8 Ways to Beat Holiday Stress and Enjoy the Season

Even if you love the holiday season, it’s okay to admit that it can be a very stressful time. If you’re like most people, you feel you must fulfill all your typical responsibilities while keeping up with additional holiday tasks and social events. This generates holiday stress! And if you live with incontinence, you have an additional challenge.

So, when the pressure builds, do you feel your joy meter dropping?

YourTye Medicalteam understands how holiday stress can stifle your joy, which is why we’ve compiled this list of ways to beat holiday stress and take your joy back!

1. Give Yourself “Me Time”

You might be wondering why we’re starting here. But making time for self-care is a vital weapon in the battle against stress. What is self-care? It rests on a simple premise that if you take care of yourself, you’re better able to care for others and fulfill your responsibilities. Cars needs tune-ups, houses need maintenance, and people need daily nurturing.

If you already practice a form of self-care don’t neglect it as the holiday season approaches, instead go the extra-mile to ensure you have some time for yourself – or maybe even extra me-time.

Don’t have a self-care routine? No worries. Think about what grounds you, motivates you, relaxes you, or energizes you. What gives you some peace or even pleasure? Here are some common self-care practices:

• Prayer/meditation
• Reading a book
• Journaling
• Taking a bath
• Gardening
• Cooking/baking
• Yoga
• Walking
• Other hobbies

Self-care routines benefit your spiritual health, emotional health, mental health, and even physical health. When you’re cared for inwardly, you’re more prepared to give outwardly. This goes a long way toward mitigating stress, even around the holidays. Try experimenting with these suggestions by combining and alternating them as it pleases you. You can also include something of your own.

2. Remember Your Physical Health

During the many hours of the day when you’re not practicing self-care, you still need to be mindful of your physical health. Many senior adults push their health needs to the side during this time of the year, because they believe they don’t have time for it. They think it will be okay if they neglect themselves for a little while. But if you begin to feel less than your best, this can add more stress.

If you want to truly enjoy your holiday, then you want to feel in optimum condition, which means you must continue to carefully manage your health. Remember, it’s best for you and your loved ones if you keep it a priority.

Here are a few areas to stay on top of during this season of festivities:

Continue Your Medication Schedule

Most medications must be taken at specific and consistent times of the day to be most effective. With all the travel and visitors around the holiday season, be sure to take time each week to plan out your medication schedule. Always bring necessary medications with you.

If the changes in schedule make this a stressful task, then consider using your cell phone to help. Most cell phones have timers and alarms that you can set to help remind you to take your medication, even when your daily routine is askew.

Hydration Reduces Stress – So Drink Up

We won’t spend much time here, but it’s worth a reminder. Regardless of how busy your life seems around the holidays, it’s important that you get at least 64 ounces of water each day. Experts say that cortisol levels (a major stress hormone) increase when you’re just half a liter dehydrated. Additionally, stress increases your heartrate and causes heavier breathing, which means you’re losing more fluid.

So, if you want to help your stress levels, it helps to stay hydrated!

You Still Need 7-9 Hours of Sleep

Don’t fall for the myth that older adults need less sleep. Seniors require the same 7-9 hours of sleep as any other adult, but it’s often harder for them to get it. They usually don’t sleep as well due to health problems, aches and pains, and sleep disorders.

Do your best to get a good night’s rest, even during the holiday season. Adequate sleep helps you manage stress and replenishes energy supplies. Make plans to turn in at your typical bedtime as often as possible. If you have difficulty getting the quality sleep you need, talk to your doctor about a referral to a sleep center for further help.

Include Some Exercise

Experts have long understood that exercise reduces stress levels. Aerobic exercise, like walking, reduces your body’s stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, and increases endorphin levels. Endorphins are brain chemicals that act as your body’s natural painkillers and elevate your mood.

You can push back those stress hormones during the holidays with just 20-30 minutes of walking each day. Invite friends and family members to join you. Maybe you’ll start a new – and healthy – holiday tradition.

3. Planning is Essential

Approaching the holidays without a plan can make you feel overwhelmed and trigger anxiety. But don’t worry, here are a few things you can plan for now to reduce stress in the coming weeks:

Set Your Budgets

One of the top things people stress over is money – especially during the holidays. We recommend you set two important budgets – a gift budget and a social budget. The gift budget is obvious, but make sure it includes ALL gifts. It should be an amount that won’t cause stress when the credit card bill comes in. Aim for an amount you (and your spouse) feel good about.

The social budget can include all holiday meals, dinners out, and costs for other social events. This will help you feel like you’re controlling your money – rather than being stressed by it.

Plan Your Meals

This is extremely important if you’re hosting a holiday dinner (or two). So, plan your menu and make a grocery list in advance. (Remember to stay in budget!) Since stores are crowded closer to holidays, buy as much as you can in advance.

