Tag: Stress Free Holidays

Hello, and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace.

We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode.

Welcome to episode 151. I’m so glad you’re here today. And Since it’s the beginning of December, and we’re getting ready to go into the Christmas season, I wanted to do an episode on three ways to have a mindful Christmas season this year. In order to do that, we really have to plan ahead of time. We have to be intentional about what we want to do, we have to be intentional if we want to get away from the hustle and bustle, the commercial aspects of Christmas, in order to have time celebrating Christ and spending time with our family members who we love.

We have to think through what season of life that we’re in because sometimes Christmas is going to look different in different seasons of life. You may need to do something different because you’ve had a loss experience. It may be time to develop a new tradition within your family. You may have kids where you didn’t have kids before.

In our situation, obviously, our daughter was too young last year to really understand much about Christmas, but I think this is the first year that we will be able to talk with her more about Jesus being born and what that means for us. I am definitely looking forward to that. Another reason that I wanted to do this episode was because stress is really awful for OCD.

We’ve talked about that a lot on the podcast. I want you to be able to be mindful about having a positive Christmas season, while at the same time reducing your stress load. Here are the three ways to have a more mindful Christmas season. One is prioritizing Jesus. We really want to take some time to reflect and think about what Christ did for us.

entering our world so that we could be saved from our sins. This is so huge. God could have saved the world any way he wanted to, and he chose to become a man and struggle with the same temptations that we struggle with and dealt with the same type of relationship issues that we deal with. He was hurt.

He was betrayed by others. People just. Up and abandon him at the end of his life. I did an episode last year about what Christmas teaches us about managing anxiety and OCD that you may want to go back and listen to. It’s episode 109. I think there’s some good tidbits in there for you to reflect on, hopefully.

Another way we prioritize Jesus during this season is to look at what do we want to be involved in, maybe that church has going on, whether that’s a Christmas play, whether that’s something with the children, whether that’s a Christmas Eve service. There’s so many opportunities for giving during this season.

Of course, we want to be giving and serving towards others year round. Maybe you don’t have something that you’re actively involved in. Christmas is a great time to hop in and say, what can I do for the local food pantry or for the homeless in my community, foster children who need Christmas presents, stuffing stockings for seniors in the nursing home.

So many different ways to get involved in giving. So really that’s a way where we’re prioritizing Jesus, that it’s not just about us getting presents or, Oh yes, finding all my favorite stuff on sale or things like that, but taking the time to be intentional about what are we giving to others, not just our friends and family, but people that maybe are in a different place in their life.

Maybe there are in a. down trodden season and we can help lift them up or love on them during this hard time. We want to prioritize Jesus in terms of what we’re teaching our children, and that may look different for different families. It may look having a manger scene, talking to your children about the different characters in the manger scene and what that means, what the birth of Christ means, reading certain storybooks.

It may look like having a birthday cake for Jesus. Whatever it looks like in your family, and I look forward to creating some of those traditions with our daughter. Steve and I haven’t talked about this a ton yet because I’m recording this episode early in November, so I haven’t had a ton of time to think about it.

However, I’ll let you know maybe when I send out an email sometime in December what we decided that we want to do for that. It’s incredibly easy to be busy this time of year, even busy doing a lot of Christian activities, but we don’t want to lose the meaning of Christmas in that process. We don’t want to miss the moments of contemplation, reflection, peace, and joy.

Another way to have a more mindful Christmas season is to think about and be intentional with what are you doing with your time. Resist the urge to overschedule and do everything. We want to be mindful about planning and executing family gatherings. I know some people may have three or four family get togethers if they have parents who are divorced and remarried.

It can be a lot to get to all the places or to do all the things. And if you’re trying to cram four Christmas celebrations in in two days, not only is that exhausting and overwhelming, possibly too much if you’re a highly sensitive person, it Know that you don’t have to continue with things just because you’ve always done it that way.

