A short TV/YouTube interview with Dr. Doni Wilson about managing stress generally and specifically during the holiday season. Dr. Wilson identifies the top three holiday stressors—financial stress, family dynamics, and difficulty maintaining self-care—and offers practical coping strategies summarized by the acronym CARE (Clean eating, Adequate sleep, Recovery activities, Exercise). She also references a holiday survival guide available on her website and her book, Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health.
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Best selling Author and speaker Dr. Donni Wilson has some important tips on how to survive and even thrive during the holidays. Because isn't that what we all want? And she joins us now live on Tampa Bay Reads with her new book, Master your Stress, Reset yout Health. Okay, so first of all, why did you write this book? What inspired you?
I've been helping patients recover from stress for the past 22 years and myself a lot of this I learned, of course, through my we all have stress, right? And I'm a mom and running a practice and seeing patients. And so I kept thinking how to help people be healthy even though we're exposed to stress.
So I know this doesn't just deal with the holidays, it deals with stress in general. But let's talk about those holidays. List maybe the top three things that cause people stress during this time of the year.
Well, what I hear about most is first of all, financial stress, just needing to purchase gifts or feeling the need to purchase gifts. Also, family dynamics for a lot of people cause them stress. And I also find that one of the key things is feeling like you can't keep up with your own taking care of yourself while you're keeping up with your life and the holidays on top of.
So do you have any advice on alleviating the stress from those three stressors?
Absolutely. My favorite way to talk about it is with the acronym care. So C is for clean eating, A for adequate sleep, R for recovery activities, and E for exercise. So we can break this down into simple strategies to help us take better care of ourselves, even during holidays.
So really it's going back to the basics. You know, you need eight hours, drink plenty of water, go take a walk if you're angry, that kind of stuff.
Absolutely.
So I find this around the holidays. You know, parents, we all want to please our kids. We want to buy the right present, the present that, you know, everybody wants and make sure our kids have the best Christmas ever. Right. So how do we as adults put stress, maybe unintentionally on our children?
Well, that's the thing is when we're sort of pushed to our max and then we lose our patience more easily, we're more likely to be drinking alcohol. We're more likely to just be off our game and not really being able to enjoy our kids. And the kids feel it, our kids do pick up on that anxiety.
And then it can become anxiety and stress for our children in the moment and later in their lives. And this is not to stress ourselves out about it. Right. Like sometimes when we learn about the effects of stress, we end up being more stressed about it. So I want to help us turn it around and say, how can we be proactive about this?
So I know you have a survival guide, a checklist. Let's check that out for people. Tell us about it.
So you can find the holiday survival guide at my website. And these are simple tips that you can integrate into your day. That's the thing, people worry. How am I going to integrate something more into my stressful day? So these are things you can do in quick five minute increments, whether it's just taking a walk, like you mentioned, feeling gratitude, listening to music, singing. You can do so many things to just help yourself in the moment with stress.
And I also think laugh at yourself too, right? I remember one Christmas we were hosting at our house for the first time. Of course I wanted it to be perfect. I pull the green bean casserole out of the oven and it slides right out of my hands onto the tile. Floor breaks and green beans splatter everywhere. Everyone laughed and, you know, from that moment on, we were all just kind of having a good time because what else could go wrong? The green bee casserole's all over the floor and they all helped me clean it up. So. Laughter Right. You gotta try find the funny in everything.
There's so much research on these things too.
Thank you so much for joining us. If you'd like to find some more information or you'd like her book, Dr. Donney's book, we'll list it on our website, fox13news.com reads. I'll also post it on my Facebook page later on today. Look for FOX 13's Linda Hurtado. And like the page.
