Episode #95

Surviving The Holidays With CBT

The holidays can be a special time of year.

They can also bring up a lot of feelings, including sadness, grief, overwhelm, and anxiety.

How can you use cognitive behavioral tools to cope with the holidays?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I share with you how cognitive behavioral therapy can help you survive the holidays.

Click to listen now!

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Full Episode Transcript

Hi everyone! This is Dr. Julie from My CBT Podcast. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I have a doctorate in Psychology and I specialize in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

As usual, I want to share a really nice email I received from a couple over in London. I do hear from people all over the world, which I'm just grateful for. So as always, keep them coming. So let me read to you what they wrote:

“Dear Dr. Julie,

I've just discovered MyCBT on Spotify and really enjoy it. I've been learning about Stoicism for a while now as it's something to help me with the mental site. Have been suffering an unforeseen illness for the past two years and see common threats. My good lady and I had a spontaneous 05:00 a.m. CBT session this morning with a cuppa, discussing some of the tips we picked up from you on assertiveness self esteem and saying no, et cetera. It helps to think of those situations in the past where we were all knocked from time to time, perhaps many times, being subtly insulted, didn't quite know how to deal with the situation, so beat ourselves up and take it personally as a failure. The reframing is a very good tool. I wish I knew it 20 years ago. Looking forward to listening and learning more and thank you for coming across the welcoming, educational and inclusive.”

I wrote back to him and just wanted to share his second email with you, saying that Gabby, his wife “and I are excited, we are expecting our first child in two months and the CBT tools you're teaching us are also helping with balancing anticipation, some nerves - not going to lie - and the overarching excitement for doing such a cool thing in our lives. Your new worksheet on manipulative people - one of my podcasts - was interesting reading this morning, thinking back to some tasty characters we both had to deal with in the past, particularly in the office environments. We've bought the Mind Over Mood book too, which is wonderful.

He says have a nice weekend and we're just heading for a walk by the beach with something nice for breakfast. Stewart and Gabby.”

So I just wanted to share that with you and by the time I'm reading this to you now, I believe Stewart and Gabby are parents. So congratulations. I assume that you're still listening and doing really well and that was exciting and I just wanted to share the different podcasts they found helpful.

So like I said, you guys can go through. There's so many now. I'm almost at my hundredth episode, which is really cool. And if you're dealing stay with anxiety. There's lots of anxiety, but there's lots on communicating with people.

It can also be related to anxiety, right? So go through all of them and see which ones you feel are most beneficial and listen and hopefully applying them to yourself, you have someone to listen with. I have a lot of couples that share that they listen with their partners, or they listen together, I should say, and then they can talk about it because since they're not really long, you can hopefully find the time to do that. So again, thank you for the emails you do send and sharing and I always think it's kind of fun to share it with you guys. So today I want to talk about the holidays because by the time you guys are hearing this, we should be just about before Christmas and all the other holidays that come along.

We got a happy Hanukkah, happy Quanzai, and a Merry Christmas to everybody. And I know the holidays can bring up a lot of happy feelings, right? But a lot of sad feelings, a lot of stressful feelings, and we all react to that, right? If we're not using our CBT tools, we're going to be just reacting off all these emotions. And I want you to try to use the tools at this time of year, especially to feel like you can create the holiday you want and you can feel the joy that hopefully the holiday can bring you.

And be mindful of when you're being triggered or when situations are becoming uncomfortable or you're having memories of maybe past holidays that weren't that great. So we want to talk about a lot of different things today. One of the things I want to share with you, which is kind of I thought it was a funny term, but it's called Christmas creep. I was like, what is Christmas creep? So that's when retailers start kicking off the holiday season way early to have these big sales events and obviously it's for sales, but for a lot of people that will trigger your holiday stress, right?

We're just trying to get, say, over, have fun at Halloween and boom, Thanksgiving at the same time they're putting the Christmas trees up, which I noticed were like, woo, that was super early this year. So it's kind of like, I teach you guys how to be present, right? And it's hard to be present when every commercial, every store you walk in is throwing like, oh, in a month and in two months we're going to be having this holiday, you need to spend money. What are my expectations? What are my family's expectations?

What are my friends expectations? What I have to get done before the year is up? Like it'll just trigger all of those thoughts that can be really stressful. And so remember in CBT, other than your thoughts, which create your moods, affects your behavior and your physical corrections, the fifth, but not least is your environment, right? And how's your environment affecting you and what can you do about that environment so you can create what you want it to be?

