Preparing For The Empty Nest

What happens when you send your only or last child to college? Mom and Dad need to give some thought to their next chapter. You don't want your college student to worry that you won't be okay! You also don't want them to feel frustrated with the neediness of too frequent phone calls so that they are distracted from making a positive adjustment to college. Starting to think about this transition a year or two ahead of launching your only or youngest child is a good idea.

If you've been an involved and caring parent, you want to plan for the sense of loss that can occur when your son or daughter departs for college. I like to remind parents that launching your child successfully into college is the desired outcome of the parenting project. It's just that it's an ending. You may have feelings of sadness, loss, grief, relief, joy and worry. You will also have some free time and emotional energy that you can redistribute to other people and causes.

After the college launch is a good time to develop your sense of self. What are your other interests and passions you haven't had time to pursue? Would you like to take a class or learn something new? Perhaps you'd like to volunteer for a cause you care about. In Orange County, where my counseling practice is, we have a great non-profit organization called OneOC that can help you quickly scan most volunteer needs in our local community.

It can be helpful to picture your life as a grid of about 16 boxes. While you are in the heavy parenting years, your children can fill many of the boxes. As you prepare to launch the youngest, it's time to re-examine your grid. You need many different facets of your life to be fully developing and keep yourself interested and interesting. Here are some boxes to consider for your life grid:

• Creativity
• Career
• Spirituality
• Self-Care
• Physical Health
• Physical Activities
• Outdoor Time
• Personal Growth
• Love Relationship
• Friendships
• Community Service
• Family Relationships
• Home
• Finances
• Intellectual Growth
• Travel

In each area, you can identify a goal and a small step you can take to move forward. It's best to take on just a couple of grid blocks at a time. This can be a kind of road map for giving your life a well-rounded feel.

For couples, I like to encourage you to think of launching your youngest child as a time for a renaissance for your marriage. Here's a fun exercise you can do with your partner about creating positive experiences together:

Have each partner write a separate list about fun things you liked to do together when you were first together, what you currently enjoy doing together, and what you would enjoy doing together in the future. Next, compare lists. You can negotiate trying some of the future activities that each of you would like. Remember, before your youngest child departs is a great time to intentionally begin  growing closer and having more fun together as a couple.

Entrances (like births, adoptions, marriages and remarriages) and exits (deaths, divorce, separations and transitions to the next phase of life) are challenges for the family system. Being intentional about making the transition to becoming empty nesters another positive chapter in your life helps everyone.

Actively creating this transition will serve you better than ignoring it until you come back from dropping your son or daughter at college. The whole family needs to make some adjustments and grow, adults included. You may find that you grow closer to your child as the space increases between you. It helps to remember that a part of being a good parent at some transition points is letting go with love.

Invisible Girl (Book Review)

Mariel Hemingway grew up feeling invisible, and now she's written a book with Ben Greenman to share her story with teens called Invisible Girl, (Regan Arts, 2014). She was born in 1961, a few months after the death of her famous grand father, writer Ernest Hemingway. That's just the start of her complicated family.

In Hemingway's family, she grew up dealing with her parent's alcoholism, OCD, and depression. Her mother became frail with cancer and dependent on Mariel. Her parent's marriage was full of conflict. She has memories of hearing them argue and fight intensely. She'd wake up and clean up all the broken dishes after their late night drunken tussles. Mariel was the youngest of three daughters, and both older sisters had mental illness. (Later in life, older sister Margaux, an actress, also died by an intentional drug overdose, just one day before the anniversary of her grandfather's suicide.)

The book is written like a diary in the voice of young Mariel as she observes what is going on in her family, and attempts to make sense of it. She includes "things to think about" at the end of each section for teens who may be reading it. Growing up in the small town of Ketchum, Idaho, Mariel often found solace and comfort by going outside into nature. The book has suggestions for teens on how to cope in positive ways with family problems, including talking about your experiences with someone you trust.

All the concepts in the book are put into teen-friendly terms. It's a short read of just 176 pages, with sketches and self-care tip lists in each chapter.

