Hello, hello, hello, my beautiful friends. I hope you're all doing so, so well. 

Halloween has passed, and we are now in the countdown for all of the holidays between the beginning of November through January. 

Now, of course I live in the, states and so there's Thanksgiving. Still, listeners around the world, which is pretty damn amazing when I think about it, and between Oct/Nov and January, there are over twenty holidays that cultures around the world celebrate. I think it is the absolute coolest thing. So, yes, while I may mention Thanksgiving or Christmas because that is from my experience, I want you to know that what I am talking about can be used for ANY holiday or family gathering that would otherwise be a triggering or potentially triggering event in your life. Maybe it is that whenever there are family get-togethers, your reproductive status is a hot topic of conversation. Maybe when you pictured the family of your dreams and holidays, you imagined how they would be participating and if there are other kiddos in the family, how they would interact and those family pictures and stuff like that. Maybe going to events and seeing other kids is tough for you. No matter the reason, we're gonna talk about how you typically make this time of year harder on yourself and a couple of ways that you can make it easier on yourself. 

Before I kick off this episode, I want to remind everyone that I am doing a free open coaching call, I call Ask Emily Anything, on Tuesday, November 15th at 1 pm central time, so that's 2 pm eastern and 11 am pacific. There is a link in my social media bio for the call, and if you're on my email list, you will get a notification for it on the day of with the link to join. There's no registration required; you just join, and you can either use that Q&A option, or you can raise your hand and be brought on, and I can coach you in real-time- totally up to you and your comfort level. I will discuss this topic for the November call, but no topic is off-limits. 

Okay, so let's get into how we make the holidays harder for ourselves and a couple of ways to make them a bit easier for us.

So first and foremost, one way that we make the holidays harder for ourselves is because we have a story around how they "should be," what they "should" look like. When we do this, there is no space to allow us to experience the holiday or get together exactly as they are. And what this might look like in your brain, it'll usually have the word 'should' in it. It might look like they should be better, but the holidays should be better than they are. They should be happier. I should be happier. We should have a kiddo or another kiddo. We should be able to celebrate like "other families." They should be more joyful. They shouldn't be so sad. They shouldn't be so hard. Our person should be here, they should be here, and they're not. My in-laws should be different. My life should be different. I should be different from my family or my in-laws. So all of these shoulds, we have this idea, and I don't think that it helps us in any way, shape, or form that we're sold so much around the holiday season in terms of how happy it should be, how bright, and shiny, and well put together and curated the holiday experience should be. We're marketed that at every turn. 

And then, typically, we put so much pressure on ourselves, especially as women, to make all of that happen. So, we have already come into the holidays, idealizing and romanticizing them. And then, when we lose our person now, it seems like there's an even greater distance between how they're going to be, how they are, and what our brain tells us they should be. And we buy into that story. We don't recognize it for what it is. We don't see how our brain tells us it should be optional. 

And so, of course, we get our brain focused on something we think it should be, which completely negates our ability to enjoy and inexperience it for what it is. Because not all holiday seasons are amazing. And even the amazing ones are still experienced by humans. So even the amazing ones that we look back and say, "Wow, that holiday season was amazing." Even those had their ups and downs; even those had negative emotions as part of them. We just kind of seem to forget and glamorize. We forget that we can experience more than one emotion at a time. We forget that 50% of the time, you might experience feelings of fun, joy, or love, and 50% of the time, it's going to feel hard. That is the definition of the human experience. 

And so, to make it easier on yourself, consider the story you're inclined to tell yourself about how the holidays should be this year. And notice how when you do that, you aren't able to make space for how you are actually experiencing the holidays. If we could drop the shoulds, we would have such a better experience of the holidays; we could let them be as they are, as they unfold, as opposed to telling ourselves and believing that they should be some way that they aren't. Maybe your family doesn't yet look how you want it to look. That's ok to feel. But telling yourself that it should look different than it does, is a recipe for misery. So that's number one. 

Number two. We worry about what we're walking into instead of focusing on what we're walking in with. And what I mean by that is this, we are walking into the holiday season with a whole lot of strength and resilience, a whole lot of agency, a whole lot of skill, and capability, and power that we don't give ourselves credit for or focus on. Think about it; we have already been through so much more than most, yet we discount it. We tell ourselves that we have no choice. We have to be strong. 

