The holiday season can present many challenges that result in stressful situations. The pressure to prepare a perfect holiday meal, seeing family who you haven’t seen in years, or meeting your in-laws for the first time can each have a detrimental effect on your mental and physical wellness.
There are various ways to help deal with whatever is stressing you over the holiday season. Here we will discuss some of the more common forms of stress people experience over the holidays and ways to either prevent them from happening or to handle them as they pop up.
Where Does Holiday Stress Come From?
Holiday stress can present itself in many different forms. For some, the holidays can signal a negative event, such as a disliked relative coming to visit. Sometimes the holidays can bring up painful memories of the past, such as a traumatic experience from a holiday season gone by or the memory of someone who is no longer with us.
The holidays can be a time for gathering together, so when a special loved one can no longer participate, it can hang a dark cloud over the season in general. The holiday season can also create a lot of financial stress. Having multiple holidays one after the other can be draining.
With the holiday season comes the pressure to make sure everything is paid for, handled and taken care of. To many, even those who fervently budget their money, the extra funds that go into planning the holiday season can create an extremely stressful situation. Yet another form of holiday stress can come from the external pressure from the holidays themselves.
Many expectations come from the holiday season, whether it be a plan to travel, having family over, buying gifts, or just being jovial all the time. There is a ton of pressure to be in the “holiday spirit” and it comes from all angles. So, what can we do to help alleviate the stress, or avoid it altogether?
How to Deal with Holiday Stress Holistically
Dealing with holiday stress can be a daunting task. It’s not always a matter of dealing with the stress itself, it can be a matter of understanding the underlying issue causing the stress and dealing with that instead. But the first part of being able to deal with stress is the ability to identify what triggers your stressful state. If you can remember what brought on your stress then you can look for ways to destress.
Self-reflect on when you felt the most stress. What were the surrounding situations that led to your stressed state? Was there an environment or a particular individual that brought along your stress? Once you identify that, you can begin working towards holistically addressing your stress.
If your stressor is another person that you normally interact with, like a spouse, then have an honest conversation with that person about how you feel and how they make you feel. In some cases, all it takes is a little understanding in order to move past the stress. This might not be that easy when the stressor is a family member who only visits during the holidays.
In order to nip your stress in the bud, some outside-of-holiday time should be scheduled to have a conversation. In both cases, opening up about what’s been stressing you can be extremely cathartic. If you have a stressor in the form of a loved one who is no longer alive, it might be a little more difficult to deal with. The best thing to do in order to help yourself with your holiday stress is to remember moments that bring you happiness.
In general, remembering a lost loved one can bring up sadness that might not ever fully go away. However, if you continue to associate positive thoughts and feelings with the deceased, that is what you’ll think of whenever you think of that person. If you have financial stress during the holiday season, there are two ways to go about handling it, and both ways depend on what gives your stress power.
Financial stress can stem from various reasons, like not having enough money to spend on the holidays or not knowing what to spend money on during the holidays. Regardless of the type of financial situation you’re being stressed by, you can have a better outlook on the holiday season by preparing for that time of the year. Creating a budget just for the holiday season can help put your mind at ease when spending money. 
Another thing you can do to help alleviate stress due to the holiday season is to prepare time for yourself. One of the more stressful aspects of the holiday season is the need to cater to everyone. Once you begin to focus on yourself more than anything else, you’ll find that you’ll become much less stressed the fewer things you have to worry about.
A great way to destress from the holiday season is through holistic, at-home therapy. There’s no better way to take a break from the heightened levels of stress that can become a hallmark of the holiday season than by administering therapies that can relax the body and invigorate the soul. HealthyLine knows how important it is to have the ability to destress when you need to. This is why we offer a long line of therapeutic mats made to administer multiple forms of therapy at your convenience. 
One such mat is the Mesh JT Mat Full 7224 Flexible InfraMat Pro®. This mat is recommended for full body therapy sessions (especially if you’re receiving a massage) as it can relieve tension in your muscles as well as grant relief to your joints. A lightweight and affordable mat, the Mesh JT Mat Full is the perfect starting point for bringing the benefits of holistic healing to the comfort of your own home.
