How to Thrive this Holiday Season by Managing Expectations, Temptations, and Family Dynamics - Emma Solo (Ep.6)
Dec 06, 2023Episode 6
Emma Viglucci
Do you find the Holiday Season stressful and overwhelming, wonderful and magical, or all of the above? You are not alone in feeling ambivalent about the holidays. There is so much that takes place and that we experience in a short amount of time. And yes, I know- first world problems…
None-the-less this is part of our experience and to deny it or minimize doesn’t serve us.
The opposite is true. In having awareness of how we are operating and feeling we can have our own back, address what’s not serving us, and create the magic we seek…
The holidays, just as anything else in our life, are what we make of them. Do we make them more challenging than they have to be? Do we create bondage we are approach? Do we trigger ourselves? Do we give our power away? Do we create misery? All this can be avoided and the opposite created.
We can have a smooth end-of-year, magical holidays and exciting new year only if we are intentional and proactive about what we create…
In today’s episode, I fly solo to help you have your own back. I cover the things that make the holidays challenging and offer ways to manage, anticipate and get ahead of them so a smoother and more enjoyable, joyful and magical season…
DISCLAIMER: This content is meant to support your Journey and not as a replacement for professional assistance. Additionally, the ideas and resources provides by our guests are their ideas and recommendations alone and not necessarily a reflection of the host’s.
Do you find the Holiday Season stressful and overwhelming, wonderful and magical, or all of the above? You are not alone in feeling ambivalent about the holidays. There is so much that takes place and that we experience in a short amount of time. And yes, I know- first world problems…
None-the-less this is part of our experience and to deny it or minimize doesn’t serve us.
The opposite is true. In having awareness of how we are operating and feeling we can have our own back, address what’s not serving us, and create the magic we seek…
The holidays, just as anything else in our life, are what we make of them. Do we make them more challenging than they have to be? Do we create bondage we are approach? Do we trigger ourselves? Do we give our power away? Do we create misery? All this can be avoided and the opposite created.
We can have a smooth end-of-year, magical holidays and exciting new year only if we are intentional and proactive about what we create…
In today’s episode, I fly solo to help you have your own back. I cover the things that make the holidays challenging and offer ways to manage, anticipate and get ahead of them so a smoother and more enjoyable, joyful and magical season…
DISCLAIMER: This content is meant to support your Journey and not as a replacement for professional assistance. Additionally, the ideas and resources provides by our guests are their ideas and recommendations alone and not necessarily a reflection of the host’s.
Emma:
Hello lovelies, welcome to another episode. I am so excited for today's topic. I especially chose it to have your back during this holiday season. I know that this season could be really challenging for people. Whether or not you are usually an even keeled, easygoing person, it could be challenging for you and stressful. Even if you have some mental health issues, substances issues, addictions issues or conflicts and situations going on in your homes - this time could be even more challenging for you. So I recorded a few things that I think would be helpful for you, identifying what might be the things that get you and also what to do to have your back so you have this more smooth, beautiful, wonderful holiday season as easy-peasy as possible. I wish you a wonderful holiday season. Stay tuned for the episode.
Emma:
Even though we love the holidays, they can be challenging. So something that we experience is a lot of holiday stress and even though we look forward to the holidays, we might have a hard time with them. So today I want to talk with you about how to do the holidays differently so that they don't have to be as stressful and as challenging as they potentially could be for you. So the first thing that I want to share with you is the things that might make the holidays challenging, so you could stay in the lookout for what might get you. And then I want to show you what to put in place for yourself ahead of the holidays, as the holidays are playing out, and during the activities, the festivities in the event, so that you can have an easier go of it and actually enjoy the holidays a lot more.
Emma:
The first topic is managing expectations. So one of the things that get us is having expectations that put us over the edge, if you may. So one we might experience things like a lot of pressure to make everything really pretty, to have very lavish or nice gifts, or a lot of gifts, all the different things that we have to do, performing a certain way, doing things in a particular way. We might feel pressure in terms of what our accomplishments are. When we hang out with family members, we might feel that maybe we haven't accomplished as much, but we're not doing as well as we would like, and so there is some shame there about how we're doing. And then there's that expectation of we're not meeting expectations, or an expectation of feeling not good enough, or that we're going to be criticized, or that we're going to disappoint people or let people down, or that we might lose the competition between other family members that might be doing better than us.
