Holiday Boundaries

Ho Ho Ho, happy holidays and season’s greetings to everyone except for the diet industry. The holidays are a tricky time for so many reasons:

Delicious food that we’ve been taught is sinful
Family members commenting on our bodies or lifestyles
The pressure to please everyone by attending their event or buying them a gift
Confronting the reality of the year vs. what your goals were at the beginning

The holidays, while full of delightful moments, hold a lot of stress for a lot of folks and so I figured it would be good for us to have a little chat about a few ways we can manage our way through!

The first thing I want us to do is just get centered in our bodies - so I am going to ask that you just plant your feet firmly on the ground and settle into your body. We are going to inhale through our noses for a count of four, hold for four, and then exhale for four and we are going to do this 2 times. Ready?

[Breathe]

Beautiful. Okay, so what we just did is something I want to encourage you to keep in your back pocket whenever you feel your stress rising. We want to acknowledge what it feels like in our bodies as we get stressed out:

Do your shoulders go up?
Do you get hot in your body?
Do you clench your hands?
Does your jaw tighten?
Does your vision narrow?

Bringing awareness to when we start to get stressed out allows us to implement strategies that can bring us back to present with minimal damage and give us the freedom to truly enjoy the holidays.

Alright, so once we are aware what stress feels like in our bodies, then it’s time to recognize the context that causes it to come rushing to the surface:

Is it certain environments?
Certain people?
Noise levels?
Activity?
Specific comments about bodies/job/relationships etc?

When we establish what our patterns are for getting stressed we can do a little excavation to see if we can remember when we first felt that way. Because here’s the thing: When people say things to us and it hurts - it’s only because we tend to believe them ourselves.
Now, if it is certain people that irk you - ask yourself “What is it about them that drives me nuts?” and then ask yourself “Is it because I could never imagine myself being like that or am I afraid of becoming the person they are?” Another good question to ask is “Do I see parts of them in myself and those are parts of me I have been taught to dislike?”

At the end of the day, we can’t control or change anyone else, but we can see what part we play in our own suffering.

Now, if they are someone who constantly criticizes/puts you down/hurts you - you get to decide what you want to do about that (even if it makes you squidgy). Ask yourself:

“How many times will I let them make a comment about my food choices before I:
Leave the room / say something / change the conversation /etc.?”

Set a boundary - not for them, but for YOU. Do this ahead of time so you have an action plan in place and you are in a space to enact it - when we are emotionally frazzled it’s hard to enact a plan on the spot. This is why we never come up with good comebacks until we are emotionally regulated and can think things through.

If the stress you get is less from people and more from your relationship with food, remind yourself that even if you were to fall into a binge cycle (which can happen particularly when you are stressed) you are still a valuable person. Being a human is hard and we have to give ourselves compassion - particularly when we live in a society that has taught us certain emotions are better than others, when we aren’t equipped from a young age with how to manage our anger or sadness, and rather we are taught to suppress it, no wondering we turn to coping mechanisms! I know relationships with food are complex, I’m in an “It’s complicated relationship” with food, too - but here’s the thing - it’s just food. There is actually no morality attached to it. You aren’t good or bad : you are just you. Someone just decided there should be and we willingly believed it - but we can choose something different.

In fact, I DARE you to choose something different this holiday.

For me, I tend to scarf my food down really fast: Like a snake unhinging it’s jaw and not even tasting what I am putting in my body. Looking back, a lot of that had to do with scarcity and food insecurity, then we add repression of inconvenient emotions on top of that and voila - we have emotional eating. The holidays add pressure because a) you are surrounded by people, lights, and noise and you may be overstimulated which can make empathic people feel….floaty/disconnected from their bodies and overeating can bring us back down to earth and b) you may want to scream at the top of your lungs about someone or something, but know that it’s “not polite” so we stuff it down with food instead. You can’t scream when your mouth is full.

Do the breathing we did at the beginning before you load up your plate - think of each food before you put it on your plate and ask your tum/body “how will we feel after eating this?” and your body will respond. The more you practice the more in tune you will be! So maybe use the holidays as a fun project to get to know your tum a bit better!

If you are stressed about work and panicking because you haven’t met your goals and now feel in a spiral of sadness and depression, you may turn to coping mechanisms to make you feel better: eating, drinking, shopping, having sex, whatever. And it’s important to note that if you do - YOU ARE STILL VALUABLE. OKAY? However, if you want to mitigate the need for coping, it helps to look at the context of what you are feeling and why. If you didn’t meet your financial goal this year and it really makes you emotional, ask yourself why? Are you afraid of not meeting someone’s standards? Are you worried about not having enough money? Where is the fear coming from? What are you making it mean?

Perhaps your goal was “to be in the best shape of your life” this year and you lived your life and your body accommodated and it doesn’t LOOK like you wanted it to. What does that mean? Does it mean you are a failure? What would that mean? Does it mean you are ugly and unloveable? Where did you learn that? What expectations are you putting on your body and why? Perhaps the best shape of your life is the one that lets you live another day?

Lastly, I want to touch on the fact that the stress you feel in your body during the holidays may not be motivated by anything in the present. If you experienced a lot of stress from your family growing up around this time, then chances are your body is going to respond as if that is still the case now. If you look back at your past, are you able to see what the patterns around the holidays were like? Were your parents stress, anxious, nervous, insecure, etc.? Did they transfer that to you? Did you feel you had to parent your siblings or your parents during this time? Perhaps alcohol + drugs were heavily used during this time and your caretakers weren’t super great to be around - this can cause a lot of internal stress that might be showing up today, despite the trigger not being there. Once you do a little digging, you can remind your present self that you are safe, supported, and loved. Make this your mantra whenever you feel the fear rising in your chest.

So my friend, I hope this was helpful and you will be able to go forth with a bit more awareness and self compassion into the holidays. Remember that people just mirror back to us the things we are afraid of/desire and how we respond to that is up to us. Having a plan/strategy BEFORE you go to events/meet up with people will help you feel more empowered and in control and recognizing other people’s patterns will allow you to know what boundaries to put in place. Lastly, look at the context that brings up some squidgy feelings around this time: is it rooted in the past or something in the present or fear of the future? Is it the food, the environment or the people?

All in all, the holidays will be what they are and the only thing you can control is yourself - so you get to decide how you want to show up! I hope you have a stress free holiday and focus on the good that’s going on. Look for the light in the dark and give yourself grace as we celebrate another year.

Let’s end this off with another deep breath. Ready? Inhale for 4. Hold for 4. Exhale for 4. Drop those shoulders, relax your jaw, and…have a lovely week!