12 TRAPS OF THE HOLIDAYS
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional roller coaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 81.
Hello, my friends. Well, we are in it, in the thick of the holidays, and I want to invite you on a journey to just let yourself feel what you're feeling right now. I know that every message, every song, and holiday card you read is telling you to feel peaceful and joyful.
And I want to tell you that you are not alone if you're not in a particularly joyful or peaceful emotional place right now. At a minimum, the holidays are stressful. There's so much to do and get prepared for, to travel and have guests over, the kids come home for college, getting everyone presents.
All of this stress seems to fall on us as moms. And this doesn't even take into account any particular challenge you or your kids might be going through. College admissions, health issues, relationship struggles.
It's a lot. Of course, there are many parts of the holidays that truly do deliver the magic. Spending time with loved ones, kids back in the nest, a chance to show people how much you care about them.
Maybe a bit more downtime once the rush of the holidays are behind you. But maybe it's the holiday marketing, the Hallmark channel, or other people's social media feed. Maybe our own memories of beautiful holidays gone by.
We can't help but have this expectation of what the holidays are supposed to look like. And yet the reality of what we can be experiencing might fly wide from the mark. If you can relate, I want to offer you a lifeline.
And that's not going to be in the form of trying to cheer you up and telling you to focus on gratitude. I don't know that it's always useful to resist your feelings by trying to gratitude shame yourself. You get to feel however you feel.
But also, I'm not here to validate or justify your feelings either. One of the goals of my coaching is to help you discover whether those emotions you're experiencing are what you really need to or want to be feeling in this moment. Believe it or not, that's actually up to you.
So I thought it might be useful to apply the mindset trap work we've been doing together to some of these unique challenges we face during the holidays to see if we can unravel some of this emotional negativity to move closer towards a place of peace. So let's go through it. The 12 mindset traps of the holidays.
Number 12. Let's start with mind reading. This trap for sure is a hot mess of an opportunity to feel terrible during the holidays.
You, my dear friend, are spending quite a bit of your time and mental energy reading minds. Your kids, your partners, your mother-in-laws, your sister-in-law, your best friend, your worst enemy, all of them. The holidays give us an opportunity to spend more time with the people we love and yet we can be left feeling miserable much of the time because people just don't behave the way we want them to behave.
You have expectations of everyone, not just the people you love. The mailman, your neighbor, the woman in front of you in the checkout line. You have expectations about how every single human should act and, spoiler alert, the majority of them don't live up to your expectations most of the time.
For example, you might expect your college kid to act happy when they're home but then you notice that they don't seem happy or they leave to hang out with friends almost the minute they get home. You expect your sister to host the holiday dinner but then she sends you a list of things you have to bring. You thought she was handling it.
You might expect your husband to buy you a thoughtful Christmas gift but then you notice he hasn't even gone shopping yet and Christmas is only a few days away. We're constantly evaluating other people against our expectations of them and whatever we observe in their behavior, their facial expressions, body language, or even the words they say, we piece these together to create a narrative about what they must be thinking. College kid leaves to hang out with friends.
In our minds we tell herself she doesn't want to be home with me. She didn't even miss me while she was away. When her sister's hosting the holiday dinner and sends us a to-do list, we start thinking she doesn't want to host everyone or that she doesn't appreciate that you took on last year's holiday dinner without help from anyone.
You haven't seen evidence that your husband has gone shopping and so in your mind you assume that means he doesn't care enough to make an effort to get you something thoughtful. These are just a few examples about how we can create this intricate story about what others' actions and words mean without having any real clue about what's going on with them. And it's one thing to try to read their mind, weaving together this fiction about what they're thinking, but then we compare the story to the expectations we have for them about how they should be and how they should be acting.
And now all of a sudden they've let us down. It's not just that our kid from college went to see friends. It's that we have the story in our mind that he or she should want to be home with us and our minds are telling us that they don't want to.
It's not that our sister asked for a to-do list. It's that in our minds we're thinking she doesn't want to host or that she doesn't appreciate my past effort. It's not about a gift or the number of hours the husband's been out shopping.
It's that we're thinking he just doesn't care about me like he should. The relationships you have with the people in your life are the sum of your thoughts about them and then how we respond to those thoughts. Are your thoughts based on reality or a fiction you've created in your mind? And as you interact with everyone in your life over the holidays, notice how all of these stories and failed expectations just leave you feeling disappointed, hurt, rejected, and sad.
