How to Create a Holiday Emotional Support Plan

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The holiday season can be particularly emotionally challenging. Financial pressures can cause anxiety and frustration. Family dynamics can complicate the delicate balance of your immediate family. Family expectations can lead to disappointment and aggravation. Missing or separated family members can heighten emotional distress. There's suddenly a lot more do to, with the same amount of money in your bank account and the number of hours in the day.

With these additional variables, it's reasonable to feel more anxious and stressed. Dealing with these stressors may require a little more planning and prioritizing your mental health, just for the next few weeks.

The following strategies are divided into two categories: one-minute strategies and 10-minute strategies. Choose some of your favorites and try to do one a day for the next few weeks.

One Minute (or Less):

• Candle breath. Try to exhale just forcefully enough to make a candle flame flicker but not enough to extinguish it. Close your eyes. Relax your shoulders and the muscles around your mouth and jaw. Imagine the candle flickering softly with each breath.
• Energy blast. This can work especially well if you've been sitting or staring at a computer screen. Stand up, get outside, and move your body in any way that feels good. Do 25 jumping jacks, or find a nearby staircase and run up and down three times.
• Try a mantra. Practice what I call an "Emotional Boundary Mantra." Say three times in a row, "My emotional health is just as important as the happiness of others." or "I am responsible only for my own emotional well-being." Smiling and breathing deeply while you repeat your mantra will help you recenter and regroup.
• Chew gum. Chewing gum may help reduce overstimulation in your central nervous system because your Neanderthal brain believes you must be safe from predators if you're eating.¹² This is a simple way to calm yourself when you're running errands, cooking dinner, or doing laundry.
• Cloud spotting. Spend 30 seconds observing nature. You can watch the clouds move slowly across the sky. You can watch a single branch move in the breeze. You can find a tiny bug on the sidewalk and watch it intently. Tuning into nature can help reset your central nervous system, ground you, and return your focus to the present moment. When you are safely in the present moment, it's much more difficult to feel flustered about the past or worried about the future.

10-Minute Strategies:

• Listen to a special playlist of songs. Sit in your car and listen to music you loved as a teenager. Your brain is particularly neuroplastic during your teenage years. This means that the music you listened to regularly and the movies you enjoyed most became ingrained in you more deeply and carry even more emotional meaning than recent music or movies. Make a few different playlists of songs you loved during your teenage years.
• Stretch yourself. Remove yourself from whatever space you've been in most of the day; get out of the car, leave your office, or walk out your front door. Then, put your phone on "do not disturb" and move your body in a way that feels good to you. Stretch. Twist. Lie down on the ground and put your feet up on a nearby wall. Try to make your body as long as possible. Shift your attention from the thoughts in your head to the feelings in your body.
• Do a 20/80 vent. Grab something to write with and find a quiet spot. I recommend you spend 20 percent of the page venting your feelings, no matter how extreme or overboard they might seem. Then, spend the remaining 80 percent of the page focused on what you want. Write out what you want to have, be, do, or believe instead of whatever frustration or pain is happening in your life at the moment.
• Linger on the best-case scenario. Visualization is a positive and powerful way to ease your fluster and calm your nervous system. Many people are very good at imagining worst-case scenarios. That's why it's important to purposely challenge yourself to instead imagine the best-case scenario. Get into the details and feel the feelings if at all possible.
• Act like a kid. As adults, we rarely take time to get creative or act silly. Do any physical activity you wouldn't typically do, like hula hooping, roller skating, or jumping on your kid's trampoline. Skip down the street like you're in third grade again, grab some chalk, and draw out a hopscotch game on the sidewalk in front of your apartment. Getting your heart rate up can reduce feelings of anxiety and enhance mood.³⁴

Understand that the holiday season is full of emotional landmines for many people. You are not alone. Be kind to yourself. Use the strategies that serve and support you as often as necessary. This is a temporary time of heightened stressors. Do what you need to do to support yourself in a healthy and productive way, and everyone you love will benefit as a result.

For more practical emotional tools and strategies, check out my new book.