SURVIVING THE FESTIVE SEASON, PART 1.

We’re well and truly heading into the festive season now and we know that this time can be both joyful and stressful for many.

As it’s been a pretty rocky year, we wanted to pull together some tips and ideas to help you not only survive, but thrive through the upcoming Christmas and New Year period!

Here are three areas that people commonly find challenging during this time:

1. Losing our sense of routine and control
2. Trying to navigate being around family and family dynamics
3. Feeling loneliness and grief

And in the lead up to Christmas, we’ll be sharing some thoughts on each of the points above, so if you haven't already, make sure you've signed up to our mailing list HERE!

This week, let’s focus in on point 1: Losing our sense of routine and control.

Part 1: Losing our sense of routine and control.

The festive season often changes up our regular routine and brings about more eating, drinking, socialising and late nights. 

When you think about how this upcoming period affects your regular routine, what kind of thoughts and feelings start to emerge?

For me, I now really enjoy shifting into “holiday mode” and often look forward to periods of celebration, however I know that this hasn’t always been the case.

I’ve long been very rigid about eating well, exercising enough and essentially being “in balance” all the time. Of course, this has granted me with relatively good physical health for most of my life, however it’s also caused me to feel a lot of stress around celebratory periods like Christmas and New Years.

So, if like me, you tend to feel a little anxious about letting go of your consistent, regular routine, here are some ideas that have helped me to really enjoy these periods.

1. Sometimes it’s not really about what’s happening around you, but it’s this sense of losing control that feels stressful.

Human beings love consistency and control, because if we know what’s coming, we also know that there aren’t any threats or surprises waiting for us around the corner. This need for consistency and control isn’t new and comes straight from our caveman days where consistency and control in our environment, was directly linked to our ability to survive. In other words, if we know where and when the tiger consistently sleeps, we know where and when we can move without the possibility of being eaten by the tiger.

Our brains (funnily enough) haven’t evolved that much from this time and although for most of us, there aren’t any tigers in our midst, however our nervous systems don’t quite understand that.

So even the seemingly un-threatening act of changing up our regular routines, (eg. eating different food, going out more, sleeping at different times etc), can make us feel really unsettled and even anxious… because as mentioned above, consistency and control help us to feel safe.

The good news is, if we’re aware and conscious of this natural tendency of ours as humans to crave consistency and control, we can employ a different part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, where reasoning and logic live, to help us feel a little better.

Just the simple act of pausing and saying to yourself something like, “it’s Christmas time and there are lots of different things happening right now. My routine’s changed but that’s okay and I can always find my sense of routine again later”, can really help us to feel more at ease. It seems ridiculously simple but give it a go and see how powerful it can be. The act of validation and re-orienting yourself back to the present moment can do wonders for your mental health.

2. Managing your feelings around "overindulging" and trying to "find balance" during this time.

I often notice conversations around “overindulging” emerging during this time and I find this to be a really interesting topic to consider with a little more depth.

No doubt that eating a balanced diet and drinking moderately are both so imperative to our mental health but sometimes the stress that comes from being really rigid about our diet can negatively impact our mental health.

I have long been really rigid around food and it’s taken me a long time to form a healthy, intuitive relationship with eating. One simple thing that has helped me to do this is to think about the timeframe you give yourself to “find balance”.

So what I mean by that is that we often think we need to eat a balanced diet every 24 hours… if we have something really heavy at lunch, we think that it’s best to eat a light dinner etc. Which of course, then causes us stress during periods of celebrations where that daily sense of balance can get lost. 

What would happen if you sought to find balance not in the space of 24 hours, but within a longer time frame, like a week, or a month or even a year?

It must be a sign that I’m getting older but nowadays, I think about finding balance across the space of a whole year, rather than in one day. In line with the seasons, I think about how summer is a time of abundance and extroversion, whereas the cooler months have a much more nurturing and quiet energy.

It might seem a little left of centre to think about this but if the term “overindulging” plays on your mind, have a think about what your own expectations are around how you find balance… you might be surprised with what you find out about yourself!

3. If you're worried that you'll never be able to return to your regular routine, you might find that your routine is in fact, unsustainable.

I used to hate changing up my routine because the routines I’d set for myself would always be so challenging to maintain. So the thought of letting that routine go, would make me fear that I’d never go back to my routine... that essentially, I’d get lazy.

If this idea strikes a chord with you too, take a moment to reflect upon whether or not your regular routine is actually sustainable. If it feels like you’re going to lose too much progress, or worry that you’ll never be able to jump back in to your routine after the holiday season, you might find that your routine is in fact, really difficult to maintain.

What feels exhausting and “too difficult” in your regular routine? And as you pinpoint these areas, perhaps also ask yourself, “what are some shifts or changes that I can implement from here?”

~

Well, that brings us to the end of part 1 of our 3-part "Surviving the Festive Season" series! Be sure to keep an eye out for parts 2 and 3!

The best way to do so is to make sure that you've signed up to our mailing list HERE if you haven't already🎁

Wishing you a wonderful Christmas and New Year period ahead!