Surviving the Holidays During Difficult Times

Amber Hollingsworth (host) offers a short, practical guide for people facing loneliness, grief, mental-health struggles, or recovery during the holiday season. She explains why holidays increase stress and isolation, and gives actionable coping tips — get movement (walks), express deeper gratitude to connect, focus outward to press pause on personal pain, and plan around substance-use triggers (exit plans, faux drinks, wingmen). The video closes with audience Q&A and pointers to resources in the description.
Chapters
If you're going into the holiday season, I guess we're coming near the end of the season of holidays. But if you're going into these last holidays during a time where you feel like you're going through a very difficult stage or phase or season of life, it's extra hard. I mean, holidays are exciting, yes, but they also bring an amount of stress. Even to people who love the holidays and who are excited about the holidays, it is still a lot of stress. And that stress comes from the increased expectations. Like I said, even if it's something we're looking forward to, there's still a lot of expectations that we place on ourselves that we feel other people are placing on us. And when you're going through a particularly difficult time where you feel lonely or stressed, or maybe you're early in recovery, or maybe you're just uncomfortable about something that's happening, what happens is, I think, is we feel extra lonely. And I think that that loneliness comes from even if we're around a lot of people, even if we have a ton of people, you know, to be around, family, friends, all that kind of stuff. When you're struggling inside, it's very difficult to feel connected to those people. So even if physically those people around you, you feel isolated, you feel some sense of disconnect. Yes, you can go through the motions. Everything can look great on the outside. You can eat, you can give the presents, you can, you know, have the sweaters. But deep down inside, you feel like it's. It feels more like an act. And you feel very separate on the inside. And if you're dealing with any kind of mental health problem or recent grief, or maybe you are in early recovery or you're struggling with an addiction, you're whole. Most of the time we're holding this sadness on the inside. And we don't want to, you know, be the buzzkill. We don't want to bring everyone else down. We don't want to bring our own sadness and difficulty into the holidays oftentimes. So we're just keeping it in, making us feel even more isolated and disconnected. So I want to talk a little bit about how to overcome some of this feeling of disconnected. How do I survive these holidays? Events that I have to go through, maybe even that you have to have post or you have to put on and not just survive it, but get through it without it being absolute misery or feeling like you're just only pretending. I'm gonna give you. I've got a couple of pieces of advice for you. And then also Campbell, I was lucky enough she jumped right on here right before we went live and gave us Campbell's little piece of advice, which were different. And I think you're going to enjoy those, so we'll give you those as well. Before we get into what to do about it, I'd love to know if any of you feel like this is you. Are you struggling with this? Are you going to go into these next week or two feeling like, yes, I have to do it. Maybe even a sense of dread inside or a feeling of disconnection, even though maybe you do have a lot of family, maybe you don't have a lot of family to be around and you feel lonely for that reason. But loneliness doesn't just come from not having people around or not having enough family. It comes from feeling a feeling of disconnection. So you can have tons of friends and tons of family and feel very, very lonely on the inside. If you feel like any of this is impacting you this holiday season, put a little hand up emoji in the chat or in the comments and give us a question, tell us what you're going through. If you're watching live and you do that, then maybe we can offer you a little support or advice or just even encourage. So I feel like one of the things that you can do to help yourself overcome this, and this is a basic one, but don't worry, I'm going to give you some other ones, is just to get some movement in. And I'm using the word movement specifically as opposed to using the word exercise, which everyone says exercise cures for everything, which it kind of does. But just movement, even if it's just a walk around the block, it will. Is probably the fastest, quickest way to shift your mood just to, I call it take a lap. Sometimes if I'm stressed or I'm going through something, I'll tell my husband, I'll say, I'm gonna take a lap outside, I'm gonna take a lap around the neighborhood. And it, it completely shifts my mood. And it works because it changes your brain chemicals almost immediately. And if you're able to even have that movement outside, there's a shift in brain chemicals related to just being in nature that is, is helping. You know, it's just the fresh air, it's the trees, it's everything. And the movement, it kind of combines to give us a shift in our, in our brain chemistry. The other thing that I think that you can do to help create some feeling of connection to combat that loneliness and isolation is to instead of, you know, in holiday season, there's all this gift giving and people bring food and treats and snacks and everybody's doing all these nice things for each other, which is wonderful. And we're plenty accustomed to saying, oh my gosh, thank you for this gift, thank you for these nice treats. They're so great. Which is a great thing to do that is expressing gratitude. But I want to offer you a little suggestion about saying thank you or expressing gratitude