Emma:
All these funny things that we might do to ourselves with the expectations that we have about who we are, how we should be, who we should be, how we should be being and how we should be doing the holidays. So you notice all the shoulds in there. So we are not really supporting and having our own back. We're not supporting ourselves and having our own back when we have all that stuff in our mind, when we are approaching the holidays and the end of year with that mindset, we might feel ashamed, we might feel guilt, we might feel lack. We don't have enough, we're not enough, we're not doing enough, we don't have enough time, we don't have enough money, we don't have enough over everything, and then we might even have expectations around how the planning should go and all of the things that we should do and put additional pressure on ourselves. So you see, when we approach the holidays with this attitude and mindset I mean, as I'm saying these things, I feel agitation in my chest Right. There's so much stuff there and imagine just embodying this and operating from this place as you're going about the holidays. You would definitely feel it. You would definitely create a stress over women and anxiety for yourself, depression even so, if you're not feeling good enough, or that you're not doing as well, or things from the past are creeping up on you. So that's one of the big things that happens then.
Emma:
The other thing that happens during the holidays is that we have all of the additional responsibilities. So, with all of those expectations, then we make a long to-do list, right, and with that long to-do list, there's so much stuff to do. So not only is our place still full from the way that we usually keep our plate, but now we also have all of the extra things to do because of the holidays. So the shopping, the gift and the wrapping, the cooking, the cleaning, the parties, all the things that we do, right. S o many other things to do. And when we're usually operating from a full plate, and then we add all of this on top of our usual plate, well, not for nothing, we don't feel so good, right. Now we're running on adrenaline, we are letting go of our self-care practices if we even have one so just to create more time to do all the things, we might lack sleep because we stay up late doing the things, you see. So we're stealing from ourselves, from our whatever things that replenish us so that we could fit more things, and we're burning the candle at both ends. So that doesn't serve us very much and that creates additional stress and overwhelm in our very good feelings.
Emma:
Right now, our schedule gets upended, we have less time. We might be operating from such a place that now we have conflict with our partner, for sure, with other people in our lives, because we don't feel supported enough, we don't have enough collaboration, we can't get on the same page by getting things done and how to get the things done. We might have all kinds of things happening where we are not feeling that we could get it done and then we start going about it in a way that doesn't serve us. We start showing our meanness and then we create more tension and more stress and more hassle and then, not for nothing, the harder it's, become even more stressful, and then with that also comes additional expenses when we're doing all these things. That's another thing that adds stress. So now we have less time spending more money, more responsibilities.
Emma:
So you get my drift here where this is going. So I'm sure you experiences for yourself. I am just enumerating it so that you get validation, like yes, it makes sense that it's stressful, it makes sense that I have a hard time, it makes sense that I'm not doing so hot, so you're not alone. And I just wanted to highlight all the things that are actually playing out, and for nothing we don't feel so hot sometimes, right?
Emma:
So the other piece that happens is that there are a lot of temptations. So, for those of us who might deal with things like food things, issues with food, issues with shopping or spending, issues with substances, issues with any kind of things where there might be an addictive piece to it, an addictive element, and now we are in the midst of all these things coming at you. Right, all the extra food, all the extra drink, all the extra other things, substances whatever substances you might be around or partake in, all the extra shopping, all the extra spending, all the extra doing the work of holism, right, there's all kinds of things here that get heightened because of just was inherent as part of the holiday experience, and so that temptation in and of itself puts us in a place where now we are taxing our willpower and our resources even farther, so creating additional stress and overwhelm. Because now, in the face of all of this temptation, we have to have more self-control, more discipline, more things to manage when we are already taxed, when our resources are already lower. So you see the conundrum that we're putting ourselves in again, not for nothing.
