CALM For The Holidays: Reclaim Joy This Season

The holiday lights flip on and suddenly your pulse spikes. Between crowded calendars, complicated family dynamics, and the ache of people we miss, the season can feel less like a spark of joy and more like a storm front. We built this mini to offer a calmer way through: a clear, compassionate framework called C.A.L.M.—Centering, Anchors, Logistics, and Meaning—that helps you make choices you actually feel good about.

We start with centering so you can move from reflex to intention. Simple grounding practices and “pause” phrases protect your energy before you commit. From there, we explore anchors: the people, rituals, and small traditions that truly connect you to the season. Think heirloom recipes you want to keep, a candle lit for someone you love, or a time-capped visit that lets you show up without burning out. When you honor anchors, the holidays feel lived, not performed.

Next comes logistics, the quiet hero of a peaceful December. We share realistic planning steps, flexible timelines, and boundary scripts for invitations, budgets, and travel. You’ll hear how to right-size commitments, set gift expectations, and pivot toward experiences when more stuff isn’t the point. Finally, we lean into meaning—the forward-looking purpose you choose now. Whether you’re reimagining old patterns, making space for grief, or investing in experiences that outlast the wrapping paper, meaning becomes your filter for a season you can actually savor.

If holiday noise has drowned out what matters, consider subscribing to my CALM Holiday series. Or you can choose to purchase single episodes or even just the Resource folder. 

Here's a link with more information and to get CALM today: https://www.patreon.com/collection/1860320

Chapters

• 0:00 Mini Overview And Purpose
• 1:06 Introducing The C.A.L.M. Framework
• 2:41 Resources And Patreon Collection
• 3:21 Why Holidays Feel Overwhelming
• 5:31 Centering: Presence And Choice
• 6:12 Anchors: People, Traditions, Recipes
• 7:47 Logistics: Planning, Boundaries, Budgets
• 9:06 Meaning: Redefining What Matters
• 10:02 Three Ps: People, Presence, Parties
• 12:28 Roller Coaster Or Hurricane
• 14:05 Guardrails And Communication
• 15:21 Preview Of Next Episodes
• 17:12 Reflect On Your Toughest Area

