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What is Holiday Stress?


These tips can help ensure you truly enjoy your holidays when stress starts to set in. The holiday season often brings unwelcome guests stress and depression. Holiday stress can affect anyone, even children. There are a lot of expectations around the holidays. Stress and depression can ruin your holidays and hurt your health. You can quickly become overwhelming to make every meal award-worthy and every wrapped gift look perfect or cook the perfect holiday dinner. The holidays can also be a difficult time of year for people who have lost friends and family members. When you add in the financial burden, travel, and visiting family members, stress can pile up quickly. All these expectations can lead to stress.

 Here are some tips to prevent holiday stress and depression:

Learn to say no. 

Saying yes when you should say no can leave you feeling resentful and overwhelmed. Friends and colleagues will understand if you can't participate in every project or activity. If it's not possible to say no when your boss asks you to work overtime, try to remove something else from your agenda to make up for the lost time.

Acknowledge your feelings. 

If someone close to you has recently died or you can't be with loved ones for other reasons, realize that it's normal to feel sadness and grief. It's OK to take time to cry or express your feelings. You can't force yourself to be happy just because it's the holiday season. Try to create relaxing surroundings. Turn on some music, light some candles or open the windows on a sunny day. Research has found that listening to music and the scent of citrus can boost feelings of well-being, and vitamin D is always a happiness booster.

Stick to a budget. 

Before you do your gift and food shopping, decide how much money you can afford to spend. Then stick to your budget. Don't try to buy happiness with an avalanche of gifts.  If you feel lonely or isolated, seek out community, religious or other social events or communities. Many may have websites, online support groups, social media sites or virtual events. They can offer support and companionship.

Maintain healthy habits.

The holidays are notorious for ruining healthy habits. A short workout each morning will help your decision-making throughout the day. Encourage your family to try snow shoeing or sledding to get in extra exercise. Eat healthy snacks like fresh fruit or vegetables throughout the season and to fill up before a dinner party or celebration with tempting, but unhealthy, foods.

Plan ahead. 

Set aside specific days for shopping, baking, connecting with friends and other activities. Consider whether you can shop online for any of your items. Plan your menus and then make your shopping list. That'll help prevent last-minute scrambling to buy forgotten ingredients. And make sure to line up help for meal prep and cleanup.

Take a breather. 

Make some time for yourself. Find an activity you enjoy. Take a break by yourself. Spending just 15 minutes alone, without distractions, may refresh you enough to handle everything you need to do. Find something that reduces stress by clearing your mind, slowing your breathing and restoring inner calm.

Remember Holidays Season are meant to be a fun, enjoyable time with friends and family. These tips can help ensure you truly enjoy your holidays when stress starts to set in. Learn to recognize your holiday triggers, such as financial pressures or personal demands, so you can combat them before they lead to a meltdown. Just keep pushing forward try to find a positive in anything and have a great Holiday Season.

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