Why do I have a post early in the fall about getting ready for the holidays?

Because women who tend to fall into people-pleasing and perfectionism are typically the ones who read this blog, and those are the women who need that gentle reminder to get ahead of the holiday traps that leave us exhausted when January 1 rolls around.

If you want to review old posts on this topic, here is a roundup of the posts I have written in a nutshell:

Let me try to spin it a different way this year.

I’ll start with a radical statement:

The best thing you can do for others during the holiday season is to take care of yourself.

Does that sound selfish?

Many women tend to think so.

Especially Christian women. I mean, aren’t we as Christians, supposed to be focused on helping others?

Of course we are. And it is super-important, Christian or not, to spend some of our resources (time, talent, skill, or money) on others. Research actually points out that helping others carries personal benefits (1). Anecdotally, I have heard many counselors recommend getting involved with helping others as a way to help someone connect with others and lift their own mood.

So yes, show up for the other people in your life, but show up for yourself, too.

Taking care of yourself and being there for others are not mutually exclusive.

Taking care of yourself makes it possible for you to help others and to keep helping others.

I am not talking about spending expensive days at the spa or outsourcing all of your domestic or occupational duties.

I am talking about thinking about what you need to be able to function well and enjoy the holiday so you make sure you are firing on all cylinders and enjoying the holiday ride.

Identifying our needs helps us know what to add more of, but also helps us realize what we need to say no to.

Many holiday pressures are actually optional, but we do not slow down to consider this.

Holiday activities feel mandatory and urgent.

When we view the holidays through our lenses of people-pleasing and perfectionism, we not only feel like we have to do all the things, but we need to do them all perfectly.

I’ve already written about how Christmas is messy.

Yes, physically, there are dirty dishes from the dinner and wrapping paper aftermath, and all of those annoying little twist ties that anchor toys in their boxes, not to mention the pine needles in every crevice near the Christmas tree.

But emotionally, there are children who are on overload with excitement (and sugar) and high expectations. There are family members that we just tend to miss more at Christmas, whether they are just far away or maybe passed away. There are strained relationships that we just don’t know how to handle at Christmas. Do we send a gift? Do we invite them even though we know they won’t come? Is it safe to invite them?

Often there are deeper messes in our families that most people generally don’t mention.
Addiction. Estrangement. Loss.
These kinds of issues can create a backdrop of trauma, anxiety, and depression that just makes the rest of the holiday expectations that much harder.

Photo Credit: Alliance Images

When we make the time to care for ourselves and identify our needs, we can make a plan for some of that mess.

We can manage our expectations and create bandwidth in ourselves so we can navigate the emotional messes. Otherwise, we tend to try to stuff things down, hoping and praying they don’t explode.

Or we rationalize we can deal with it later (which is not always a bad thing as long as you actually deal with it later.)

I remember one Christmas Eve my husband and I got in a silly argument. I don’t even remember what it was about. One of us said to the other, “Do you really want to argue about this on Christmas Eve?” and the other definitely didn’t. It wasn’t a serious issue, so it was fine to table that one – the holiday gave us some much-needed perspective. We have since used it as a joke, “Do you really want to argue about this on President’s Day? On a Tuesday? On the night before football season starts?”

All joking aside, it is too easy to sweep things under the rug just to get through the holidays. Big things that need to be talked about.

Resentments build.

Maladaptive habits form.

Misunderstandings and assumptions create chasms of disconnect.

Dealing with it later starts to feel “too late.”

It is important to be ready to deal with things during the holidays, instead of just letting the holidays press “pause” on our needs and important conversations. This requires us to be proactive (hence the post about the holidays at the beginning of October!)

5 ways to take care of yourself during the holidays

Woman with eyes closed relaxing during Christmas — Photo Credit: SebastianGauet from Getty Images

Evaluate your non-holiday self-care.
This involves thinking about what you need just for everyday life.