that might actually just go a little deeper, not only to brighten that other person's day, but to brighten your day. And if you have people that you're going to be seeing in these next week or so, and maybe you don't see them very often, maybe even think ahead of time, something, some kind of expression of gratitude that you'd like to say to them so that when you get a chance, maybe if you get a little moment alone or something like that, you can have this conversation with them. And more than just thank you for the gift, thank you for the cookies or whatever, I want you to say something. You know, you always make me feel, fill in the blank, you know, want to say thank you for this thing that you did or this way that you were there for me in this certain period or time of my life. It's a much sort of deeper level expression of gratitude. And like I said, not only is it going to brighten their day, but it's going to actually shift your brain chemistry. Because what it does is it makes you, it forces you to start thinking about something that you're appreciative of, that you're hopeful about. It's, it brings in a positive good memory. And when you're having positive good thoughts, it changes your brain chemistry. You know, this isn't just woohoo, nice counselor Y type things. I'm telling you, this has. There's a lot of science behind why these things are so effective and why they work. So think ahead. Even now, if you're already as I'm saying this, you're coming to you like, oh yeah, I want to say to this person how I appreciated that they did this or they were there for me in a certain way or that they always bring cheerfulness or whatever. But it's more than just this specific right now thing. It's like something that's happened that's bigger than that. It's going to create that little heart shift. Kind of like the Grinch movie, right? Your heart will grow two sizes. When we're in this loneliness state, we tend to feel like we need something more and we get very sort of self focused. And I don't mean that in a judgy way, but we do kind of fall into this self pity, this woe is me. And we're pulling our own selves back from the people around us that care about us, that would be there to support us. Some of that isolation is self imposed even if we don't even realize that we're doing that. And so the best way to combat that and is to get a little bit more externally focused. If nothing else, just view these maybe celebrations or events that you have to go to as a distraction and give yourself permission to press pause on whatever these thoughts and stresses and these other things that are creating this feeling of disconnect and loneliness. Give yourself permission to just press pause on it and shut the door on it. Kind of like if you've got a really messy room in your house and you're just like, I'm just going to shut the door on that closet, I'm just going to shut the door on this. I will deal with this. I'm not ignoring it, but I'm going to shut the door on this and give myself permission to try to be present and focused and in the moment. Because you need a break from that sadness or grief or stress that you're dealing with, it's okay to shut the door on it for a period of time. It doesn't mean you're not dealing with it, it means you're taking a break from dealing with it and you just want to be present. So getting out of yourself, out of your own head and even just engaged or disconnected or focus on someone else, focus on helping to someone else to make sure that they have a great time. It is going to take you out of your own self pity, self involved, loneliness, sadness and grief. It works almost immediately. So these are very quick, very easy, very natural things that we can do to get through this. Now some of us deal with this stress by drinking or consuming other substances. Even those of us who are not necessarily that maybe don't have an addiction, maybe you don't have an alcohol problem. I'm talking about people in general, across the board. People deal with these stresses by drinking especially, but even other substances. And I want to encourage you, even if you don't have a substance abuse problem, to think about whether you want to drink during this holiday season. Because more if you're struggling inside and you're down and you're depressed and you're stressed and you're not Doing good. What happens is when you drink, you take the filter off of all of that. So you may think it's going to help give me a break from all that, but. But there's a strong likelihood that it could actually make you go further into that. Whereas when you're in your normal state of mind, you can kind of keep the lid on it a little bit. When you pour the alcohol on top, you have less and less control over that because it slows down your front brain function. You know, that part of you that can then allow you to disconnect from that and do some of these other things, I'm saying, and you're gonna go into the emotion. You know, alcohol usually releases whatever it is that we're feeling at the time, right? If we're happy, if we truly are happy and we're celebrating and we're drinking, we're probably going to release a good amount of that, right? We're going to connect more to that. But if we're sad, lonely, depressed, stressed, grieving, you're going to connect more to that. And if you're not careful, you're going to end up being that sad drunk person. Whether other people know it or not. You're just going to ruminate on these difficulties in your life. So I want you to think long and hard about whether or not you want to drink. And if you're gonna drink, how much you're gonna drink, you know, don't let yourself get to that point where you're actually unleashing some of this stuff that you're trying to keep the container lid on, at least to some degree. Right? It's not helpful now after the fact, what I hear