Holiday Stress | Table for Five

December 14, 2011 By Elizabeth

The holidays stress me out. They have for as long as I've been a Mom. This year has been even more stressful than usual, I think because I'm creating a lot of stress for myself due to my complete lack of ability to organize. Organize what?, you ask? EVERYTHING. I am the most unorganized person in my entire family. Which is probably why no one EVER says "let's get together at Elizabeth's house". When I say that my New Year's Resolution is to get organized, I MEAN IT. I can't go on living this way. My family can't go on with me living this way. I have no system in place for organizing my blogging, my household responsibilities, my emails, my life in general! And now it's the holidays, Christmas is in 11 days, I haven't even ordered Christmas cards let alone started gathering the addresses, I haven't wrapped a single present, it's just all a big mess. In fact, Chris and the kids decorated the tree, a job I usually love, while I sat on the couch deleting emails. … [Read more...]

Tips for reducing holiday stress from the Institute of HeartMath

December 13, 2010 By Elizabeth

Image by Crashmaster007 via Flickr The holidays are stressful for a lot of people, me included. I'm totally stressed out about money, about getting all the gifts bought and wrapped, about finding time to address and mail Christmas cards, about the house being a mess, about the pile of work I have to do. The Institute of HeartMath, who makes the Wild Ride to the Heart game that I recently reviewed, has tons of resources on their website to help people like me learn stress-reduction techniques. You know, so I don't explode. In a recent survey, the American Psychological Association learned that while 69% of parents of tweens and teens say that their stress has slight or no impact on their children, a whopping 86% of children report that their parents' stress bothers them. “We don’t have to let stress deteriorate the quality of our lives when there are very quick and effective ways to manage it,” said behavioral psychologist, Deborah Rozman, Ph.D., who serves on IHM’s … [Read more...]