5 reasons why you may find the festive season stressful

As December nears, perhaps your thoughts are casting forward towards the holidays – the to-do list of things that need to happen beforehand, the preparation for travel, spending extended time with family and friends, and the festivities themselves.

For some of us, the thought of extended time with friends and family is uplifting and helps get us over the end-of-year push. For others of us, we may have a more complicated relationship with the preparation, and with our families, that adds to our stress.

According to a 2019 study of over 2000 British participants, 2 out of 5 people felt stressed over the festive season. Whilst over half of 18-25 year-olds reported that their mental health is better over the festive season, in contrast, 30% of people of 45-54 year-olds reported negative effects on their mental health.

This study was conducted in 2019, so you can only imagine how these figures may change should the survey be repeated in 2022 – with continued Covid implications, the current global financial climate, and unsettled political challenges.

When you throw all of these factors together with neurodiversity challenges, it’s not surprising that the festive season may fill some of us with stress.

Let’s take a look at 5 reasons why the holidays may feel stressful for us neurodivergent types.

2. The ‘perfect’ festivities

Our first experience of the festive season as children in our parents’ home often forms the baseline for how we come to view how the holidays unfold today. Either we double down to recreate this picture each year, OR if that baseline picture was not particularly joyous, we may double down on rebuilding it into one that resembles what we feel the holiday SHOULD look like.

Either way, we often set impossible standards for ourselves to construct the ‘perfect’ festivities. This is exhausting. On top of our daily challenges posed by our neurodiversity, this added layer of effort, energy expenditure and perfectionism can pile on the stress.

3. Planning & prioritising

One executive functioning skill that may trip us up and cause additional stress over the festive season is planning & prioritisation. Planning ahead weeks in advance, identifying a starting point to begin tackling those plans, prioritising all the tasks on your to-do list, and working systematically and efficiently to execute these tasks are difficult for us. Think making travel arrangements, buying gifts, preparing food (stocking up beforehand and on the day/s preparations), getting the home ready, and the list goes on.

4. Working memory

There are plenty tasks that tax our working memory over the festive season. Preparing the home requires multiple steps involving cleaning, stocking up on food, ensuring guests have everything they need, remembering everyone’s food and drink preferences, following complicated recipes, negotiating time blindness as we try to follow complicated, multi-step recipes…. that’s a lot to ask our brains to manage!

5. Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

We all want the festivities to go off well – for everyone to recognise our efforts, enjoy themselves, for your guests to feel at home and happy. This means a lot of effort often goes into making sure this happens. When we perceive criticism or displeasure (spoken or unspoken), we may struggle to keep objective and end up taking things personally – cue putting in more effort, time & energy to win favour and people-please.

Can you identify with any of these?

These are challenges that we hear all the time in our clients over at Connections in Mind. Our team often gets together to consider how we can best support our clients to negotiate these challenges, so they can experience more grace and less stress over the festive season.

This November, we are excited to get the whole Connections in Mind team together for an informal fireside chat about the challenges that us neurodivergent folks experience over the holidays, and how we can successfully navigate this tricky time – in one piece, with your sanity in tact!

Join Victoria Bagnall (co-founder of Connections in Mind), and psychologists Dr Soracha Cashman, Rachel Breskal and Casey Anley for this special event:

Some key takeaways will include:

• Come to terms with the fact that the perfect festive season is impossible, and how to be kinder to ourselves and our loved ones this festive season. 

• Understand that shame and guilt around executive dysfunction are driven by society’s judgement. 

• Understand that this shame and guilt affects us all – even (or maybe especially) high achievers.

• Gain insight into how we, as psychologists and coaches, practice self-compassion in the run-up to the festive season.

We can’t wait to dive deeper into this topic, and share this special fireside chat with you!