Are you aware that these feelings have nothing to do with your family and friends? Mindset trap number 11, fear of the unknown. Now there's nothing quite like being with your big kids over the holiday that can remind you about how much we're losing as they gain independence and increasingly plan their lives away from us. My baby's a junior and I'm realizing this time next year he'll have applied to college.
Maybe he'll even have an acceptance or two. The clock with him at home is ticking. Maybe you have a junior or even a senior at home and you can relate.
It's not much longer before the last one leaves the nest. And my older son, he's already gone. He won't be back for spring break so the next time I see him after the holidays will be when? Summer.
And what does all that look like? I'm not even sure he'll be home for the summer. I have a good friend whose kids are already both in college and she expressed to me that she can't motivate to make any plans because she's always hoping the kids might be available to meet up over the weekend or make a trip home. She doesn't even want to make plans to go away over what would typically be spring break because she can't bear to go on a big vacation without her kids.
And all these thoughts about our kids moving on make it even more clear that we're not sure what comes next for us. We fear the unknown. We can feel lost, sad, unmotivated, and anxious.
And believe it or not, it has nothing to do with the fact that our kids are growing up and everything to do with the of the fear of the unknown. But the future is always uncertain. By definition, it's unknown.
The real problem here is that our brains are interpreting this uncertainty as dangerous and then projecting into the future an outcome that we don't want. As you go through the holidays, notice how your brain tends to want to fabricate a certain future that is something that you don't want. It's almost as if our brain would prefer certainty over feeling comfortable.
Mindset trap number 10, labeling. And this is another fun one for the holidays. We have all sorts of labels for the people in our family.
Notice how these labels lead you to assume others are a certain way, like this one is difficult, that one's sensitive, that other one's a narcissist. When you have these labels in mind, you can tend to approach interactions with these people almost on the defense, like I'm expecting this one to be difficult. You have your guard up.
Byron Cady has been known to say defense is the first act of war, because we have in our mind that this other person is a particular way based on the label we've given them. It's like our brain wants to protect us against them. And honestly, when it comes to these more negative labels or judgments we have about these other people, the underlying assumption is that they're wrong for being this kind of person.
And we're right because we would never act this way. And look, let me just get in the pool with you for a second and agree. Sometimes people who we really love and want a relationship with are difficult.
But first consider that whatever they do specifically that you don't like, that makes you think that they're difficult, this behavior doesn't define who they are. You also don't know, again, you're not a mind reader, why they're acting the way they're acting. Maybe they have reasons, whether or not you agree with them.
It's not the behavior that defines the person. It's also not their actions that are making you feel angry and hurt, believe it or not. All of it is the story, the label that you've given to them based on the particular aspect of their personality or actions that you don't like.
If this is someone you want in your life because you always have that choice, consider taking responsibility for the label and the stories and judgments you have of them. Could it be possible that you're wrong about the label you're giving them? Mindset trap number nine, identity crisis. I mentioned before how this time of year can bring with it a lot of fear of the unknown.
And with that, we can experience difficulty figuring out who we are now that our kids don't need us as much anymore. But the holidays bring with it almost an alternate reality. Like, our worlds are colliding in ways that don't feel entirely comfortable.
On the one hand, the kids are home. Unless they're much older and they don't come home for the holidays, they're at least coming back to visit for part of the season. So in some ways, it can feel like you get to revert back to being a mom.
And in a perfect world, in our ultimate fantasy land, this means our kids come home and we have fun getting back into the holiday traditions. We imagine spending long dinners talking or going on family adventures. We imagine hugs and laughter.
And hopefully we do get a glimpse of all of these. But also, there's tons of laundry. The kids might be going out at all hours.
And as I mentioned, there's that college kid who always wants to be with their friends. Suddenly you're waiting up for them again. Or waking up in the middle of the night panicked that you fell asleep before they got home.
Curfews for college kids? Is that even worth trying to enforce? We can find ourselves taking on all the workload of being a mom. The laundry, the dishes all over the house, grocery shopping, cooking without knowing who exactly is going to be home. All the work.
And while the upside is worth it, having our big kids home is wonderful. But if you were starting to have a taste of a bit of peace and a cleaner home while at least one kid was away, all of a sudden you're managing the mayhem again. While for sure the empty nest can cause us to get jolted into an identity crisis, this temporarily filled nest can feel even more disconcerting.