Emma:
Things get tough, right, and now what happens with this is that we get triggered and then any mental health things that we might have really get highlighted right about now. So, whatever symptoms you might experience or whatever diagnoses you have OCD, ADD, PTSD, anxiety, depression, trauma like any other kind of other traumas, eating disorders, all kinds of things right, so you do so. All of our stuff could really get kicked up in the face of all of these additional demands, all these additional stress, this temptations being out of whack from our usual routine, not doing our self-care, everything is really upside down. Right, so we're more at risk for remission, for relapses, for getting triggered and if we don't necessarily need to have a major mental health diagnosis, but you might still experience some of these symptoms in the lesser degree, you just have a flavor of this to yourself and to your life, where it might get worse for you during this time. Right, so you might feel all these things rear their ugly heads and just making things even harder. And then, lastly, the other things that happens on the holidays is that we get to have more contact with our family. What happens now, when we're closer to family members, when we're in proximity to our family of origin?
Emma:
First of all, you might have a result conflicts. You might have differences of opinions, different preferences. It might be conflicts going on. It might be cut-offs going on. There might be all kinds of different dynamics happening and playing out family members.
Emma:
They might have addictions in all the things that they show up with. That could trigger you. Even if you don't per se, you don't have an addiction yourself or you don't have a particular issue yourself. Their stuff is significant and it just triggers our own nervous system, right, they just make us prickly. It triggers us back in some regard. So all of that in a self-placeout.
Emma:
Then you might have throwbacks to past traumas, right? So the sense, the music, the decorations, the smells everything has to do with the holidays the rituals, the traditions, the way that things feel and look, bt throw you back to things that might have happened in the past, maybe weren't so satisfying and potentially even very traumatic. Right, depending on what kind of background you came from. So not only do we have that family members showing a funky that might trigger us, we have a throwback to how things might have been that might trigger us. We might have active current conflicts and issues going on. We might have things like being worried to disappoint, to let down, to embarrass. We might have competition things going on. We might have loyalty things going on. So, as you could see, just the context is loaded. So things that I mentioned before were kind of leading up to family gatherings, like planning and doing the holidays.
Emma:
And now we're in the family gathering and you're in the phase of all these additional potentially triggering things. And again you could get triggered mildly because you're pretty stable usually and it just kind of rattles you a little bit. Or you can get significantly triggered if you have more instability going on usually or you have some mental health things going on. So again, this could be very challenging times. There are things in here also like I'm supposed to be happy during the holidays. The holidays are supposed to be magical, so I'm sorry if I put out content about that that might be triggering.
Emma:
The intention is to inspire ways of creating that for yourself, not to give you, not to create pressure for you. So you feel whatever you want. You're not pressured to do anything that you don't want to, or feel bad if you don't do it. It's just a little side note there for you. But again, about this, you might feel sadness, you might feel loss and grief, depending on what's happening in your life. You might feel let down, you might feel that you're not measuring up. There's just so many things that get kicked up.
Emma:
So what we want to do here is figure out how to manage all this stuff. That's what I'm going to go into next. So I'm going to give you a few things to help you, first of all, get ahead of this as much as possible. Then help you manage it whatever comes up for you as a practice, but also in the moment. So I'm going to try to have you back as much as possible here, and then some of these things that I'm going to offer are also going to help you with the post-holiday blues. Okay, so if you're interested in that, leave a comment, let us know, and we could create another piece of content around that for you, because that's prevalent as well, right? So actually you know what? I think I have a blog post about that and I will link it here for us so that you could have it here and there ahead of the game and we could have you back early. So, additionally, I'm going to put some other resources on here, some past either videos or blog posts that I've done to support you through this period, so that you could do the holidays better for yourself, so you could get ahead of things, and so these things don't happen for you or happen in less, less amount, and also so that you could have your own back in different ways. All right, perfect.
Emma:
So this is what I want to offer for you a couple of things to help manage the expectations, the temptations and the family dynamics. All right. So the first thing is to manage your own thoughts and just scripts and things that you are allowed to run space in your head. A lot of times, we get so worked up in what we think and how we anticipate that things might go that we just create our own stress, and we didn't even have to, right. So obviously we don't have to create our own stress, but what I'm saying is that by that way of thinking, by that way of going about things, you're actually making a lot worse for yourself, which you could totally prevent it.