a lot of people saying when they do this and they unleash some of these things and they do it in a very unfiltered way, they have a lot of regret about it. But in order to sort of like a defense mechanism against that regret, they'll say. They'll say to themselves, well, it was the truth, or they needed to hear it. You know, maybe you. There's a family member there that you don't like or whatever, and you drink and then you just unleash it and you say all the things that you've been holding in, you may feel the next day, well, like, well, I've been holding it out. It needs to be said. But it doesn't need to be said when you're intoxicated, because it's going to be said in a very unfiltered, unstrategic, unhealthy unhelpful way, most likely. So I just want you to think about how much or whether or not you're going to use substances. And that doesn't even bring into the account the fact that most of you that are watching this channel either have a substance abuse problem or have a loved one that has a substance abuse problem. It's okay to have the holidays and leave that part out. Some of you watching this video, maybe one of your big stresses and your big feeling of loneliness comes from the fact that you're not going to be consuming substances this holiday and you're going to, and other people are, and you're going to be feeling very disconnected from very outside of the group. Yes, you're present, yes, you're engaged. But you may be feeling a little self conscious about the fact that you're not drinking or doing whatever everybody else always does. You may be feeling very self conscious about the fact that other people are noticing that, or other people know that you've struggled this year or that you had treatment and it's just awkward. You may be worried about whether or not people are going to ask you questions about whether or not people are going to pressure you to drink, about whether or not you're going to be triggered by any number of things. There's a million triggers that can come from these holidays, these family events, these gatherings, and everything else that's going to go on. If that's your situation, I encourage you to think about how you're going to handle those situations before you get in them. Because you might find yourself sort of in the spotlight, you might find yourself sort of backed into the corner. Maybe you have a relative, maybe they've been drinking, and then they lose their boundaries a little bit and they start asking you intrusive questions, or they start pushing you to use this substance. And you probably know right now, as I'm saying, you probably know exactly which person's gonna do. Right. I know you do. You know, it's going to be Uncle Jake or whatever, you know, or Aunt Susie. You know exactly who it's going to be. So go ahead and, and have a plan on how you're going to handle that. Otherwise you might end up getting really angry. You might want to leave, you might have a relapse over it, you might say some nasty things. But if you have a plan for what you're going to say, what you're going to reveal or not going to reveal, you're going to feel a lot more in control of the situation. And sometimes it's just as simple as, how am I going to down a drink? What am I going to say is the reason why, when everyone knows I always drink? The amount of anxiety people feel about what people are going to think about the fact that they don't drink anymore is actually, believe it or not, a lot of times more than the anxiety that they feel about not drinking. So it's not even the not drinking that's bothering them. It's like, what is everybody going to think about the fact that I'm not drinking? It's this insecurity, this sense of feeling like everyone knows something, everyone's looking at you, or everyone's thinking this weird thing about you. It brings on a lot of stress. And if you're in early recovery or maybe you're just not drinking because you're trying to support a loved one, it really is good to go into the situation with what you're gonna do. I was talking to a client this week. It was a newer client. And right when I'm getting started working with this client, we're going into the holidays. You know, it's like week one. And here we are, like, we're like at the super bowl of challenges here. And one of the things that we talked about was she was going to hold a drink in her hand that wasn't an alcoholic drink, but that maybe had the appearance of being an alcoholic drink. So that when people came by and they asked her about it, that she could just say, oh, I'm good, I'm good. You know, just have your cup in your hand. I'm good. I don't need anything, you know, because so early in the game, she's not ready to talk about it. And even if she was ready to talk about it, she doesn't want to tell everyone her business. It's not everyone else's business. You know, there are some people that you're close enough to talk about those things with, but not everybody, you know, and so sometimes you just want to sidestep the situation. And it is also okay to not go or to go very briefly. You can. It's okay to skip it and to get out of it. And if, you know you need to do that because it's going to either emotionally throw you into a tailspin or possibly trigger you to relapse, then either get out of it or say you're gonna go, but make up a reason why you can't stay long or you gotta leave, or maybe you're gonna go and you're gonna enjoy the presents or the food or something like that. But you're gonna leave before the drinking gets really bad or before, you know, Uncle Jake gets obnoxious or whatever it is. Make an exit plan. And having a loved one with you, I call it like a wingman. Having a wingman with you to help you do this is super helpful. They can run interference. Someone who kind of knows what's going on that you have a plan with or you can have a secret look