Professional Perspective: How to Destress Your Holidays

PTSD is a year round scrooge but during the holiday season it can pinch us more than usual. What can you do to alleviate some of the stress? Elizabeth Stanfill, a destress expert, gives us some helpful suggestions for managing and coping with the holiday season.

Tips for Destressing Your Holiday Season

Today, I would like to say a little bit about the holidays and destressing. We get so busy during the holidays and being prepared is a huge way to destress yourself. So, here are four things we can do to be prepared and help relieve stress for the holidays.

1. Take care of yourself by eating right, exercising, and getting plenty of rest. In other words, do not overindulge! It takes energy to handle a busy schedule for the holidays and when we overindulge by eating too unhealthy, eating too much, not exercising, and not getting enough rest, we can get very tired. If you overindulge, you will end up losing your energy.

2. Manage your activities. Make a list of all the things you need to do, prioritize that list, and then schedule, in your calendar, all the things you have on the list.

3. Manage your money. Know your budget, make a list of all the people you have to buy presents for, list all the things you have to buy, and then budget accordingly. This may mean you have to spend less on someone or something, or you may have to eliminate someone or something. When we reduce costs, where they are needed, we won’t get in a financial bind.

4. Ask for help. If you need help because you are overwhelmed, ask family or friends to help with tasks. If you are low on funds, ask people, you are inviting over, to bring their favorite dish. They will be honored! I love to do this because I love to bring people things especially my baked or cooked goodies.

This list is full of simple things that you may already do. My goal is to remind you, and me, to be prepared for the holidays and consider things that will make life easier and more pleasant thus, destressing yourself. Finally, don’t forget to have fun and be playful, it’s in your nature.

Please email me if you have any questions, I would love to hear from you: elizabeth@destressyourself.com.

Elizabeth Stanfill is the creator destressyourself.com, a company and website that specializes in permanent stress relief and helping individuals create happiness, energy, and vitality. Elizabeth has been teaching stress management to the Emergency Personnel for nearly 16 years, and to the general population for about a decade. What she does best is show you, as an individual, how to destress yourself. Visit her website, Destress Yourself, or her blog. You can also connect with her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.

“Professional Perspective” is a weekly feature. To contribute contact Michele.

Tags: elizabeth stanfill, holiday, ptsd, stress