It’s okay to say, hey, this is a crazy time for us, can we reconvene for New Year’s? Can we reconvene as a family sometime in January? We have some family that we are not going to see until after Christmas this year, and that’s okay. We’ve made some scheduling and some traveling decisions, and they’re okay with it, and we’re okay with it, fortunately.

But you may have family members that push back if it’s the way that you’ve always done it. As much as you love your family, sometimes being with certain family members, Might be really stressful for you, so keep that in mind in terms of your holiday plans. Being intentional, not just doing something out of obligation or the way that you’ve always done it.

And it’s okay for some gatherings that you may want to pop into for two, three hours. It doesn’t mean you have to stay for six hours. You can still go and be a part of it. But if you know that being around certain family members are going to cause you a lot more stress, it’s okay to duck out a little bit.

It’s between you and the Lord who you spend Christmas with and your family. When we do things that please God, it doesn’t always mean that it’s going to please everybody else in the equation, or you may do something that pleases one family member and then another family member is unhappy. Just know that those things happen and we have to be able to adapt and move forward and say, okay, I’m accountable to God for how I treat other people.

But as long as I’m not being malicious or hurtful towards other people, I’m going to pray about this and take it up with the Lord, make sure that I’m right with Him, and then move forward if family members are upset with me about something. I think that’s a good general principle, not just for holiday season, but just general principles for dealing with your family.

You are an adult, you have a choice, you can decide that this is the Christmas that you want to go travel with your spouse. And that you don’t want to run around and do all of the things that you normally do. And I worked with a client one year on this, and it was incredibly freeing for her. She didn’t believe me, like, that she could say no to some things.

Because she was always doing things out of obligation. But when she was intentional, she was able to say, you know, I enjoy having more quality, in depth time with these family members. So I’m going to schedule other times to see them, not just at the big family gathering. And that was more fruitful for her, and much more of how she wanted to spend her holiday than just trying to rush and make sure that she saw everybody without that in depth quality time.

This also goes back to what season you’re in. Last Christmas was particularly tough because it was a first Christmas without mom or dad. And it was really important for me to be with my side of the family. And of course, Steve understood that dividing time when you have a spouse is obviously something you have to figure out some type of system or agreement on.

There was a time after my divorce where I did not want to unpack Christmas decorations and decorate my house like I normally did. One of my roommates really freed me up and was able to say, well, do something different. Don’t just decorate the same way that you’ve always decorated. And I actually got some blue Christmas lights for the tree and put like all blue Christmas lights on.

I found this beautiful ribbon at Hobby Lobby. That ended up being a nightmare because I didn’t realize, like, how many rolls of that I was going to need, but I kept, like, having to go back. However, anyway, the tree looked really pretty. It looked different than it normally did. I kept the, some of the foster child ornaments put away because I just wasn’t in a place where I could handle that.

And now I have some and I keep some at my office. I have a miniature Christmas tree there, and I think I may have some for our tree at home. I can’t remember how I’ve split those up exactly, but I can look at them now and not be horribly sad. So just know if you’re going through grief and loss, there may be things that you want to do this holiday season that are different, just to start something new or to have a shift or to let yourself know that, yes, It’s not going to be the same this year as it has been in the past, and that’s okay.

Take care of yourself in that process. You may be going through a mental health period of depression during the Christmas season. There are people that experience that. It’s like, quote, supposed to be a happy time, or we feel like we’re expected to always have a smile on our face, like, oh, yay, isn’t Christmas so great?

But just know that it’s okay to be depressed, too. That may be the season that you’re in. And you may want to keep things minimal until you’re feeling better. And you may just not want to focus on a ton of social gatherings. You don’t want to completely isolate yourself because that’s not necessarily healthy either.

But you may need to put a little bit more time and energy into some self care, making sure that you’re sleeping and eating and doing things that rejuvenate you, trying to get some physical activity, and that may take a lot of energy, and you may not be able to expend it in other areas. Just know that if this is a depressive season, that that’s okay.

