The holidays are stressful for so many reasons. For a person struggling with mental health or substance use concerns, normal holiday stress can feel unmanageable. Dealing with difficult family members, financial stress, and feeling pressure to make everything perfect have the potential to derail even the most carefully planned holiday events. In this blog post, we will explore a few strategies for managing stress around the holidays. If you have a family member who is struggling with addiction, the best gift you can give them, the only gift with the potential to save their life, is the encouragement to attend treatment. Contact Crestview Recovery to learn more about our remarkable residential addiction treatment programs by calling 866.262.0531 today.
Lowering Stress During the Holidays
How can you effectively reduce stress during the holidays? A good step in the right direction is recognizing when you are stressed without becoming incapacitated by it. For a person struggling with chemical dependency, managing stress is a constant battle. People who use opioids and benzodiazepines may even experience physical reactions to stress, including:
- Shaking and sweating
- Dizziness and vertigo
- Muscle spasms
- Waves of panic
While experiencing the aforementioned reactions to stress may cause a person to want to escape into numbness, this numbness prevents them from being present and connecting with family and friends during the holidays. Consider a few stress-management tips that can help you avoid relapse.
Focus on Fewer Activities and Tasks
You want to do everything. You want to see everything. Yet, there is only so much time during the holidays to do it all. That’s why it tends to be important for individuals to list a few key activities that are most important during the holidays and ensure you properly manage them. That is, you may have to say no to friends or family that want you to do more. Doing too much makes things less meaningful.
Invest in Time Alone
Though isolation isn’t a good thing, sometimes too much time around friends and family can make it harder for you to make it through the holidays without stress. You still need that time alone to do things for yourself. It may be meditation, yoga, going for a swim, or going for a walk. No matter what your go-to type of self-care is, you’ll want to keep that in place right now.
Don’t Let Guilt Get in the Way
Feeling guilty about past events is a powerful predictor of relapse. This is especially true around the holidays. While it is important to take accountability for your actions, being weighed down by guilt can use people to react in ways that encourage the cycle of addiction, including:
- Overcompensating and overspending
- Using drugs to escape into numbness
- Being unable to experience gratitude
If out-of-control drinking or drug use has caused you to let people down in the past, especially around the holidays, apologizing to them will be ineffective if you are intoxicated. The desire to make amends is not the same as making amends. The best way to prevent family members from experiencing stress related to your addiction is to get help for it.
Keep in Touch with Your Drug Treatment Center
It is also important for you to make sure you are focused on your unique health needs. That means getting in for your counseling appointments. It may also mean scheduling an extra session or two. You may want to reduce some stress by doing something that pays back the people that helped you. Doing something good for the community is an easy way to reduce some of your stress.
When You Need More Help, Don’t Delay
When stress builds during the holiday season, don’t ignore it. It is critical to engage more fully in your treatment plans during that time. If you do find yourself using drugs again, reach out to our team for immediate help. We offer the programs to help you to get back on track fast, including:
- Relapse prevention services
- Women’s rehab program
- Men’s rehab program
- Intensive outpatient care
- Dual diagnosis treatment
Stress during the holidays is standard in most families. For a person who does not have an addiction, this type of stress can still be hard to manage and may become too much to deal with independently. Yet, it becomes critical to do so when you are in recovery. Our team at Crestview Recovery is here for you if you are struggling with your sobriety during the holidays.
Embrace Treatment from Our Portland Rehab Team
The holidays can bring about stress, but it doesn’t have to control the outcome of your experience. It’s important to manage stress during the holidays. And, when it gets to be too much, reach out to our team to find the support you need to avoid relapse. Call Crestview Recovery today for immediate help or long-term care. Call 866.262.0531 to speak to a dedicated counselor.
Since 2016, Dr. Merle Williamson, a graduate of Oregon Health Sciences University, has been the Medical Director at Crestview Recovery, bringing a rich background in addiction medicine from his time at Hazelden Treatment Center. He oversees outpatient drug and alcohol treatments, providing medical care, setting policies, detox protocols, and quality assurance measures. Before specializing in addiction medicine, he spent 25 years in anesthesiology, serving as Chair of Hospital Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee and Chief of Anesthesia at Kaiser Permanente. This experience gives him a unique perspective on treating prescription drug addiction.
