Strategies for Reducing Holiday-Related Stress | Episode 42 | Reviving Vet Med

The holidays are here and while this time of year is exciting and energizing for many people, it can be exhausting and illness-provoking for others. According to the American Psychological Association, more than one-third of people surveyed during the holidays report an increase in their stress level due to time constraints, financial concerns, commercialism, the pressures of gift-giving, and, of course, family gatherings. 

It’s important that we don’t get lost in the hustle and bustle of traveling, buying presents, entertaining family and friends, or attending parties, without also taking steps to preserve our mental and physical health. In this episode, we share ten practical and evidence-based strategies for reducing stress, including ways to incorporate them into your busy holiday season.

Resources

Ten Tips for Staying Well This Holidays Season (Blog): https://revivingvetmed.com/ten-tips-for-staying-well-this-holiday-season/ 

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For more practical pointers and tangible tips related to veterinary mental health and wellbeing, subscribe to my e-newsletter: https://revivingvetmed.kartra.com/page/newsletter 

Online Programs

To learn more about my 4- and 8-week online programs approved for CE credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE, please visit: https://revivingvetmed.com/programs/.  

Questions or Suggestions

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Transcript

Hey everyone! Welcome to another episode of Reviving Vet Med.

In today's episode, we will be discussing some practical and helpful strategies to reduce the stress that many of us feel during the holiday season. So, we are going to talk about making time for exercise, eating healthy, carving out downtime and making sure that you’re spending time with other people that is meaningful from a social connection perspective. So, I think this information is going to be helpful for all of you as we move to the holiday season. 

This is the Reviving Vet Med podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Marie Holowaychuk. My mission is to improve the mental health and wellbeing of veterinary professionals around the world.

All right, so the holidays are officially here. We are in the month of December and while this time of year can be very exciting and energizing for a lot of us, it can also be exhausting and anxiety provoking for some. And that is because, of course the holidays come loaded with a lot of different things. Sometimes spending with family is not necessarily enjoyable or rejuvenating. Sometimes the pressures of gift giving, and celebrations are also challenging and so we want to honor that. Yes, this can be a wonderful time and it can also induce a lot of stress and lead us to even experience illness and get very run down this time of year and that is of course, because all of this is happening.

On top of what is for most of us, a very busy clinic schedule, usually we've got a lot of people amping up taking care of their pets before their holiday season. And so, while some clinics will slow down a little bit, many do still stay very, very busy.

So I want to share with you a statistic that says that the American Psychological Association recognizes that there are a lot more feelings of stress, sadness, irritability, and fatigue around the holidays. In fact, more than 1/3 of the people that they surveyed reported that the holidays increased their stress levels, and they attribute this to time constraints financial concerns. Commercialism, the pressures of gift giving and of course family gatherings is something that many people dread this time of year. So it's really important that we don't get lost in the hustle and bustle of travel entertaining, buying presents going to parties and all those, those sorts of things and that we do take steps to preserve our mental and physical health. 

So, I'm going to share with you some strategies that have research benefits in terms of reducing stress and I'm going to give you some practical ways that you can continue to practice these strategies despite the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, so no matter whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, whatever it might be this time of year, I do hope that you'll find benefit in this. So the first strategy that I want to share with you is to try your best to maintain your healthy diet. So, this is challenging this time of year and and I'm victim to this as well. I like my fair share of holiday beverages and Christmas treats and chocolates and the whole 9. And I can remember.

You know, when I was in clinical practice full time, this was the time of year that clients would bring just boxes of chocolates and treats and so many other things. I would walk into the ICU and there would just be a spread consistently for people to choose from and it's not to say that you can't take in some of these treats, but the problem is, is that when that's all that we are eating and that's a lot of sugar, we know that sugar can have a dampening effect on our immune system for some of us, it can also wreak havoc on our guts as well. And that can put us at risk for mental health challenges and also gastrointestinal challenges and even challenges with our immunity. So what I'm going to urge you to do is outside of the yummy snacks and treats that you're eating to just make sure that you are still trying to take in healthy food. So, continue to pack your lunch when you go to work. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables. The good thing about prioritizing fruits and veggies is that those will fill you up and you won't have as much of a hankering for some of those sweets. And then just try to limit some of your intake. So again, I'm not saying no treats. What I'm saying is when you go to Starbucks, maybe you get your beverage half sweet or when you go to a party and you know that you're going to be drinking alcohol, maybe you decide ahead of time that you're just going to have one or two drinks. OK. So, these are great ways that we can make sure that we're still sticking with a relatively healthy diet. 