When children grow up with alcoholic parents, they adapt in different ways. Mariel became the "parentified" child, often cleaning up after her parent's drinking bouts and caregiving for her ill mother. The concept of growing up feeling invisible is an apt one. It's tough to grow up in a home where your development is overshadowed by parent's problems like substance abuse, a high conflict relationship or mental illness. Young people can see themselves as supporting cast to the family drama.

Learning to tell your story and have it validated by someone you trust, and to learn to do self-care are steps to becoming visible. This is a simple little book about some important subjects that don't often get talked about with teens. Hemingway's tone is kind and caring, and she carries credibility for having lived through family issues and becoming a happy, well-balanced adult who still finds her comfort in nature.Young people can feel less alone if they know that others are dealing or have dealt with similar family issues. Hopefully, Hemingway's book can reach girls and help them process difficult family dynamics and begin to consider their own needs.

'Tis The Season : 10 Holiday Tips to Keep You Merry

December brings up a lot of different things for people. It can bring stress if you get overwhelmed by all the tasks you have to get through. December can bring up memories of past holidays, whether sad or joyful. It can bring up grief if you are dealing with a loss this past year or two. For children, the holiday season often brings anticipation. Some adults feel the gravitational pull of their family of origin sucking them back in to unhealthy patterns.

Even one of the founders of family therapy, Murray Bowen, wrote an essay called "Going Home" in which he explained how he could be a happily individuated adult most of the year, but could regress when back visiting his parents, like at holiday times. It is so easy to get pulled in to old patterns if you're not conscious and intentional.

Here are some ideas for staying emotionally healthy during December and into the New Year:

1. If you have experienced a loss this year --- the death of a close family member or close friend, a divorce, separation or break-up, or a move far from your support system, be patient with yourself during the holidays. You will need to rethink of all your usual December traditions so you can decide whether you want to keep or change them this year. Be flexible with your plans, and don't take on too much. Focus on what will be comforting and supportive.

2. Stay an adult this holiday season. Reconsider demands and expectations made by your family of origin, or your partner's family. Part of individuating is making choices about what is meaningful and enjoyable for you, rather than just doing things by autopilot.

3. Give yourself permission to mix up old patterns. At family gatherings, exercise your power to move closer and visit with the family members you really enjoy and admire. Move away from the negative and toxic people.

4. Keep up your healthy self-care patterns throughout this busy month: keep exercising, eating healthy (even if it's before a holiday party so you're not tempted to eat the wrong things), and get enough sleep and alone time.

5. Share the tasks. Women often feel more burden for holiday tasks. I always encourage families I see in family counseling to hold a family meeting to get everyone signed up to share holiday tasks. Sort through the regular tasks to check and make sure that you focus on holiday traditions that bring joy, as opposed to those that are just an energy drain. People enjoy the holidays more when they help create them, so don't do it all yourself. Share the cooking, the shopping, the decorating and wrapping. Even small children can have fun wrapping gifts if you loosen your standards and provide lots of tape.

6. Get outside yourself. Reach out to an elderly neighbor or volunteer with a local food bank or charity which needs extra help during December in your local community. I promise it will lift your spirits, no matter what you have going on in your own life. Develop your spiritual side.

7. Say 'no' to invitations which sound emotionally taxing. Carry your own boundaries throughout the season. Preserve some down time.

8. Go for the joy. Be sure to sprinkle in some holiday joy. What are the sensory experiences that will activate your creativity, senses and holiday memories? Do you like to smell cookies baking or walk through a Christmas tree lot? Would you enjoy looking at happy photos of holidays past? Could you enjoy a holiday Christmas movie fest? Do you delight in hanging some festive lights? Spending time with children also helps you rekindle the joy of the season.

9. Break up the visit. If you are visiting family during the holiday season or you will be hosting family staying at your house, think through ways to streamline and make the visit less intense. Have some breakfast foods out that guests can do self-serve. Get out for a walk by yourself, and get those endorphins pumping. Don't expect yourself to be "on" for days at a time. Taking a break from hosting or being hosted can help everyone stay less frayed. Help guests to do some things independently if possible.

