The Therapy Edit - THROWBACK - on tips to reduce festive stress

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

This week we're sharing a THROWBACK episode while the team take a well-deserved Christmas break.In this solo episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna shares a few of her tried and tested tips for reducing your stress levels in the run up to the festive season.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I love bringing bite-sized thoughts and conversations to support your well-being in your busy lives. Behind the scenes, we are working on bringing you a whole new series, but in the meantime, we have delved into the archives and will be sharing some of our most loved nuggets, lightbulb moments and powerful chats. I hope you enjoy them. Hi, everyone. It's that time of year, isn't it? stress and overwhelm can so easily start to pick up. And if you're feeling it, I am feeling it. I will never forget this moment. It must have been years ago now where we, I think it was Christmas

Eve and we were going to the theatre. It was a pantomime. It was a Christmas pantomime and my husband ran back to the car to go and get some coats and he came back to join us and he said, oh no it's so sad i just spoke to this woman who was loading stuff up in a car and asked her if i could help her and she just said i can't wait for it to be over he said isn't that so sad and i said no i actually really really get it i really get it and if you're a woman or a mom who is very responsible for making christmas happen often it can go fully not completely known by other members of family, all that goes into it. Now, I'm incredibly grateful my husband will pitch in, but it's just one of those things. It's just one of those things

that I guess I have more of a hand in, partly by choice, but also just time-wise. So I'm feeling the stress starting to pick up here. And I have created a little mini bite-sized course called the merry and perfect Christmas course and it's just four little videos that you can find on my website, they're £12 and it is just, I'm going to give you some tips now, but it will go into this a little bit more just to give you almost a framework of ways just to take some of the stress out of Christmas. So here we go, here's my three-step tip to taking some of the stress out of this festive time. Number one, do a tradition inventory. Now think about all the traditions that your family have picked up along the way,

whether it's something that has been done generational, whether it is something that has been brought in since you've had children. My husband and I have different traditions that we've grown up with, so kind of merged them together. Somehow I remember him just being so surprised that we opened some presents before breakfast and I was really surprised that they waited until after dinner. And it was this enmeshing of all of these different traditions, kind of merging them together, conflicting over some, but finding our way through. But have a little think, what do you always do? Think about, maybe you might write them down. What do you always do? Now, I want you to spend a moment looking at this list through the eyes of how you're feeling, through the eyes of the

resources and the capacity that you have. And I want you to be really honest with yourself. As you look through this list of traditions and things that you've always done, I want you to think about what makes your heart leap, what makes your stomach drop, what makes your shoulders clench and tense. I want you to think about what have you not got capacity for? What traditions may have just been traditions because they're nice, but actually when you think about it in the current context or where you're at financially at the moment, where your family are at the moment, I want you to look through the lens of now. And I want you to think that traditions are only really traditions worth keeping if they serve you.

so what of that list perhaps this year may need to be skipped may need to be reduced may need to be delegated may need to be taken off completely actually if you're really honest with yourself it might feel like a relief not to do it so have that inventory have that list reflect on it talk about it with a partner if you if you need to and if you can number two put it into action now if you were to go without doing some of these things what does that mean what what might that look like are there conversations that need to be had who do you need to speak to what do you need to do or maybe even let everyone know that you're not going to do i remember years ago i think it was about four years ago now, where I thought about sending all the Christmas cards, because that's

just what we'd always done. My mom absolutely loves every year designing a Christmas card and handmaking these Christmas cards. That has been something that she has always done. So I've grown up with Christmas cards being a big thing. They'd be strung up on a wall in our house, and we would add to them every day as they came through the letterbox from friends and family members. And I remember this one Christmas just sitting there and I think I was heavily pregnant and I thought right and he'd start the Christmas cards and I thought you know what that just feels like a mountain it feels like a lot I do not have capacity for it I just don't have the energy for it and I thought to myself what if I didn't and it felt like the most renegade rebellious thing to even

contemplate that I would not do this thing that had always been done and my husband comes from quite a traditional family as well, where they, they two had always done the Christmas cards. And I remember thinking, what if I didn't? What if I didn't? The more I thought about it, the more liberating it felt to even think that that could be something I didn't have to do. And I didn't. And what did I do? I didn't spend that money. I didn't sit for hours, just constantly writing cards. And I'm not someone who can just write simple to so and so love from so and so. I always feel like I have to justify sending a card by writing a little essay in. So it would take me quite a while to write these cards and it felt very liberating. So what I did,