Like, some people might want to decorate even early in their house. That's wonderful. Some people might like to they kind of like to wait till I know the day after Thanksgiving, a lot of people start to decorate whatever works for you. There's no rules except your rules. And you want to figure out, what are my rules?

So during the holiday, you definitely want to practice self awareness. Again, you decide when the holiday holiday starts for you. You decide what kind of holiday you want. Sometimes people go all out and then sometimes they have a year where they're like, yeah, I'm just going to do a little bit. I'm not having a lot of people over.

I'm going to maybe go somewhere else for the holiday. So I'm just going to put that stress on myself. But they might enjoy a little this, a little that when they're home, to be able to remind them that the holiday season is here. Also, if it is stressing you out, I would say to limit your social media. Because now there's ads in our social media, right?

But the other thing is you're going to be seeing all these people celebrating, having all these get togethers, going and doing things. If you're not in a good place right now, that's okay. But a lot of times social media makes you feel bad. I have a lot of clients that really struggle, you know, thinking that what they see on social media is like 100% true. Like, everybody is living their best life.

Obviously we know that's not true, right? So moments you are not all the time. And usually we post good stuff on social media, right? Usually we do. So if that affects you, just accept it and just limit your time.

That's okay. You don't have to be on it every single day. You're not going to miss anything that important. Whatever you need to know, people will reach out to you and let you know. And also, if you are struggling, I would really recommend you find support, whether it's through therapy or someone you can talk to, a good group of friends you feel comfortable with, maybe they're in the same situation as you, whatever that might look like.

And to be able to share and know, like, I can call that person when I'm having a hard time, they're going to be available to me. So create some support network that works for you and you know that you can reach out. And instead of feeling like I'm going to be all alone, I want everybody to talk to it's. So isolating. I know I have this person or that person.

So you want to create whatever that looks like for you. That's best. So one of the things I wanted to share in this podcast because recently it's been just coming up a lot in my life with my clients over and over. And I think it really is something that makes the holidays super hard to struggle with, is all the issues that we all have in our relationship. So I hope I've always come across pretty genuine and authentic.

And although I know these tools great, yes, that's true. And I specialize in CBT, it doesn't mean that my life is perfect by any means, and I handle every situation perfectly by no means. Okay. I always remember a funny story. When I worked in my first psychiatric hospital, there was a really great psychiatrist.

He was just excellent, and he was a psychiatrist, and his wife was a social worker like me, and they were having their first child. And I remember saying to him, I said, oh, my God, you're going to have the healthiest child alive. And he kind of laughed, and he said, yeah, or the most effed up one, right? And maybe got to take pause. Like, just because we're in this profession, I know people assume we got it together.

We know how to handle everything. We got all the answers. I'm just like you. I'm working my way through my life. I'm on this journey with you.

Situations come up that sometimes I'm like, oh, my God, I don't wish this wasn't happening. It can be exhausting. But when the relationships are really important, right? That's when I have to take pause and just say, okay, I need to work on this. I need to work through this, because these people are important to me.

Now, who you have in your life, there's lots of what I call great, right? It's not black and white. Either everything's great or everything's not great. I either talk to them, I don't talk to them. Right?

And what I was saying a few minutes ago about what's come up in my life recently and dealing with people and meeting people is there's so many families that people do not talk to each other because of something that happened, obviously. Right. And they've never resolved it. Maybe they don't even have the full story. Maybe it's he said, she said, oh, this person said this.

They're like, I never said that. But because of that, I'm never going to talk to them, right? And sometimes, yes, like my one podcast on boundaries, there are reasons not to have people in your life. But I also say boundaries are fluid, right? Some boundaries are, I can't have you in my life.

Maybe the person's abusive. Maybe somebody stole from you, whatever. A real betrayal. That is not healthy for you to have them in your life. Other boundaries are that maybe I'm just going to be in touch with this person.

Say it's a family member. Maybe it's just the holidays, or maybe it's going to be just once a month or just special occasions that you're not going to maybe hang out with them every day. Maybe you're not going to call them every day. What's healthy for you? Maybe you decide not to share everything with them because you realized they couldn't be fully trusted.

Like, say, for example, you shared something private with someone in your family or a friend, and they were really concerned, and they told somebody else, and you didn't want them to. So you have to say, what was their intention? So let's assume their intention was good. They're were concerned, they didn't know how to help you, and they thought, I'm going to talk to this other person. But now you're like, Well, I wasn't really cool with that.

