Navigating This Season

Last year, I was asked to lead an online seminar about coping with anxiety during the holidays. To prepare, I began to consider the origins of holiday season anxiety. As a therapist with post-degree training in trauma, I didn’t have to look far.

This time of year, despite the inherent joy of whatever holiday you celebrate, can’t help but bring us back to our families, whether in real time or memories.

Either way, that’s not always a festive occasion. Despite the cartoon image that accompanies this blog post.

Sadly, many later-in-life incidents of post-traumatic stress disorder or dysfunctional behaviors originate from early-in-life abuse (physical, emotional, sexual) by what therapists call “attachment figures,” typically a parent or caretaker. In holiday seasons present, it becomes difficult to detach from those memories being awakened.

How can you do it? That was the heart of my presentation at the online seminar. I focused on the basic principle of recognizing signs of rising anxiety in the body. When you feel these signals of tension—a sinking feeling in your stomach, tightness in your chest, tension in your neck and arms—it’s your body telling you it wants to go into “fight, flight or freeze” mode, triggered by some type of memory or perceived danger even when there is no evident threat in present day.

If you can recognize the body’s signal early enough in the cycle, you can do some type of soothing technique to reduce the intensity or duration of what is happening in your body. That can be regulating your breathing—take a nice even breath through your nose (not too deep) and a long slow exhale through your mouth—for a couple of minutes. That’s just one method. There are many different ways to avoid fight-flight-freeze once you become tuned to your body’s signals. You can take a walk (change scenery), turn on some music, do something creative.

Any tasks that require the activation of your prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain used in executive functioning such as planning, creative and social expression, and decision-making—can move you away from full activation of the amygdala, the part of the brain where fight-flight-freeze originates.

Once you have soothed your system, another step you can take after being triggered is to get curious. Why did I just feel threatened? Was it real or can I recognize it for what it is, a memory that is no longer a threat?

In this way, you can reduce those triggered feelings and ease a little bit of that holiday season tightness. Enjoying the safety of present day—and knowing when to set a boundary of detachment from those you cannot feel safe around—should make this time of year more tolerable.

Here’s wishing all a safe and serene holiday season!