The second strategy I want to share with you is to make sure that you carve out time to get into nature. So, research will say that walking in the woods or getting outside, even if it's just green space, this research shows that there. Doesn't have to be mountains and lakes or oceans, and that kind of thing. Just being in a space that is green even if you live in a city setting and granted, I know this time of year if you live in a climate like mine, it might be snowy. So it might be white, but the point is that you were going out around trees and nature and the natural world. This has been shown in research studies to drop our cortisol levels and to improve our attention span and our memory. So, it really is about clearing the mind. It's kind of a good reset. I know for me when I'm feeling really challenged at work, especially if I'm working from home, I will get out and go for a walk and even though I live in a downtown area, there's still enough greenery and green space outside that I know that this is having a positive impact on me so. I know oftentimes in the winter we like to kind of hunker down and bundle up and hibernate, try to carve out space to get outside, take the dog for a walk, go to an area where you know it is nature full and it doesn't have to be, you know, an epic hours and hours amount of time. It can just be 20 to 30 minutes and that's still going to have a rechargeable benefit for you.

So, the next strategy I want to share is to make sure that you are finding time to move your body and that you are finding time to exercise. So, I know for me my exercise has become such an important part of my mental health routine. I love to feel strong when I feel physically strong. I feel more mentally strong. So don't get me wrong. I lift weights not only to strengthen my mind, but also strengthen my body as well, and there are so many benefits for exercise in terms of stress relief. So whatever form of exercise or body movement resonates with you, that is what you want to try to keep up with over the holidays. Now I know for many of us we're traveling over the holidays. We're maybe staying with family or friends. It can become a little bit challenging to stay within our routine, try to proactively decide on a plan that will allow you to keep exercising. I know that I take my daughter and we go home to visit my parents over the holidays. And so, I make a point of scheduling in some yoga classes.

While I'm at home or I just get up early in the morning and I go down to my parent’s basement and I do a bit of body weight training using an app. My favorite app is the Peloton app. They've got tons of great different classes that you don't even need equipment for and I knock it out early in the day, I get it done and that just sets the tone for me to be able to deal with whatever stressors might be coming up. For me, the rest of the day. So again, whatever resonates with you, maybe if you are going home to visit family or friends, you ask a friend to go to a spin class with you or go for a walk with you. You know, making sure that these are brisk activities that get your heart rate a little bit elevated, that's where the benefit comes from. Is from that cardiovascular exertion. So again, moving your body in whatever way you like to move your body and making sure that you carve out time or you plan to get it done. Because if you say to yourself, I'm going to make sure I exercise over the holidays, something that can happen at any time doesn't happen. And you've heard me say this multiple times, so make sure that you plan it out.

So, the next piece of advice I want to share with you is to practice mindfulness. So, this is something I need a constant reminder for. There are times, especially when I'm stressed, that I can get very reactive. I especially around my family for whatever reason. You know my sister, or someone will say something. And I will just immediately have a reaction and I lose that buffer. I lose that mindful awareness of recognizing. Oh, ‘’I didn't like what she said I'm having these thoughts of you know, why would she say that?’’ Coming up and now I'm feeling frustrated and angry and I'm noticing these sensations in my body. My jaw is clenching, my fists are tightening. All these different things that mindfulness is that present minded experience where we are fully aware of our thought’s feelings and bodily sensations in that awareness offers that buffer or that pause before we have a reaction. Now you and I all know that there are situations with our families where we are so preconditioned to behave in particular ways. It's like we revert to childhood behaviors and a lot of that is that Bree activity that we would often do before you know, before we were adults and had a little bit more mindful awareness. So, this can be really, hard over the holidays, especially if you're not rested or especially if you're feeling stressed for other reasons.

