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Holiday Anxiety
Hey friends, the holidays are coming, and so is the holiday anxiety for many. If you missed last week, I talked about all the food and nutrition stuffs and gave you 3 steps to banishing the holiday cravings + guilt + overwhelm that comes with it.
Despite the joyous nature of the season, often we are overindulging in food and alcohol, overindulging in expectations and what others demand of us, overstressed, and just plain worn out. This serves to significantly increase our inflammation and decrease our health and wellness. It’s the same for all but scales up when you are living with a chronic illness or autoimmune disease.
So in today’s episode, we are going to talk about the holidays the energetic and emotional turmoil, summing it all up in holiday anxiety.
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Holiday Anxiety
Rough Transcript (listening is best)
Holiday Anxiety Introduction
Hey friends, the holidays are coming, and so is the holiday anxiety for many. If you missed last week, I talked about all the food and nutrition stuffs and gave you 3 steps to banishing the holiday cravings + guilt + overwhelm that comes with it.
Despite the joyous nature of the season, often we are overindulging in food and alcohol, overindulging in expectations and what others demand of us, overstressed, and just plain worn out. This serves to significantly increase our inflammation and decrease our health and wellness. It’s the same for all but scales up when you are living with a chronic illness or autoimmune disease.
So in today’s episode, we are going to talk about the holidays the energetic and emotional turmoil, summing it all up in holiday anxiety.
Intro
Welcome if this is your first time listening - I’m Audrey Christie - I’m a functional and integrative nurse nutritionist and energy medicine practitioner. I help women start their very own Autoimmune Revolution so you can stop chasing symptoms and learn how to heal your body from autoimmune disease.
If you are inundated with food and drinks from Mid-November through New Years and maybe on into the Superbowl and you combine it with stress, anxiety, emotional ties to the food AND then the family stuffs and budget stuffs that happens - you have a big recipe for big inflammation and effects that last long after the holiday joys wear off.
Before we get too far into this, I want you to know for yourself or for a loved one that might be listening or you might be thinking of... the information that I'm going to give today is absolutely not meant to be pill shaming in any way.
Pill shaming is toxic and it's time to break down that taboo in society. Working through anxiety is hard enough oh, it makes it even harder around the holidays, and then adding pill shaming and stigma creates an even more difficult situation.
There's a lot of misinformation out there about antidepressants and even antipsychotic drugs. Yes, they can do a lot of damage to the body but sometimes people require that extra bit of help to enable them to live a normal and happy life. The strategies were going to talk about in this episode are generally enough for people to reduce their dependence on medication sometimes even eliminated, but not always.
Every human deserves a life neither ruled by stress or fear or crushed by depression and anxiety. And for some people in the same way you would wear glasses to help you see better require a pill or 6 to give them the assistance they need to help their mental state. And there are lots of different reasons for that.
Follow up part of this message is along the same lines but important to give just the same. If you are taking medication and wish to get off of it, it is important that no matter what you do to support your body and your mental status, that you work with your physician or that you, me, and your physician work together to wean you off of the medication prescribed when you become ready. Please don't take this information and take it as a license to stop taking any medications on your own, even if you've done all the work and feel better. This is something that you need supervision to do.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's dive into Holiday anxiety the contributing factors, the symptoms, and what you can do naturally and energetically to help. I'm going to give you the tools to put in your toolbox to deal with holiday anxiety over the holiday period.
Emotional Voids Leading to Anxiety
One of the things I talked about in the Holiday Cravings episode that was the last episode feel free to check that out is the emotional void that is often filled with anxiety, or food, or alcohol, over the joyous holiday season.
Most of those emotional voids have some root in anxiety. And then anxiety has root causes and other things of course but we're going to take it down to the anxiety for this instance. I think it's important to find gratitude and all things, gratitude is transformational in nature but physically and energetically, and emotionally. So I want you to find a little bit of gratitude for anxiety because it has a purpose. the same system that makes you feel anxious when you're staring down the barrel of going to a relative's house for turkey day is also the same system that controls the fight or flight response that can save your life when it needs to.
The flip side of that coin is when this system has a negative impact on your daily life. This can show up in many ways from fleeting symptoms to full-fledged disorders. anxiety disorders often overlap other types of mental and emotional issues so it's kind of hard to get a list or a set of physical symptoms.
For example, normal anxiety might look like being concerned about exposure to a novel virus and taking a couple of extra steps to wash your hands after being in a public place. A person living with anxiety may look at this and not even leave the house for fear of getting sick.
Some symptoms of anxiety that are pretty standard might be things like racing heart, sleeplessness, the tension that can show up as headaches and other issues, confusion, cold sweats, butterflies in the stomach, upset stomach and other digestive issues, dry mouth, snapping at loved ones, flashes of irritation, emotional roller coasters from happy to crying, and a whole host of other things.