or code word with to get you out of there. Plan ahead for how you're going to deal with that stress. Just like, plan ahead of maybe someone you want to say something really nice or special to. And also just realize that if you do open that channel by expressing some sort of gratitude or some of sort. Some sort of very nice, very genuine compliment to someone, they may open up to you more. And then once you're dealing with another person and they're sharing something with you, you start to feel that sense of connection. And that really is the feeling that's going to combat the stress, the loneliness, even the cravings and the triggers and the chance of relapse. These things are super effective and they work. Let me add a few to the list. These are the ones that Campbell said. Campbell says to do less, as in if you. You. Maybe you feel like you're the one that always hosts, or you always have the best gifts, or you always have everything wrapped perfectly, or you always bring 25 things to the gathering or whatever, let yourself off the hook. Do less if you can't skip it. If you can't skip it, which I'm telling you, you can skip it. But if you can't, if you absolutely have to, which I understand, there's sometimes it's like, if you skipped it, it would really be like way more hassle and way more grief than it would be to go. I totally get that there are situations like that and, you know, that I've experienced in my life. So sometimes you can't then just expect less. You don't have to bring the most expensive gifts. You don't have to bring the fanciest food. You don't have to have the best outfits. Let's shuff off the hook. Let's shove wing this one. You don't. Every single one of these holidays does not have to be perfect. Nominate someone else to be in charge of bringing that perfection if you need to. Campbell also says to take a break from it, meaning maybe, maybe instead of cooking all of the holiday food for everyone this year, maybe you go to the Movies and watch the new movies. That's kind of a popular thing on Christmas, right? You go to the movies, there's usually a movie or two that gets released. It's kind of a big movie people want to see. It's kind of fun. It's just kind of a fun thing to just. Just leave the mess. The house may be a mess, there may be wrapping paper everywhere. There may be food still left out on the counter. But give yourself a break. Go, leave and go do something else. Or another way to give yourself a break is, and you don't want to cook everything and you don't want to wrap everything is either downsize what you're going to do or if you can afford it, pay for it to be done. Just pay for the food already cooked. Ask everyone to bring a dish. These are ways you can take a break and lower these expectations that you're putting on yourself that are just going to add stress to your already feeling of overwhelm and disconnection. And then also along with that, Campbell's third thing is to give yourself a little grace. And it's by giving yourself a little grace that's going to allow you to do those first two things right. Let yourself off the hook. You don't have to bring the party every year, every time. Let someone else do that. In fact, ask someone else to do that and they'll feel good about themselves. You know, get yourself a wingman. Get yourself someone to step in if you can't just step all the way out and just totally like not not go to the event or not do the thing and. And not. And skipping it completely isn't always the answer because sometimes it just makes us feel more lonely and isolated. You're the only one that really knows what. Whether it's going to be better for you to go or to not go, but give yourself the grace and the wiggle room to make that decision. And you don't have to explain to everybody why if you don't want to. You know, maybe you tell one person or maybe you tell no people, but have a reason, have an excuse if you want to, to get out of it or give yourself a break, or at least just not do nearly as much as you would normally do. Focus more on connection than trying to bring this perfect holiday experience. Our expectations around this are just crazy. We have these images in our head about the way things should go and the way things should look and how everyone should be dressed and where everyone should sit, and it's just too much. It's Just. And I love the holidays. It's, like, my favorite. And mostly because I love the decorations. That's what I like about it the most. I like the lights and the ribbon and the wrapping paper. But it is still super stressful. No matter if you're dreading them or you're looking forward to them, your stress is probably up this week and going into next week. Bree, we're about to take some questions and some concerns. Here's from people. I'd love to hear if there's any particular thing that you're stressing about this holiday season that you're worried about coming in contact with, and maybe we can brainstorm a little bit on how to alleviate a little of that. Go ahead and. Yeah. Oh, thank you, Donnie, for the super chat. Aren't you sweet? Donnie's my husband, you guys. If you don't know, if you don't recognize that last name there. Thank you, Donna. You're the best. As you get your questions and comments in there, I will tell you, as always, there are resources in the description. If you need to talk to somebody to really think through your situation, maybe you have a very specific situation and you're like, I don't even know how to handle this, or you're not sure. Maybe you. You have a loved one who has a substance abuse problem and you're really worried something bad's gonna happen. You need to think it through. There is still time, I think. Bree, is there still time to get in and talk to someone? Bree's shaking her head. Yes. There's a. There's. There's a few appointments still open if you need to