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. This episode is a little different. It's actually an overview of my calm strategies to manage holiday overwhelm. And I put this together because first I had so many clients that struggled at this time of year, but I myself I love the holidays, but my parents aren't with us anymore. And there I've just had a lot of different losses over the years. And so sometimes the holidays to me feel bittersweet. And I just feel like there are really simple concepts that you can access to connect to what's important to you and to find ways to, I guess, create joy for yourself or find those little windows of peace and figure out what the meaning for the holidays truly are for you. So what I have for you today is it's kind of like the intro or the overview what my Calm holiday series means, and Calm stands for four things to help you kind of remember, utilize different strategies. If you want to dig in more, I actually put together a five-episode series, and the first episode is just a repeat of what you're going to hear today, but the other four are kind of expanding on what the four elements of calm are. And I also have a folder of resources, so things that you can use, which include a way to figure out what's really important, something to symbolize what is meaningful to you. There's a calendar of little daily things that are holiday connected to help you just do some mindful activities. There's a lot of fun things in there. So it's one of my favorite things to offer. So if you want to dig in more, there's a link in the show notes that takes you to my Patreon, which is where you can buy the collection of the series if you want more. But I think today's mini will give you a pretty good overview and I think even start to get you thinking about how you can create more peace and have less stress at the holidays. So thanks for listening. And here's my intro to my calm strategies. Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, host of the No Shrinking Violets podcast. And I put together a calm holiday strategy to help you transform your holidays. So let me tell you a little bit about why I did this, and then I will give you an idea of what we're gonna cover in these strategies to help you transform your holidays from something that's stressful or overwhelming to something that can feel really peaceful. So I'm a therapist, and at this time of year, I often have people coming to me feeling totally overwhelmed by the holidays. Sometimes this starts as early as mid-October, but often as we get closer to the end of the year, they come to me talking about things like they need to see these people that they haven't seen since last holiday, or they have overstressed themselves with commitments, or they feel that some of the expectations are too much for them. And we really get wrapped up in not only what we feel we're expected to do, but we tend to get wrapped up also in the meaning of the holiday. What does it mean to us? Do we think about things that we have to do? Do we think about the people that we miss that aren't here anymore? Sometimes holidays come with a lot of melancholy or sadness because the people that we care about or the times that maybe we have fond memories of are past. They're not here anymore. Or there might be things about holiday time that didn't feel good for you. Maybe a lot of your memories aren't good. But perhaps you have a partner now who you want to create memories with, or you have children and you want to make the holidays have a special meaning for them. We all come to this time of year with a different set of expectations, a different set of emotions. And sometimes it can be it can be confusing to understand why I start to feel so stressed about this? What is happening? What is going on? How do I handle it? Do I just have to grip my teeth and get through it? So whether it is Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, just the season in general, whatever you celebrate, maybe you don't really celebrate a specific holiday, but you still have traditions around this time of year, but it can cause stress and overwhelm. So my calm holiday strategy, the word calm has the four components that I'm gonna talk to you about in the next four episodes of this um, I call it a secret podcast. Um, so the first thing that we're gonna talk about in the next um episode is center, centering, and that's the see in calm. And I'll tell you more about this in a bit, but it is how to basically ground yourself, how to stay present, how to decide what you want to do with your time, what you want to commit to, really feeling a sense of being present, being connected. Um, the A in calm is anchors. And so when I think about the anchors of a holiday, it's what connects you to that holiday, that meaning. And meaning is actually the M. We're gonna talk about that more. But the anchors are the sort of the physical parts or the procedural parts um of the holiday. So that might be the people that give it meaning. Um, it might be the traditions that you have. Do you always go and get a Christmas tree at a certain place with certain people? Do you have specific recipes? And it's funny when we think about recipes. I would guess nearly everyone has one or two holiday recipes. My mom was an amazing cookie maker. So my sister makes her sugar cookies. We call them sugar cakes because they really are like mini cakes. And I make her sand tarts, which is a recipe that's over a hundred years old. And I'm gonna tell you it's a pain in the butt, but when they're done, they're wonderful. So I don't always look forward to the sand tarts, but I do fun things like try to find as many colors of sugar as possible or as many different shapes that relate to the Christmas holiday. So I try to make it fun, but I know how important it is to certain people because this is the only time of year we eat these cookies. So we're gonna talk about how do you manage those kinds of things, those expectations. But anchors are the things that when you think about the holidays, what connects you to that? What are the people, the events, the recipes, the traditions? Then the L in calm is logistics. And sometimes this is the most important thing because we can tend to not plan or we can think, oh my gosh, I have six weeks, it's all good. And I can tell you that the years that I need to host my family, we celebrate on Christmas Eve, there are upwards of 20 people, and often there are new people in the mix, depending if someone's, you know, some of the young ones are dating someone new. But preparing for that, and for me, I've had years where I've made uh like 12 kinds of cookies, so that's dozens and dozens of cookies, and I would have to make a list. Here's all the ingredients I need, this amount of sticks of butter, or how many cups of sugar, like all of those things. But I think with anything, being prepared and having a strategy can really help ease the stress of the holidays because sometimes it's just that we've overcommitted or we didn't remember. Oh, I have all these gifts to wrap. So that is what we're gonna talk about in logistics. And finally, the M is meaning. And again, that does tie to the anchors a lot, but meaning is very forward-thinking. You get to decide what the holidays mean for you going forward. So, overall, I think about the holiday time as being about three Ps. It's about more people, more presence, and more parties. We tend to see people at the holidays that we don't usually see. And I think the commercials or often social media will paint that as something really happy. You know, the the Folgers commercials or the Hallmark commercials show somebody coming home and surprising the family early. That's