But take note if you start to feel guilty that you're having any negative feelings about your kids coming back home. I want to invite you to take yourself off the hook. It's not your kids being home that's the problem.
The reason you might be feeling overwhelmed and a little confused is that you got used to life's rhythm while the kids were in school and the schedule was predictable. And now you're feeling a little untethered. Nothing has gone wrong.
Just remind yourself that you get to decide who you want to be while your kids are home. Your identity isn't defined by the number of times you cook dinner or the loads of laundry you do. Your identity is literally what you believe about yourself and your mind.
So what do you choose while your kids are home for the holidays? Mindset trap number eight, personalization. I'd like to break this down into just simple mom guilt. This is blaming ourselves for things that are entirely out of our control.
As moms we are experts at this. Admit it, anything goes wrong with your child you're going to find a way to take responsibility. At the very least you're going to think of a ton of things you wish you had done differently.
Let's think about how toxic this guilt is for us at the holidays. All of a sudden now we're taking responsibility for everyone's happiness. All that holiday cheer, that long list of presents, the plans, the stock fridge, all of it.
We put so much pressure on ourselves to get it all done. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with clients since Thanksgiving about the family drama, the disappointed expectations, the sense of guilt and responsibility when other people are unhappy or hurt. Have you noticed how hard it is to just let other people be unhappy? It goes without saying that we don't want our kids to be unhappy, but this extends to many other people in our life.
And of course we wouldn't wish for anyone we love to be unhappy or hurt or disappointed. We wouldn't purposefully try to make anyone feel bad, but you may not even realize how much responsibility you put on yourself to fix it when other people feel bad. There's this underlying assumption that not only should that person not feel bad, but somehow it's my fault that they do.
Either there was something I could have done to avoid the situation or there's something I did wrong that created this situation. Something as simple as a family dinner or event can create so much negative emotion and I have a friend who jumps through hoops to make everyone in her family happy. Not just her kids, but her husband's parents, her mother, all of the siblings.
Her family has a lot of drama. People are jealous of each other, prone to hurt feelings. This is at least her characterization of all of it, and I take her at her word.
It's a bit of a mess. But every year I see her going out of her way to please everyone, to host when she doesn't want to host, to give up time that she'd rather just be with her kids alone. Basically to compromise what she wants, to try to make everyone else happy.
She compromises her happiness. And guess what? Year after year, holiday after holiday, she reports back that the drama continued. Notwithstanding her best efforts, no one was happy, least of all her.
And yet if she didn't do all of this, make all this effort, I imagine she would also feel guilt because she hadn't tried. All of this behavior, all of these interactions among her family members, it's entirely out of her control. And yet she can't let go of the guilt of taking responsibility for trying to make it better.
Could you imagine what might be different for her, or for you, if you could stop taking responsibility for other people's feelings? When I talk about this with clients, people can tend to think that not taking responsibility for how other people feel is the same as not caring. And I want to offer that this isn't at all the case. Did you realize it's possible to love and accept other people for who they are, and let them feel what they feel without blaming yourself? Well, the key to achieving this is to understand that you actually don't have any control over how other people feel, ever, no matter what you do.
It's so funny because we all think that we do have control over other people's feelings. But just consider that if it's really true that you don't have control over how other people feel, then what good is the self-blame when people actually do feel bad? The only thing that it achieves is making you feel bad. Mindset trap number seven.
Perfectionism. Okay, this one. Another way we take responsibility for everyone's feelings.
It all has to be perfect. We set the bar so impossibly high. I think in large part because we think that this is what's required to make the holidays special.
But have you ever stopped to really consider what makes the holidays special? Every year for as long as the kids have been in our life, I've produced a holiday card. I've hired a photographer, a friend of mine actually, and we've had her take pictures of all of us on the beach every summer. It's all three of my boys, including my husband's least favorite activity.
They hate it, but they've done it in the past begrudgingly because they've known it means a lot to me. But every year that holiday card is such a production. And maybe because I've been sending cards for so long, I get a lot of cards.
And they're always lovely. I do like getting them, but I probably spend about five seconds on each. Like, oh that's nice.
Wow, those kids have really grown up. So interesting to consider. Is the effort really worth it? This year I dropped the photo shoot entirely.