Emma:
So you're going to watch what kind of thoughts you're having, what those thoughts are, what kind of feelings those thoughts are creating, and you're going to manage those thoughts. By that I mean you're going to say, okay, so there are things to these thoughts. In my words, I'm going to say okay, so there are things to these thoughts. Am I worried about things playing out a certain way? Am I worried about not having support? Am I worried about not having time? Am I worried about what people might say? Am I worried about how much money I'm going to spend? Right?
Emma:
So just see what is the thing that keeps showing up and then, depending on what it is, you're going to clean that up for yourself. So you're going to do a reality check - do I think that? Or how reality-based is that Like? Is that just something that I think, or is there a cost to think that? If there is cost to think whatever you're thinking, then see what can you do about it and see if you could take a little action towards remediating that, towards soothing it, towards making it better, towards proactively getting ahead of it so it potentially doesn't happen. If it's something that you're worried about that might happen, or you alleviate whatever the thing is, okay. Okay if you're like, well, no, I'm just thinking that then tell yourself to stop it.
Emma:
And it is as simple as that. Say to yourself stop it, don't need to go there and distract yourself with something else, another thought, something else to focus on, and don't even entertain whatever it is and allow yourself to go down the rabbit hole. That's called a thought-stopping technique. Ok, then the next thing is to think about. That's kind of like what you do in your own mind.
Emma:
The next thing is what to do in the practical, which is that you would plan ahead. You don't have to do a super, super intense plan, right, but plan ahead to get ahead of what might happen or what might come up or how you want things to go and how you want things to go. Do it in a moderate version, ok, so don't go over the top, don't make things crazier for yourself. Find three quarters of the way and see okay, how do I make that happen? That's going to be really good enough and it's going to be amazing. And because there's more spaciousness now and because there is less of all the junk, it's actually going to help you make the holidays much better. You see, that's where the magic is. So you're going to plan, you're going to be moderate and you are going to be conscientious of your spending. You're not just going to nearly really go spend, but then you're going to freak out come the end of the holidays, and this is what happens as part of the post-holiday blues.
Emma:
People's expenses get the best of them at that point. That's when reality hits. So see if you can get ahead of it. Decide on how much you think you want to spend, if this is a thing, and stay within that for the best that you can. I would even try to go under. See if you could be your own plan. So it's not about the stuff, guys. This is where we create our own hell. It's more about the connection, the meaning, the spending time together, being present, being together, enjoying the jealous companies, having fun together. That's where the magic is. That gets lost in translation with all of the doing and with all the consumerism. So just resetting around that might be really, really helpful.
Emma:
So the next thing is in terms of managing the symptoms that might come up, the temptations and those kind of triggers and with that, what I want to offer is a few things. So one is to stay attuned with your body. Are you feeling physical symptoms? Are you feeling the stress of whatever is happening in your body? If you stay attuned, then you will recognize that you're not doing so hard, that something's happening, and you can put things in place to help you moderate that or address it. So sometimes we are disconnected from our body and we just keep going on and on and on until a body breaks down on us.
Emma:
So people get sick during their holidays or post holidays, and so this is a great thing to keep in mind, to be mindful of how am I feeling? How is my body? Is there attention? Is there pressure? Is there agitation? Is my heart beating faster? Is my skin breaking out? Does my stomach hurt? Does my back have back pain all of a sudden? So what is your body telling you? So you will have information there to help you moderate whatever it is that you're doing.
Emma:
So want to help you take care of yourself, address the symptoms, address your body, take care of yourself, but to moderate what you're doing so that you stop abusing yourself, if you may. So with that, this is where we want to implement self-soothing techniques and self-care techniques. So the self-soothing are things like breathing exercises, meditation, tapping technique, the EFT tapping you might want to look that up and so you self-soothe and you regulate your body, and then, with the self-care, you could implement all kinds of different things. Usually, what happens is that that goes out the window. If you've even had a self-care practice, that goes out the window during the holidays, right? So this is the time to be intentional and recommitted to your workout, your healthy eating, your mindfulness practice, whatever are the things that you do, to not lose them, because things are more hectic now.