We didn't have a choice, we just did the best we could, but we didn't have a choice—such a lie. We could have totally checked out, but we didn't, and we've literally survived a 100% of our worst days. We have demonstrated our own resilience over and over and over. But yet, we don't give ourselves credit for that. We don't give ourselves credit for the amazing people that we already are. We can handle what's already thrown at us; whatever is thrown at us, we've already done it. We have proven it true. 

And if we look back and we're like, "Holy crap, I've been through some stuff; maybe I am more powerful than I give myself credit for." And we start to focus on what we're walking in with. We're walking into the holidays with the ability to allow any feeling to pass through us and that's the worst part, the feelings, always is, that's the worst part. And yet we have the ability to allow any feeling to pass through us. If you have forgotten go back and listen to Feel Better NOW, one of the very early episodes, teaches the process that I teach. This is something I practice over and over and over with my clients because it really is the key to managing ANY situation that you are confronted with. But we already are walking into the holidays with the ability to handle any feeling, the ability to allow it, to let it pass through us. We're also walking in with the ability to choose what we want to believe. Just because thoughts appear, doesn't mean we have to listen to them. We are walking into the holidays already catching on to the BS that our brain tries on us. We are walking into the holidays knowing and expecting that some of the time will feel amazing and some of the time will feel terrible and I don't need to judge myself for that, I can have that feeling, whatever feeling it is, hang out with me, let it pass through me, and then I will feel differently. I don't have to come up with some elaborate story about how there is something wrong with me for feeling a certain way. I don't have to come up with some story about how I should be feeling differently than I am feeling. How do we know you should be feeling whatever it is you're feeling in a given moment? Because that's how you're feeling. It's that transparent. We don't need to dig deeper. Right now, I am feeling XYZ. An hour later I felt this. All of them are perfectly and completely normal. 

This is how one of my favorite coaches, Krista St. Germain explains this, “We are not the thoughts we think. We are not the stories in our brain. We are the awareness that gets to choose what we want to think, even about that uncle you hate. We get to choose what to think.”

We’re walking in with the ability to create our own emotional experiences with our brains no matter what happens, and we forget that. And instead of reminding ourselves of what we’re walking in with we get all worried about what we’re walking into, which totally gives our power away to things outside of us. 

So, let’s not do that this year. Let’s not tell ourselves stories about how the holidays should be when they aren’t going to be that way. Let’s not tell ourselves that we have to worry about what we’re walking into, instead let's bring the focus back to what we’re walking in with. 

So, what I want you to remember is that this holiday season is only going to come one time, yes, there will be others but this one only comes once. And even though your family might not look the way you want it to; maybe you’re going through fertility treatments during the holidays, maybe you’ve taken a break, maybe you’re waiting to start until after the New Year, whatever that looks like for you, I want to offer that you can stay present with what is and not wish it away. Your experience of it will be so much easier if you stop believing the should stories that your brain is offering you, if you stop worrying about what you're walking into and start focusing on what you're walking in with. Allow your emotions to be what they are, in any given moment. So very often we feel like this process takes us hostage. But that’s not true. We always have the agency and the autonomy to do what we like and to think and feel how we like. There might be times during the holidays when you WANT to feel bad, or sad, or angry. Those are completely acceptable emotions- contrary to what we’ve been told our entire lives. They are valuable emotions. They give us a lot of information about our lives and how we think about our lives. You don’t have to shy away from that. You don’t have to walk around with a smile plastered on your face and telling the world you’re fine, when that is the farthest from how you feel. You can absolutely do that, but it’s not a requirement, it’s an option. You can also opt out of certain family traditions if that doesn’t feel good to you. Like if you feel like it would be too hard to manage your mind around certain things, that’s ok. Yes, other people might not like it, but other people are not you. You know what’s best for you. Lean into that. Trust yourself. Honor yourself. And above all, compassion, compassion, compassion. That's how we make holidays easier and you can do that. 

And that is what I want for each and every one of you. 

Ok, That is what I have for you today. Have a great week, and I will talk to you soon.