take the steps necessary to help yourself stay in a good emotional space. By implementing measures such as planning ahead, acknowledging your feelings, getting support, focusing on the present, and adopting healthy habits you can ensure difficult emotions do not get the best of you during the holidays