Emma:
The other thing around this to moderate temptations and the stress and the symptoms that might come up for you is to, especially if you have a history of mental health symptoms or addictions. This is where it's very important for you to get ahead of those things. So what would be the triggers? So, with food, with substances, with particular family members showing up to an event or whatever the thing is to get ahead of that, do I need to prepare my own food? Do I need to give a heads up to a host about some of my needs? Do I need to avoid a particular family member, do I need to say no to an invitation because the taxid person is there and we don't want to expose ourselves to that? So whatever the thing is that you need to do for yourself so you don't get triggered and throw yourself back in your life with whatever recovery or whatever thing that you're dealing with, do that for yourself.
Emma:
People's feelings might get hurt family members or friends or whatever. It's on them to manage their own feelings. As long as you deliver your message and your requests and your needs in a polite, caring, compassionate fashion, you're not going to go being mean and beating them up to set your boundary around this. You can, if you want to. You can do whatever you want to, but what I'm suggesting is that you will get a lot less slack or feedback or reaction, depending on how you go about this, which will make it easier for you. So it's not to make this easier for them per se, because you might be like I don't care about them. That's fine. It's to make it easier for you because you will get less reaction, less nonsense, and just make things smoother why not? And of course, we do want to be nice to people too. If you care about them, all right. So that's for managing temptations and mental health and anything that might throw you on your journey. We don't want that, so get ahead of it as much as you can. Have a backup plan. We're leaving by this time. If this thing happens, we're leaving or we're not staying over.
Emma:
Things like that have helped clients make these kind of rules for themselves, get on the same page with their partner about it, so that they could easily implement them in the face of things happening during family gatherings or it gets harder if you're the host, because it's not easy to kick people out of your house but you could implement different things right. So, like different rooms for different things, you could kind of direct traffic in your own home, like set up activities, set up different foods, have an area where maybe there is no drinks and that's where people who have things about that could hang out, you see, so you could really set up your context and your situation in a way that serves you and your loved ones the best that you possibly can. So you reduce any of these extra miscellaneous things that come up during the holidays, that make them so much more challenging than they have to be. So with the family, what we have is that, like I was sharing before, you might get thrown back in time in traumas, you might have current conflicts, there might be all kinds of things going on, right, like I said earlier, and so a few things that I want to offer for this number one is to plan accordingly.
Emma:
So, depending on what the event is, who the people are, what the event, what the situation is, then this is how we want to kind of make sure that we create a plan that serves us and our loved ones. So we're going to take into consideration things that might come up and set up the activities and the plans accordingly. And so the last thing that I want to offer is how to deal with family members, and sometimes what happens is that, like I was saying before, we might have current conflicts going on, we might have throwbacks to the past, past traumas, all different things might show up, and so what we want to do is plan accordingly so we could stay ahead of that. So, whatever we anticipate that might happen, we could plan for it, so we could set expectations, we could have conversations with either the hosts or, if we're hosting, like all different things that we could put in place ahead of time so that we could minimize what might be triggering. We could address family members. That might be challenging. We could figure out how to have conversations with them beforehand, if necessary, plan ahead for food or for substances, or just think whatever things might be that might come up. What can we put in place beforehand so that we take care of what the triggers might be? So some of the more practical things around food and stuff.
Emma:
I was talking about that in terms of the temptations, but when it comes to family members, you might get things like pressure to eat, pressure to drink, pressure to do all the things, pressure to behave a certain way, pressure for gifting, pressure for hanging out later than you want to All kinds of things. So this is where you set the boundaries and the expectations ahead of time and you get on the same page with your partner and you make a plan and if you need to give heads up to the people that you're going to be hanging out with, you can. So everybody's on the same page and you avoid any challenges and difficulties in the moment. And then you have to deal with the aftermath of that now. So setting the expectations is very important for this, and the other thing is setting boundaries.
Emma:
So how do you go about putting those things in place? The boundary is not on other people, the boundary is on us. Usually we like to tell the people what to do or what they should do or what they shouldn't do. We have no control over other people. So the boundary is for what we're willing to do, what we're willing to tolerate, what we're willing to take care of, not take care of, show up for, and things like that. So if you get ahead of that, then you have your own back and you smooth the path in front of you, so you create less challenges for going forward. And then the other side of that is to put more of the things in place that would help you feel comfortable.