10. As New Year's Day approaches, think about creating a vision board for 2015. You can use a piece of poster board to pull out pictures and ideas that inspire you in how you want to grow and what you want to experience in the beautiful new year ahead of us. It will serve to remind you that the holidays, while stressful, are fleeting. The last month of the year is a great time to begin setting your intensions for an emotionally healthy 2015, with new goals and new plans.

Move as lightly as you can through the next 4 weeks. A few last inspiring pre-holiday thoughts:

If you are facing a judgmental or critical family, or tend towards perfectionism: "The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself." -Anna Quindlen

If you're worn out by holiday crowds and shopping: "Sharing the holiday with other people, and feeling that you're giving of yourself, gets you past all the commercialism." -Caroline Kennedy

If you need inspiration: "The holiday season is a time for storytelling, and whether you are hearing the story of a candelabra staying lit for more than a week, or a baby born in a barn without proper medical supervision, these stories are about miracles." -Lemony Snicket

Take good care of yourself as you navigate a healthy holiday season. Be sensitive to what you are needing, rather than do things just out of obligation. Give yourself permission to do December your own way.

Getting Unstuck and Out of the Comfort Zone

I especially enjoy doing life coaching with adults who are feeling stuck in their lives. Each of us has a comfort zone, and if we stay inside it we can get bored, complacent and unhappy. Challenging yourself to learn a new skill or try to get past your comfort zone in a small way can help keep you feeling alive, fresh and growing.

Are you feeling that your world is too small? Expand your world by volunteering, helping others, or joining a cause that you care about. Many of us get too isolated and feel too alone, and being around positive people who care about the same cause that you do will reduce those feelings. Watch less television or do less time with technology and see what you can create with that space and free time.

Taking a class or learning a new skill at any age is a great way to meet other open-minded people, challenge yourself, and build a sense of community in our often too fragmented world. Even after college, I like to see people learn new things or try new adventures. Taking on new things to learn gives you a growing edge. It makes you more interesting. In an classic life planning book, The Three Boxes of Life, and How to Get Out of Them, the focus includes not making the mistake of doing all your learning at the front end of your life. Brain experts tell us that life-long learning and keeping your mind active is critical to optimum aging.

Setting some goals for the summer or the remainder of this year may also help you get unstuck. What's on your bucket list? Is there a trip you want to plan, a bad habit you want to release, or a way in which you'd like to develop yourself so that at year's end you can look back with satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment? What do you really, really want that you could take some steps toward accomplishing?

Get more active. Set your intentions to get outside every day this summer spending time doing something active you enjoy. We think better, sleep better and feel better when we get exercise daily.

Watch what you say to yourself. Most of us have picked up an internal critic along the way who says mean things to us and contributes to staying stuck. Fire that critic. Write down negative internal chatter and counter it on paper. Consciously upgrading your self-talk makes a huge difference. Try to avoid telling yourself you can't, or that you are not good/strong/attractive/disciplined/brave enough.

Don't let fear run the show. If you really want to go back to college, find a different job, improve your relationship, move, get out of debt, travel, or date and find a partner, make a plan and go for it. Notice the fear any time you do something different, but don't let it stop you. Like Susan Jeffer's book by the same name, feel the fear but do it anyway. This is the only life we know for sure that we get, so don't leave unaddressed dreams on the table.

Take calculated risks. Trying new things or going for goals that you have may make you feel vulnerable, but it's also where the good feelings of growth and accomplishment live. If you don't get some rejection or disappointment, you may not be risking enough or aiming high enough with your goals.

Take baby steps toward a goal that you have. Many people fail to meet their goals or get unstuck because they won't break down their goal into tiny little bites. As I often share with coaching clients, we eat elephants one bite at a time.

Do extreme self-care. Think of how you might be neglecting your health, your spiritual growth, your sleep, or any other area of your self-care, and reverse the trend.

Don't live in a world that's too small. Come out of your comfort zone to keep growing and creating the life you want. Get an accountability partner who hears your dreams and encourages your steps towards them, while you do the same for them. There are lots of people who live life in a sort of automatic pilot, rather than challenge themselves to keep growing. Don't be one of them!

