Holiday Stress
Well whether we like it or not the holidays are right around the corner and that means Thanksgiving Dinners, Christmas parties, family visits, in-laws, children’s school functions, Christmas shopping, etc. Are you feeling stressed yet? Let’s look at some of the top stressors during the Holidays and the ways to reduce the stress that can normally happen around this season.
Top Stressors During the Holidays
- Relationships
- Relationships can cause turmoil, conflict or stress at any time, but tensions are often heightened during the holidays. Family misunderstandings and conflicts can intensify, especially while spending several days together in the same house.
- On the other hand, facing the holidays without a loved one can be tough and leave you feeling lonely and sad.
- Finances
- With the added expenses of gifts, travel, food and entertainment, the holidays can make a big impact on your budget. It also can impact your peace of mind and be a joy robber during the time of year where joy is to be embraced.
- Overspending can mean financial worries for months to come.
- Physical Stress
- Even the most excited holiday enthusiasts may find that the extra shopping and socializing can leave them wiped out. Being exhausted increases your stress, and creates a vicious cycle in your relationships. Exercise and sleep are good solutions for stress and fatigue and many times they may take a back seat to chores and errands. To top it off, exhaustion makes you more susceptible to colds and other health concerns.
Reducing Stress During the Holidays
- Relationships
- Seek support. Lean on family, friends, religious or community organizations. Also, consider volunteering your time to help others.
- Set differences aside. Accept your family members for who they are. Keep in mind that you are the only person that you can change.
- Learn to say no. People will understand. You can’t do everything. If they don’t understand, let them deal with their expectations instead of you trying to fix them.
- Finances
- Before you go gift and food shopping, decide how much money you can afford to spend and then stick to your budget. Don’t go overboard with a multitude of gifts. Here are some alternatives you could try: Donate to a charity in someone’s name, give homemade gifts or start a family gift exchange. Keep in mind it’s the relationships in our lives that are most important.
- Physical Stress
- Acknowledge your feelings. Whether you’re sad and lonely or frazzled and frustrated, let it out.
- Be realistic. You can only do so much!
- Plan ahead. Schedule shopping, cooking and visiting so you don’t get caught in a last minute rush.
- Don’t abandon healthy habits. Indulge in moderation.
- Take a breather. Even if it’s just 15 minutes, take some time for yourself.
- Seek support
- Talk about your anxiety with your friends and family. Getting things out in the open can help you navigate your feelings and work toward a solution for your stress. If you continue to feel overwhelmed, consider seeing a professional to help you develop coping strategies and better manage your stress.
The Four Horsemen Continued
The Four Horsemen occasionally take their ride through most relationships. When the horsemen are running rampant, couples begin to believe that there is no way they can work out their problems. Couples start to separate themselves emotionally, spiritually, physically, and financially hoping they can resolve their relationship problems somehow outside their marriage. There becomes drastic and detrimental changes in how we see our spouses positive and negative behaviors. I believe this is partly caused by couples believing the lie that society tells us that marriage is based on happiness and not on the foundational commitments that were made on the wedding day. If my spouse is not making me happy then I’m outta here! That statement is a whole other post waiting to happen that I will get to in the future.
When the relationship reaches this point of disconnectedness and isolation, it can involve what Dr. Gottman calls “flooding”. Dr. Gottman refers to flooding as when “you feel overwhelmed and disorganized by the way your partner expresses negativity. Couples can feel flooded by one another by the ways they express complaints. They get hypervigilant about negative things. The body of someone who feels flooded is a confused jumble of signals. It may be hard to breathe. Muscles tense and stay tensed. The heart beats fast and seems to beat harder.”
The thing is that once the heart-rate reaches 95-100 BPM adrenaline goes into action and the ability to listen and understand at a level needed to heal the relationship goes out the window. The term “fight or flight” is often used to characterize the circumstances under which adrenaline is released into the body.
So how do we break the cycle of these four horsemen so they don’t take our marriage down a path we don’t want to go? Dr. Gottman believes that repair attempts are a way to break the cycle of the four horsemen. Repair attempts involve talking about your communication styles and the negativity in the relationship. It requires making “I” statements that include variations of the structure, “I feel _______ when _______.” These blanks can be filled in with anything because they are your feelings and other cannot make us feel a certain way. We are in control of what we feel. The “I” statements takes the relationship out of attack mode and allows the couple to minimize the four horsemen. If I’m not blaming, then my criticisms are less, my spouse isn’t as defensive, contempt doesn’t creep in, and there is no need for the stonewalling. In all relationships, learning to accept rather that expect will help to create fewer disappointments and assist in lessening the negativity.
What Dr. Gottman and his colleagues found is that couples who maintain a ratio of five positive moments (interactions) to each negative moment have relationships that last. Marriages that fall below a one to one ratio (.8) usually fail. If we want to get the horsemen out of our marriage, we need to jump on a positive horse and get riding! I challenge you to take on the 5:1 ratio for one week in your marriage and see what happens. You might just be surprised and what changes you see happen when you get intentional in your marriage.
What are Your Expectations?
Okay, so we all have expectations. Some are realistic and some are not. My wife should be this. My husband should be this. My children should be behaving differently. I should be farther along in my career by now. People who drive slow should stay out of the fast lane. Do any of these sound familiar?
In the book titled, The Knight in Rusty Armor by Robert Fisher, there is a statement that has been helpful to me for years about the expectations that I have set in my life. The statement is “When you learn to accept instead of expect, you’ll have fewer disappointments.” So many times I have referred back to this quote with much growth and understanding to follow.
Today, I heard another perspective on expectations. The perspective is a formula that says Expectations – Reality = Frustration. I started thinking about all of the times that I get frustrated for one reason or another and started to find this formula to be extremely accurate.
Frustrations in my marriage, in my business, in friendships and with my family have all been rooted in expectations that have not been upheld to my standards. I am the only person that can be accountable for my expectations and for my emotional responses or reactions to the standards not being met.
There is a freedom in setting healthy expectations in relationships. Make this a year of expecting realistically and accepting the reality of the situation. I believe it will add quality to your relationships!