Emma:
So things like, while you're in a gathering, taking little breaks, stepping outside for fresh air, going to a restaurant for a few minutes, going to a different room, sitting in a corner somewhere not being antisocial per se, but rather just chipping time up and interactions with people so you get a breather. So something that I do with people who travel and who can visit family members so this might help you too this is something that you do for the holidays is to build in breaks, like if you stay in somebody's home, for example, for a few days, and it's usually tense and it gets intense and people are in pain and people cross your boundaries and you have family members telling you what to do and how you should feel, when you should get up, what you should do with your kids, all the things, all the criticisms come out and you feel like you're back in your childhood home from when you were five and you're getting triggered all over again. And so something that we build in for people who are traveling and visiting family members is to build in that break. So, for example, after two days, you go have a night out with your partner, supposed to stay in all the time with your family members. Or you do three days in somebody's home and then the rest of the time in a hotel, things like that. You ask the grandparents to watch the children for an afternoon and you take a little break and you leave with your partner. This is very important because partners get really messed up during these trips. Everything becomes about the family, everything becomes about managing your own self, the relationship goes through the wayside and then the partners get triggered, they're feeling disconnected. So not only do, you have all the things that I was talking about already happening, but then you also are in conflict with your partner. You're feeling disconnected and you start getting on each other's nerves even more and you start triggering each other hey, more fun, you're more fun to the mix.
Emma:
So adding this breaks like this if you're traveling, it's very important or even if you're at somebody's home for a day or for an evening, just having touch points with your partner also is very helpful, where you kind of meet by the cooler, if you may, and you say how's it going, how are you doing? So, what have you been up to? If it's a large gathering and you've been spending time with different people, have touch points throughout the evening, the night, the day, so you can check in on each other and have each other's back if you encounter or experience anything weird with any family member, so you can have each other's back and show support. That way, stay connected, and that gives you resilience. Okay, very important.
Emma:
So the other thing is to be mindful to stay in your own circle. Like I've been saying, we love to tell all the people what to do, and people love to tell us what to do, and that is the easiest way to get in trouble at any moment in time, when we leave our circle where we have control and go into somebody else's circle where we have no control. So that's just a formula for disaster. So in that case everybody is disempowered. Nothing good comes of those interactions, and why are we doing that to ourselves?
Emma:
So if you have an issue with something and speak about you, your feelings, what do you need? What's happening for you, what you would like to see happen from there, and not how your partner sucks Right, what they're doing wrong, how they're not doing whatever. So we're not going to tell our partner stuff about them, what they're thinking, assigning motives, making assumptions, telling them how they should be being, but rather we're going to speak about what's happening for us and then we could ask for something from them if that would help us. They have the option of saying no, as asking doesn't mean that they have to. And then because then we make that another thing right, so we can make requests, we could give options. So our partner has a choice and they could choose what they're willing to do, or we could even ask them what they think they could offer to support us, you see. So let me say when, when, situation. Okay, so hopefully all of that made sense.
Emma:
The other thing that I want to offer is to just be kind and gentle, to take it easy. There's nothing wrong. There's no fires, right. So just your approach, your mindset, how you choose to go about all this is what you will create. And so if you allow yourself to be easy with yourself and with others, to be more gentle, to create more spaciousness, to have compassion and to be forgiving, to let go, to be grateful, to be giving and generous in all the ways that you possibly can, and that just makes life so much easier.
Emma:
We operate from a very different place and that different energy just makes things prettier and it allows us to feel better. That just automatically creates a different state that helps you mitigate all of those symptoms and all of those triggers and all of the things that might come up for you. Okay, so that's it. I'm going to keep it nice and sweet, short and sweet for the day. Hopefully that served you and feel free to leave comments. Let me know what you think, where you might get stuck, what else you would like to see in this podcast, and I wish you the most beautiful, loving, caring and magical holidays and I will see you at the next one. Bye.