talk to someone. If you want to go ahead and get into recovery coaching for January or into our membership, there's still time to do that. All those resources are in the description. Elizabeth says, oh, glasses. Gotta come out here, Bree. Elizabeth says, I've gone to Al Anon in the past, and they have you refer to the addictive person as your qualifier, which I don't like much. What do you recommend to refer to the person? I'm kind of with you, Elizabeth. It is weird. I don't quite understand your qualifier, like, which is basically your addicted loved one. This way, I understand it qualifies you to be an Al Anon. I don't know. It is just a really. It's just a really weird thing to say. But it's also a mouthful to say my addicted loved one. And you may also really want to, for privacy reasons. You may be resisting saying, my drug addict son, my alcoholic Wife or whatever. You may be resisting saying that, so I'm not sure. I don't. I don't know a better way to refer to it, but I do agree with you on that. It's just kind of a weird. Your qualifier. I don't. I don't really kind of understand where that comes from or why that is. What. What do the rest of you say? Do you have another way of referring to this person that maybe keeps privacy, but also sort of gets the point across? I struggle with this, too. Even just entitling these YouTube videos. Your addicted loved one. It's like a mouthful to say it otherwise, so it's almost like I wish there was a more direct way of saying it that wasn't offensive, but they got a point across. You guys give Elizabeth some advice on that. Adrienne says, question. What if the holidays is the first time you're seeing some family members that you have distanced yourself from because of past abuse? Oh, that's a tough one. I think this is another really good situation where having a wingman might be good. One other person that's going to be there or that can go with you that kind of knows a little about the situation and can run interference for you, because the last thing you want is to be trapped up by this person, to have to deal with this person. It's definitely not the time to address the issue with the person. Mostly probably what you're thinking is you just want to, like, minimize the interaction or just get through it. And if you can, and you need to give yourself permission to not go, I understand, though sometimes there's. That's not always easy, and sometimes it causes more grief to not go. So I'm not saying that that's possible for you, but have a wingman, have a person to run interference, have an exit plan, a reason and excuse. You know, it's kind of like if you. Before you go on a first date, maybe you have your friend call you at a certain time in case you need to bail. Like, have one of those kind of plans, okay, to get you, get yourself out of it if you need. But definitely don't try to use the time to actually deal with that because you're not going to have the privacy, the space. It's just going to be too, too much to have to face that or have a conversation about it. Wakam says my addicted loved one has caused a huge drift in family due to substance abuse, so we are mostly not invited or he doesn't want to go to the family. Things Tips to cope with that. That's really. That's really unfortunate. And it is really difficult because it's like now you or the whole. Your whole family, I don't know who else is involved in that. It's like, now you guys are. It's just another consequence, another way that this person's addicted to addiction is impacting you. I get the impression what you're saying is like, your loved one maybe has caused a scene or gets obnoxious or does something out of bounds, and now because of that, you don't get invited to things. I don't have the best piece of advice. I'm trying to think on that. You know, if it is that your loved one doesn't want to go and they're fine with you going, then go do it. And if you're scared that you can't leave them alone because you have to babysit them and you leave and you go to the event and they're not going to go, that they're going to do what they're going to do. If you're living like that and you're living like you can't go to things because you have to babysit this person in your life, you're doing it wrong. Watch some Amber videos. Talk to Campbell, because you're being there. And babysitting isn't really keeping the lid on it, but what it's doing is, it's keeping you miserable. So give yourself permission to go be with others if that helps you. Especially if you're extroverted and you like to be around others. Either to go to this family event and leave your loved one home or to have maybe a friend situation or somewhere else that you decide to go and it gives you. That's kind of one of these. Taking a break from the situations. Anybody else got any advice for? Joaquim? Put it in the comments and the chats because I bet a lot of you have been there and you've dealt with this. You may have some even better advice than I have about it. Jen B. Said, my son died from alcohol poisoning. I have zero energy to engage in life. Any tips? I think, Jen, when you're having that severe grief, it's one of those situations where everybody probably, well, maybe not everybody, but a lot of people may feel like they're helping you by saying, come on. And they just want to sort of rally you and they want to, like, you know, push you into doing things because they think that that's helpful. But it's not always helpful, Jim, because. And I feel like, this is exactly what you're saying, because it feels like you have to put on the face, right? And you have to deal with the other people's grief about it, and you have to be there and show up. You have to basically, like, you know, put in this whole show, and you're just not in the mood. And. And it's okay to take a break, to not go or to go, but only stay a very