Tips for holiday stress relief

11 Tips for Holiday Stress Relief

I hope you are able to enjoy a relaxing day with friends and family whatever you choose to celebrate (or not) this holiday season. I know that regardless of what holidays you may celebrate this time of year can bring a lot of stress.

Over the years I’ve put together several posts about dealing with stress (both during the holidays and otherwise). Today, instead of sharing a brand new post (because honestly I’ve been overwhelmed lately and just don’t have the energy), I wanted to share a few of those posts with you in hopes that you may find them helpful.

• 5 Spoonie Tips for Surviving Christmas – just as the title suggests, I share five tips for getting through the Christmas holidays. It might be a little late, but probably not because whether it’s Christmas or Easter these issues recur throughout the year.

• Surviving the Holidays with Chronic Illness – This post covers the specifics of dealing with the holidays from family dinners to gift-giving.

• Holiday Traditions for the Chronically Ill – If the standard holiday traditions just wear you out, then you may want to consider these traditions, that might be a little more doable for those of us with chronic illness.

• Entertaining with Fibro (the holiday edition) – If you are often the host for the holiday dinners, you will want to check out this post, sharing some tips on how to make things easier.

• 5 Things to Help you Deal with Year-End Anxiety – the end of the year always brings specific stresses as we look back at the year past and forward at what’s coming.

And these posts on reducing stress (no matter the time of year):

• 4 Ways I Reduce Stress & Anxiety – This post focuses on things I avoid thinking about in order to keep my stress at a lower level.
• 7 Ways to Decrease Stress – focuses on things to stop doing that are causing you stress.
• 8 Tips for Dealing with Stress – we can’t avoid all stress, so sometimes it’s just a matter of dealing with it when it comes.
• 10 Ways to Reduce the Stress Related to Chronic Illness – Living with chronic illness brings some specific stresses that others may not deal with.
• Turning Into the Skid – Often life throws skids at us and the advice to turn into the skid may not be correct, sometimes we’ve just got to take our foot off the gas and let it ride.
• Stop Ruminating – Ruminating is when you let yourself get stuck in a thought loop about a topic (usually negative). It’s easy to do when you live with chronic illness, but it’s a habit we have to break because it just creates more stress.

There are actually quite a few more posts on my blog that talk about dealing with stress… it’s a common topic. But, these will get you started and the related posts at the bottom of each one will let you rabbit hole further should you choose to do so.

Again I really hope you have a happy and stress-free holiday.