Holiday Overwhelm

Is your mind racing a little these days?

I don’t know why the holidays do this to us when we know a year ahead that they are coming. Somehow, I can just never seem to either get into the spirit or make a firm decision on anything until I’m into the month of December and the deadline is approaching.

But the issue is much bigger than the day we get started. It’s about deeper things that many of us have running under the radar as women. Things like perfectionism, over-responsibility, and buried fear of somehow not being enough.

Those might sound like heavy topics in a time of celebration, but it is in times of stress that the byproduct of the things we hold inside spill into the open. We think we are just ‘overwhelmed’ - but the root cause is deeper. And a lot of it comes from the way that we are socialized as women.

The need for everything to be perfect actually creates the absolute least perfect state of mind that we can have. And yet – we are relentlessly chasing the dream. This is because we are made to believe that we are supposed to be able to do it all.

Women feel over-responsible for almost everything. At this time of year, it is making sure everyone around us has the BEST holiday, the most enjoyable food, just the right gift, a beautiful setting, at a time and place convenient to everybody’s schedule.

Because of socialization and the very special gift of social media, the standard we are working toward is no longer even based in reality. Even if we do manage to create it all, it is not usually happening in a fun, harmonious way(like we think it should) so THEN we beat ourselves up for that!

This isn’t easy stuff to shake because it becomes a part of who we are (even as I write this my mind is drifting to what I’ve missed on the grocery list). But we do need to be better at finding balance and holding our own well-being in higher regard. Maybe even more so for our daughters and what they try to emulate themselves.

In these last few days, accept less than perfect, lower expectations for your outcome (just a little), breathe deeper, and remember to care for yourself.