3 Ways to Reset After the Holidays

Feeling worn out after orchestrating the holiday festivities? You're not alone. Join Calley Hewes as we uncover the hidden mental load women carry during the holiday season and why it's crucial to replenish our well-being afterward. I share personal insights and simple, effective strategies to help you recover from the post-holiday blues. This episode is a must-listen if you're seeking to regain balance and peace in the wake of the festive chaos.

In this candid discussion, we shine a light on the pressure to create magical experiences for our families and how this can lead to a state of overwhelm. Discover our top tips for resetting your nervous system and rejuvenating both your body and mind. Whether you're reflecting on the past holiday season or preparing for the next, we equip you with empowering advice to take the lead in your life and well-being. Tune in for an uplifting conversation that's all about nurturing yourself and emerging from the holiday hustle with resilience and grace.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Brazen, a weekly podcast where we get down and dirty on how we can live a more bold, curious and vibrant life. We are your hosts, kali Hughes, a self-care coach and nurse practitioner, and Valerie King-Mowler, a business growth and mindset coach. In this podcast, we are helping women stop people pleasing and perfectionism, awaken their inner badass and discover what can happen when we take the lead in our own life. Join us as we explore everything available to us when we brazenly take accountability for our life and well-being. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of the Brazen podcast. I am your host for today's episode, kali Hughes, and today we're going to kind of be diving into a topic that I know has been blowing up my social media feeds just with it being the holiday season and all, but it's the topic of how women tend to shoulder the majority of the mental load during the holiday season and they're kind of the magic makers and especially when you have kids, they are the ones who are kind of spearheading the whole operation. And of course, this is not always the case, and I'm just speaking in generalities here, because this is the most common experience for people who are in a partnership. So we're going to dive into the topic of mental load shouldered by women, and particularly mothers, during the holiday season. This is something that I know a lot of you have probably experienced. As it is now January, we've gotten through the holiday season and now we're kind of just in this state of overwhelm and kind of just like, oh my God, what happened? What just happened? So, as the festivities are happening kind of from late October through the beginning of January, there's often an overwhelming burden placed on women and pressure to kind of create the perfect holiday experience, to have the desserts and Pinterest worthy home decorations and to make sure that you're giving your kids the best holiday experience possible. So it's a nice feeling when you can do that for your family and for your kids, but it requires a ton of planning and organization and foresight and just tons of to do's and tasks that you have to juggle on top of the normal day to day activities. So let's start off by just naming some of the really common stressors that we have during the holiday season. So I know from my own personal experience it's buying gifts for everybody, and that comes with also thinking about what kinds of gifts you would want and making sure you buy them with enough lead time so you're able to gift them and wrap them before the Christmas party or whatever holiday you celebrate I personally celebrate Christmas.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Then there's also the events. This is just such an insane time of the year as far as events go. There are work parties, there are family holiday parties, there are kid parties, there are different events like eating breakfast with Santa or different types of snow related activities. I mean, there's just something for everything. And that's not to mention all the different themed days in the week or two leading up to winter break at school. It's just a lot. And then you have you know if you're hosting anything, planning out the meals, getting the food in the house, making the food or delegating who's doing what. All of that takes a lot of energy. It's just every little detail. We haven't even talked about decorating the house, doing cookies or other desserts, making sure that you're helping your kids to enjoy this time of year. I mean, the list is never ending.

Speaker 1: 5:11

And so it is no wonder that there is this thing called the post holiday blues, which is this phenomenon where people tend to feel this sense of burnout, overwhelm, depression as soon as the holidays are over. It's kind of just this sense of let down after you've been on and go, go, go for weeks on end. There is a ton of stress on your mind and on your body during this time of the year and so, that being as it may, I just want to give you some tips that are going to help you to reset your nervous system, because it's just probably been on haywire for the last several weeks, and it's going to help you physically as well as emotionally and mentally. So somatic reset wise. So that, basically, is just the physical body, your nervous system. Deep breathing exercises are fantastic and they're really simple, and it seems like it is too easy for just doing deep breaths to be enough to reset and improve your mental and physical well-being, but that truly is the case. So what you want to do is just take in a deep breath and then you want to exhale and make the exhale longer than your inhale, and what that does is it triggers the vagus nerve, which is one of the nerves in your body that is integral in the process of relaxation and stress management. So it's going to trigger your vagal nerve to tell your body that it is safe to relax. It also is helpful if you kind of just repeat to yourself comforting sayings or statements like I am safe. That kind of thing also relax. So that's one thing.