I'm not going to cut them out of my life, but maybe I'm not going to share such personal things with them. So that's just an example. I don't want you get into this black and white thinking like, you did one thing I'm done. So you have to decide. I can't, through a podcast, tell you who to talk to, who not to talk to, what circumstances or what, because it's very complicated.

And that's why a lot of times going to therapy, I've had a lot of people come in and talk to me about family issues where people stop talking to each other, right. Over fights, over estates. I've heard that story way too many times. A parent dies and somebody's taking care of the estate the way it's supposed to, but whoever's around still doesn't like it, and now they're not going to talk to that person. I mean, it's devastating, just devastating.

It's very sad. It happens when we think it would never happen. And some people we don't reconcile, which is great. Some people never talk to each other again. So as I kept hearing more stories with people I know, people in my life, clients, I started thinking, I just want to talk to you guys about this because I know you probably at least know somebody, right?

If it isn't someone close to you that, oh, yeah, I don't talk to my sibling. I haven't had touch with that person in years. It's so common. There's people that I know that I was surprised to hear that. I'm like, really?

I wouldn't have guessed that that's going on in your life if that happened. Right. Or maybe we had grandparents or we heard about aunts or uncle. So I think everybody can relate to this. And if it's going on for you personally and it's bothering you, then I want you to take time and really figure out what are my thoughts that are causing me to be so angry or so resentful and is it in my best interest?

And again, it might be. I'm not saying to go talk to everybody or let everybody back in your life, but is it what I want at the end of my life? Not to sound extreme, but really think about at the end of your life, am I going to be okay that I never had this person in my life whatsoever? What's important to me and what's going to be the best thing that I can do for myself? Right?

My mantra is to make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel. So you want to say, okay, so what are my thoughts? Is it best for me to not have that person in my life? Is it best for me to have better boundaries? This way, we're not just reacting off our feelings, and that's a good way to make a decision.

Right. What are my intentions to make in doing this in my life? Sometimes if there's a relative that is really affecting the family and maybe you've put up with this person for years and your kids are like, it's not okay with us, maybe you need to set boundaries just to protect your kids or make them feel comfortable. That's why there's so many different situations that come up with families that I just wanted you to kind of think about that and say, who's in my life today? How do I feel about the people in my life?

Maybe you do have people that you got to set better boundaries. And at holiday time, we tend to see a lot of people that we don't see during the year, and that's why a lot of these feelings come up, because, like, how are we going to handle it? Oh, they're going to be at the party. I don't really want to see them. I know I've used this example before in other podcasts, but if you're going to see, like, say, like, Aunt Sue and Aunt Sue is intrusive and ask questions and you're like, not comfortable, and you don't want to tell her or, you know, she's a big gossip.

Right. Come up with what you want to say when you do see her, if you still want to say, well, I'm not going to miss my family party just because of this one person. Right. But I'm going to maybe keep a distance, or I'm going to be prepared when and sue asks me personal questions, and I say, thanks for asking. I'm doing well, I'm going to go help my mom in the kitchen.

Or you know what? I got to go to the bathroom. It's always my good, general, generic excuse that you can be polite. You don't have to share. Don't put that burden.

Like, I have to answer. You don't have to answer anybody's questions. But I always tell people that when you do an action plan, which is you're planning for something coming up, how am I going to handle because I'm probably going to bump into that person, and I'm not comfortable with that. Right. I don't want to see them, but I know they're probably going to show up and all those kind of maybe even talking if it is, say, an aunt, letting your parents know, I'm not really comfortable when I see Aunt Sue.

So if you think I'm not spending time with her, please respect that. Don't come up to me and push me to go talk to her more. If she says, Why isn't Julie talking to me. You guys can come up with what they want, what you want them to say to her. So I don't want to make it feel so big, but that's a way of having support, right?

Where I was saying, create some support in your life at this time. Think about if I'm going to have these boundaries with this person, maybe I need to let these other people know so they understand and don't say, oh, I'll go talk to Julie and say, what's the problem? Then it's like, no, then it's getting all messy and we don't want to go there. So what's best for me just using the holiday party if I do go, what's best for me if I'm worried about seeing somebody, how do I want to handle it? Maybe there's some parties you're not going to go to because that's not what's best for you.

It's too uncomfortable, or I'm going to stop by because there's a couple of people I do want to see, but give myself permission that after 45 minutes I'm going to exit and go do whatever I want, let people know I got another party I'm going to go to. It's nice to see you. When you go, you feel good and you're honoring yourself because it's the holidays. It doesn't mean we don't honor ourselves. It doesn't mean we give into other people's expectations or other people's wants or other people's pressure.

