How are you feeling as you experience this holiday season? It’s perfectly normal to experience stress, overwhelm, social pressure, some emotional up’s and down’s, decreased productivity, burn-out and the “holiday blues” during this time.
Stress in itself comes from a variety of stressors, big life events or a series of smaller events and issues calling for your attention. Typically, stress comes from outside sources beyond your control. Your reaction to stress is largely personal and is called your “stress response”. The way you interpret and cope with stress as well as the type of positive or negative stress that you encounter is what it’s all about.
Chronic stress effects health, relationships and productivity, while acute stress can be more manageable and less life altering. You choose to face your challenges head-on, find appropriate coping strategies and solutions to your stress or resort to less pro-active defaults. Because of that, you can be motivated to grow, seek out support and solutions because of stress. You may feel stifled and overwhelmed when you feel stressed, especially if it’s chronic or varied. You may deny, avoid, and possibly sink into the inaction of oblivion, keeping the stress alive if it feels too over-whelming, foreign or long-standing to handle immediately.
Your task is to control what you can, release what’s outside of your control, reduce your stress and re-claim your inner peace, individual life progress. You have the right to take care of yourself. Use your self-care as a coping strategy that helps clarify your mind, calm your emotions, relax your body and soothe your soul.
Clarify what is stressing you out most and go from there. Are you partying too much or not quite enough? Is gift giving with limited finances getting you down? Are you feeling the pressure of the holiday’s spirit to be joyful, happy and giving when it doesn’t match up with your real feelings? Perhaps you are feeling the loss of a relationship or people have either exited or entered your life and you need to let go, transition, and adapt? For many, family interactions or the thought of spending time with family can stir up old, unresolved dynamics and create anxiety.
Your job is to figure out which category of stressors your life currently fall into and then create a workable action plan. If your stress is more temporary or transitional, mostly holiday-related, the good news is that relief is on the way as soon as the holidays pass. If you’re struggling with intense, ongoing or chronic stress you’ll need to seek out support to help you to make sense of, and then learn how to successfully rise above your plight. Wherever you are, no matter your circumstances or what you’re dealing with, remember that time and insight heals. Take the time to care for yourself, heal your life. You’re certainly worth it! Live Inspired!® Nina~ www.LiveInspiredwithNina.com