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An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Approach to Holiday Stress
According to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - ACT - the best way to maintain your sense of well-being is to stay committed to your personal values ...
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An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Approach to Holiday Stress
According to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - ACT - the best way to maintain your sense of well-being is to stay committed to your personal values.
There are many different areas in which you can identify your values:
• Marriage/couple/intimate relationships
• Parenting
• Family relations
• Friendship/social relations
• Career/employment
• Education/training/personal growth and development
• Recreation/leisure
• Spirituality
• Citizenship/contribution to society
• Health/physical well-being
During the holidays some areas will naturally take greater priority than others. It's important to be clear, from the beginning, about what you would really like to value this season. It's hard to do everything, and please everyone, so decide now what is important to you this season, and what you would really rather do without.
Take some time to really consider the above areas, and identify your highest priority values. These are the goals that will bring you the most joy and fulfillment this season. These are not things you do out of a sense of obligation, or for approval. These are the things that YOU want to do because they are important and worthwhile to you. They are things that will make you, and possibly but not necessarily others, happy in the process.
The holidays are a time when it's easy to become burdened by a sense of obligation. The extra work of preparing, hosting, shopping, and socializing, in addition to the added financial strain, will easily leave you feeling exhausted and disillusioned about the whole season. This can distract you from your values, and bring you into a state of just going through the motions.
Not giving in to that sense of obligation that pulls you away from your values can easily lead to uncomfortable levels of guilt and even shame. Try to just see these feelings as an indication that you are a considerate and caring person, and let them be okay.
According to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy there are four processes that lead to psychological suffering. They can be summarized by the acronym FEAR:
Fusion with your thoughts - taking you thoughts too literally
Evaluation of experience - good/bad, negative/positive, acceptable/unacceptable
Avoidance of your experience - unwillingness to have certain thoughts or feel certain feelings
Reason giving for your behavior - believing that you cannot have or do certain things until certain thoughts and feelings
arrive or go away
In the case of holiday guilt, this looks like:
Fusion -
thinking that feeling guilt is a true indication that you've really done
something wrong, fearing anger or disappointment from others
means that these things will cause irreparable damage to your
relationships and truly need to be feared
Evaluation -
not doing certain things makes you a "bad" or "selfish" person
Avoidance -
doing things you really don't want to do to avoid feeling guilt or
shame
Reason giving -
believing that you really have no choice but to do things because you feel bad
The solution to all of this is to practice mindfulness - staying in the present moment. As much as you can, notice that all of these guilt-inducing thoughts are just content of your mind. All of our minds have evolved this tendency to keep our lives safe, but it's not very effective at making our lives happy or peaceful. Just thank your mind for all its hard work, tell yourself that everything will be fine if you do not do certain things because it will, and continue to pursue your own holiday values.
Simply remember to ACT:
ACCEPT the content of your mind (guilty thoughts) as no more or less than content of your mind.
CHOOSE a personally valued plan for the holidays.
TAKE ACTION and commit to your own plan based on your values.
To learn about how to apply Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Concepts to your day-to-day life, read the ACT self-help manual:
Get Out Of Your Mind & Into Your Life by Steven Hayes with Spencer Smith.
If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at SusanRotella@4peaceofmind.ca.