Stress, Anxiety, and the Holidays

With Passover around the corner, many people are feeling more stressed out than usual. Holidays are times of increased expectations and responsibilities. Preparations for holidays often include trying to meet a tremendous range of demands. Our lives are already pressured enough without the added stress of cleaning, cooking, shopping, caring for children on break from school, and hosting guests from out of town. The pressure to create a memorable and meaningful holiday leads us to exact the highest standards on ourselves and creates an internal pressure to achieve unrealistically lofty goals.

Though this pressure can lead to the realization of a beautiful holiday experience, it often comes at the price of our mental health and emotional stability. The physical strain of the added responsibilities of holiday preparations can take a heavy toll. Many people have to adjust and balance their normal work schedules with the added exertions required for the holidays. The additional shopping, cooking, cleaning, and preparing can lead to physical fatigue which in turn leads to more stress. In addition, with our calendars over-scheduled and our agendas filled to capacity, it is often difficult to find time to do the things that alleviate our stress, like exercising and making sure to get enough rest.

Relationships can be another key source of stress over the holidays. During holiday celebrations people are forced into close quarters with family members and others with whom they must spend prolonged amounts of time. Relationships can be tough in regular times but over the holidays tensions can run even higher. Differences and old family conflicts become magnified when people are thrust together and feel obligated to interact for extended periods. In addition, the belief that holiday celebrations should be harmonious and free from discord adds another dimension of intensity to the mix.

Financial strains are another source of tension during the holiday season. The current economic climate has already caused apprehension about money among many people but this stress becomes exponential as the extra costs of holiday expenses get factored into our budgets. It is already difficult to navigate the reality of our financial situations when holidays like Passover add additional demands and significant expenditures that can overextend our resources.

As these different stressors accumulate and intensify, they clash with our expectations for a joyful holiday experience and the result is often increased anxiety. One way we can begin to combat some of this anxiety is to alter our expectations about the holiday. As people change and families grow, different needs arise and what was once simple can become exponentially more complicated. It is important to acknowledge that things are more difficult and that all of the same standards and goals we hope to achieve cannot be met every year. Try letting go of some of the extraneous tasks that are on your list of things to do. This may alleviate some of the additional strain brought on by the holidays.
urbantherapist@gmail.com

Stress and the City

It is a well known fact that living in an urban environment is related to elevated levels of stress. But why is that? Quite simply, people need space and space is hard to come by in big cities. Open spaces tend to lend people a sense of freedom. If I am unencumbered by obstacles or impinging stimuli in my general vicinity, I am able to sustain the illusion that I am in control of my environment and can choose my next move with relative freedom. In contrast, being crowded in by others reduces one's feelings of control. If people and things are constantly surrounding me, they are more likely to conflict with my needs and inhibit my sense of freedom. The lack of control and inhibition of freedom engendered by the crowded nature of urban life directly influences the stress levels of city-dwellers.

What can we do about the added stress of an urban environment? The first thing we can do is to understand that our surroundings often affect how we feel. Oftentimes we walk around completely unaware that our anxiety level has increased or that some stimulus has triggered our feelings of stress. Because these feelings are unrecognized and unacknowledged we often respond to them in maladaptive ways including increased interpersonal conflict, difficulty concentrating, and even the development of physical pains or ailments.

If we can learn to be in touch with our stress levels and aware of the situations that cause us to feel tense, we can better understand how to alleviate and cope with these feelings. I believe that the first step in effectively managing stress is taking a self-inventory and identifying all of the sources of stress in one's life. If your stress level feels overwhelming, it is often helpful to start a stress journal in which you identify when, how, and why you get stressed and how you react to your feelings. As you begin to keep track of your stress in a daily log, you will begin to see patterns and common themes that may be used to better understand and thus manage your reactions to stress. By becoming more aware of ourselves we can gain some control over our reactions and thus enhance the tools needed to cope with and reduce stress.
urbantherapistny@gmail.com