Speaker 1: 7:43

The second thing is to set realistic expectations for yourself, and this is something personally that I struggle with a lot of the time. I really tend to want to do it all and I want it to all be done perfectly, or at least near perfect, and I've had to really remind myself, especially this year, that the list of things that need to get done is actually very small. So I am giving myself permission to cut corners and, to quote unquote slack off in a lot of different areas. For instance, I am not putting a huge priority on folding and putting away the laundry of everybody in the house. I am making sure that everybody has clean clothes because laundry is one of my tasks when my husband and I divided up home tasks. So I make sure that everyone has clean laundry, but I am not going to spend my time and energy folding it and putting it away unless I feel like I have the bandwidth to do that. Another example is that I am only spot cleaning my house right now. I picked up all of the clutter and trash and did like a cursory organization of everybody's toys and stuff that they got for Christmas. But I am not going to concern myself with doing anything beyond the bare minimum until I am feeling physically and mentally like I can handle that without it taxing me.

Speaker 1: 9:52

And so I want to just encourage you to consider what areas can you slack off in, because chances are you're doing way more right now than you need to, and I want you to experiment with prioritizing rest at this part of the year when, in the dead of winter, solstice has happened, it's dark, it's cold and this is a time of hibernation. This is not a great time to be going out there all gung-ho for all of your New Year's resolutions. Thank you, because for a lot of us, this is a time that is better spent relaxing, cocooning, going into like our own version of a hibernation where we're really just focusing on taking care of ourselves and nurturing ourselves and not pushing ourselves to achieve and produce and to just hit all of these big goals that we've set for ourselves. Honestly, most people do better with that happening in the springtime or in the fall time, like around when school starts again. That's, personally, when I feel most motivated to set goals. This is not the time of the year for me to do that. So just set realistic expectations for yourself, knowing you and how you tend to feel this time of the year. Don't feel pressured into setting all of these goals for yourself. It's okay to hibernate.

Speaker 1: 11:44

And then the third tip that I have for you is kind of in the same vein, but it's prioritizing self-care, and I know that we kind of harp on this all the time, and it's one of those things that is much easier said than done. Believe me, I am right there with you in thinking that, and oftentimes I found myself in like a do as I say, not as I do, type of a thing. But prioritizing self-care is really something that I am leaning into in 2024. And for me, self-care is asking for help when I need it, peace, saying no to things that I just either don't feel like I have the mental, physical, emotional bandwidth for, or I just don't want to do it, and it's not something I have to do. It's also setting clear boundaries with people. So if there is something that somebody would like me to do and I just feel like it is not in my best interest to do that thing, I'm just setting a clear boundary there and I'm not letting people steal my energy or, you know, take advantage of my giving nature.

Speaker 1: 13:07

I'm really trying to be much better about prioritizing the things that I know that I need in order to feel like I am taking care of myself. And, in taking care of myself, prioritizing time where I can be alone, because I'm an introvert. Time where I can engage in hobbies of mine without any guilt. Time where I can ask for what I need from other people and allow other people in my life to help me and to serve me. Those are some really refreshing ways that you, too, can take care of yourself, and so think about those things. Let me recap them real quick. So it's practicing deep breathing exercises, setting realistic expectations and kind of just letting things go undone as much as you can, and then prioritizing self-care, whatever that means for you. So those are three ways that you can kind of relax your body, reset everything after all the stress of the holidays, and it's going to help you get 2024 off to a great start.

Speaker 1: 14:32

And I would love to hear what your personal goals are for yourself. Is your goal to just simply clean your bathrooms and call it good, or are you going to try to prioritize rest in this time of the year, are you going to create your own effort list, which is the thing that I have, where it's the ways that I am just essentially saying effort and I'm cutting corners because it's not important to me and it isn't essential for my household to run effectively. So come up with your own ways of doing that and let me know how it goes. I would love to hear from you through email or on social media. You can click the links in the show notes and it'll connect you right to whatever platform you would prefer to use, and I can't wait to talk with you again next week. So tune back in and we will see you soon. Keep being brazen.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Brazen podcast. We'd love to hear more about your parenthood or child-free journey, so please feel free to email us at hello at brazenwomencom. If you liked this episode. Please rate, review and share the episode so we can get the word out there. We'll be back here next Tuesday, but in the meantime, keep being brazen.