The holidays can be a wonderful time of the year. And they can also be an incredibly stressful, grief-stricken time of the year. As we are go into this December break, we are sharing some coping mechanisms to help keep you regulated and make the most of the time off.

Thanksgiving can be a welcome time of togetherness, belonging, gratitude, and love. Yet, for many of us, it can be a stressful period of navigating broken relationships, that hard-headed family member, and those topics that have been swept under the rug only to pop up when the entire gang is around the table.

Calling an emotion “good” or “bad” doesn’t give us a lot of information as to why someone is feeling this way, and it becomes especially hard to be helpful. Different coping strategies and support work for different emotions and so it’s important to be specific about emotions. We want to name them and include nuance.

Invalidation can be exquisitely painful to experience, especially when it’s ongoing or occurring in close relationships. Regardless of the other person’s intentions, invalidation can lead to people not feeling worthy of support, to doubt their own experiences, to feel alone, and to judge their own emotions and thoughts.

One way to improve repair in relationships when you’ve done something that hurts someone else is to use correction-overcorrection. This can also be helpful if you are struggling with feelings of shame, guilt, and regret for having done something that negatively impacted someone else.

Urge surfing is a technique that can help you manage unwanted behaviour by learning to ride it out, like a surfer riding a big wave safely to shore.

Being able to fully experience moments of pleasantness, happiness, and joy is not always a straightforward and easy task. In the short-term, it can feel easier to avoid feeling good in order to not experience feelings of loss or disappointment.

Let’s back up a bit and start with the why of self-care. Why do we do it? Why is it necessary? We do it to evoke agency, to connect with ourselves, to check in with ourselves and to not only use it as a preventative tool, but also to sustain us. When we practice self-care and prioritize ourselves, we can begin to feel our best and function at our best.

Given that there are many folks who have been working at home due to covid-19, this won’t necessarily be news that’s hot off the press, but maybe you are looking for ways to revamp your approach.

Comparisons are something that we do all the time and I do think there’s a time and place for it. They can have their benefits when it comes to determining the value of something because we generally don’t make decisions in a vacuum. Comparisons with others can also give us ideas about what’s important to us and can feel motivating to know that other people were able to achieve what we want.

This idea of becoming a better person (whatever that means) involves the idea that there is something happening right now within ourselves that we need to escape from. Pema Chödrön calls this an act of “subtle aggression” against ourselves.

Shame is a deep-rooted belief hidden in the parts of your subconscious and it can become a roadblock in building more profound and meaningful relationships with your partners.

Ironic process theory refers to the process by which suppressing thoughts (e.g., intrusive thoughts, anxious thoughts, urges to drink) can lead to such thoughts emerging with vengeance. This theory posits that there are two cognitive processes at play here.

The constant checking my phone for the time gave me the illusion of having control and a way to cope with the uncertainty of the situation. But it wasn’t very effective except for making me more irked and impatient. We all know that a watched clock never goes faster.

Validation is about acknowledging the kernel of truth in another person’s experiences. It doesn’t mean that we have to agree or like what the person is doing but instead, we can try and understand some of the reasons that people have for thinking, feeling, and behaving a certain way, given their past experiences. Validation also involves us showing the other person that they are inherently deserving of dignity and respect.