When the Holidays Don’t Feel Like a Magical Time of Year…
Are you sitting at home scrolling through holiday-centric themed posts, stories, and reels? Do feelings of disappointment, frustration, or even jealousy pop into your mind?
These are COMPLETELY normal feelings to experience, especially around the holiday season. What would it mean for you if you didn’t have the constant reminder that this year may look different for you? Feeling lonely and isolated during the holiday season has left many with increased anxiety levels and exacerbated feelings of isolation. So instead of sharing with you the ways to cope with your direct feelings of discomfort, I felt it timely to share ways to add elements to your home and routine to dial up your happiness.
The golden ticket is focusing on what can we do shift our attention to things we can control.
1. Mute, unfollow, and cleanse the social media pages that aren’t serving you! If looking at someone else’s page brings up feelings of “not-enoughness”, jealousy, anger, or frustration it isn’t serving you. Life is hard enough as is. There is no need to constantly trigger or remind yourself that your holiday may look different by following things that aren’t supporting your journey. Emotional weight is a real thing. Moving away from content that induces feelings of physical fatigue, agitation, and upset (even taking on other people’s emotions adding to your own pot of emotional baggage) can help you reconnect to yourself and your needs.
2. Introduce some friendly greenery to your home environment. Check out this article Plants and Your Mental Health to peruse how this “low expectation” companionship can up-level your happiness and sense of well-being.
3. Attempt a new grounding activity. This can look like trying a new skill such as singing, learning how to play an instrument, knitting, or painting. Generating new skills that help us slow down can be soothing and work a different part of the brain. You may experience a bit of resistance initially when curating space for yourself to soothe and calm. This is normal, as quieting and slowing down the mind may be a new experience for you. Some of the most challenging work we can do is to pause to hear ourselves and not those around us. I am especially enjoying trying to cook new recipes for hormone health. Check out Eat for Hormone Health and The best foods for hormone-balance for more information on this topic. After engaging in some newly discovered activities, ask yourself what did this do for me? How do I feel? How do my body and mind feel? Do you feel more connected with yourself? Checking in with yourself can feel foreign, so take a moment to sit back and try to take a couple of silent moments to listen.
4. Allow time to grieve. When the hopes of engaging in yearly rituals or connecting with loved ones are shifted, it is understandable that uncomfortable feelings may creep up out of nowhere. I encourage you to let yourself feel. This could look like periodic crying fits, screaming out loud or into a pillow, and even hitting or/ punching your bed (soft surface) to let off some steam. Allow yourself to FEEL your feelings. Mourn the experience you had hoped for. It may not be as you had pictured and allow yourself to feel bummed about that. By releasing some of these feelings, it may create space to think about what you want to do this year that brings meaning to your holiday experience. Do you want to recreate a traditional family recipe? Start your own new tradition? Or would you like to try to bring in new home elements that bring you comfort? There are wonderful resources out in the world that can assist you in sparking some creative ideas around making your holiday enjoyable for you. Check out Tips for self-care when your alone for the holidays for some helpful ideas.