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Top Ten Ways to Survive Your Family's Holiday Visit This Year
By
Although we love them, sometimes families can challenge our emotional wellbeing, our perceived adulthood and our sanity! From healthy to dysfunctional, family members can sometimes become the guests from--well, you know what I mean.
Here are some survival strategies from one who knows!...
(1) Get the guest room ready--wash everything you plan to use for your guests, and put it in a zip-tight plastic storage container, or one with a lid. A day or two before their arrival, throw everything on air fluff and then, it will be ready to go. And there’s one thing you can check off your list early.
(2) Buy their gifts now, and wrap them, then, put them away in a box. Another thing you won’t have to worry about at the last minute.
(3) Use aromatherapy candles to help calm you as you anticipate their visit and to keep you calm once they arrive. You can also buy a diffuser, for even more immediate impact. Here are some essential oils to look for…
Sandalwood: helps you feel grounded and safe, and helps you maintain healthy boundaries. Calms, comforts and helps you heal relationship issues. Generates wisdom and helps us reconnect with our sense of who we are, and with a sense of being, in general.
Ylang Ylang: helps you face your fears, increasing your courage and helping you be at peace. Releases anger and fear.
Spruce/Fir Needle: Promotes grounded wisdom and helps you develop compassion for yourself. Increases intuitive understanding.
Myrrh: gives you strength and helps you deal with emotional wounds. Grounding. Supportive and fortifying.
Orange: Wonderful when you are feeling depleted, helps you overcome both lethargy and depression. Nurtures your soul and generates joy.
Clary Sage: Calming and uplifting, develops and strengthens intuition.
Juniper: Helps you release the negative energy you’ve received from others, clears the room when there has been tension or arguments. Helps you trust your internal voice and clear energy blockages.
Lemon: Also, good for clearing negative energy from the room. Clears emotional confusion and promotes clarity and focus. If you get this in oil form, you can combine it with filtered water in a spray bottle and spray it whenever you need to clear the air.
Bergamot: brings in positive energy and helps you develop fortitude.
(4) Use energy therapy to clear away energy blockages. Energy blockages create stress and keep us from working through and releasing the negative experiences we have. We end up getting stuck with things we need to let go of, physically and emotionally. Being clear and free before a family visit could have a powerful impact on how you handle it and how it affects you.
(5) Make sure your home reflects who you are now and is nurturing to you. Walk through each room of your house and take a look at your possessions. Feel their impact on you.
Are there any that make you feel bad?
Try this: go back through each room with an empty box and collect each of the items (where possible) that generate negative feelings. Put them away for at least a week. Take note of how that affects the way you feel in each room.
Consider leaving them in the box for the remainder of the holiday season. If you need to, put off making a final decision until after all the holiday madness is over. You’ll feel better, then, anyway, and deciding will be easier.
You can also nurture yourself by adding things based on your elemental style. To determine your elemental style, go to CreateSanctuary.com and take the quiz.
(6) Help yourself stay grounded and centered…
Every so often, each day, take a moment to sit down and notice the feel of your feet on the floor and your back against the chair. Focus your awareness on your breathing and then, imagine that you are actually a sturdy tree with roots planted deep into the ground. Feel those roots connecting your feet to the ground.
Enjoy a bath soak every night of their visit, and as you sink back into the water, think about the ocean and the river and how connected you are to them. Take in the strength and the solidity of the ocean. And throw in some dead sea salts to cleanse you of any negative energy you’ve picked up during the day.
Put rose quartz in your pocket or keep it handy, and hold it whenever you need to, to reconnect to your heart and to your compassion, and to help ground you.
(7) Build a support group of people who love you and know exactly who you are. Many of us already have one but are severely underutilizing them. If you don’t have a group like that, 12-step groups are wonderful for offering support, as are church groups (of all faiths).
It would be worth it to stretch yourself a little so as not to feel so alone during the holiday visit.
People who know us help us remember that although we are being treated like slightly daft or rebellious children, we are actually fully competent, capable, beloved adults.
(8) Think through the limits you want to set and practice what you will need to say. Sometimes the broken record technique is your best bet…
“I am not willing to talk about _________”
“I appreciate your desire to help, but I have decided to __________”
Repeating the statement every time there is a breach of your boundaries rebuilds the fortress. You will be tested, but if you stand firm, eventually, what else is there to say? You just kindly and politely refuse to engage as many times as you need to until the madness stops!
(9) Keep your journal handy so that every day, at some point, you can discharge any remaining negative energy. Also, put some inspirational reading on your nightstand. Not what you think should inspire you but what actually lifts your spirit every time you read it (even if it’s the comics from the morning paper).
(10) Another great way to release negative energy is to crack or open the windows every day (how much would depend on the weather and your tolerance). That way everybody gets a little fresh air!
Bless you during your holiday visit! And let me know how I can help!
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Jeanine Byers is a certified healing coach who helps women discover and nurture their soul purpose and life mission. For the holiday season, she is offering a free holiday stress relief exercise so that your holiday experience will be calmer, steadier, more centered, more grounded and more abundant. She also offers 3 Days of Transformation to remove the blocks and resolve the issues that keep you from creating the life they really want--just in time for a new year of delight! Schedule a free consultation when you visit her website at www.pages.ivillage.com/healingjourney.
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