Let's Thrive: Redefining Success

Arianna Huffington, the editor-in-chief at Huffington Post, has a new book called "Thrive" (Harmony, 2014) out this month that is well worth reading. She suggests that money and power are a rather limited way of evaluating one's success in life. Huffington believes we need a third metric which includes creating well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving.

Huffington shares personal stories about growing up in Greece and lessons learned from her mother, who owned little but was extremely generous with others, often giving things to people who complimented them. Her mom also believed in being fully present, never missing an opportunity to interact with a shopkeeper or stranger. She tells some lovely personal stories about learning from her mom about what's truly important in life, all the way up to sharing how her mom died surrounded by family, a final shopping trip to a farmer's market, and sharing good food and wine.

Huffington addresses the issue of burning out at work, something that women are especially prone to. In contrast to "Leaning In" the recent book by Sheryl Sandberg, Huffington suggests that we all begin to intentionally lean out of work and being available 24/7.  She is in a unique position to be aware of the demands of the 24 hour news cycle, and the addictive draw of email, phone contact, and hyper-vigilance to news. She feels we need to feminize the workplace with core beliefs that we don't want to just make it to the top, we want to make the world a better place.

Here are a few of her valuable suggestions:

1. Get more sleep. She feels many of us aren't functioning at our best level because we are tired, hungry or lonely. Adults, teens, and children all get less sleep than they did a generation ago. Try an earlier, and firm bedtime. Try it for a month as she did and see how you feel. Ask family and friends to help you with your goal of getting to sleep earlier.

2. Take breaks. She has a nap room in side the Huffington Post for all the employees, also has healthy snacks there like hummus and carrot sticks. We are more effective at work when we stop for lunch and rest breaks. Perhaps you can get outside the office at lunch.

3. Give your phone a bedtime. Tuck it into a sleeping position early in the evening in a location which is NOT in your bedroom, so you are not tempted to check it during off hours. Could you put it to bed at 7pm? 6pm? Try this one and see if it helps restore you to truly be off. Don't turn it back on immediately when your feet hit the floor in the morning. Give yourself a little time to start your day in your own calming way first.

4. Take real vacations where your phone and email do not go with you.

5. Volunteer and do selfless service. At Huff Post, they pay employees for their time to do a few days of service for a cause they care about every year, but even if you don't, do it anyway. Research shows it makes us happier and helps us avoid burnout.

6. Let's have some silence. It helps us reconnect with ourselves. It quiets and soothes us.

7. Give important people, like your loved ones, your full and undivided attention. It's powerful and rare.

8. Think about the legacy you want to leave behind. This will help you peel back to reveal what really matters in your life and what you are focusing on. Work doesn't love you back. People do.

9. Protect your own emotional capital. Don't be a spend thrift with your time and energy.

10. Stop to experience awe and wonder in your daily life, whether it's noticing the sunset or the sky, a sweet interaction between people, a child's joy, or a tender moment. Savor it. Slow down for a variety of petite happiness.

11. Refuse to multi-task. It's draining, physically, mentally, and emotionally to operate in life with a split screen mentality.

12. Nobody stays on this wise course all the time, so when you veer off, get yourself re-centered again.

I enjoyed Huffington's approachable and open tone. In "Thrive" she is forthcoming about dealing with challenges in her own life and with her adult daughters as they experience difficulties like overcoming substance abuse. She emerges as a likeable, warm, and authentic person who is sharing some of her own life lessons, including about what Huffington calls, "kicking out the obnoxious roommate in her head"(a term for her negative self-talk).

It's too narrow to focus our sights on being a success at work. The real challenge is succeeding at the 30,000 or so days in life we are fortunate enough to have. It's an appealing idea to remake the workplace and our work practices to reflect this third measure of success. We need to shift the definition and the boundaries of what builds success, for ourselves and for the next generation, our children, who follow us.

9 Strategies for Moving Past Your Partner's Affair

You love your partner, and never dreamed they would be unfaithful. Now you found out. Perhaps you had been noticing different behaviors in your partner, or you found a heap of text messages or phone calls to the other person. Maybe you found the restaurant or hotel receipts, or the credit card bills, or a mutual friend saw your partner out with the other person and reported it to you. It may be that your partner came out and told you directly. You are grief-stricken, and your whole life appears not to be what you thought it was. Now what?

