If you're irritable with family members, because they're not keeping the house clean a certain way, that means you have expectations.
If you've enjoyed our episode, or the content that we provide on the universe is your therapist, check out our signature program, the whole health lab, in the whole health lab. We walk you through healing from trauma, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If you're wondering if you have trauma, go to many trauma.com/quiz. Take our quiz, and you'll be able to determine if trauma is affecting your life. If it is, and you find that you want to go further, we would love to be your guide as you recover from trauma. Hi, and welcome back. Today's episode we thought would be very beneficial as we go into the holiday season. And this conversation is going to be about how to set ourselves up for the holidays in a way that is intentional, so we can reduce our stress and our overwhelm that is very typical around this time of year. Yes,
that is a great idea. And I think it's, it's so counterintuitive, because many of us look forward to the holidays as a time to celebrate and reconnect with loved ones and that sort of thing. And we don't always remain conscious of the fact that connecting with our loved ones can also bring up old triggers from childhood. And we also don't always realize consciously, that we have our own set of expectations about what the holiday should look like. And because of that, we tend to focus more on the appearance of the holiday or getting certain things done. And that's very, very common, but having a conscious awareness of that and making a decision about how to mitigate that can help with stress levels during the holidays.
Absolutely. I find that I as you said, I look forward to the holidays immensely. I love. I love the change of season. I love the gathering, I love my family so much and especially gathering with the family we have here in the Ozarks. It's truly such a joy. And with the holidays comes for me stress about making sure I'm that I'm remembering everyone. So am I being intentional with remembering all those that I love and making sure that I acknowledge that through, you know, something small a token of some sort, whether it's cookies, or whether it's a small gift is you know, a lot of people, it's very financially challenging during the holidays, because there are expectations. And even though it's so wonderful to give, it can be stressful to add that to your budget. But I think that one of the biggest services we can do to ourselves as we approach the holiday season is, as you said, develop awareness of what our expectations are. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that about some of those expectations that we typically aren't conscious of, and how do we become aware of them so that we can then set ourselves up for success?
Sure. And I think this ties in with our, the work that we've done in the podcasts that we've done that work we do in our program with our clients, with the awareness that we have two major drives biologically, and those are the drive for connection and the drive for safety. While the holidays, it activates both of those drives. And if your nervous system believes that it can only be safe that you can only be safe. If you please everybody, then you will not have the ability to enjoy the holidays, the same way that you would if you understood that being somebody being pleased by what you're doing, saying are giving has less to do with you and more to do with them and their own expectations. And so we want to connect with people we worry about what people will perceive in terms of our gift giving or the way we invite people over to celebrate and those things can be very burdensome, and I would say it can raise to toxic stress. If we're not careful. I think it's windy are one of our CO founders, I think it's her one of her family, they have a rule that all the kids and they brought them up with this rule that all the kids give each other gift, but it has to be homemade. And I think that's a great approach. I think it's probably not very practical for many families today because of how busy everyone else. But the other thing that I think is really fun is I've heard of it would depend on your family if you have addiction in your family or mental illness that this may not work, but kind of a re have fun re gifting holiday party, where you bring a group of people together and you rummage through your, your things at home or your closet and take something that you bought that you haven't used, or something that somebody gave you that you aren't going to use and your gift. And then the other thing that can be really fun is a white elephant party, and that can relieve financial stress. But what it might do is it also might spike your anxiety if you have family and friends with high expectations for gift giving. And so keeping that in mind, do what will help your nervous system be a little bit more calm, whatever that is.
I love those suggestions. Let's go back a little bit to how you can cultivate awareness that you have expectations. So if you know for years, I didn't know I had expectation, right? So it was very difficult to then go into the holidays and be disappointed and then have to backtrack and realize, Oh, I thought it was gonna go a certain way. How can we help our listeners develop some of that awareness? So they're being more cognizant of their own expectations?
Yes, I think one of the best ways is to notice where you're irritable during the holiday season. So if you're irritable with family members, because they're not keeping the house clean a certain way, that means you have expectations. If you're irritable, irritable, because you can't, you're not decorating or you don't have time to decorate the way you want to, or cook the meal that you had really hoped to cook those. Those feelings of irritability are all going to be based on expectations. And in one of our workshops about a year ago, I remember we talked about how expectations are the same thing as planned resentments. And I think that's super clever.
I did too. And who said that originally? Where does that come from?
Oh, I don't know. But I think Angela, who were we were working with quoted that and we used it in our in our workshop, and it's just really beautiful. It's probably out of the 12 step community.
Yeah, actually, you're right. It probably is. If anyone knows message us so we can attribute. I love that. For me, though. I didn't even know I had expectations. So I love that you're taking us back even further to why am I irritable? What's going on here. And irritability looks different for different people. So for me, it's usually anger, which, on the inside before it erupts is more just, you know, crappiness barking at the kids or being short with my husband or just rushing around. But I know for some people, their irritability doesn't come out as anger, it might come out as isolation, or I don't know, what are some other ways that people can recognize irritability in themselves?
Well, I think if you have a pretty active or harsh inner critic, a lot of times you're irritability can can show up as depression as a tremendous amount of anxiety. And let me as an aside, addressing anxiety piece you, you also can use anxiety as a possible tool for awareness. Because when we are anxious, it's usually because we have certain thoughts running through our head. And we have worries about certain things. And in your family growing up, you learned that in order to be safe, you had to placate and make sure everybody was happy, then you're going to be anxious about that. And I'm not saying it's an easy fix. I am saying that if you can pay attention to your anxiety, it can be a clue to what is running through your head.