How Do You Know if the Holiday is Causing Anxiety
Many times these symptoms are not controllable or even perceived by the person experiencing them until they're over. And you can look back and say oh I was pretty anxious there. Mount in an upcoming episode I will go through all of the root causes for anxiety. But today I just want to give you some tools in your toolbox that you can use for the upcoming holidays when we often feel so out of control.
One thing that I want to put in your toolbox is that you are in control. I granted you permission last episode to be in charge of you and that continues now. You cannot control what is around you, who is around you, the behavior of the people around you, what comes out of his mouth, but you are in control of you. I would extend that further to being in control of your immediate family, as in your children.
Often it's hard for women and in particular, women that have a chronic or autoimmune disease because we historically have been out of control in so many areas, but one tool for keeping anxiety away is recognizing and owning your power.
So I repeat what I said last week, I officially grant you permission to be in charge of you. And along with that, I grant you permission to forgive yourself for forgetting that you were in charge of you in the past.
Holiday Anxiety Toolbox
I'm going to give you some exercises for you to have in your toolbox ready for your holiday. this is by no means an all-inclusive list and I'll be talking about more options and the wellness Circle when we take some of these sets and make them more actionable. It's there are just some things you can demonstrate better in a video so if you're not in the well most definitely check that out we will be having that class the week after this episode airs. And the replays living there too.
Forgiveness Technique for Holiday Anxiety
The first thing I want to talk to you about is the Forgiveness technique. The Forgiveness technique is used to release whatever happens. It could be that you have some forgiveness that needs to happen around last year's holiday season. It could be that you have some forgiveness around some things that have happened in between there, some things that happened a long time ago, or something that just happened at your most recent holiday gathering.
I like to lead with this tool because it's a good prep tool if you haven't been to any family gatherings but it's also probably reported back as the most frequently used tool because if you're new to this you're going to be aware of the issue likely after it happened and that's okay. That's how this whole new anxiety-free world begins.
Here's what you do:
- Stand up, put your hands over your heart.
- Take a big inhale looking up, exhale looking down.
- Bring Focus to whomever or whatever needs forgiving and think or say out loud “I forgive you.”
- Take another nice big inhale and say “that was then” and turn and look over your right shoulder as far as you can, as exhale turn back to the front and say “this is me now.”
- Repeat as many times as you feel called.
It's important to remember when doing this forgiveness technique that forgiveness is for you, not the person that you're forgiving. Forgiveness is releasing it from your energetic field, not saying that it was okay that it happened or that the person is okay.
5-Finger Peace for Holiday Anxiety
The second technique I want to give you is called 5-Finger Peace. You can do this anywhere anytime and it's hardly noticeable by the people around you. It helps to remind you that you are in control of you.
Here’s what you do:
- Find your breath. Notice how it is slightly cooler on your nostrils as you inhale, and slightly warmer on your nostril as you exhale.
- Touch your thumb to your first-finger and say or think “peace.”
- Touch your thumb to your second-finger and say or think “begins.”
- Touch your thumb to your third-finger and say or think “with.”
- Touch your thumb to your pinky-finger and say or think “me.”
- Repeat “peace begins with me”
If you have more questions about how to navigate this holiday season and are looking for more actionable steps in this episode, I would love to have you join us in the Wellness Circle, my exclusive and free community to help women pursuing holistic wellness, body, mind, and spirit and discussions around the Autoimmune Revolution Podcast.
Friends, chronic disease is 99% preventable and autoimmune disease is capable of being healed or put in remission with lifestyle, energetic, and nutrition practices. You can get the direct link on the show notes page or at audreychristie.com/facebook
When you join the free Wellness circle you will also get the Kickstart your Autoimmune Revolution guide. It has 5 steps to get you started on your very own Autoimmune Revolution. Are you ready to stop fighting and starting healing?
A special festive invitation...
If you are really interested in pursuing this holiday season without all of the BS - I encourage you to nab my Fit and Festive Holiday Challenge! 4 weeks of cranking the holiday out stress and guilt-free in bite-sized steps (because who has time for more items on their to-do list- did I mention it's super fun too?)You can find it at audreychristie.com/festive The early bird pricing is over but you can still purchase access.
To wrap this up...
To wrap this up - you’ve got this mama! This holiday CAN be different. Anxiety can range from a little annoying issue to major debilitation, wherever you fall on the scale, using these tools can help serve your body to heal, and to not become as inflamed as it would in previous holiday seasons.
Thank you so much for tuning in, if you have a second it would mean the world to me if you could leave a rating or review! That helps me help more people to start an autoimmune revolution of their own. I’d be oh so grateful.
I hope you have the most magical and restful day friends, and I challenge you to leave your world, however you can, a little better than how you found it when you got up this morning.
Be well,