Strategies for Finding Joy During the Holiday Season, From Doing Less to “Silent Mornings”

Not long ago, Niro Feliciano found herself sitting down to wrap Christmas presents for her four children at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, having already attended a candlelight church service and hosted a dinner for her extended family that same evening.

It was the frenzied end to a busy holiday season and the moment she realized something had to change.

“I was like, This is just not healthy,” said Feliciano, a Connecticut psychotherapist and frequent guest on the “Today” show. “And I started thinking, ‘We need to do things differently.’ Not just for me. For my family.

Shelf Help is a wellness column in which we interview researchers, thinkers, and writers about their latest books, all with the goal of learning how to live a fuller life.

Feliciano loves the winter holidays with all their cozy rituals, but for most of her adult life she has struggled to fit cookie baking, holiday parties, Christmas movies, and the occasional scenic sleigh ride into her already busy life, running a private practice while raising four children with her surgeon husband.

“We were running at a crazy pace all the time, so as soon as I heard about vacations, I was stressed. There was no bandwidth, there was no time,” she said. “And I kept thinking, ‘How am I going to do this?'”

In her new book, “Everything’s Calm: How to Feel Less Frenetic and More Festive During the Holidays,” released in October, Feliciano describes how she deliberately shifted her relationship with the holiday season by choosing to slow down, do less and focus on “connection rather than perfection,” as she puts it. In 31 short chapters—one for each day in December—she offers down-to-earth personal stories and advice for people who feel overwhelmed by the winter holidays, whether because they’re trying to do too much or because they’re dealing with heartbreaking issues like grief, loss, loneliness, or illness.

“In the 20 years I’ve been working as a therapist, I’ve found that this is the hardest time of year for people,” Feliciano said. “I was thinking: Who doesn’t need a therapist during the holidays? »

Her clients joked that they wish she could come home with them and talk to them throughout the season.

“The answer to that question is no,” she said. “But now at least I can give them a book.”

Feliciano talked to me about how she began to feel more present throughout the season, her transformative “silent morning” practice, how to deal with grief during the holidays, and why gift-giving has long been a trigger point for many women she knows, including herself.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

(Maggie Chiang / For Time)

What is your relationship with vacations?

My relationship with vacations has evolved. Especially when I was young and just learning about my family and being so influenced by social media, I felt like we had to do what everyone else was doing so our kids wouldn’t feel left out. We were going to do everything, but in the end I felt exhausted and not happy.

I didn’t want my kids to feel like this is our way of doing things, where you sacrifice all your joy for everyone else. So they started to see me slow down, they started to see me doing less and hopefully I felt like I was more present and connected with them while still taking time for myself.

How does social media affect our experience of holiday celebrations?

It’s huge. I think it affected us on two levels. The first is comparison, which affects our perception of what we really want. Look at my crappy decorations compared to this woman who isn’t Martha Stewart but she could be. Then all of a sudden I don’t feel so happy. I’m not as satisfied.

But scrolling on social media also literally impacts our brain chemistry. We get these surges of dopamine, and then our body tries to compensate for them, which puts us in a state where we’re more irritable, more anxious, more depressed. It’s kind of a trap because we’re so exhausted and tired that, what do we do? We’re going for mindless fun and dopamine hits.

In your book, you describe a practice that you call “silent mget up» where you wake up early, light a candle, drink coffee and enjoy time alone, reading, journaling, praying or just sitting quietly before starting the day. I’ve done it and I find it transformative. What does that do for you?

During the holidays, I did it several times a week and I think that’s what made the biggest difference in how I felt at the end of the season. I felt like I had created something that was just for me, and it was beautiful and it was something expected and relaxing. Even if it was only for five or ten minutes, it made a difference.

We no longer have a real tree, so I always had a pine scented candle which evokes memories of winter and nature for me. I think part of it is figuring out what will evoke something beautiful for you, and then incorporating that into the silent morning.

It feels like we’re supposed to feel joy during the holidays, but after the year we’ve had in Los Angeles: devastating fires, ICE raids, entertainment industry layoffs and beyond – some of us might find joy elusive this season. What do you suggest?

I come back to this idea that comes from dialectical behavior therapy: two things can be true. We can live in very difficult and painful circumstances and it is important to recognize this and also recognize that there are ways to experience joy; it’s just a matter of knowing where to look. Often I think you have to make the choice to experience joy and pursue it.

It may take some time to figure out how to do this, but if you think about what matters most in your life and if you own some of these things, these are the areas we can connect with to find joy.

The holidays can be especially trying for those who are grieving. What advice would you give them?

I would say, to start, give yourself the grace to not do things the way you’ve always done them. If it’s too painful, you can try something new. Also, don’t put pressure on yourself to do all these projects. You may not know how you will feel until that day. I think you just need to honor your feelings in the moment and surround yourself with people who will honor them for you.

Especially if this is a new heartbreak, trust your intuition to know what you need in that moment. Think about someone you feel safe with, who wants the best for you, who you can be yourself with and spend time with during this season. This will help.

You also have a chapter on the conflicts that can arise around disappointing gifts. Is this something that comes up often?

This has always been present with my clients. So many women feel very disappointed in this particular piece. It’s like if we’re doing this for everyone, why can’t anyone do it for us? This is especially important to me because my husband and I have struggled with this as well. We’ve been married 22 years and now I really want to buy myself gifts and give them to him and say, “Hey, wrap this for me,” but it was a serious point of contention at first.

Part of the reason was that my parents were busy immigrant doctors who came to this country to work. They didn’t have much time all the time, but giving gifts was a way to express their love. For my husband who grew up in a very poor Puerto Rican family where there were no gifts, he never saw how to do it, he never received it, so it wasn’t important to him.

It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve realized why this is so important to me – that I feel like, “You don’t love me if you don’t think about gifts,” and I don’t recognize that he never learned that language. It was my language. Now I can do it myself and appreciate what my husband does to express his love for me: it ends at 11 p.m. when he has had 16 surgeries that day and is suffering through it with me.