Right? I know that there's this image going back to social media, going back to TV, the Hallmark Channel, Hallmark commercials, and I'm a Hallmark fan, but you got to remember, these are just shows, these are just commercials, right? And they are heartwarming and it's nice to see, but don't compare yourself and think everybody else's holidays are like this and everybody else's are wonderful. Right? A lot of people have had very difficult childhoods.

A lot of times, more drama, addiction, abuse, whatever is going on gets heightened during this time because of the pressure. So those might be your memories that come into this holiday, right? So I'm just saying, take a minute to sit back, breathe, pause. I still got a couple of weeks before the holidays. How do I want to handle things?

Part of making that decision. I also want you to be mindful if you're just avoiding, avoiding, avoiding, because that's not a good tool for everything. So usually when we avoid, we're feeling anxious and worried about something. A lot of like, anticipatory anxiety, right? Like, how are things going to be if I go, if I see this person?

Right? Another idea is, what if you get a Christmas card from somebody that you don't really want to be in touch with? Do I have to respond? There's all these little things that come up. So if I'm avoiding, avoiding, avoiding, then I'm not really being mindful and I'm just reacting off how I'm feeling.

So again, using your CBT tools, what am I thinking? That's making me anxious. It wants me to avoid and are these hot thoughts? I can't handle it if I see that person, nobody's going to respect my boundaries. Nobody's going to honor what I share and what I have to do for myself.

Those could be hot thoughts. Depends on who these people you're talking about. It depends on how you can handle things, right? If you're single and you're going somewhere and you're worried about how's it going to be, you know what? Ask a family friend.

Ask a sibling, hey, can you come with me? That's good support right there that you're not alone, so be mindful if you're like, I don't want to go do anything. I don't like the holidays. I don't want to deal with this. Everybody else seems happy.

Those may be a lot of hot faucets that you really need to take some time. And as I always say, situations are opportunities. And even though at first they don't feel like opportunities, they just feel like stress and things I don't want to address. And again, I've had those feelings too, and that's when I'm like, okay, if I don't want to deal with this, it's stressing me out that much. It's a big deal.

And I need to pause and I need to think about what are my thoughts about handling this? That's getting in the way of me using this opportunity to make my life better, my relationships better. And again, what can I do to create a happy holiday for me if that's what I want to do? And that's important. There's so many things you can volunteer for.

I think giving back always makes us feel good. Finding a family to adopt over the holidays and getting gifts for them, giving extra maybe to the local animal shelter, taking blankets for the dogs and the animals that they need or what do they need, that kind of thing. How can you give back if you don't feel is anybody really close that you want to do that for? What are some things going on in the world that means something to you and you can be of help? That's a great thing to do also.

So it doesn't have to be directly to a person. It can be to something that means something to you. Right. If you love going to the ocean, a lot of times there's days they have like a cleanup date, I'm going to go volunteer for that. Right.

There's just lots of different if you look up different organizations, you're appreciator. I know they do a lot of toy drives at this time. That might feel good, knowing you're getting a toy for a child that wouldn't get a toy otherwise. I'm just kind of brainstorming with you right now that I don't want you to be like, hey, Doctor Julie, this doesn't work for me. That person isn't good.

I have nowhere to go. I have nothing to do. You can get involved outside of that circle. If you want to, don't go to that black and white thinking, right? That's a cognitive distortion.

There's ten of them. You can listen to my podcast on cognitive distortions, but that's one of them. All or nothing. Black and white is the same thing, but we want to get shades of gray. What will this look like?

What's best for me? What's important to me? How do I want to connect with the people that I do love and feel good about how I'm handling that? So, again, there's a lot of emotions out there, lots of conflict, right? And we want to deal with the conflict.

Once you deal with it and make decisions for yourself that are best for you, it really will relieve a lot of the stress and possible anxiety you're going through, because you're taking control, you're taking charge because you're realizing, oh, this is what I'm thinking. That's wanting me to avoid the situation. That's not really true. I need to come up with a better balanced thought, and then my behavior will follow, and then I will be making better decisions for me. And then adding to this.

During the holidays, I always encourage people self care. Self care. Buy yourself a gift. It's not about buying for everybody else, right? Do things that are self.

Get enough sleep. If you like to exercise, if you like to get a massage or go get your nails done. Just it's not all girly stuff. Guys like getting their nails done and getting a massage and all that good stuff. What's good for me during this time, right?

