This topic was suggested to me by one of my patients as a good subject with which to start the holiday season. With the onslaught of costumed sugar addicts at my door the other night, I would say the holidays are officially in full swing. Somehow the season of good cheer also is the season of big time stress. Part of the reason is how many different stressors there are right now.
When someone says the word stress to me, they usually mean some sort of psychological stress. They say they are stressed out. But what they don’t realize is how many things all come together to create that unpleasant feeling. Lets go through a few of them here.
We mark the beginning of the holidays season with a sugar consumption festival in part because this is the first major stressor of the season. I am not just talking about the damaging physical effects everyone now admits about eating sugar. Yes, we know sugar is the major driver of diabetes, heart disease, gall bladder disease, nerve disorders, and rapid aging of the body, but as far back as 50 years ago stuff was published estimating that at least half of the patients in mental hospitals could be released if they just took them off all forms of sugar. Our governor back then decided it was easier to simply close the mental hospitals and let the patients fend for themselves on the streets. But yes, sugar directly affects how your brain functions and how you feel as a result. Sugar is a huge stressor on both your mind and body during the holidays, but we feel entitled to all the goodies everyone is pushing our way this time of year.
Here is a coping strategy for navigating your holiday sugar cravings. You can greatly diminish the effects of sugar on your body by making sure you keep at least 24 hours between indulgences. Keep the indulgence to only one hour of fun and don’t do it again for another 24 hours. To really have a beneficial effect, you need to understand that starches are sugar to your body. That bread and pasta, those mashed potatoes or fries, that fruit salad, even that carrot juice are all just a huge load of sugar to your body. Once they go in your mouth, it takes your body about ten minutes to turn all that stuff into sugar. So the cupcake and the French fries are essentially the same thing to your body. The one hour of sugar a day applies to all those starches as well as the sugars. Vegetables, fats, and protein foods have to fill you up during the rest of the day.
A sneaky trick I like to use is to make treats that are sugar and carb free using almond flour and my Dr. Dave Double sugar. I can reproduce most holiday favorites without impacting my blood sugar at all. These I can have anytime just like the veggies, fats, and proteins because that is what they actually are.
Sleep – the holiday season seems to be a time when people suddenly decide they don’t need their rest. There always seems to be so much to do and not enough time to do all of it. Sorry, there is no skimping on sleep. You need 7 ½ to 8 hours of sleep every night. If there is not enough time to get everything done, then the real answer is to do less. Change your expectations for yourself and put you first. If you don’t take care of you first, then there will not be enough of you to be of help to anyone else.
This enters into the realm of the greatest holiday stress – expectations. The holiday season brings out the child in all of us. It is the child in all of us that is the single main source of stress in our life. We want the delight of the child to come out, but with the delight also comes the black and white thinking and the inherent “it has to be my way” thinking of the child. A child’s brain is not developmentally complex enough to grasp a world view in which the needs and wants of others are just as important as theirs. You add to that reality the fact that children are completely dependent on their caretakers for their very survival and they view every new thing they want as a life or death issue. Just watch a three or four year old in the store when they decide they want a particular toy and mommy says no. The screams that
result make you think someone is trying to rip that kid’s liver out with rusty old pair of pliers.
These feeling are still very much alive in most of us, just buried very deep under years of negative feedback and suppression. But the holiday season brings that part of us much closer to the surface. That means we feel entitled to have things be our way and we get stressed if things don’t work out that way. You can tell when that child-thinking is bubbling to the surface if you hear yourself thinking or saying words like “should,” “have to,” “its not fair,” “this is horrible or awful.” These are examples of typical childhood extremist black-and-white thinking with the child belief that they are entitled to have things their way. Sorry, these are self serving lies we used as children that don’t apply to the real world. Because they don’t work in the real world, they cause us a huge amount of stress when we fall into believing the lies. People that are normally quite rational the rest of the year can get really crazy during the holidays.
What can we do about these old child patterns of behavior that crop up this time of year? This is not a new problem, and the spirit of the holidays is the perfect answer to these childlike tantrums. The spirit of goodwill and kindness to all directly counters the child feelings with the adult understanding that we are all connected
and work together in harmony to create the best life for everyone. The child’s insistence on getting his or her own way can yield to a greater wisdom if we throw ourselves into the service consciousness. Gratitude for what we already have in our lives counters the child’s demand for its every little want. Grounding in the outflow of love as the prime reason for the season helps to overthrow the fixations on trying to make everything just right so people will approve of us. The approval seeking of the child is a never ending quest because no amount of approval can fill the emptiness inside for more than a few minutes. That emptiness is filled from the inside out when you outflow simple love and goodwill to others without concern for a return. That spirit of giving this season is known for filling us with the love we are seeking. We don’t need to be perfect or right or anything else when we understand that it is what we give out that fills us. What others think about us doesn’t matter so much. All judgments are only self-judgments anyway.
Managing stress during the holidays is really about
loving yourself just as much as you love others. Care for your body. Give it the sleep it needs and the good food it needs and keep the sugar crap to a manageable level as I described before. If things start getting too busy, say no. All that stuff you think you just have to do, you don’t have to do. You want to maybe, but respect your needs first. This is the season of giving love, not stuff, not parties, not even service activities when they are too draining. Give from your abundance, your heart. Keep the unrealistic expectations of your inner child in check and the demands under wraps. Let it out to play, but don’t let it get bossy out there on the playground. Enjoy the season – literally “bring joy into the season.”