6 Ways to Reduce PTSD Stress During the Holidays
You change after trauma, but everyone else expects you to remain the same. Up until the day of your trauma (whether that was birth or any time afterward) the people around you have expectations for who you are, how you should behave, what you will and won’t do and that you will make choices in alignment with their agenda. The stress and pressure of these expectations can become enormously overwhelming – especially over the holidays.
Top Tips for Handling Combat PTSD at the Holidays
There is no shortage of triggers for veterans with combat PTSD during the holidays. Loud noises, parties with crowds of people, the expectations of positive emotions and so many more things can make combat PTSD harder to live with during the holidays; and when everyone around you is having a great time, it can feel very lonely being the one who feels worse during the holiday celebrations. But there is hope. Use these tips to handle your PTSD during the holidays and maybe even have some fun.
How to Cope with PTSD and the Holiday Season
Holidays are notoriously difficult for those among us who are acutely aware of loss. Days are short. Gaiety is for others. Ceremony reminds us of what we are missing, rather than what we have. Survivors of cruelty and catastrophe are particularly affected by the commercialization of compassion.
So how can we cope and how can we care?
Coping with the Holidays Survival Guide
For many people, Christmas and the holiday season are a happy and joyous time, enriched by reuniting with family and friends. But year’s end can also be very stressful. Old patterns of behavior emerge, our stress levels rise, and our ability to cope can really be tested. People with unsupportive parents or problematic family members face a whole different set of challenges.
Home for the Holidays: Tips for overcoming anxiety and stress.
The holidays offer plenty of reasons to be stressed out and anxious — the gifts you haven’t wrapped, the pile of cookie exchange invites, the office parties. But for many, the biggest source of holiday stress is family, the obligations, and the burden of family tradition. And if you’re fighting clinical depression, or have had depression in the past, the holiday stress can be a trigger for more serious problems.
Alone for the Holidays
Holidays spell loneliness for some. For some people, holiday gatherings resemble a Norman Rockwell tableau: a big family, all smiles, gathered around a golden turkey. But for many — particularly those who are divorced, widowed, or estranged from family — that long stretch from Thanksgiving through New Year’s can be lonely, stressful, and depressing.
