I woke up in the morning with indigestion. As I switched on the lamp on the bedside table with one hand, I popped two anti-acids into my mouth with the other. Here we go again. My fifty-third Christmas is less than a month away, and this will undoubtedly be the most stressful Christmas season I have ever experienced. As if the holiday stress that usually accompanies this time of year is not enough, this year I will also technically be “homeless.”
The Worst Christmas Holiday Ever
Nine months ago, we decided that it was time to downsize. We optimistically put our authentically renovated farmhouse here in the south of France, with 22 acres of meadows and woods, on the market. It was time to find somewhere to live where the maintenance was less physically challenging with our four horses and four cats. Two months later, the house was sold, but it took our buyer until now to secure his mortgage. It was an unbearably stressful time because we could not buy the house we wanted until we had sold our home. The owner of our dream house finally decided earlier this month that he would sell to someone else.
We have sold our house, and we shall have to move out. Now, the two of us, our four horses and our four cats, have nowhere to go. Finding somewhere to rent with enough land for four horses here in deepest rural France at this time of the year is going to be extremely difficult. The same goes for buying another house. People here take their properties off the market during the winter. Also, it legally takes at least two to three months for a house sale to go through here, so even if we did find another house to buy, December and January this year will be unimaginably stressful, even without factoring in the usual Christmas holiday stress.
Desperately Seeking A Sustainable Solution
Something similar happened to us a few years ago when we were between houses for 15 months. By trial and error, I developed a coping strategy during those suffocatingly stressful months and even wrote a book about it. It might well be a simple strategy, but it is not easy to implement. A certain amount of effort is required, as well as persistence, determination, focus, and commitment.
6 Ways to Help Manage Holiday Stress
As a medical doctor, I often saw patients suffering from stress-induced conditions in the weeks before Christmas. I advised them to:
- Eat a healthy and well-balanced diet
- Get enough sleep every night
- Exercise regularly
- Limit their use of coffee, alcohol, and recreational drugs
- Spend time in nature
- Talk to friends and family and ask for help
Easy to say, but not so easy to do, as I know from personal experience. The first five suggestions are particularly challenging for most of us this time of the year. Most of us end up eating and drinking much more than we planned to do and then make desperate New Year’s resolutions in an attempt to get back on the straight and narrow. Our sleeping patterns are disturbed because of all the late-night Christmas parties we (have to) attend. As for exercise, who has either the time or the will? Spending time in nature is not very appealing either when it has rained non-stop for weeks, and going outside means slipping and sliding through ever-deepening mud.
The last suggestion can have a negative instead of a positive outcome at Christmas: we have to guard against too much of a good thing, as spending time with friends and family, each with their own set of holiday expectations, can cause a lot of stress.
Best Ever Holiday Stress Management Strategy
Nevertheless, these six suggestions remain the cornerstones of my own Christmas stress management strategy. I do my best to follow my own recommendations, sometimes with more success than other times. What never fails me — and this is especially efficient during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays — is to practice mindful gratitude and generosity.
The easiest way to get all the benefits associated with a daily gratitude practice is to keep a gratitude journal. The idea is to cultivate a gratitude habit. It usually takes six weeks to adopt a new habit. If you start the week before Thanksgiving and continue till the first week of January, you will have established a practice that will enable you to manage stress effectively during the Christmas holidays and also for the rest of the year. If you start today, you will still be well on your way to a habit of gratitude by the new year. All you have to do is write down what you are thankful for in your diary every day.
Keeping a Gratitude Journal That Actually Makes You Feel Better
Maybe you already tried to keep a gratitude journal but did not feel noticeably less stressed. You are not the only one who had that experience. The same thing happened to me. So I did further research and discovered that the full stress-busting benefits of daily expressing your gratitude depend on:
- Going for quality rather than quantity. Writing about one or two things in great detail is much more effective than making a bullet-point list of ten things.
- Writing about the people you appreciate is more effective than making a list of possessions you value.
- Taking your time to ponder what you are grateful for is essential. Gratitude journaling is much less effective when you rush to make your list.
- Putting gratitude into action by being generous. Sharing your blessings with others is a habit that you can cultivate at the same time as you develop a gratitude habit. Simply choose a few random acts of kindness that you commit to doing each day.
- Adding mindfulness to the mix: to notice what you are grateful for and to be generous, you have to be mindfully aware of what is going on around you.
The Christmas holidays can be extremely stressful. But it is also a time when developing gratitude and generosity habits can be easier than any other time of the year. Even in the most stressful circumstances, we can always find something to be grateful for. Even if it is only that we are still breathing. When I can’t think of anything that I am thankful for, I do a mindfulness meditation focusing on my breathing. It never fails to calm me down. It helps me to see my situation from a different perspective and to find solutions to my problems.
The only thing that really annoys me is that it took me nearly 50 years to figure out how effective a stress management strategy a gratitude practice can be.
Still Stressed?
We get it — these suggestions can work wonders for many people, but for some, the stress of the holiday season can be overwhelming. It’s a time that can bring up a lot of feelings: joy, sadness, loss, loneliness, jealousy — the list seems endless, and it can be too much. If you find you’re still feeling the strain of the holidays, here are some things that can help you along and even help with the pressures of daily life when the holidays are over.
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