Name: How to manage holiday stress and family tension
Uploaded: 2025-11-25T17:58:06.544Z
Duration: 1 min 28 s
Description: How to manage holiday stress and family tension, according to a clinical psychologist.

How to manage holiday stress and family tension, according to a clinical psychologist.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Shahrzad Jalali provides guidance on managing stress and family tension during the holidays. She highlights that many people enter the season with unresolved issues and exhaustion, which can make celebrations challenging.

Dr. Jalali advises against revisiting old family roles and suggests politely declining uncomfortable conversations to maintain personal boundaries. She emphasizes focusing on genuine connection rather than striving for perfection, and recommends grounding techniques such as deep breathing to stay present during overwhelming moments.

How to manage holiday stress and family tension

The holidays are much about coming together as family and friends, but coming together can cause stress and anxiety in actual practice. I spoke with clinical psychologist Dr. Shahrzad Jalali about how to make the holidays more bright than bitter. Dr. Jalali says some people come into the holidays carrying 12 months worth of unmet needs, unspoken tension and exhaustion, and then we're expected to switch into celebration mode on command. She says, don't create stress by exposing old family roles and unresolved dynamics. Here's one of her keys to prepare for questionable conversations. Let's say they want to talk about something that you're not comfortable with. You can very politely say, I'm not talking about that today, but I'm happy to catch up on other things. Or you can say, I know you're curious, but that is not a topic I wish to discuss at the moment. So you are staying true to yourself at the same time you're staying connected with everybody else. Connection, not perfection, is what the holidays are all about, Dr. Jalali says. To protect against going for the ideal social media image, the more we make it about what it looks like, the less we're actually present in the moment. And if you're overwhelmed in the moment, Jalali says, do some deep breaths with slow exhaling or ground yourself by pressing your toes into the floor. That prevents our minds from hijacking us and puts our body back into the present.

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