short period of time. And I realize that a lot of people may be pushing you into staying longer and doing things because they think that they're helping keep you cheered up or something, but sometimes you're just not in the mood and you're not ready to be cheered up, and you don't feel like you want to entertain people or you want to put on the brave face. So I think it's okay to. Not. To. Not to not do it, to let yourself off the hook. Maybe not forever, but. But you don't have to do all of it either, right? Eliza says, question. My daughter owes me a few hundred bucks, so it puts a small cramp in my gift buying. Do I forgive it for Christmas instead of presents? Do I give presents and keep the agreed debt separate? This is a good question. Dang. Is Campbell sitting right there? I feel like Campbell might have a better answer for this question. I guess it's hard for me to say because the thing that comes to my mind first is, do you think that your daughter is going to pay you back, or do you know your daughter and you know the situation well enough that you know you're never going to get that money back? If you know you're never gonna. If you know that the likelihood that you're gonna get that money back is like next to nothing, then maybe you want to forgive the debt, right? Because if you go and you buy a bunch of other expensive gifts and then you still don't get paid back, you're gonna have double resentment about it. So I think that that is a perfectly okay thing to do if that's what you want to do. But I think a lot of it depends on whether or not you think that you will actually get that money back. And a lot of times, if it's an addicted person, you know, they borrow money, they sell payback, and a lot of times they don't. But it just depends. Each person is different. And you know your daughter well enough to know whether or not you think she's gonna actually do it. Married a long time. Says he got laid off after Thanksgiving. Has he has shown Humility and willingness to change. But he is home alone with the holidays. Finding a job is not possible. What will keep him from nose diving? This is another really hard question, and I appreciate that you're so mindful and aware of what it is going to be like for your loved one. So I think having empathy for them and just saying, hey, I totally get it, is probably the only best thing that you can do and help them realize that you. Or help them know that you realize that they can't get a job right now because it's the holidays. Because that's legit. That's real. Like, you're not. Businesses basically from like today forward are not going to be making decisions. They're not going to be hiring people, they're not going to be doing anything. But maybe keeping it on just the bare minimum for the next week or so. And so maybe just let that person know that you get that they're going through something hard right now and that you know that they're gonna need some time to get a job and that to kind of maybe like help take a little bit of pressure off of them and ask them what they want through the holidays. You know, maybe they just want to be distracted. Maybe they just want to keep it small. Maybe they don't want to go to the holiday event because there's gonna be a lot of drinking. Or maybe they do want to go and they don't want you to say anything to everybody because feeling like everyone knows about it is going to make them feel awkward. Then the trigger itself is going to be. So I would talk to them and ask them what you can do to help support them and just take a little bit of the expectations off. Linda says, I gave a boundary to my son if he is not coming to celebrate with his brother and I, and if he's doing substances. Wait, let me read that again. I think I read it wrong. I gave a boundary to my son if he's not coming to celebrate with his brother and I, and if he's doing substances now that I have done this, should I reach out to him again or let him approach me? I think what you're saying, Linda, I could be wrong, but I think you're saying you set a boundary with your son, that he basically not to come to the family thing if he's going to be using substances. I think, and there's a lot of reasons why you may be doing that, especially if your son has a history of making a scene, showing out, causing an argument, whatever, when they're using substances or just some kind of dysregulation for the whole event. I totally get why you're doing that. Yeah. I think it's okay to reach out to him and. And just say, hey, I hope you're having Merry Christmas, or whatever it is. I'm thinking about you to keep that relationship open. And it's plenty fine to do that and still keep the boundary in place, too. Right? You can have a boundary and say, no, I'm really not okay with this. But I still care about you. I still love you. It doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about you. It just means that we don't want to have an episode like we had. You don't have to say this part. You just think this part like we had last year or the year before or whatever. Yeah. All right, everybody, I think we are coming to the end of our time together today. I am planning on doing our regular live next Thursday after Christmas and the one after that, which I think is like the day after New Year's Day. So we will be on here next Thursday, at least as far as I know. Right now. I'm wishing you guys happy holidays. And if you can't have happy holidays, have tolerable holidays and just survive it and get through it, and I'll see you on the other side of it. Thank you. For those of you who showed up live, I know you got a lot going on, so the fact that you took the time out here to be with us means a lot to me. Again, there's resources in the description. And I'll see you guys next week. Bye, everybody.
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