Making it Through the Holidays

With the busyness of the season, it can be complicated to make it through the holidays.

The rush, the shopping, the lists, the extra events… honestly, the extra everything is overwhelming.

Planning family visits and holiday parties and school party snacks and college flights and airport pick ups while figuring out menus, food, special recipes and who is going to sit where after the election season.

At that point, you haven’t even started on cleaning the house, changing sheets, or decorating the tree!

If you have any special needs whatsoever in your family, neurodivergence, dietary restrictions, rest requirements, health issues, or mental health considerations, this is a hard time of the year.

If you have family drama, toxic people, unhealthy relationships, destructive circumstances, or a recent dose of crazy, the holidays are that much more complicated.

The holidays bring darker and shorter days, more sugary treats, less sleep, and hard to plan for situations because of weather and sickness.

Extra anything brings extra to everything.

With these things in mind, it’s not just the holidays that can be tough. It’s birthdays and summer vacation and church events.

If it is special or out-of-the-norm, if it requires changes to schedules or sleeping in new places or a long car ride, it can be difficult to navigate.

If it takes extra energy, planning or scheduling, it’s nearly impossible around therapies, classes, counseling, doctor’s appointments, and meetings.

In light of all of the above, how do you make it through?

How can you make it through the holidays while keeping peace, joy, love, and sanity?

Making It Through the Holidays

1} Talk to someone – I’m putting this first. Yes, I’m a coach and can help walk you through. I’d love to do that. But you can talk to a friend, a parent, a partner, someone from church or anyone that is safe and trustworthy to hold this with you. Talk to someone who will understand how complex this is and hold the story with you without diminishing or devaluing your challenges and struggles. If you don’t have that someone, a life coach can for sure be that someone.

In talking to someone, you also might need to see a health practitioner to talk about supplements, energy levels, sleep, or other health issues you might be having. Find someone local and get some health support just for you. They can be a wonderful resource to you and your family.

2} Do an audit on your mental load – What all are you carrying in your head right now? How many details? plans? calendars? schedules? lists? to dos? Brain dump that stuff into a notebook. Evaluate. Ask for help. Read the rest of this post.

Click here for a free 14 day Brain Dump Guide – it can really help get the mental load out of your head and help you navigate, prioritize, and ask for help.

More journals and options here too.

3} Learn about your window – Have you ever heard of your window of tolerance? You have one. And, the overwhelm means you’re probably working outside of that window. You’re overextended, over-functioning, pushing outside of your capacity and feeling the impact in your body. In coaching, I often have you draw your window and start listing what living inside the window looks like and journaling to find out how much, how often you have to work outside of it to get it all done. This also applies to your nervous system and what you can really tolerate right now. Super important for your health.

4} How many spoons do you have? – Let’s talk spoonfuls of capacity and how to measure them. This goes with the above concept of your window. How often are you using up all of your spoons and STILL grabbing at spoons to keep going and doing the things?

“Unfortunately, capacity isn’t something that you can sustainably ignore. It isn’t something that grows just because you want it to grow. Capacity isn’t guaranteed to expand just because you gain new skills or get asked to take a bigger role in your work. In fact, capacity can shrink. As it diminishes, it’s sending off alarm bells and warning signs in a myriad of ways. Even more, living outside of capacity for extended periods of time will cause incredible damage to your whole self.” – Jenilee, Global Trellis

Making it through the holidays means learning about your window and your spoons and figuring out how to navigate inside your capacity and your tolerance.

5} Journaling – This can be brain dumps like I mentioned above, or it can be all different kinds of journaling. Ways to write down your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and struggles. It can be a way of recording, listing, remembering… all so your brain has space to rest. {check out this one to print, put in a cute binder, and start using for the holidays} Once it’s on paper, you can tell your brain, it’s on paper! There’s something about opening up brain space and mental load that really does make the holidays a bit easier to navigate. Talking through the brain dumps, the journaling, and the things you notice about your thoughts can also be very helpful.

6} Boundaries – This simply comes down to what is yours to do? What will you do? What will you not do? Boundaries are not placed on the other person or family members. They are boundaries that you create and place around yourself to help guide your plans, decisions, needs, wants, and space in many areas of life. Having boundaries allows you to say a full yes or a full no. Knowing what you’re willing to do, what is actually yours to do, and what you can’t or won’t do is valuable information that will help you make it through the holidays. Again, talking this through with someone like a life coach while focusing on your specific situation can help make this more clear and geared for you.

7} Reflect and Discover – What does your family really want? Do they need 3 trees and fully decorated cookies and 10 family recipes and that one specific punch that has 15 ingredients and 5 Christmas crafts? Do you have to bring the main dish to a party? Are they really asking these things or do you feel compelled, obligated, or someone culturally pushed into doing them? Reflect and discover what really needs to be done. What actually means “holiday” to your family? What activities do they want to do? Which ones can you set aside for another year or retire altogether? How can you bring things back to a manageable level? Can you just say no?

8} Take time for you – Talking to someone, doing an audit, journaling, resting, taking a nap, sitting with coffee and a book to enjoy the falling snow, watching a Christmas movie just because, going for a walk, eating a healthy meal, and waking up to a Christmas tree that you love is precious, life-giving, and needed. Releasing the shoulds, musts, and have-to’s allows you to breathe and focus. You have to make that time. You need this kind of time to make it through the holidays. Schedule time for you.

What’s next?

Take a look at your brain dump, your journaling, your audit of windows and spoons.

• What can you release this year to someone else or to not having it at all?
• What part of the schedule and timeline can you simply cross off and not do?
• What can you hand to someone else?
• What are you doing that isn’t yours to do?
• Have you taken the mental load in your brain and set it down on paper?
• Can you talk all of this through and come up with simple ways to stay inside your window and work within your spoons?

Fighting the overwhelm during the holidays is a real challenge.

But, there are ways to make it through the holidays with a measure of calm, your sanity intact, and memories made because your brain has the space to hold new things.

Do you need help to make it through the holidays?