If you are married, love your spouse, and  have children and a whole life together, it's a big decision to give up all your dreams because of their affair. Infidelity is wrong, and involves a third person in your relationship. Practically speaking, it is also very common. Can couples heal and move on together after an affair?

I have seen many couples deal with the aftermath of one partner's affair, and some couples really can heal and get past it. An affair can, but often does not have to, end your marriage. If you choose to stay and repair the marriage, you have a whole journey of healing ahead of you. It helps to know what to expect, what to talk with your partner about, and what to do on your own to take responsibility for your own healing.

Your partner's response when the details of the affair matters: Were they remorseful? Did they sincerely ask for your forgiveness? Were they more arrogant and defensive? Were they willing to work hard to repair the marriage with you? If they weren't truly repentant and deeply sorry, you may want out of the marriage, because this affair may be foreshadowing of more affairs to come.

What if they really regret the affair and want to repair things with you? How do you manage the myriad of feelings the spouse feels who has been cheated on? How do you work through the trust being broken with your partner? How do you move through the current hell you are living through,with an eye to rebuilding the future of your marriage?

1. You need to take time to grieve. Finding out that your beloved spouse was unfaithful to you---physically, emotionally, or both, is a huge loss. In some ways it's worse than a death, because it was a willful decision to turn to someone else without regard to hurting you.To grieve, you must  feel all the feelings that you experience: shock, anger, bargaining, sadness, hurt, and eventually, acceptance.Grief comes in waves. It can be very intense.You can feel it as physical symptoms, including an inability to sleep, not being able to eat, a hollow feeling in your chest, etc.You have lost the trust and the innocence you once had in the marriage. Something has happened that you won't be able to forget, but can work hard to forgive over time. You may want to journal or talk with a therapist on your own to process all your feelings, and decide what you most want to communicate to your partner. It is usually a better choice not to share everything with friends, family, or your children (especially if you want to work it out, as you may forgive your partner, but they might not).

2. Do extreme self-care. In the months following your finding out about your partner's infidelity, it is  important to rebuild your confidence and self-esteem. Few things in life feel more like a personal hit and rejection that a partner's affair. Take some time to reinvest in yourself. Exercising might save your life during the first few months. Change a few things up about yourself. Find ways to be your own best friend. This is a time to reinvest in yourself, because you have to get stronger to fight for and rebuild your marriage. Whether your repair attempts work, and you are able to rebuild your marriage or not, you are with you either way.

3. After you get the facts on the affair and have talked openly with your partner, try not to obsess about your partner's every move. Better to act with integrity and self-esteem, and put your partner on notice that you are "all in" the relationship with them, as long as they are "all in" as well. Let them know that if you find out they are continuing their unfaithfulness, you may need to end it. This is about reclaiming your own power. You are not willing to be repeatedly victimized. Go on record about this with your partner.

4. Restructure the relationship with your partner. You need to understand what the affair meant to them. Are their unmet needs that they have? How about needs that you have? Create a format where you can each check-in with each other about how you are doing with the other. Do you have a regular date night? Weekends and vacations away together? If not, set it up, take turns making the plans, and get going. Begin having fun together again if you weren't. Find a safe way to make behavior change requests with each other.

5. Require new transparency in the marriage. As a marriage therapist, I don't like couples to have secrets. Discuss and negotiate new boundaries on Facebook, cell phones, email, lunches with the opposite gender, etc. Modern technology makes infidelity an easier temptation, but inappropriate and hurtful behavior needs to be addressed. If your partner can't agree on some reasonable compromises with you, it's a huge red flag. It is reasonable for you to want new boundaries.

