"It's the most wonderful time of the year." Or so the carols and commercials insist. But as a therapist for 20+ years and a highly sensitive mom for almost as long, I know this time of year can be especially stressful and trigger sadness and overwhelm.

But the good news is, therapy can help you identify your triggers and vulnerabilities and come up with a plan to honour what you need this holiday season.

Here's some of the ways therapy can help you cope with specific issues:

1) Letting Go of Unhelpful Guilt

Something that comes up a lot in my therapy sessions with busy, big hearted moms is the importance of discerning healthy guilt from unhelpful guilt. We talk about how a lot of the pressure comes from the perfect mom myth or trying to make up for what we didn't get.

With deeper awareness, instead of spending time exhausting yourself trying to make everything perfect, you can focus on what matters most. Instead of spending money that you don't have or on things your children don't really need, you can grow up again alongside your children. And you can instill a sense of gratitude and generosity that extends beyond the immediate family to communities in need.

2) Moving Through Grief and Loss

Despite my grandmother being gone now for 10 years, I miss her most during the holiday season. Fortunately I've learned to move through the waves of my grief with compassion.

Living with loss, whether it's your first year without a loved one or several years, like my grandmother, the holidays can be a painful reminder of their absence.

Whether it's a parent, grandparent or child you're grieving, a painful breakup, a pregnancy you were robbed of, a job loss, a move or a friend that's ghosted you,  you are not alone. Your pain matters.

Grief needs a compassionate witness and therapists provide validation and compassion as well as education to normalize your experience and help you honour your needs. While it can feel like the rest of the world has moved on, therapy offers a space to slow down and connect to all your feelings and needs. It's ok if this year needs to be different. Let's create a plan together.

3) Sharing the Load

Do you feel exhausted and resentful thinking about how the majority of the holiday "magic" falls squarely on your shoulders?

I used to as well until I learned to challenge societal messages and invite my husband and my children, as they aged, to take on more responsibility.

In my therapy sessions, the weight of the mental load comes up often. We talk about the unfair burden that Society has placed on women to carry the bulk of both the visible and the invisible, yet taxing mental load. Drawing on specialized training, we discuss how to have those hard, but crucial conversations to invite shared responsibility to lighten the load and ultimately deepen connection.

4) Preventing Sensory or Emotional Overwhelm

The holidays can be especially taxing on highly sensitive people and/or people struggling with anxiety. We naturally need more quiet and time for rest. The noise and emotional intensity of having little ones home from school and the extra social outings can feel overwhelming and exhausting or even activate your threat response. Then instead of enjoying your time, you're feeling guilty for pulling away or overreacting.

Highly sensitive people are also more impacted by conflict during family gatherings and tend to struggle more with personalizing and perfectionism.

In therapy I help my hsp and anxious clients celebrate the strengths of their sensitivity and befriend their anxiety with curiousity. We discuss strategies to protect against overwhelm and burnout and practice mind/body exercises for before, during and after social interactions. An important part of this work is boundary setting.

5) Setting and Holding Boundaries

A lot of stress over the holiday season comes from feeling pulled in multiple directions, trying to make everyone happy.

This is common for many of my clients who adopted the coping strategy of people pleasing. If you can relate, please know, it's not your fault and boundary setting is not as simple as practicing a script of phrases.

In my sessions, we look at the reasons for people pleasing, rebuild an internal sense of safety and help you reconnect to your anger in safe and healthy ways. Not all people or places are safe or supportive. You get to decide.

‍Boundaries are not mean but they're also not easy to start implementing on our own. I can help.

If you can relate to any of the above or are dealing with a difficult situation or craving support to be gentler towards yourself and your children, book now. I have limited sessions available on Monday afternoons starting in December. You can book a free intro call to ask questions and see if we’re a fit or book your first assessment/treatment plan to get started on your journey to stressing less this holiday season and cultivating more peace and joy all year long.

‍

Nicole Schiener, M.Ed, RP, CCC, CCFP, CGE, HSP Knowledgeable Therapist