Feeling Those Holiday Emotions
It's Thanksgiving and that means there can be a lot of emotions come up. It's either a lot of family time or no family time or not enough family time. Holidays can cause a lot of anxiety and sadness in your brain. But you don't have to feel anxiety about how much you have to do or who you have to talk to or if you have no plans.
It's all how we think about it.
If you feel anxious, sad or upset about the holidays, watch this video on how you can feel better or keep reading.
Whether you are seeing a lot of people for the holiday or not, we often live with reoccurring thoughts like:
- My family doesn't understand me
- I'm alone on the holiday
- I hope no one asks me about X
- Everyone else has a better Thanksgiving than me
These thoughts can make us feel sad, anxious or lonely (or something else depending on the thought). So I want to show you one example of how to analyze the way you’re feeling.
I coached someone on the thought:
- Everyone else has a better Thanksgiving than me
And this person was having a 10-person Thanksgiving dinner with her family, but since she didn't have the huge Hallmark movie gathering, it made her feel sad. She was comparing herself with an ideal she saw on a Hallmark movie that that is the best kind of Thanksgiving you can have and thinking if she couldn't have that, she shouldn’t be happy. I think the deeper truth was she didn’t feel connected to her family or loved because she didn’t have the right kind of holiday.
Regardless of what you do, if you have 30 people or two people, if you're having a Friendsgivng or going to a Chinese restaurant for Thanksgiving, anyone could have this thought.
So let’s look at this.
C: Thanksgiving with 10 people (neutral)
T: Everyone will have a better Thanksgiving than me
F: Sad
And from your feelings you either take action or don’t take action. From a place of sadness, guess what? She wasn’t too motivated to make her Thanksgiving any better. And she was creating an even less happy Thanksgiving for herself, because of the way she was thinking about it.
A: do nothing, wallow
R: create an unenjoyable Thanksgiving
It's the way you think about it that changes your experience.
She had the choice to have a great holiday by the way she was thinking about it.
So what if the holiday that would be better and happier?
She said it was feeling connected with her family, she could hug everyone when she got there.
If you had the choice to have a great Thanksgiving, what would
you choose to think?
Want a visual explanation? Watch this video on how you can feel better.
It can help you feel better around the holidays and with any other negative feelings you have.
And it explains a little more how coaching works. If you're curious about it, email me and ask me a question.