6. Coping with triggered grief, anger, and sadness is an inside job. Much like war veterans can get triggered PTSD symptoms, lots of little things can surprisingly trigger the downward emotional spiral of people who have been betrayed. You have to be able to sort it out yourself, or get help doing so. If you fall apart or get angry or paranoid over every little thing,your partner will begin to feel hopeless that you two can get back on track. You have to be able to choose which items are the big things, and how to ask your partner for comfort (as in holding you). You can't stay stuck in angry, attack mode or it will drive your spouse further away. Remind yourself that your partner CHOSE to return to you, rather than pursue a future with the other person. It may help you to keep a list of your negative thoughts and check the evidence, making sure you are not using distorted thinking like emotional reasoning. You need to sort this out and be aware of not coming across as hostile, defeated, and stuck with your partner. Pick your battles, don't beat your partner up every time you get triggered. You can also learn to do thought stopping, where you go run a few miles when triggered, or remind yourself your partner stayed with you.

You need to be able to develop your own internal dialogue to deal with the insecurities that have gotten stirred up inside you. It may be overwhelming to your partner for you to be consistently needy, angry, and hyper-vigilant. You need to stay grounded, and keep a mindful of creating a new, better relationship with each other. Keep in mind that your partner may have given up the other person, but is actually grieving that relationship concurrently to working out things with you.

7. When you feel safe to do so, begin to address the sexual relationship between the two of you. If it has been dormant in recent months or years, heat things up again. I find many marriages have become disconnected in this intimate part of the relationship after having children. Begin to talk about what you would like in this intimate area of your life again, and get your partner to talk about what they have always wanted in this area. If at all possible, do not ask for specifics about sexual activities between your partner and the other person. It will be harder to get rid of these images. Make your partner wonder why they ever got involved with anyone else! Again, get out of victim mode as soon as you can. You can't undo what has happened, but you can try to rebuild and move forward.

8. Develop your spiritual life together as a couple after the affair is uncovered. A shared faith could be a huge help as you try to heal.

9. After the initial grieving, try to introspect about whatever part you may have played in the distance that happened in your marriage. It's perfectly possible you played no role in it, and certainly your partner involving another person was wrong. It is also possible that you need to own things you did or didn't do that distanced your partner (Did you get busy and ignore him? Over-focus on the children? Not invite her for date nights or couples time? Not share responsibility for a great sexual relationship?)

Marriages change after infidelity, but with your strength, the right support, and a good effort from both you and your partner, you may be able to get back on track and not lose your love and your life together. Hopefully, years from now you can look back and be glad you rebuilt your life together. In a world where the divorce rate is this high, being a couple who dug deep and renewed your commitment to each other and rebuilt the trust over time is something to be proud of you both for. There are times in life when digging deep and growing through difficult times can make you grow as an individual and as a partner.

Mending a Broken Heart

Break-ups are hard at any point in life, but almost everyone has been through it once or more than once. It's a part of our human experience, and helps us appreciate the fragile nature of close relationships.

What do we need when a relationship ends? How can we process what has happened? What can we do to help ourselves move through the grief?

It's important to remember that loss is always felt in direct proportion to how attached we were to that person. The more attached the two of you were, and the more your lives were intertwined, the greater the feelings of  loss you will experience.

Allow yourself to feel the loss, including the shock, the sadness, the anger, the regrets, the bargaining in your own mind about if things had only been different. All of these feelings are normal. Grief is always easier and less complicated if you deal with it at the time of the loss. Look through old pictures if you feel the need. Listen to songs that remind you of that person if you want to. Let yourself cry if you can; tears are healing.

Avoid alcohol or drugs as you are grieving your loss. It will bury your grief, and delay you dealing with the painful feelings until sometime later, when it will be more difficult to deal with. Grief therapists notice that losses that don't get dealt with at the time can show up later in that person's life, when some subsequent loss occurs and it hits doubly hard.

Activate your support system. Let your close friends and family know what has happened, and that you need them to be available to support you. It's okay to spend some time alone, but spend some time with your friends and family and allow them to lift your spirits. Work and school can be healthy distractions, too.

Reflect about the insights and lessons you may have learned from this relationship. What will you do the same in a future relationship? Will you be more attentive, more open, or choose someone with different traits? Perhaps you have learned some lessons about what is important to you in close relationships.

