How to Cope With Holiday Stress
Therapist tells faculty/staff to plan ahead, speak up, ask for help

Ioana Patringenaru | December 15, 2008

Do you hate holiday shopping? Do you find yourself rushing this time of the year? Do you feel stressed and tired? Then Sherry Reasbeck, a cognitive therapist, has some advice for you.

Sherry Reasbeck, a cognitive therapist, gave staff members tools to deal with holiday stress.

Watch a video of the Learn at Lunch talk titled “Family and the Wonderful, Happy, Peaceful, Very Good Holiday.”

“Let’s put a sanity clause back in the holidays,” Reasbeck told her audience Tuesday during a Learn at Lunch talk at Eucalyptus Point conference center.

This year’s holidays promise to be especially stressful, said Rose Lee Josephson, a staff member with the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program, which co-sponsors the Learn at Lunch series with the UCSD Staff Association. The economy is putting a damper on everyone’s celebrations, she added.

A quick poll of the audience Tuesday revealed that many felt rushed and tired. Many also reported dreading memories of holidays past and flare-ups of tensions within their family. Cleaning up also was a big source of distress.  And the more anxious you feel, the more you avoid thinking about the causes of your anxiety—and that in itself is a problem, Reasbeck said. The best course of action is to figure out where fears come from and come up with a game plan to deal with them, she added.

“Nobody is going to change,” she said. “What has to change is the way you cope.”

Speak up about your anxieties and your needs, she said. For example, if cleaning is the problem, get some help from family. But an audience member said she had trouble convincing relatives, especially her daughter, to help. Reasbeck did some role-playing with her. When asking for help, be specific and give an exact time when the person needs to show up, Reasbeck said. And make it fun. Offer helpers coffee or hot chocolate. Set up games to entertain the children. Play holiday music. And if relatives still don’t step up, hire someone to clean.

Reasbeck also warned her audience against over-extending themselves. “I believe in the 5 percent rule,” she said. “Take all you’re thinking you want to do and do just 5 percent of it.” For example, she went on, she teaches a class for other therapists and every year, she wants to add to the curriculum. So if she’s thinking about adding two books to the reading list, she adds two chapters instead. “My students don’t know the difference,” she said. “I’m more relaxed, and they get the information better.”

Reasbeck also advised to try and define what’s important for the holidays: getting together with family, eating or buying presents. Tell relatives: “I want to focus on the love, on the connection,” she said. “I just don’t want it to be about presents.” But what if relatives say you’re just cheap? “The technique is to really blame everything on yourself,” Reasbeck said. Explain that the problem isn’t money, she also advised, it’s shopping that has become a source of stress—and you just don’t have the energy for it.

But what if you keep flashing back on disasters of holidays past? This tendency to ruminate is yet another way to avoid problems and leads to poor problem-solving, Reasbeck said. “If you find yourself thinking the same thoughts over and over again, stop and think how you can make it better,” she said.

The key here is to not ask why something happened, but how to avoid facing the same problem again. For example, one of Reasbeck’s clients dreaded celebrating Christmas at her in-laws every year. The elderly couple was afraid their grand-children would make a mess and didn’t let them play. Reasbeck suggested that the client talk to her husband, who could in turn ask his parents to set up a room where the children could play. Otherwise, she could just refuse to go, Reasbeck added.

“If you do something a little differently, things will start changing,” she said.

A little pep talk also doesn’t hurt, she added. Tell yourself you’re doing your best, she advised. But what do you do if the stress just gets to be too much? What if all the anticipation gets to you? You have to remain in the present, Reasbeck said. She advised audience members to focus on their breathing. She then told them to close their eyes and try to listen to three different sounds around them. She also instructed them to take three deep breaths.

“Just notice the pleasure of feeling present,” she said. “Just the pleasure of being in your day.”

After the talk, Monette Karr, a staff member at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said she found Reasbeck’s advice helpful. She said she was going to plan ahead for the holidays and speak up. “It was useful information about the different ways to cope with holiday anxiety,” she said.