Holiday Stress on Steroids

Holiday stress is real. COVID stress is real. Add them together and we have holiday stress on steroids.

2020 has been a year like no other that I can remember in my lifetime, I have taught about other extremely tumultuous years, where our nation was divided and a worldwide pandemic was wreaking havoc on our schools, economy and national unity, but I’ve never lived it. I know that there are some people, lucky enough to still be alive who have lived through those times. I’ve read stories of people born during the 1918 Flu Pandemic surviving COVID. That’s incredible, but for the vast majority of us, this is a new and stressful experience.

People answering surveys about their mental health have indicated that they have experienced more thoughts of anxiety, depression and self-harm since March when the COVID became big news in the United States, and those statistics usually rise between Thanksgiving and New Year’s as holiday stress takes it’s toll. Add in this year the 288,017 American families and the 1,538,317 families around the world (according to Worldometers.com on December 6, 2020) who have lost a loved one this year to COVID, that’s not including the countless other families missing a loved one due to other causes of death such as heart disease, cancer, accidents, suicide and the various other reasons that people die each year. The holidays will be different for millions of people this year.

I’m not a psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor or therapist, I’m just a regular person who suffers with anxiety and depression who gets stressed out A LOT!!! There are days that just getting out of bed and starting the day seems overwhelming and buying gifts and “Doing Christmas” is extremely daunting.

What keeps me getting up each day is my kids. Knowing that they also have anxiety and possibly depression, I want to show them that it’s possible to talk about those and survive and function and do all the things that people do, even if it’s exhausting, even if it takes all your energy.

Here are some of the things I do that help me to manage the stress. Who knows, some of them might help you too, you’ll never know unless you try.

1. Journal-it helps me to get the thoughts that are racing around in my brain out.
2. Exercise-sometimes it’s stretching, sometimes it’s taking the dog for a walk, sometimes it’s cardio videos I find on YouTube, I just need to move.
3. Find someone to talk to- This can be a friend that you trust or a counselor. I talk to a few trusted friends and a counselor.
4. Read a book-books can take you away for awhile to a different place.
5. Make a plan- Plan how you can conquer what you need to do, it doesn’t need to all be done at once, a little bit each day works just as well.
6. Deep breathing exercises- There are a ton of videos on YouTube and apps that help with this.
7. Guided relaxation- Again, there are tons of videos and apps that help with this.
8. Focus on taking care of you- if you aren’t healthy you can’t take care of anybody else.
9. Start a gratitude list- try to find a few things each day to be thankful for. It helps to take the focus off of all the negative, this is hard to do, sometimes it takes me a long time just to come up with 5 positive things everyday, but I can list 5 negative things in 10 seconds. But this has been a tremendous help in lessening my stress levels in the past few month.

I don’t always remember to do these things, and they may not help you. The point is we all need to try to do what we can to not allow the stress to overwhelm us, especially if we also have mental health issues to deal with on top of the stress.

This holiday season be well, have fun, and be safe!