Take extremely good care of yourself. Eat nutritiously. Grief is heavy emotional work, so be sure to get your sleep. After a break-up is an excellent time to step up your exercise. It will help you relax, sleep better, work out anger, and get a healthy dose of endorphins. You may want to change a few things---perhaps a different hairstyle, a new outfit, or something else that boosts your self-esteem a bit.

Take your time healing. It isn't a race to get back out there and begin dating again. It's healthy to take your time developing yourself again after a break-up. Focus on your friends, your career, your family, and your interests. It's important to learn how to not be in a relationship, and be by yourself.

Loss is a part of life. Time passing helps, as well as feeling your feelings. This is the only healthy way through the journey of grief. You can work through the grief process and even grow from it.

If you are stuck, feel you are slipping into depression, or can't figure out how to move through the pain to the rest of your life, meeting even a time or two with a therapist who is trained in grief work can be very valuable in moving you forward.

Break-ups happen. Some of the challenge is finding your way through it, feeling and processing your grief, and learning from the journey along the way. The human heart is an amazing and resilient thing.

Keeping the Happy in your Holidays

Remember when you were a child and the holidays were pretty magical? It might have been your favorite part of the year, other than your birthday.

Too often, adults dread the turn of the calendar to November, with the extra workload of the holidays: cooking, shopping, meal planning, wrapping gifts, more demands on your time, extra expenses, decorating, cleaning, entertaining, thinking of brilliant gift ideas. It's enough to make one want to schedule a long nap to rest up!

It's time to take back your holidays. This article is geared to help you stage your own holiday makeover so that you can put the joy and meaning back into the season, and not go passively into all the regular routines without some careful checking in with yourself and the people who matter most to you.

It can be helpful to make a list of the holiday tasks you normally do, and consider what brings you the most joy. If you live alone, you can do this by yourself. If you live with family, you can have a meeting with the family to find out what means most to each person. What is each person's favorite part of each holiday? What can you cut out because the effort isn't worth it?

Try to delegate and find out who can do what task to help bring the holidays together. Could meals be made into shared events where each person contributes a dish? Could your son, daughter, grandson or granddaughter home from college help you with decorating and un-decorating? Could you bring food in? Could you make things more casual? Ask for help! Some of the joy is in putting the holiday together, not just showing up for it. Don't hog all the tasks for yourself, or you are likely to resent it (and your resentment will leak out).

Could you schedule some self-care into your holiday season? Perhaps you could schedule some breaks for you to exercise, get a massage, watch a favorite holiday movie, or do something else that restores you. If you have been losing weight and taking care of yourself, maybe you want to reconstruct your holiday menus to not create backward motion on your health goals. You can also increase non-food related holiday activities, like seeing a play or a concert together. Those peanut butter balls are not going to be easy to burn off after the holidays. If we get a little creative, spending time together doing active things can be a refreshing change from one holiday meal after another.

Think creatively about doing things in a new way that would fit your life now. This would be a good time to suggest drawing names for gifts in your family, rather than trying to find and fund gifts for every single person. It's not worth stressing yourself out, or incurring debt that could depress you in January when you get the bills. Perhaps you can make this a cash-only holiday season, and avoid charging on credit cards.

You might have to update your holiday plans given the changes that have occurred in the past year. I am working with people in counseling that have moved into a smaller home space this year, and have had to rethink having all the adult kids stay over. Maybe the adult kids can stay in a nearby hotel, and meet up for some part of each day with you if you are hosting.

If you have divorced, been through a break-up or death this year in your life, it's definitely time to revisit your take on the holidays. Give yourself the permission and authority to rewrite the regular traditions, or keep them the same depending on what feels most comforting to you.

Seek peace and acceptance with your family during the holiday season. Don't expect miracles. Try to lower your sensitivities to slights, be generous with your forgiveness, and realize it's not your job to judge other family members. Choose to wage tolerance and extend yourself if you can.

Cut where you like, but don't cut out the meaningful things. If faith is important to you, or volunteering in some way during the holidays to get some perspective, then schedule that in first. It could be that you want to extend your holiday season and make plans to see close friends before or after, rather than getting too stressed and tired.

