Episode 145: Stress and Anxiety Around the Holidays

Psychology Has It Backwards

It's that time of year again when we're all expected to be joyful and enthusiastic, and a lot of people just feel stressed, pressured, and anxious about doing all the things they think they have to do for the holidays. We forget that we're making it up. It's our own thinking about holidays, our own exaggerated ideas of what we need to get done, our own pressure to make everything perfect for friends and family, that creates a lot of worried, stressful thinking. We don't lose our natural resilience during the holidays; we simply forget to depend on it and get caught up in thinking and planning and striving. When we start feeling the tension build, it's a good time to stop, clear our heads, and quiet down. It all works out.

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