So, practice this ahead of time. There's lots of different ways that you can practice mindfulness. You can go on a walk without music or a podcast and justice. Notice your breath, notice your body, notice the sensations, and notice the thoughts and feelings that are coming up for you. You can do a body scan practice you can do seated meditations or lying down.

My favorite meditation app is Insight Timer, so you can get on an Insight timer and check out all of their free programming. There's also lots of meditations on YouTube and headspace, and tons of other apps as well. The whole point being that you want to build this muscle of mind, mindfulness. Which really is a muscle. It gets built with Practice before you go into these stress inducing situations. So again, carving out some time and it doesn't have to be long. Once again, I know over the holidays time is short, everything gets condensed. My mindfulness practice literally might be just a few deep breaths in the morning gathering my thoughts, noticing my body noticing where my head is at Before I get out of bed, so it doesn't have to be anything major.

So, the next recommendation is along the same lines of mindfulness, and that is to try to have some sort of meditative practice regularly. If you are in the habit of meditating regularly, whether that's every morning, every evening before bed, or a couple of times a week, you want to try to maintain that over the holidays and my strategy is when my days get very full or my work is bleeding into all parts of my day, it's becoming very long. I just shorten my self-care exercises. So, what you don't want to do over the holidays is just throw all these things out the window, you know? Oh, I'll pick it up after the holidays. It will be January 1st soon. I can make it a resolution. What you want to do is you want to stick with it in some sort of modified form. So, if you're used to having a 15- or 20-minute daily meditation practice again, maybe it gets condensed to a 5-minute meditation.

It doesn't have to be anything epic, just consistent. Remember something that you do every single day is so much more important than the things you only do every once in a while. So really do try to stay mindful of that and maintain your meditation practice. If you have one.

So the next recommendation to mitigate stress over the holiday season is to make sure you're paying attention to your breath. So, you've heard me mention before. The importance of breathing is something. Of course, we do most of the time without even thinking of It, but in stressful situations the breath can be a very helpful tool to modify our autonomic nervous system response. So what I mean by that is during stress, our fight or flight or freeze response is engaged, right. Our heart rate often goes up, our muscles tense up we Will divert blood flow to our extremities so that we can run or do whatever we have to do and that moves blood flow away from our guts, right? It makes it so that we are able to spring into action. But it is not good for a sustained period of time. So, if you've been running around, you know, running errands or going to activities, and then, you know, going to work and work is busy and everything else that's happening, you want to take these moments to reset your autonomic nervous system to up regulate. Your parasympathetic or rest and digest system, and you can do that with breathing. So, the way that you can do that is simply to Think the duration of Your Exhales. So, if you're breathing in for two seconds, breathing out for four seconds, you can also do this by box breathing. This is where you breathe in for four seconds. You hold for four seconds. You breathe out for four seconds, and then you hold for four seconds. You can make it even longer than that you can go 6 seconds 8 seconds I find personally for me 4 seconds is usually a pretty good duration. So those breath holds and that prolonged exhalation. Activate the vagus nerve, which drops the heart rate, thereby mimicking that parasympathetic nervous system. So again, the breath even just tuning into your breath and how it feels is a really easy way to reduce your stress. I do not recommend blowing into a You know, a a paper bag or taking a lot of deep breaths because it's usually not the inhalation that is the problem, it is the exhalation, it is the blowing air out. Very often when we're stressed, we hold the air. So, we want to make sure that they, you know, are breathing out.

