Emotional Holidays
Posted on November 14, 2019 by dragonspitapothecary
We all have preconceived ideas of what the best holiday looks like. We all have ways we enjoy spending them. Some of us avoid the holidays and don’t like them as much as others. We delay, stall and grumble about the stores because it is our comfort zone. Some are planning holidays well before seasons change in anticipation and over the top excitement. We are building up the hype by posting countdowns on our Facebook page. In both situations there is a lot of emotions being felt and avoided. Holiday time brings out the emotion in all of us.
How you spend your holidays and how you feel during these times is important to acknowledge. It is entirely ok to feel how we feel but we have to be honest about it. We have to acknowledge it, feel it deeply and then make peace with those feelings. We also have to contain and level set our expectations so our feelings don’t overrun us with emotions that flood our ability to function. That balance of feeling alright in our skin, moving through the holidays in grace and honoring how we feel during this time can feel entirely unbelievable as possible.
Turn off the TV
Marketing done on TV and in stores has added a lot of stress and anxiety to the holidays. We are inundated with commercials and ads for the latest toys, perfect meals and beautiful holidays that we should all be working to achieve in our own homes. Are you seriously even trying if you don’t already know what the hot new toy will be this year well before Black Friday?
The problem with all the advertising is what it does to our emotions. The purpose of it all is to get us to spend our money to purchase all we should have for the perfect holidays according to the marketing execs. It is a deep play into our emotions to create desire. However, the downside of it all is we:
Easily overspend on our budget resulting in dread and misalignment in our finances
Feel guilt and shame if we honestly cannot afford these hot new toy trends
We feel excluded if we’re not having a perfect meal on a large table surrounded by loved ones
We feel like we’re odd or strange if our homes lack beautiful wreaths and decorations that everyone should have up
These emotions add up to a lot of us feeling overwhelmed as well as inadequate and inferior. These are not at all holiday spirit feelings and yet many of us report a higher recognition of stress, anxiety and depression around the holidays. It’s not that we don’t want to have good happy holidays but we are overwhelmed at the stuff we are told it takes to make a perfect holiday.