I'm bummed about it actually because these photo shoots have given us this beautiful annual snapshot of the boys as they've grown up. It's hard to imagine not having that anymore in such a beautiful professional format. But also, it was impossible to schedule now that my son's at college.
And I had to admit, I wasn't sure it was worth having to force my kids into doing it. I honestly almost didn't do a holiday card, but it's been a holiday to do on my list for so long that I found it surprisingly hard to let go of the tradition. I'm not even sure why.
I obviously have some expectations of myself in some way. Like, this is what I'm supposed to do. But if I'm really honest with myself, if I stopped, I can't imagine anyone in my life would be disappointed.
This is literally my own standard. How many of these standards do you set for yourself over the holidays? If it was just one or two, fine. But the reality is many of us moms have hundreds of these holiday to-dos.
And for what? It's like we don't even question it. But quite literally, we set the bar for ourselves so high it's almost impossible to meet it. And as we try, we feel burnt out and overwhelmed and frankly unappreciated.
Never quite questioning what it's all for. Peace? Joy? Are we really creating it? Or are we just following a set of expectations we've set for ourselves that we've never once questioned? Trap number six and five. I'm going to put two of these together.
All or nothing, thinking and catastrophizing. This time of year, many of us are facing the college admission process or may be worried about our kids for any number of reasons, whether they're at home or coming home from college. Amidst all of this uncertainty, our brains gravitate toward the worst-case scenario and then spin in it trying to fix it.
What if my kid doesn't get into a school they're excited about? What if they bomb their finals or midterms? What if they're depressed and need help? What will I do when my kids leave the nest? Notice that when we're in this trap, we often ask ourselves a lot of questions. And whether you realize it or not, your brain is answering those questions in the negative. What if my kid doesn't get into a school they're excited about? Your brain's really thinking that it's possible they're not going to get in and it's a huge problem.
Then they might be depressed and lose their confidence. When your brain asks, what if my kid bombed their finals or midterms? Your brain is actually answering, I should have gotten them a tutor, been more on top of them for their studying. When we ask, what if they're depressed? Our brain is immediately going to that I need to get them help.
This is a huge problem. And when we ask, what will I do when my kids leave the nest? The answer is, I don't know. I'll feel terrible, lost.
I feel dread. I'm feeling these feelings already. Our brains go to the worst case scenario and spin in problem solving.
And often there isn't a clear problem to fix. We're projecting into the future this possible pain and then bringing it into our present. And look, sometimes there are situations that will require problem solving.
But this trap is about projecting the worst case, most terrible outcome in the future. And there's literally no upside to dwelling on it. This trap isn't that our minds think of something bad that could happen.
The trap is latching onto it and thinking that somehow the more you stay up late at night agonizing over solutions, that you'll be able to avoid that future pain. When I catch myself doing this or I remind myself, everything is actually okay right now. Trap number four, the comparison trap.
There are so many opportunities to make ourselves feel bad by comparing ourselves to others during the holidays. How lavishly other people decorate, the presents their husbands buy them, how much it seems like other people's teams want to be with them. How often have you gotten a holiday card and seen a happy family and thought, I wish my kids were willing to pose happily for a family photo.
I'm here to tell you, those kids who are smiling in the photos don't always love being there. In retrospect, I feel guilty. I probably should have signed my card.
The smiles in this card have been made possible by much begging and a good amount of bribery. There's so many other ways we beat ourselves up with comparison. We compare ourselves to others in terms of how many holiday parties we're invited to.
Maybe most significantly, how happy other people seem like they are. Look, we can't help it. We're constantly looking out into the world and evaluating how well we fit in, how well we fit that norm.
It's our subconscious mind's way of keeping us safe, trying to be sure we fit in. Our minds compare. But just notice when you have these thoughts, I invite you to laugh.
Nothing has actually gone wrong. The only thing that's happening is that our brains are judging us, judging us, judging others. But there's no prize for the most decorated house or the most expensive present.
None of this really matters. And when it comes to happiness, consider that you can never truly know what another person is feeling and that every single one of us experience 50% positive and 50% negative emotion through the course of our lives. This isn't a competition, my friends.
Trap number three, validation seeking. I don't know where this started, us thinking that our self-worth comes from other people or for things that we do, things outside of ourselves. We wait for other people to say thank you or well done or even just I love you, just so we can give ourselves permission to believe that we're loved, appreciated and worthy.
These feelings come from you. Always. You can't feel loved without your own permission.