It’s okay to take a little bit of a step back. When you’re looking at how you’re spending your time, just go ahead and look and see what do you have on your calendar. Evaluate it and decide, do we want to go to all of these things that we were invited to? Maybe we don’t have this problem because I’m a solo person, but maybe you have a work Christmas party.

Your spouse has a work Christmas party, and your child has this big thing going on around Christmas, and the church has a function over here, and maybe there’s just too much going on. That’s a time where it’s like to sit down with the family and evaluate the calendar and say, okay, which one of these things are priorities?

Like, yes, we are absolutely going to try to make it to that as long as we’re not sick. What are we doing there? And then for some of those other optional things, just seeing what you can do. Saying, okay, well, maybe we don’t want to go to that one at all, or we do want to go, but we just want to go for a short amount of time.

Maybe we’re going to show up a little bit late to it. Give yourself the freedom to know that you can do those things. You don’t have to be all 110 percent in for these events. Obviously, I’m talking from an introvert personality and from a highly sensitive personality. So. I can’t handle having my calendar just be maxed to the gills, it just does not work very well for my nervous system, but I don’t know, maybe you’re an extrovert, and you need a ton of things on your calendar, and that just fills your cup, so.

Take this advice and make it your own. And the last thing that I want to talk to you about when we’re looking at having a more mindful Christmas is money slash gifts. First of all, decide what your budget is ahead of time. Hopefully you have decided this before the beginning of December and you’re not just making that.

Decision last minute, I know a couple of Christmases, Steve and I felt like we spent so much money on medical bills throughout the year. It just seemed like we didn’t have much left for when it came down to Christmas and that was disheartening. So you may have a year like that and it’s okay. You know why?

Because some of the best gifts that you can give people are not always monetary. Sometimes someone needs a note of encouragement. Sometimes they need someone to watch their child so that they can go do Christmas shopping. Maybe you know a single mom and they’re trying to figure out how to juggle a lot of different things.

Is there something that you could do to help them or bless them in some way this season? Sometimes I’ve made things before, whether that’s making food for people or making crafts. Maybe you think, well, I’m not a crafty person. But is there a home project, using your gifts, whatever they are, maybe you’re good around the house, maybe there’s a home project you could do for somebody.

So by deciding what your budget is, talking with your family ahead of time, how are we going to do Christmas gifts this year, we’ve done different things at different points in our family, we’ve done name drawings, we’ve done, and usually there’s some type of spending limit associated with that, or the person has some kind of wish list.

We’ve done experiences instead of gifts. I’m a big fan of those. For those of you who know me, I’m a bit more of a minimalist. I just don’t need a lot of stuff around me. It gets cluttered, it becomes too much, and I end up having to figure out what to do with it later. So I try to bypass all of that by, Being more focused on, let’s do something together as a family.

I love doing new things and making new memories with the people that I love. The older I get, I find the less stuff that I want, actually. And when you’ve lost both of your parents, as I have, it just really shifts your perspective on these types of things. Well, when we’re talking about what’s most important for Christmas, Are you going to look back at the end of your life and say, wow, I’m really disappointed that I didn’t get that air fryer I wanted?

No, you’re not going to care about that. The things that you might regret though, are not going and making those special memories with your family, or you might regret not slowing down. Long enough to really be able to enjoy others, the joy of Christmas and Jesus. Let’s be mindful. Let’s be intentional.

Let’s be focused I do have another episode that I did on surviving the holidays with anxiety That’s way back on episode 55. I talked about some of these same concepts, but you may find some other things in there I talked about how to survive holiday parties, which I know is a big one You If you have a lot of anxiety, especially socially.

OCD Warriors, as we’re getting into 2025, starting to think about goals for the new year, I want you to think about what you would like your relationship with OCD to be, how you would like that to be different, maybe, than it has been in 2024. If there is absolutely any way that I can help you with that, please contact me via the website carriebock.com

com. I’ve got a contact page on there. You can also contact us on the podcast page, I believe. Just let me know what I can do to help you. I would love, love, love to do that. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review.

This really helps other OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.