 So, the next strategy I want to share with you is social connection and you might be thinking, Oh my gosh, that's the last thing I need around the holidays is more people and what I mean by this social connection is meaningful connection. These are the connections that you really want to be making over the holidays. This is connecting with your friends and your loved ones that really means something for you, that especially for the introverts who are listening. These are the people. You can have those deep, rich, meaningful conversations with them. It's not that superficial. Chitter chatter that you have with your families, you know that you're not kind of talking about anything major. It's just kind of the surface level things for those of us who are introverts, we really like that deep conversation and being in all of these superficial conversations can be really draining. And for some of us, it is very stress provoking. I know for me, I get anxious and almost a little bit irritated by just having surface level conversation, so I make sure that when I'm visiting my family that I'm also carving out time to see some of my friends.

And ideally, friends who know me really well, like outside of Marie the veterinarian or the Wellness advocate, that we can talk about life, things like, you know, family and health and all those things that really matter to us. So, make sure again that you don't let the holidays pass you by that you. Proactively, now, today, connect with some people who you really want to connect with and carve out that time and if you don't have the opportunity to see some of these people in person, could you send an e-mail? Could you write a letter? Could you, you know, send a holiday card or even just record a voicemail? I love the voicemail function in WhatsApp or text messaging, for example, where I can just record a message and it's in my voice. It conveys meaning and tone because it's me talking and that can be a lovely thing for someone to listen to, to feel really connected to you even if you might not be able to connect in real time.

So the next strategy 8 that I have for you is to make time for play. So, play, believe it or not, is not just for kids as as a mom to a three-year old, I can attest to the fact that I am playing more now than I probably ever did at any time point in my life, which is a wonderful gift that she gives to me. But even without her playtime is for adults too, and playtime is so important for stress relief.

And for our brains, because playtime is essentially doing something that has no predetermined goal. There is no specific outcome. You cannot predict how it's going to go. So, this can be playing a board game. This could be going outside and making a snowman or having a snowball fight or You know, going to bargaining, these are activities that you do without any predetermined You know reason for them or goal at the end, you know, going bowling, singing, karaoke, all these opportunities where there's very little structure. It requires a little bit of, you know, loss of inhibition and you just get out there and you are just playing and again, the neuroscience research behind the importance of play really demonstrates benefit. And so, I urge you to carve out time for this as the next recommendation for you is to also make sure that you are scheduling downtime. So, I don't mean like downtime to buy all your remaining presents and drop everything off and finish your baking and clean the house before the company arrives. I mean down time that you are not planning anything that when that downtime arises, even if it's just for half an hour or an hour in your day, that you do whatever feels right for you to do in that moment. Maybe you make a cup of tea, and you just sit and day. Maybe you do end up doing a little bit of tidying up around the house. Maybe you sit and you journal. 

Maybe you flip through a magazine, you do whatever comes up for you that is not scheduled or regimented. So, I remember connecting with my psychologist a few years ago and she really, you know, her observation. I cannot recall the context of the conversation, but ultimately, she concluded that I needed a whole lot more downtime in my life. And she said, you know, you're so incredibly structured, you really will benefit from having a bit of unstructured downtime. And she recommended that I start with just 5 minutes a day and so this is something I've really tried to incorporate. This is something I benefit from over the holidays because it is so structured and so busy for so many of us. And so, yeah, again, this is something I recommend that you do. And if you don't carve it out in your schedule. Try to incorporate it into your daily activities when you are going out and running errands at the last minute while you're standing in line at the checkout. Can you not check your phone? Can you just sit in that place of? I am purposefully doing nothing right now and just see what happens. Sometimes our best epiphanies come up when we are literally not doing any.