What types of self-care do you really need?
We are all different on this. For example, I have a need for solitude that the extroverts in my family just do not seem to share. I have to be intentional about having some time by myself in the quiet.
This article may help you get started in identifying the types of self-care you already engage in, and which types of self-care you may need to pay attention to.
What types of self-care help you show up for others the way you want to?

2. Think about what you need for the holidays.

How does your self-care tend to change once the holiday season gets into full-swing?
Are there extra self-care needs that emerge during the holiday season?
Are there some self-care needs that can take a backseat until January?

I wrote about this extensively in another blog post . Your needs include practical things (like freeing up your schedule) and purposeful things (like the things that bring meaning to the season for you and your family).

3. Reflect on your past holiday seasons.

List what stressed you out.
What were you feeling?
What were you thinking?
Maybe these same things won’t come up for you every year, but I am willing to bet many will. Our brains tend to create some go-to scripts for our thoughts and feelings. They think, “OH, we’ve experienced this before, this is what it’s about” and just re-play the movie of when something similar happened so we don’t actually have to slow down and think about it. We can just skip straight to the reaction. Our brains often make faulty assumptions in the form of these automatic thoughts.
List what you love about the holidays. You can have each family member make a list like this, too.
How can you give yourself (and your family) more of that?
How can you give to others during the holiday season?
Do you need to say no to something so you can do more of what you love?

4. Make the plans.

Write out what you need for self-care.
Write out your holiday to-do’s. Circle the priorities in this list and really be ready to let go of things that are not priorities if need be.
Delegate things that you don’t want to do.
For those things you can’t delegate, make a plan to make doing it yourself somehow more fun! Can you do it with a friend? Can you do it while watching your favorite Christmas movie? Be creative!
Schedule appointments, etc., ideally before the month of December.
Develop a system for tracking your holiday shopping and your holiday budget. (I love using Trello for this, so it’s on my phone and always with me).
Create a plan for how you want to regulate your emotions when it all gets to be too much.
You can check here, here, here, and here for some ideas.
Decide ahead of time to deal with the big things as they arise instead of thinking you’ll deal with them later. Nobody wants to have heavy discussions during the holidays, but if you don’t have the discussion you’ll be spending the holiday with an invisible elephant in the room. That’s no fun, either.

5. Manage your expectations.

Even with a realistic plan, things are not going to get done. Or go wrong.

You’re going to still get tired. It’s the nature of how we celebrate the holidays in America.

Nobody’s holiday is perfect.

Movies and social media gives the impression that holiday perfection is a reasonable expectation, but the holiday season is ripe for stuff going wrong.

Can we just normalize that and give ourselves and each other some grace?

A family wearing holiday clothes, with one child making a silly face. — I’ll leave you with a holiday card from many years ago when my daughter decided to make funny faces in every single one of our Christmas card pictures.

Yes, I sent them out anyway.
At the time, my thought was that I was pretty sure I was not the only one whose Christmas cards didn’t come out perfectly.
Looking back now, maybe they did. They were a perfect snapshot of what our family was really like that year. They captured the humanity, the humor, the unpredictability, and the beauty of being connected to other messy people.
*I wouldn’t have it any other way.*

If you need some help getting your brain around how to navigate your own self-care, boundaries, or messes in your life as we head into the holidays, please reach out. Sometimes these things are easier with an outside observer.

Reference
(1) Espinosa JC, Antón C, Grueso Hinestroza MP. Helping Others Helps Me: Prosocial Behavior and Satisfaction With Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Front Psychol. 2022 Jan 27;13:762445. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.762445. PMID: 35153950; PMCID: PMC8828552.

Jennie Sheffe is a National Certified Counselor ™ who helps women find freedom from anxiety and peace in their chaos. She sees clients virtually in the state of Pennsylvania, or in her Carlisle, PA office. She offers Christian counseling and EMDR Therapy.

5 Ways to Take Care of Yourself During the Holidays