I think back then, I wrote a Facebook message and said, we're not sending cards this year and said, I'm donating that money that we would have spent on cards and stamps to charity. I was letting people know, giving them the option not to send me one because they were not going to get one back. Now we've done it for four years and we barely get any cards. I think we've been crossed off a list and I'm I'm grateful for that and I really had to sit with that fear of upsetting people offending some old relatives perhaps and just know that we needed to make that decision for ourselves more recently a family member said in a in a group on our on our phones on our what's that you know what we're we can't afford to buy everyone at Christmas present this

year can we do Secret Santa and I think everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. So it's been a good number of years now where we just do not buy presents for everyone. And that was somebody stepping out there and saying, you know what, we can't do what we've always done. We can't do what we've always done. And it might just be that in having these conversations, you find that others may even be relieved, that you're stepping out of a tradition. So what do you need to do in order to relieve? yourself of this. Now number three is about managing the disappointment because let's say you decide that we did elf on the shelf last year because that is what everyone was doing on

Instagram. We didn't do. I've never done that. And my kids are disappointed that we're not engaging in this fun thing that their friends might be talking about at school. And I say to them, I know it's so fun, isn't it? But the elf, we don't have an elf. And they're disappointed. But I have to manage that. And I think sometimes we just, we so fear the disappointment or upsetting others. We so fear maybe resentment coming our way or people not understanding why perhaps we can't do what we might have done. Perhaps you're saying, you know what, we just can't host this year. I know it's our turn and I'm really sorry.

And we just, we just can't. We just can't do it. Or you know what, we really just need a Christmas together. whatever it might be. We've had a hard year. We just need a slow Christmas. We don't want to trek across the country this year. Now I think it's also really helpful to think of this as for now, not necessarily forever, because sometimes when we're addressing things, we can think that this is it now. We're never going to do that again. But actually, your energy levels might be different next year. Your resources might be different next year. But how can you honor where you are at now?

and I know I mentioned resentment from other people, but actually what about the resentment that we can feel when we know we're spending something that we do not have, be it financially, be it energy? You know, we're doing that in a spirit of resentment and frustration and you have no idea what this has cost me. You have no idea what this sacrifice has been behind the scenes. So as we're saying to people, you know what, I can't do that this year. not doing that this year. You're actually enabling yourself to let go of what could be resentment that is going towards that person and they might have no idea. So as we're doing this for ourselves, we're doing this for other people. Now we can be kind and sacrificial and sometimes maintaining

relationships requires us to be a little bit sacrificial. So it's a bit of a case by case basis really, isn't it? And sometimes we need to weigh up other people's temporary discomfort for the health of our mind or the health of our family, just a little something to get you thinking as your mind is rushing ahead about actually what might you just be doing because you've always done it. What tradition may not be serving you this year. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Grab a copy of my new book, The Uncomfortable Truth. Change your life by taming 10 of your mind's greatest fears, where we tackle some of life's uncomfortable truths that rob us of energy, joy and headspace, such as some people don't like me, I'm going to

fail. Bad things will happen. And as we move into a place of radical acceptance of these truths, you will find yourself living more freely and intentionally with more presence and confidence than ever before. You can find it at your usual bookseller. But in the meantime, just feel free to hit subscribe and if you enjoyed this episode please do share it so that we can get more ears benefiting from the words that we share.