How to Survive the Holidays: Part 2 - Video Transcript

Hey, everyone. I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. If you celebrated, today's video is going to be a follow up of how to survive the holidays. So last week I shared a few tips and this will be part two. I know we have some more holidays coming up in December and January, which can be very stressful or triggering for a lot of people.

So my first tip is to let go of expectations. I think a lot of times we enter into a situation and this doesn't just apply to holidays. This can be any situation and we have certain expectations about how something is going to go, what, be it positive or negative and that really kind of does us a disservice because ultimately we don't have a crystal ball, we can't predict the future. We can't anticipate how something is going to go because it hasn't happened yet. It's important to enter into a situation and the holidays with an open mind and just be sort of receptive and accept that things are going to unfold, how they're going to unfold and all you have control over is how you respond to that.

The second tip is to heal the wound. I think a lot of us have family members that they know how to push our buttons. They know how to get under our skin. Maybe your mom makes comments about your weight every time you see her and it just drives you nuts. This is ultimately touching on something that you are already insecure about. It's important to heal that wound so that if people make comments or ask questions, it's not quite as triggering for you. We can't control what other people are going to say or ask us. We can't set boundaries which I mentioned in the first video, but ultimately we don't have control over what other people are going to say. We have to look inward and heal whatever wound or insecurities we have, that continues to get triggered.

A great way to do that is through therapy. If you find that that you do have these buttons that get pushed when you see your family, I would highly recommend working through that with a professional.

Third is to be cognizant of what kind of energy or attitude or mood you're bringing to the situation, because that often is sort of what we get back. If you're showing up to a party and you think it's going to be terrible and you have this negative attitude, that's the type of energy that you're going to attract, and it's you will, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, which is that what you think kind of becomes your reality. If you think it's going to be terrible, you're going to start behaving in a way that aligns with that subconsciously not that you're doing this consciously and so you're going to sort of make that your reality, so just be aware of that, what kind of energy your attitude you're coming in with.

The next tip is just to remember that you're only responsible for your experience. So this is something that I personally have to remind myself of whenever I host, I tend, my perfectionistic side comes out and I want everything to be perfect. I want everyone to have a wonderful time. I want them to enjoy the meal and I have to remind myself that I'm doing the best I can and other people have their own feelings and experiences and expectations that I don't have control over. If I remind myself that I'm not responsible personally for everyone having a good time, then it allows me to not focus on what's going wrong and jumping into fix it mode, but rather just kind of enjoy the experience for what it is and recognize that there will be positives and negatives to any experience, right? It doesn't have to be all good people will look back at the experience as a whole. Not these little little specific pieces of it and then finally just try to be present and focus on gratitude.

You know, sometimes we lose sight of what the holidays are really about and we can get so caught up in the stress and the chaos that we sort of forget to look at the positive things and the things that we do have in our lives that we can be grateful for, and just to try to be present in the moment.

You know, a lot of times most of us struggle with being present. You know, our mind is either in the future or in the past and so it's really important to just sort of be grounded in the moment and enjoy it for what it is, even if it's not the best experience ever.

So I hope this was helpful. I hope everyone has a great month and um in a wonderful holiday season and I will see you next week. Take care.