A stranger can say I love you and you won't feel loved. You'll probably feel confused. I can spend a whole podcast or coaching session telling you or a client you're worthy and it's not going to mean a thing unless you believe it.
So the trap here is thinking that you need someone else's permission to believe these things. As you experience the holidays, notice how often you're waiting for someone to show that they appreciate you, show you that they love you. But what if you didn't need them to do a thing just so you could believe you were worthy of love and appreciation? We're getting down there.
Trap number two, confirmation bias. We've covered a lot of traps, mind reading, catastrophizing, labeling, validation seeking. So think about all of the thought patterns associated with these traps that cause pain.
Mind reading, thinking someone's mad at you based on their facial expressions. Catastrophizing, thinking about the worst case scenario that it's highly likely. With all of these traps, we tend to believe something is a problem.
With confirmation bias, our brains actually look for evidence to confirm what we believe. So if you believe someone's mad at you, you'll find it. If you believe the worst case is likely, you'll find evidence to support it.
If you believe someone doesn't appreciate you, there's evidence you can find for that too. This is an important trap to understand because as you can see, it only reinforces the negative traps you might already be falling into. And finally, trap number one, emotional reasoning.
This is really at the heart of the reason women come to me for coaching. All of these mindset traps aside, the reason people seek coaching or even therapy is because they feel terrible and want to find a way out. At this time of life, we can feel trapped in anxiety, fear, guilt, sadness, frustration, anger.
We blame our kids, our partners, our mothers, but mostly we blame ourselves. There can be no doubt in our minds that there's something wrong with us, that we just can't handle this emotional pain and we're not sure how to get out of it. If we were only better in some way, we wouldn't be failing in our relationship with our teens.
We would be better at figuring out how to support them and we would have a clear sense of how to handle this transition. We would know what we want and know how to go after it. That's what we want, but instead we feel this overwhelming emotional heaviness that blocks us.
This final mindset trap is about thinking the emotional pain we're in is true. Now I'm not saying your feelings aren't valid, but are they feelings that you've chosen? Or do you feel like they're happening to you, dependent on things outside of your control? It is absolutely true that there are many things outside of our control. Other people for one, especially our teens.
We can't control the weather or the time or the past or our medical diagnoses. We can't control any of this. But these things also don't create our feelings.
That's up to us. So the question is, are you deciding how you want to feel? Or are you letting these mindset traps take over and control your emotional life? It is a choice. This is the power my clients gain in my one-on-one coaching program.
The power to decide how you want to feel, to discover limiting beliefs and negative patterns of thought, your own personal mindset traps, and set yourself free. All of this is possible. Feeling better, taking control of your emotional life, improving the quality of the relationship you have with your teens, your family, everyone in your life, including the relationship you have with yourself.
If this sounds compelling, I invite you to learn more about Smalljar's one-on-one coaching program. Now after exploring all of these traps and some examples of how they come up for us over the holidays, is it really any wonder that we can both love and hate the holiday season? Maybe I should say it's a wonder that we do find joy and peace during the holidays. There is so much opportunity for joy and love and peace in our lives.
You're a mom, you have a child, maybe you have multiple kids. Notwithstanding how they're acting or what they're doing, they love you. It's just the truth.
These humans used to look to us for everything in their lives, depended on us, needed our love and attention. Just because what they need right now is a bit of independence doesn't change the bond that you forged with them over close to or more than two decades. Your child loves you.
If you look for it, you can find it. You will hopefully get to spend some time with your kids over the holidays, no matter how much or little. You get to spend time connecting with them.
There are so many things you love about your child. Focus on all of these things. No matter what lies ahead, you are here now.
There's nothing you have to do, nothing you have to prove, there's nothing you have to do to fix or change anyone else. It's all exactly as it should be. Let the miracle of this holiday season be that you let your brain be a crazy toddler with a knife, and just as you would have said to your own child when they were a toddler, say to yourself, it's okay, love.
Everything's going to be okay. Can you show your subconscious mind a bit of compassion? That poor thing falls into all of these traps. I've covered 12 of them in this episode, and there are even a few I haven't gotten to yet.
It must be exhausting to be our minds. So show your mind a little love, and in the process, you might be surprised to find that you create an unbelievable sense of peace, self-acceptance, confidence, and joy. I wish all of these for you, both now and in the year to come.
Happy holidays. Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
