“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.” – Dolly Parton
When facing a problem or conflict, it’s important to try and focus on the things within your control, such as your own behavior and the boundaries you choose to set in your relationships.
By focusing on yourself, you can manage your emotional response to the things that happen in life that are out of your control. While it may not necessarily direct the winds or the resolution of the problem, it can certainly help adjust your sails and change your perspective on it all.
Minimize holiday stress by sharing the responsibilities of holiday tasks. It can be hard to let go of certain responsibilities or tasks, especially if you’ve taken them on in the past. But, letting go of certain duties can allow for other opportunities, such as to create new traditions of self-care, or to connect more intimately with a relative or friend. Take inventory of the many tasks you take on during the holidays and be honest with yourself about what you can let go of, and what you can delegate.
A big mistake that people often make around the holidays is that they focus so much on how they’ll spend time with others, that they don’t intentionally think about how to spend time caring for themselves.
A good way to curb holiday stress is to be just as intentional about what you will do for yourself during the holidays. Even if you spend a few minutes each day, or designate a weekly ritual or self-care activity, when we care for ourselves during the holidays, we can minimize stress and maximize the opportunities to bond with our loved ones.
It can be easy to get carried away with spending during the holidays, especially when we want to please our loved ones or show them that we care. However, when we over-spend, we can sometimes feel depressed after the holidays are over and the bills arrive. Keeping track of your holiday spending and setting boundaries around your expenditures will help you avoid the blues once the holidays are over.
Using substances to cope with difficult emotions is a slippery slope, as it can be difficult to tell when it becomes a problem. Being aware of your substance use, such as how much alcohol you drink, will help you ensure you are coping with holiday stress in a healthy way and will prevent you from developing a habit that sticks with you long after the holidays are gone.
Rather than feeling extreme stress about one particular day, such as Thanksgiving or New Year’s Eve, try to think about the holidays as a season. This perspective will help you focus on what matters over the next several weeks and will help you overcome difficult emotions when things don’t go as planned.
One of the best ways to overcome our own sadness and loneliness is to feel like you’re brightening someone else’s day. If the holiday season has you feeling low, go out of your way to connect with someone else who may be feeling the same thing, such as an older adult. If there aren’t any in your life, try connecting with a virtual volunteer opportunity through a nursing home or senior citizen center!
For more strategies for loneliness, check out the HRI program: Coping With Loneliness here.
Coping with holiday stress can be tough and the pandemic isn’t making it any easier. This week, we’ll share tips to help you not just survive the holidays, but to help you thrive during this holiday season!
Our first tip is to set realistic expectations for the holiday season. This includes being honest with yourself and with your family members about what the holidays will look like this year, especially as the pandemic impacts travel and family gatherings all over the world. Setting realistic expectations also means that you anticipate that things will look different and allow yourself to explore in advance what feelings these changes may arise not only in you, but also in your loved ones.
Being realistic about your expectations will help to minimize disappointment, conflict, and miscommunications around the holidays.
12.15.20| Coping With Loneliness Part II: A Panel Discussion
HRI is bringing back this important topic of loneliness during the holidays, this time with a panel of mental health, substance abuse, creativity, and spiritual experts!
Join the Healthy Relationships Initiative on December 15th from 12:00-1:30 pm EST and learn strategies to cope with and overcome loneliness during an unprecedented holiday season. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions throughout the program and hear live answers from our experts.
Watch the first program of this 2-part series, Coping With Loneliness During the Holidays, here.
Tip 4: Model the online behaviors that you wish to see in your kids.
We’ve all heard that children tend to do what we do and not what we say. With that in mind, how effective of a parenting strategy is it to tell your kids not to scroll while talking with their siblings, when you may be doing just that at the dinner table?
In general, when setting rules around online behavior, it’s important for parents to stick to those standards as much as possible, and when that’s not possible, to make sure that children and teens understand why (i.e., “I cannot disconnect from my cellphone right now because I am waiting on a very important call from my boss.”)
While parents can’t be expected to follow the same internet guidelines as their kids, it is helpful to show that you’ll stick to them as much as you can. ConnectSafely offers some insights for parents thinking about their own online behavior here.
Another good way for parents to keep the boundaries around internet use is to establish rules that apply to the whole family and to make sure that adults and older teens are following these rules consistently.
As parents, the most powerful way to encourage positive behavior from our children is to model those behaviors ourselves, such as being present and putting devices down during family moments, refraining from scrolling when doing other activities, and avoiding the use of screens before bedtime.
As kids get older, parents should be especially aware of the content that they post online and the profiles that they follow, as kids are often highly aware of what their parents do online as well.
In general, a good way to get kids to buy into what you are teaching them as a parent is to model those teachings yourself, especially in regards to online behavior.
