Stop pulling your hair out from holiday stress
Mary enjoyed stress relief before the Christmas season; however, the stress of the (Christmas) holidays seems to overwhelm her and cause her to pull out her hair.
So Mary enlisted my help dealing with holiday stress and pulling out her hair.
To help her, I asked Mary to tell me about her worries that created the chaos of holiday stress.
Here are their answers.
1. I don’t have enough time to prepare for the holidays.
reality check 1
The Christmas season comes every 365 days.
Mary’s Christmas stress and hair pulling developed because she waited until the last minute to start her Christmas preparations. Mary used to relieve stress from the rush to get ready for Christmas and then crash and burn after Christmas day.
Over the years, this rush of stress relief and hair pulling has resulted in overwhelming stress during the holidays. His survival system (pulling his hair out) that was once so effective no longer works.
2. I have trouble visiting my extended family.
reality check 2
Holiday stress and hair pulling are created by not accepting people’s behavior because you think they should behave differently.
The easiest way to deal with holiday stress and stop pulling your hair out is to become aware of the things you don’t like about people and accept in advance that this is how they are going to behave.
Holiday stress and hair pulling can become paralyzing when you think you can change someone. It’s not likely to happen.
3. I push myself to be perfect.
reality check 3
You may want to make the perfect meal, and in your desire to be perfect, you may omit an ingredient. The customer, let’s call her Sue, she baked a cake and forgot to include an ingredient. The cake tasted wonderful and got all kinds of compliments on it.
Sue was still stressed and pulling at her hair because she wasn’t perfect enough to remember to put all the ingredients.
If you were to take a hard look at yourself, you know all the dumb things you’ve done, therefore there’s no way you can be perfect. So why do you allow the holiday stress and hair-pulling feeling to wash over you when your cake isn’t perfect, but you still enjoy it?
4. I feel guilty if I don’t visit my extended family.
reality check 4
The stress of vacations and hair pulling can sometimes be created by what you don’t do. Mary’s concern was that if she didn’t visit her extended family (in-laws or outlaws!) she would feel guilty.
When Mary understood that she could accept the idiosyncrasies of her extended family if she would stop judging them by her standards, the unpleasant feeling of Christmas stress and hair-pulling was replaced by the profound experience of incredible Christmas stress relief.
5. I don’t have time to put up the decorations.
reality check 5
The concept of being perfect was again creating Christmas stress for Mary and causing her to pull her hair. She wanted to arrange the decorations a certain way and no matter how well her husband and children arranged them, Mary was not happy.
She felt that she was the only one who could place the decorations perfectly. Consequently, her husband and her children sat around watching television because she Mary did not appreciate her help. This behavior really infuriated and inflamed Mary’s Christmas stress as she continued to pull her hair.
As a hypnotherapist, NLP trainer, and energy worker, some of my clients are very myopic in their perceptions of stress coping strategies. My responsibility is to help them find themselves.
So what is the moral of the story?
The stress of the holidays can make you pull your hair out for the perfect Christmas vacation.
A profound relief from Christmas stress can be experienced when you first accept that you are not perfect and when you are able to accept the failures of your extended family.
When you notice your feelings of acceptance of everyone and everything around you, even if they don’t meet your standards or expectations, you find it easier to relax because the sound pressure of vacation stress has been neutralized.