That's really helpful. So when you start feeling anxious when you start feeling irritable, pay attention to that right and that can then when were used, you know, self compassion and benevolent curiosity asking ourselves, why am I irritable? Oh, because I just booked my third party that week and RSVP Yes. And I'm feeling like, I don't have enough time to get XYZ done, right? Or, you know, my house is a mess or whatever it is that we have that reaction to start asking in a very loving way. Why am I feeling irritable? So that's the first step is we're cultivating awareness. Right? And that's going to help us ask ourselves about what our maybe our hidden expectations are. The next step, I would say, once we kind of identify that we have some of these expectations is to minimize them, obviously, what's the best way to let go of expectations?
I think it's what I call the sowhat game, and you make a statement. And then you ask yourself, so what with each additional statement, so it sounds like this. I am freaking out because my house isn't clean. Okay, so what? That's the question you ask. So what is the worst thing about that in my brain like? So what if my house isn't clean? What's so horrible about that for my brain? Well, that means that I'll be embarrassed when people come over. All right, well, so what if I'm embarrassed, and then you go through and a lot of times, it'll sound something like, people will think I'm not organized, which by the way, I am not organized. Or they will think that I don't have my act together. Or they will think that I'm a slob. And the other thing that can be helpful is to ask yourself, What's the worst thing that can happen? And spend a few minutes just being calm and quiet, while you think about that? Because the brain is naturally designed to catastrophize and to make something that you're stressed about seeing horrible, at inability to be resolved, and, like impossible. And so if you have an understanding of how your brain naturally catastrophize things, then you can backtrack a little bit, and do some accurate thinking about some of those things.
I think that is so helpful. So we've cultivated awareness going into the holidays, we've discovered our expectations, and we've played the sowhat game to determine what really is the worst that could happen if our expectation doesn't get met, right? And then for me, at that point, I decide is it worth it or not? Because sometimes, it's that important to me that the expectation is met. Yes. Sometimes if the expectation is, I'll be able to see my family this season. And that doesn't happen. That would be very, very hard for me. So I would move mountains to be able to meet that expectation, right? So then we use our agency to determine if that expectation is something we want to keep,
yes, and our agency and sovereignty is only possible to us. If we have awareness, and we're making a conscious choice. One thing you said really interested me, what we tend to do is we tend to like conflate or mush together several expectations. And so somebody might say, it's really important to me that I see my family, but the three hidden expectations in connection with that are and that everybody's happy and that nobody gets strong, and that everybody behaves themselves. And so if it's important for you to see your family, then figure out how to do that without trying to figure out ways how to control a situation you can't control or a person that you can't control. And that can bring relief.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that I think we will probably do another episode during November about that specifically, because we had one last year that was so well attended. So going into just really quick because I know we have kind of gone through the steps. At this point. We want to set ourselves up for success. Besides expectations and kind of the mental game. I think what I want to do is encourage our listeners to set up physical boundaries for success for this season. So limiting your obligations, limiting your you really have a need for perfection, which again is mental but just deciding that you're going to focus on the human connection of these events. So the person into person interaction, instead of is this is, is this the picture perfect gathering? Or is is the roast done perfectly, right instead of running around, making sure it's perfect. And that's something I struggled with for years, is I would invite everyone over. And then I would spend, I mean weeks planning and trying to make it perfect. And then the day of the event, I would hardly sit and actually talk to people. And so I loved watching them connect. But that was also kind of a safety issue for me, as I had set the system up where I was watching it and kind of outside of it, I had accidentally set that up. And so being aware of that, let yourself sit down, let yourself enjoy the human to human connection of the event, and prioritize that over the structure of the event or the aesthetics of the event.
I love that I think another really important physical boundary can be to limit our use of alcohol during the holiday season, the use of alcohol increases during the holiday season. And to me, it's completely understandable because we're self medicating through pain of family relationships, pain of expectations, pain of anxiety. But if we can be conscious about our alcohol use during the holidays, I think that physically that provides a really healthy boundary and a great foundation to try to connect with others from. And if we can manage our expectations and engage in behavior that calms our nervous system, whether it's tapping or yoga or meditation. If we can do that, then we may have less drive to self medicate with alcohol or substances.
I love that. And I would also add this is a season of relaxation in a lot of ways. And I mean, supposedly feel very relaxing a lot. But you know, you go into the holidays and you think warm fire and family and cozy, hot chocolate, and then you're running around crazy town. But what I would encourage people to do is to really allow for that slow down and allow for that relaxation, while at the same time keeping their sleep schedule, keeping their eating schedule that has provided health for them, keeping their exercise routine that is providing endorphins. And so keeping those routines in place where they can still set themselves up to how what are the resources to go into the holidays.
That's a great point. I think I'm really glad that you brought that up Q
so those are our tips for going into the holiday season to set yourself up for success. And we're so grateful going into this next season to have you here as listeners and we'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the universe's your therapist this week. If you have any questions or looking for more information, you can find us at many trauma on Instagram, as well as many trauma.com Our website and if you're enjoying our content, we'd love it if you could rate review and subscribe to the show. We'll see you all next week.