And then the very last tip, the 10th tip I want to share with you today is to make sure that you get enough sleep, sleep. I've talked about on the podcast before is so important for our mental health and for our stress relief. We know that when we are not sleeping enough or our sleep is not of good quality, that we are more predisposed to mental health challenges and that just in general, we can feel more irritable and frustrated. And sleep is important, especially as we are navigating some challenges over the holiday season because sleep is how we process, it's how we make sense of what happened to us during the day. It's how we take events and create memories. So important benefits not just for our cognition and our daily functioning. But again, our mental health and our regulation as well. So, the research demonstrates that most adults require between 7:00 to 9:00 hours of sleep per day. So, if you fall asleep on the couch after dinner one evening, that will count into your daily sleep and what I would say to you as my biggest tips for making sure that you're getting good sleep over the holiday season is to have an alarm for your bedtime. So make sure that you are signaling to yourself, oh, it's almost time for my bedtime. That way you can start to wind down, wrap up whatever you're doing and then engage in your regular bedtime routine that is the same thing you do every day that you go to bed before you go to bed. So maybe that's a bit of stretching, a bit of tidying up, washing your face, brushing your teeth, listening to a meditation reading Book whatever it might be and that at that point forward you are powering it down. Screens are off. Preferably you're not looking at your phone and you are powering down to go to sleep. Now of course, if you are super wired or you're not tired, that's not the time to be going to bed. But what setting an alarm does is it prevents you from staying up and, you know, unbeknownst to you, it's now two or three hours past your bedtime and you didn't realize it because you were streaming Netflix or you were, you know, wrapping guests until the wee hours of the morning or whatever it might be. So, this just tries to keep us on a schedule because the research really demonstrates that a consistent sleep schedule in terms of bedtime and a wake up time is important and along those lines. Try to get up around the same time every day, the experts say. You know, maybe giving yourself half an hour to an hour of buffer, especially if you are, you know, going to bed extra late or you're feeling like you need additional rest. 

But what we don't want to do is we don't want to get into the habit of really sleeping late over the Qualities because what that does is that just pushes your bed time back later and later, and then when it comes to getting back to real life and you have to get up to go to work in the morning, it's going to be very challenging for you to fall asleep the night before. So, try to stick to a regular schedule. You know, again, you don't have to get up and get ready for work. But you know, you can get up and read a book or visit with your family or whatever it is that you like to do over the holidays. So, keep that sleep consistent, making sure that you are keeping your phone out of the bedroom so that you are not being activated by messages or notifications and making sure too that if you're drinking caffeinated beverages that you avoid those before you know about six hours, four to six hours before bedtime. For most people, caffeine has a pretty long half-life. So, if you're going to bed at 10, usually we would cut ourselves off from caffeine around 4:00 and with alcohol.

We have this misconception that alcohol is a depressant and that it helps you fall asleep and and the the truth is that yes, it does have some depressing qualities. Many people do fall asleep easier, they feel more relaxed when they've the drink. The problem with consuming alcohol before bedtime is that it prevents us from going into deep sleep or our R.E.M. Cycles, which is where a lot of our mental restoration happens. And so, if you are going to drink over the holidays, just make sure that you do it earlier in the evening so that you've got time to get that alcohol out of your system by the time you go to bed, so maybe you, you know, have a drink in the afternoon or with dinner and then try to avoid drinking again right before bedtime.

So those are my tips. I'm going to run through them one more time. Just to summarize it, I talked about maintaining a healthy diet, getting out in nature, finding time to exercise, practicing mindfulness, meditating daily. If that is your practice, not forgetting to breathe, especially lengthening those exhales harvesting or harnessing, I should say those important social connections. Making time for play, scheduling downtime, and getting enough sleep.

So that's it for this episode of Reviving Vet Med. I hope that you took away some helpful tips and strategies for reducing your stress over the holidays season after listening to this episode, maybe you’re going to connect with a friend and make a plan for the holiday or you’re going to book that holiday yoga class to make sure that you’ve got an outlet to deal with all holiday stressors. 

As always, please subscribe to our podcast if you haven’t already, we always welcome your ratings and reviews and even better if you know of someone who might appreciate or enjoy this episode, please go ahead and share it with them. Word of moth is the very best way to spread the word about our episodes. If you are interested in the resources from today’s episode, please check out the show notes where we will include links to anything that is related and if you have any questions about today’s episode or suggestions for future topics, please email us at revvingvetmed.com I would like to thank my wonderful assistant Valentina for producing this episode and I’d like also to thanks you for listening I hope you’ll tune in next time. In the meantime, take care of yourself. Bye for now!