For many, the holidays bring more stress than cheer—family dynamics, packed schedules, financial worries, and grief & loneliness can make for a heavy season.
We put together a short guide to navigating loss and life pressures featuring insights from one of our chaplains and practical strategies from a licensed therapist.
Whether you are experiencing stress or grief, boundaries and expectations are very important.
Paying attention to your limits and honoring them helps create boundaries and manage expectations for yourself and others. Before your calendar fills up or your bank account gets low, remember:
- It is okay to ask for help. Don’t assume everyone is too busy and cannot support you.
- Accept what you can and can’t do. Ask yourself: What am I able to contribute? Do I want to host? Can I swing the airfare to travel to a celebration?
- Let people know what you can do mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially. Clearly communicate “This is what I can offer”.
- Traditions can be valuable, but they don’t have to limit you. Give yourself permission to take a break and try something that works better for you. You don’t have to pressure yourself to make a certain recipe, overcommit financially for gifts, or attend multiple gatherings out of obligation. Maybe you bring something you love from a bakery instead of making treats, or maybe you only can go to a party for an hour. That is okay.
Prioritize Self-Care
Setting boundaries and clear expectations are great habits for self-care. Other ways you can practice self-care include:
- More alone time to recharge if needed. If community and support help, surround yourself with loved ones.
- Give yourself enough rest to deal with all the emotions.
- If you are at a holiday event, find a safe person and a safe space. Usually there is at least one other person at a gathering you can “hide” with – someone who is also struggling and needs an emotional break from the merriment. Try to find someone who feels comfortable to be with, knows what is going on, and they can just be with you. A safe space can be a bathroom, a car, a balcony – anywhere you can go if you are overwhelmed with emotion and you can separate yourself to feel how you feel in the moment.
The holidays can be particularly difficult, because they really heighten that “family feeling”.
“Be aware of the grief cycles, acknowledge your feelings and don’t ignore them. The worst thing you can do is fight the feelings and not acknowledge them,” said Stephanie Latka, LPC.
The Kubler-Ross model describes the five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Give yourself grace and know that it is okay if you are not at the acceptance stage yet.
How PACE Helps with Healing
Across our Trinity Health PACE centers, our chaplains and social workers offer deep listening and grief support groups. Programs hold memorial services to honor participants who have passed twice a year and work with families and participants to identify what matters most to the individual facing a loss.
Chaplain Bernadette Camp from Mercy LIFE of Pennsylvania expressed the significance of asking open-ended questions and listening to best gauge what participants need.
“I let them talk. A participant’s roommate recently passed away, so I called and checked on them. I just ask how they are when I call. I want them to bring it up and let it be organic,” Bernadette said.
For many grieving participants, writing letters to their late loved ones is a beloved activity, and sometimes participants find talking to their loved ones as if they are still here as a way of closure. Many of them did not have an opportunity to say bye to them. For memorial services, Bernadette offers a moment of silence and invites participants to share their favorite thing about the individual who passed, and she invites them to read a Bible verse or say a prayer if they are interested.
With a background in chaplaincy in other settings, Bernadette highlighted how PACE’s approach to supporting participants through grief differs from traditional environments:
“As a chaplain with PACE, I am seeing participants daily, and trust is built. The fondness is there. We get to know them and their families. It’s beautiful. It’s a relationship, and you cannot build that relationship in a hospital setting,” Bernadette said.
For more information on PACE and the grieving process, read our blog featuring TH PACE Mission Leader Terry Anderson.
Stephanie Latka, LPC, offered insights and strategies for this article. Stephanie is a licensed therapist at Counseling and Resource Center of Dearborn with a Master’s in Counseling from Trevecca Nazarene University.