#18 Holiday Stress, Family Boundaries & Loneliness: A Gentle Reset for the Festive Season
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi everyone, I'm Cass and this is the Mind Your Being podcast. A space where we'll explore health and what it really means to care for our whole being, our physical, mental and emotional health. Each episode you'll hear from leading health and wellness experts or everyday people who share powerful insights and lived experience. And sometimes it'll be just me sharing thoughts, tools and reflections from my own journey. More than anything, I want you to feel supported, encouraged and empowered to make informed health choices that feel right for you. If this sounds good to you, please enjoy.
Why is the festive season often stressful for many people?
Hi and welcome to Mind Your Being. This is our final episode for the year.
I want to thank you all for tuning in. So for this episode, being the festive season, I really just wanted to offer an episode that is a small pause in the December busyness. Often the festive season has us feeling stretched, overwhelmed, or even a little lonely. And I want you to know you're not alone. I think everyone at some point in this festive season gets a little overwhelmed or a little bit stressed because it ends up being such a hectic time of year. children are finishing up on school, parents may or may not be on holidays yet, there's all the Christmas present buying, there's all the shopping for food, planning holidays, planning kids activities, Christmas parties, It's a lot. So I just wanted to do a short episode to talk about why this time of year can feel stressful for many people, how to navigate it gently.
And towards the end of the episode, I'll share some of the topics we'll cover on Mind Your Being in 2026. That always sounds a little strange to say the next year for the first time, but 2026 is just around the corner. So let's kick off with festive season stress. For many of us, this time of year comes with extra expectations and responsibilities. It's not just the shopping or the cooking, it can be the emotional drain as well. We hold the mental load of planning, organizing and caring for others. So even if you're not hosting a Christmas event, the combination of work deadlines, family commitments and social events can leave your nervous system feeling overloaded. But it is typical for stress to feel heightened at this time of year.
Add that together with hormonal changes, maybe sleep disruption, or just the sheer busyness and the fast pace of life these days. It can make everything feel more intense, particularly at this time of year. Something I notice amongst my friends and amongst colleagues is There's a lot of pressure around the idea of the perfect festive season. If you're a regular listener of the podcast, you'll know I talk about myself as a recovering perfectionist. And I think Christmas particularly is the time of year when perfectionist tendencies can tend to go into overdrive. If you're that way inclined, you might be striving to have the perfect meal, the perfect tree, to choose that perfect gift for someone, the perfect family gathering, that perfect sense of togetherness, just like it is in all the Christmas movies, right?
But often the gap between our expectation and reality is where the frustration lives. If you're someone that's striving for that perfect tree or that perfect gift and it's not creating a sense of stress or a sense of overwhelm for you, then happy days, like there's no problem with it. If there's no downside for you, then, you know, it's not a problem. But for some people... If you have those perfectionist tendencies, striving for that perfect gift or that perfect meal, it can create an enormous feeling of stress, overwhelm, overload on your nervous system. And there is a downside. There is a cost, right? To trying to create that perfect event or provide everything for everyone else. There is a cost to you.
So I think it's about balance and I'd encourage you to step back and look at your own values, look at your values of your own family and see if there's some ground for you to step back a little bit on the perfection and still find a beautiful tree, still prepare a beautiful meal and host a beautiful Christmas with your friends and family, but with less of the stress and overwhelm that comes with trying to have it all together, trying for it all to be perfect.
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