all well and good if that is a happy, positive relationship. But again, as somebody who's worked in the mental health field for over three decades, it's not always happy. Those people don't always bring with them good memories. But it's just more of that. It's more people, it's more parties. And some people love that, but other people are exhausted by it or they want to say no, but they feel guilty or they don't know how to say no because my gosh, I only see these people once a year. So we'll talk about how to manage that for yourself. You don't have to go zero to 50. You could go to a party and put a time limit on it. So there's a lot of things that we can do to manage that. It's also okay to say no. And when we think about holidays, we often think about gifts, gift giving, which is wonderful, but it's also stressful if you haven't planned financially or if you feel like there's an expectation to plan or to spend a certain amount of money. And what my family has started to do recently is we're investing in experiences. So we don't give as many physical gifts. We still do like a fun little give and take game with sometimes some goofy gifts, but that's one of our traditions that we love. But the actual gift giving for some people has become really stressful. I actually love gift giving. I think it's just one of my kind of love languages. But I also respect that as we're all getting older, we want to invest in experiences together. So people are really intentional in thinking about what we can do during the year where we actually are with each other and we're making memories instead of giving physical gifts. So, overall, when I think about the holidays, one way I can think about it is we're clicking to the top of the roller coaster. So we're holding our breath. And some of us are dreading the plunge down the other side. You know, when we hear the first few notes of the first holiday song or the first Christmas song, some people are excited by that. Other people are like, oh, here we go because it's only November 1st. So if you love roller coasters, you're excited. But also, it can make you sick. So maybe you love roller coasters, you're plunging down the other side, you're excited, but then after a while, you're like, oh my God, this is like, when is this gonna end? So any way you feel is okay. It's just figuring out how do you recognize it and how do you deal with it. So instead of a roller coaster, however, I think of the holiday as more like a hurricane. So when a hurricane is coming, you often hear on the weather channel or the news that people decide they're not evacuating, they're not preparing, they're just hunkering down. And I think there are some people that deal with the holiday by just hunkering down. I'm just gonna get through it, I'm just gonna go through the motions. But instead, being prepared, which means fortifying yourself. So how do you plan ahead? And that's gonna be a lot of the logistics we talk about. But how do you sort of protect yourself? And by protecting, I don't mean just checking out, unless you really feel like you want to do that. But when you protect yourself, you're basically saying these things are a priority, and also knowing that some things you may choose to just do because it's better to be there and do it than to say no, thank you. But it's putting guardrails on things. And so, as part of our logistics, we're gonna talk about how to set boundaries because sometimes you can be put in a position that you no longer want to be in. Maybe everybody assumes you're going to be the one to host certain things, or you're always going to bring the sand tarts, which I can tell you take about four hours to make. So learning how to just to be flexible and to have a capacity to be able to do these things that are important while at the same time balancing your need to say no, to make a boundary, to maybe not do one of the things that you typically have done in the past. So we're gonna dive into that a little bit. And I think the other part about boundaries is being able to communicate that. So one of the things that I want to have you think about and maybe sort of remember as we go through this is that life happens through you, not to you. So sometimes it can feel like here comes the hurricane, or oh my gosh, I'm on the roller coaster, it's coming to the top, it's soon gonna plunge down the other side. And it can feel like you're powerless. But these things aren't happening to you, they're happening through you. So there are things that you can do along the way. All these things that I sort of gave you a little sneak peek of, all those things are things that with a little attention, you can gain a sense of control and a sense of peace as you go into the different episodes of the calm strategy. So again, we're gonna talk about centering, which is kind of like mindfulness, so that if you are able to give yourself a firm foundation, be really connected to your present, your body, being able to maybe start each day with something that is just a quiet time before some of the craziness might happen. It's a much stronger place to start from. We're gonna talk about the anchors. What are the things that have meant something to you that you want to prioritize? What connects you to what's important to you in the holiday? And it might be a little different than the rest of your life. You might have certain people in your life that you tend to keep a distance from, but maybe during the holidays you recognize I need to let them in a little closer for a day or two. We can talk about how to do that. Then the third episode, which is actually episode four, but the third part of Calm is logistics. How do you manage to keep on top of that centeredness, that groundedness, and prioritizing what you want? How do you manage your time? How do you manage your money? And how do you manage the communication of where your boundaries are and what you need? And then again, the M is meaning. So that'll go a little bit deeper, but connected to those anchors about what is important to you, what is not only the meaning that your holidays had in the past, but if they didn't feel good, or you need to sort of reimagine that, or you want to reimagine it, what meaning do you want it to have now? So going forward, what do you want to create? So before you start the next episode, The Sea in Calm, which is center, I want you to think about those four areas. As I talked about them, did one feel like it was going to be more of a challenge for you? Do you think you'll forget to maybe check in with yourself to stay grounded, to stay connected? Do you think you might struggle with anchors? Do you feel a lot of pressure to maintain traditions or maintain um traditions or those recipes? Do you tend to feel overwhelmed by trying to do all the things? Or do you perhaps feel sad? So, what are those anchors for you and how do they feel? The logistics, is this where you think you're gonna get hung up? Are you someone who overcommits or you tend not to break things down into steps? Or you do that so rigidly that if something happens, you get sick, a kid gets sick, um, your oven doesn't work, you know, different things. You don't get the one gift in the mail that you planned to get. Um, you don't get it in time. You know, there's a lot of things that can derail a plan if it's too rigid. So we'll talk about logistics and finally the meaning. And again, tied closely to anchors. What is your forward thinking about this? What do you want the holidays to be about for you or for you and a partner, or maybe for your kids? You get to decide that. We're gonna jump into the next episode by talking about the sea and calm, which is centering. So I will see you there.