Betsy Guerra (speaker) presents brief, actionable strategies to alleviate holiday-related sadness by addressing four human domains: biological, social, cognitive, and spiritual. She recommends simple practices: smile (to trigger feel-good neurotransmitters), do something for others (the gift of giving), use positive self-talk and cognitive reframing, and connect spiritually through prayer or meditation. The talk frames these interventions as simple but emotionally difficult and emphasizes faith and perspective-shifts.
Chapters
The holiday seems to be a very happy, cheery time for most people. But I've come to realize that not everybody feels the same way. In fact, many people struggle with the holidays, and it brings a lot of sadness and depression. There is so much you can do, and I always tell my clients that the solutions are so simple, difficult because of how you're feeling, but. But simple. It's not something that people can't do because they don't have the education or whatever it is. We are very complex human beings. We're biological, we're social, we're cognitive, we're spiritual. And there's something that we can do in each of those areas. For example, biologically speaking, something that you can do is smile. When you smile, you release serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, all the feel good neurotransmitters that tell your body you're feeling good, you're in a pleasant mood, so just by smiling. In fact, there's research that says that, yes, you smile because you feel great, but if you smile first, you will feel good, you will have a pleasant mood. Socially speaking, whenever you're having negative thoughts or you're engaging in and that pain that you're experiencing, you can interrupt that pain and those thoughts by doing something for someone else. The gift of giving is proven to bring you to a pleasant state of being, to a pleasant mood. And you feel great when you make somebody else smile, even if you're not feeling great before then. So socially speaking, you can do something for someone else, and it'll make you feel better. From a cognitive perspective, there's a few things that you can do, starting with tell yourself what you want to believe. So stand in front of the mirror and tell yourself, I feel great. I am so blessed. I have all these people supporting me, even if they're not physically present. I have an angel in heaven that's watching over me, and that's amazing. And I can be with her or with him all the time, as opposed to before, that I could only be with that person when we're physically present. So you can. And that comes to the second thing that I wanted to share in the cognitive aspect, which is reframing. Reframing is changing the way you look at something and putting a positive perspective. So when you reframe, when you look at the same thing from a different angle, it can change everything. Nothing has to change around you for everything to change. You just have to change the perspective. And from a spiritual standpoint, you pray, you meditate, you connect with a higher being. If you believe in whatever, if it's God or the universe or the electric power, it doesn't matter. If you believe in a higher being, then you're not alone and you have someone to get your back. And that's why I'm so. I feel so strongly about faith. Faith in anything.