Even if you’re not hosting, it’s still a good idea to plan your regular meals during the holiday season, that way you’re not stressed about the day’s details. You can also plan for any dishes you may be bringing to holiday dinners.

Enroll in Autoship for Medical Supplies

It’s easy to get busy and forget about your incontinence supplies. But you can avoid the stress of last-minute trips to crowded stores or running out of your favorite product. Just enroll in our free Autoship options. You can choose from weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, and quarterly shipping options on all our incontinence products. Just set it and forget it until after the holiday season – or stay enrolled for convenience all year long!

Have other medical supply needs? Check with your vendor and enroll in their autoship programs as well!

Gift Shop in Advance

Once you have your gift budget, get to work making lists of gifts to purchase – and get started on your shopping. Advanced planning and shopping let you avoid holiday stress, the hassle of crowds, and late packages. When you’re finished, you can relax even more, knowing your gifts are safely tucked away.

It’s also convenient for most people to buy many of their gifts online. Then you can choose to shop in-store for a few items if you enjoy shopping this time of year.

4. Prioritize Your Time

The truth is – most of us can’t do everything, and if we try, we become frustrated and stress ourselves even more. So, if you want to beat holiday stress, decide how much activity you can comfortably handle in the upcoming weeks without wearing yourself down or adding holiday stress.

Then, choose the activities and gatherings that are most important to you and commit yourself to only those. Concerning the rest, politely decline invitations or offer to meet up after the holidays.

5. Prioritize Your Traditions

We all love our family traditions, and sometimes we forget that they’re not written in stone. At times, our staunchest traditions become a source of holiday stress. During this season, spend some time evaluating your traditions and what means the most to you. Then consider which ones you should set aside for now or which ones you should scale back.

For instance, if you love baking cookies every year, consider baking four or five batches over the course of a month instead of ten batches in one day. It’s much less stressful, and you can enjoy it more. Do you love stringing lights outside? Maybe you can skip it this year and hang a wreath instead – or maybe hang lights around the porch and shrubs rather than covering every inch of your home. Simple adjustments can dramatically reduce holiday stress!

6. Communication Is Key

Check-In with Loved Ones

Everyone can get busy this time of year and fall out of touch. But if you want to beat holiday stress, it’s important that you stay in the know and provide important information! Talk to family and friends periodically to stay on top of meals, events, schedules, and expectations. Miscommunication is a huge source of stress, but you can avoid it with a few phone calls.

Delegate It

Enlist some help for those larger holiday tasks and assign some of the many smaller items to others. Husbands, children, and grandchildren will likely be happy to take some of the pressure off you and relieve some of your holiday stress. You don’t have to go it alone!

It’s Okay to Vent

When you’re having a particularly stressful day, it’s okay to talk about it. You may find it helpful to share with a sympathetic listener, and then you can return the favor!

It’s Not All About the Gifts

Consider changing up your gift exchange this year. Try alternatives like donating to a charity instead of buying family presents. Or, maybe adults would agree not to exchange gifts and only buy for the children in the family. Another option is for adult family members to draw names (maybe over Thanksgiving if you’re together), that way you’re only buying one adult gift (set a price limit so there is no pressure to overspend).

7. Limit Time with Negative People

Do you have family members or old friends who negatively impact you? This can be a major source of holiday stress as you anticipate seeing this person. When possible, give yourself permission to ignore this person if they’re acting negatively. You don’t have to keep company with the individual. If you have close loved ones who’re aware of the situation, ask them to help you navigate the uncomfortable situations.

Also, if the relationship is a larger problem, remember that you don’t have to attend gatherings where this difficult person is present. You can politely decline and offer to come by and see your friends or family on a different day. Remember, you don’t owe anyone your health and happiness.

8. Celebrate the People You Have

Some of the worst holiday stress comes when you’re missing a loved one. For any number of reasons, the person cannot join you for the holiday season. It’s true that no one can replace this person, but it’s also important to remember the loved ones you do have. Try to focus on those who are with you and be thankful for them. This simple shift in thinking can restore some of your joy and help you stay connected to your loved ones.

When you being to feel holiday stress coming on, remember that it’s normal this time of year. But you can proactively take steps to ensure you experience more joy than anxiety. And it’s okay if you need to read this article again and again!

Get Your Free Samples and Place Your Order Before the Holidays!

Don’t wait! During this time of year, you need reliable, cost-effective incontinence products. This is one area where you especially don’t want stress! Check out our line of premium quality products and try them out for free!

Always discreet shipping!

Always Reliable!

Always LivDry!

When you find what works best for you, set up an Autoship order!

Make the no-brainer choice this holiday season with LivDry so you can get back to what’s really important!