This is part 2 of the situations that can feel tough around the holidays. We explore how we deal with grief, family dynamics and clashes and ways we can take care of ourselves and look for ways to enjoy what is available to us. Tips from a counsellor to consider for the holiday season. 

Main topics of this episode:

• Part 1 unpacked topics like anticipatory anxiety, routines, loneliness, overspending and transitions 
  
  
  
  • 196. When The Holidays Feel Hard (stress, anxiety, loneliness, overspending, transitions)- tips from a Counsellor
  
  
  
  


• Dealing with grief over the holidays
  
  
  
  • When you need permission to grieve
  
  
  • The 4 tasks of grieving
  
  
  • Canadian Grief Support mygrief.ca
  
  
  
  


• Family dynamics
  
  
  
  • Owning your own values 
    
    
    
    • 149. How to find what matters to you (uncovering your personal values)
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Family roles 
    
    
    
    • 8 common family roles
    
    
    • 134. Do you typecast your kids? (Labels + how they impact our parenting and our kids)
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  


• Boundaries help maintain a relationship vs barriers which block a relationship
  
  
  
  • Knowing when to use each one
  
  
  
  


• Coping well, taking care of your capacity over the holidays 
  
  
  
  • The Meeting Your Needs Series
  
  
  
  


• Bringing the fun with you, you are allowed to enjoy moments
  
  
  
  • 162. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives.
  
  
  • Finding Joy In Your Every Day (#theperfectmomentsproject)
  
  
  • 163. Have fun with your kids, on purpose + reasons we don’t have fun
  
  
  • Five Tips to Make Your Christmas Simpler and More Enjoyable
  
  
  • When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? (and my journey back to enjoying them)
  
  
  
  

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FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

0:10

Hi, It is Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. And I’m just going to jump right into it. This episode is a follow up to 196 When Christmas feels hard, in that we introduced the concepts of making one shift for yourself this Christmas in the US things that feel hard. And we talked about anticipatory anxiety that you might be feeling stressed around the lack of routine, the pressures that we feel on Christmas spending money, being alone at Christmas being in a time transition. So those were all really great intros in situations that were shared. And I’m going to pick up and continue on with the topics of grief, family dynamics and boundaries. So the topic of grief was shared in the scenarios that women shared about the things that feel hard at Christmas. So there are things that we are grieving, we might be grieving this deed of the world right now, we might be grieving, a loss of what we thought this year would be. Maybe we’re walking through a loss a loss of a person that you love, a loss of a relationship, a loss of a family, or friends system as you knew it. And if if someone has lost someone in the recent years, they’re going through these seasons of life without that person for the first time. If someone has had a divorce or changes in their family, even if it was wanted, they’re still left with this blank space that was once filled with familiar patterns and people and traditions they could rely on. And they know there are people grieving losses that happened over the past few years and didn’t really get a chance to mourn during COVID Things have gone unaddressed. And new griefs can trigger old griefs. I wanted to share an experience that I had with grief around Christmas time. A few Christmases ago, during COVID, my mom had what was suspected to be a mini stroke, and she already had dementia. So from this, she was put into the hospital and then moved into a care facility. But at that time when it first happened, and she was in the hospital, she couldn’t talk. She wasn’t very responsive. She had to be spoon fed, she was in a wheelchair. And this was such a dramatic contrast to where she had just been. I mean, my dad had taken care of her for years. And this incident had forced her into a care facility. It also meant because it was COVID, she had to be isolated for two weeks, no one could go in and see her. And there’s so much more I could share on this than I’m going to write here. But at that time, I thought my mom was dying. She has recovered from this and is in care and doing well. But at that time, it was Christmas time. I was supposed to be enjoying this time with my kids and grief felt like water rising and flooding over me. It felt like such a great sadness. It still is a great sadness in my life. And that’s the thing, grief doesn’t look at the calendar. It doesn’t wait for the holidays to be over. It doesn’t take a break during the holidays. Grief is something you carry with you like rocks in a backpack and over time, you acclimatized to it, it’s still there. It’s important to acknowledge and validate this, acknowledge that things feel hard. If you have the space and capacity for it, acknowledge what you’re missing, who you miss what you miss about them what you wish this could be right now and validate this. If it feels appropriate, do something to honor that person that you miss. One way I tried to honor my mom at Christmas time is to intentionally and with love and mindfulness admire all of the ornaments that she had given me over years, which I took for granted as a child. But each year there’s the date on the back. And as I hang them up, I look at the back I think about old I was and each ornament is represents a picture of who she saw me as over the years of my life. Each one I feel like has a bit of a story. And sometimes I will share that story out loud to the kids and to my husband. And that is a way that I feel like I bring her in to my Christmas and and carry it on through me for grief. There are different stages that we go through and those around us are grieving in different ways or at different stages. It can feel tricky to navigate our grief amidst the grief of others. My encouragement to you here if you feel like you’re in a period of grief at Christmas is to keep getting support from it. Like listen to podcasts. I’m sure there’s so many great ones. Read about it. If you feel like it could help you talk to someone. Get support calling a support line, talk to a therapist or a friend or go to a support group but get yourself some support. Grief doesn’t have to be gone through You’re alone even if it makes you feel alone. The next major category of scenarios that were shared with me were issues related to family dynamics. Some of the examples shared with me were in laws, expectations from in laws, communicating expectations within laws, feeling annoyed my family, but I don’t want to feel annoyed, the differences in personalities of the people around and those differences are usually inflamed by alcohol. We see there’s difficult people, there’s personality clashes, and they often become heightened at the holidays. One part of our pain is that we’re wishing the other people were acting differently, if they would be easier to get along with and be better communicators fill in the blanks, if they could just do this, then it would all be easier. And the other part of the pain is that mentally and emotionally, we start thinking things and feeling things and we don’t want to like the great example shared there is that scenario of I’m annoyed, but I don’t want to be annoyed. Because we don’t like how that feels in us