Keeping your own energy level up is important. Try to get your rest, exercise, and not get overwhelmed. Try to set boundaries with negative, toxic, demanding, and unreasonable people. Pay special attention to pacing yourself. Take breaks from entertaining and hosting.

Take control, and make this your new, updated, and improved holiday season. You just might have a lot more fun, and bring back some of the magic. Lighten up, and go for the joy!

Stepping Off The Stress Train

You know those scary movies that come out this time of year, where there are frightening phone calls coming in, and the character discovers the chilling fact that the threatening phone calls are coming from INSIDE their own house? What if your stress set point works the same way, and you have to look at your own role in whipping yourself up into being "stressed out"? In reality, you are the main person who can decide to actively change your own thoughts that are keeping you stressed, and making active lifestyle changes to deal with stress more effectively.

The good news is that you have more power than you have realized in the past to effectively manage stress. You might start by keeping some notes in a stress journal. Note what is happening when you are stressed, what you are thinking, how you are feeling both physically in your body, as well as emotionally. Write down what you did in response to the stress. Record what made you feel better or get past the stress and let it go. There are valuable clues in a stress journal, by watching for patterns that may illuminate other healthier choices you can make.

Watch out for excuses. Some people blame other people or events for their own stressed out state, not taking responsibility for their own negative internal dialogue which makes them overreact to normal events. Try not to blame stress as an integral part of your personality, your work, or your family, which negates your own power to create healthier patterns.

It's better to build your awareness of what stresses you, and make an active plan to manage the stress.

In relationships, I try to get my patients to take responsibility for their own part, rather than blaming others. Make sure you are doing good self-care, including getting regular cardiovascular exercise (enough to make you sweat), eating to keep moods stable, and weeding out those negative  thoughts which make you believe you are powerless and helpless. You're not, unless you resign!

Take a look at your schedule as well. I am always concerned that my patients schedule with regard for balance, including regular breaks and time to connect with those you love, play, exercise, and have down time. If you don't take care to preserve time for these important activities, you are by default choosing to victimize yourself, and stay on the stress train.

Try to avoid unnecessary stressors. This may mean you need to be more careful about your boundaries, and learn to say "no" both at work and in your personal life if you are already fully committed. For example, make a commitment to yourself NEVER to work through lunch. Seek out people who don't stress you out, and in fact help you relax and feel good.

Try doing less. Some people just chronically overschedule, and need to create more realistic expectations for themselves. Practice under-scheduling if this is you, and experiment with how that feels. Scheduling yourself too tightly just makes your blood pressure boil.

Be in charge of not inviting stress in to your life. Turn off news before bed. Listen to soothing music in your car. Allow more time for things than you think it will take.

Be more communicative about expressing your feelings. Keeping them all tucked inside can amp your stress up further.

Be careful not to deal with stress by medicating it with alcohol, food, drugs, caffeine, oversleeping, over-shopping, or other unhealthy behaviors that end up creating more problems and their own stress. Passive stress reducers, like watching TV, are not as good as doing something active like taking a walk outside for 30 minutes and noticing nature.

You may also want to lower your standards. Perfectionism leads to more anxiety and stress. Take a more protective stance with your own emotional and physically. Give tasks only the energy they really deserve, and don't be a spendthrift with your own energy.

Reframing stresses can also be helpful. For those stressors that you can't escape, try to keep the big picture in mind. Some stressors are temporary and will pass. Reminding yourself to keep that big perspective in mind and try to laugh about it can make a big difference in how stressed you get. Try to see the positive in what you are learning from such stressors, and how it may be making you stronger as an individual.

Do something fun or enjoyable every day, even for fifteen minutes! Squeeze in some time to self-soothe with a bubble bath with scented candles, talk with a good friend, curl up with a great book, get outside to see what's blooming this week in your neighborhood, or play with a pet. You'll be surprised how you can lower your own stress set-point through self-care.

When it comes to stress, you are the conductor on your own stress train, and only you can decide to get off it. Life is so short, and we have so much medical evidence about how our own internal stress level leads to health issues like high blood pressure, hypertension, heart problems, and many others. Don't stay on the stress train any longer than you must! You will be happier, and so will those who care about you.