I'm going to put some time, maybe a little money aside, because there are certain things I want to get. Maybe I won't get them. I'm going to buy them for myself. I don't have to depend on other people making me feel good. And I can really enjoy being able to give in whatever way that is.

Sometimes giving is just hosting, right? Sometimes, again, giving is with gifts, time baking. So I know you all can find something that will make you feel good and really reflect on the holidays. That's another thing, I think with social media and all the expectations, we get really wrapped up in how things should be, right? Remember, the rude word of should is scold.

I should do this, I should do that. It's like no. Why are we even celebrating the holidays? Right? To be honest, gifts and everything that comes with it are secondary to what's the meaning based on the holiday you're choosing to celebrate?

There's a purpose, right? And to be able to connect to that is really important. You don't want it to be just a thing you're doing, just an action you're taking. It's like, why am I getting that extra connection with people right now? We're making more time to come together and visit and want to share our love and care for each other because hopefully the holiday you're connected to is bringing that into your life.

So if you can start there and be connected to whatever that meaning is for you, I think it will really open your heart and open some doors on maybe handling things differently better than maybe you have in the past. So there's so much I wanted to COVID And I was really feeling strong about this again because I've just had a lot of things happen in my own life recently, and people I bumped into that we all seem to be going through all these relationship struggles and who doesn't talk to who, and who doesn't want to talk to who and how it's affecting other people. Right. It's really hard on parents when kids don't talk to each other. It's really hard on kids when aunts and uncles don't talk to each other, or grandparents.

I mean, it isn't just what's going on with the immediate person, right. It's how everybody else might be affected as well. We can't all be together because certain people don't want to see each other. So I wanted to really bring this up for all of us. Maybe we can start talking about it.

Maybe we can start talking with it to that person. Maybe we can just start talking it to other people and saying, am I comfortable with my decision? And if you are, that's wonderful. And I love that you're honoring yourself, but what are my intentions in continuing to not have this person in my life that seems to be in a lot of other people's lives? Right?

That's the part of sometimes you cannot talk to someone, you'll never see them again. It doesn't matter. It's when it affects you have to. I don't want to say have to. Right.

You may bump into them because other family members are connected to them or other friends are connected. Right. And how do you feel about that? How do you want to handle it? So, again, I don't want to repeat myself and ramble on with you guys, but I have a lot of thoughts come to my mind just talking about this.

So I hope it's something that I can help you with through using your CBT tools and looking at your behaviors, are they healthy for you if it's what's best for you, not allowing other people to put their pressures on you? And maybe let's make, you know, this holiday of 2022. So the year has been very challenging for probably all of us in many different ways. How can we make this time special and be really mindful with our intentions of how we're living our lives and who we bring in to be able to help us also feel loved and cared for and supported?

So please let me know what your thoughts are about everything I shared today. I'd love to get feedback. I'd love to hear your stories, maybe ways that you've dealt with this that I didn't. Mention today if you have questions on how to handle situation. Again, it can be tricky, but I'll give you some response and give you some direction.

And then maybe if you need to talk to someone professional, I wanted let me add that here too, because I've recently had people asking about me being able to work with them and if they're out of the country or not in a state I'm licensed, I can't do that. But if you guys are looking for a CBT therapist, if you go onto Feelinggoodinstitute.com, that is a website I'm connected with and a lot of training through the Feeling Good Institute comes originally from Dr. David Burns. He wrote Feeling Good, Feeling Great, and on their website there's a tab that will say Find a Therapist. You click on that, you put in a little bit of information just about your address, and then it'll come up in your area.

Who's there? So personally, I see people in California, Colorado, South Carolina are the places that I'm licensed in at the moment, and if you want to reach out and contact me. But if you don't live in those states, that would be the best website to go to, to find a true CBT trained therapist.

So, again, I hope this was helpful. That's it for today. I look forward to hearing from you guys. You can email me at my Cbtpodcast@gmail.com. You can follow me on my Cbtpodcast Instagram.

My website is my cognitive behavioral therapy.com. Facebook is under Dr. Julia Osborne, and TikTok is under my CBT podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please hit and subscribe the button to make sure you won't miss another one. Thank you for joining me.

Stay safe. I wish all of you a wonderful, happy, healthy New Year.

Again, thank you for being listeners, sticking with me all those times. I've been grateful and humbled to be there for you and knowing that learning these CBT tools is making a difference in your life.

So happy holidays!

And again, remember to always make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.