Upon hearing that the holidays are approaching, for many, this is followed by immediate and intense feelings of overwhelmedness, trauma-triggers or family conflict. If you live in a northern region, summer’s end signifies the beginning of this season of life that is about to start lifing; a time of year that can inevitably bring stress, loneliness and frustration.
While the holidays are known as a time for giving, gratitude and connectedness, when our lives are chaotic (as is the case for so many of us), we don’t feel aligned with any of those things. Conversely, we begin to wonder what’s wrong with us, why our life has shaken down the way it has or how we could possibly overcome what is happening inside of, and around, us.
Where did the holidays go so wrong?
We are consistently faced with messaging from our culture that touts groundedness and coping as the epitome of health and wellness during this stressful season; when, in reality, the environment we’ve created surrounding the holidays does not support either; always surrounded by images of the perfect “healthy human.” The truth: we are unique— rare even, we just don’t have space created for our individualities and this cultural discrepancy leads to pervasive core beliefs of inadequacy and brokenness. These beliefs then go on to build a negative self-narrative that defines our whole being, leading us to struggle with depression, anxiety and relationship difficulties that flair this time of year.
Even this very article telling us how we should be unique and unbroken is another way we are reminded that, in some way, we are in fact, different. And you are. Our differentness is our right, our life story and our foundation. It is the space we take up in a world that tells us we should be small. So what happens if our foundation isn’t secure— if we don’t possess a sense of self to build our life upon?
Where do we go from here?
It is thought that our personalities change every 7-10 years, much like our tastebuds. This phenomenon is believed to be related to changes in our DNA across a lifetime. So even as we talk about our uniqueness, that too will go through several shifts, making it nearly impossible without guidance or awareness to put down the anchors essential to our identity development— the starting point for coping with emotions that come up during the holidays.
If you’ve ever been told that you want too much or over think, it is likely you’ve been taught these beliefs and is quite possibly a result of simply being exposed to perpetuated oppression and the absence of profound meaning. For many, we’re surrounded by negative messaging about our flawed desires and innate need to analyze, when those are the things that truly define our identity’s differentness, and are not broken at all. We may not have been exposed to humans who empower us through meaningful conversation and inspiration; both of which can seem absent during this season. Moreover, we haven’t been taught to identify these cultural pitfalls nor how to harness the power that our personal desires and deep thinking possess.
In order to overcome the disparities in our world during the holidays, we first have to be able to recognize what is happening. Through therapy, self-help books and classes, or journaling, we can start the process of creating neural pathways that map to new information and create our unique identities. Becoming more attuned to the emotions the above elicits can guide our journey towards healing. It is not about gratitude, it is instead about remapping new beliefs in place of old ones (though practicing gratitude can certainly help with this).
Start by simplifying, slowing down and refocusing during this season of contradictions.
Simplify
Just by learning how our brain works, we can rewire much of that narrative we referred to earlier. We know that fight or flight is a feeling associated with fear and anger. We may not know, however, that those emotions are housed in our brain’s amygdala, the structure also responsible for attaching emotion to memory (cue overwhelmed, triggers and family issues). In other words: all of your past experiences and received messaging about this time of year have now been stored away and ripe for the pickin’s each time fear or anger associated with the holidays is experienced.
Slow Down
Our body becomes our guide; letting the sensations in our body initiate the remapping toward awareness of what our brain is actually up to (i.e. amygdala mode) can create the most change. Tightness in your chest, heart palpitations and a pit in your stomach are signals that the brain is experiencing fear or anger and has activated the adrenal gland to increase its goal of survival. By learning to recognize these cues in our body, we can slow down and reevaluate.
Refocus
Reassociating these physical body sensations with our new knowledge about the amygdala can create space to refocus the signals we are being sent by our nervous system. With practice, we can begin to rewire new neural pathways for new empowered behaviors instead of old core beliefs of helplessness and hopelessness. We have now built a foundation of coping that may include replacing an old behavior with one that calms and centers our brain, leaving the situation or employing a mantra to soothe the brain during this activation.
Trauma therapy, behavioral intervention and EMDR are all services offered at Inner Body Works that can be hugely helped with support and guidance from a trained, culturally-aware and compassionate therapist. These changes may seem overwhelming but you don’t have to learn them alone. We are here to help.
