Daris Lancaster Stojakovich: Hi! I am Daris Lancaster Stojakovich, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Life Coach. I am talking today about holiday stress and how to handle it. Right now, I am going to be talking about maintaining relationships and family interactions. So why during the holiday season is the time of stress with regard to family and relationships? Well, it can be a source of stress any time of the year. Sometimes, a family dynamic and the dynamic of the relationships can be amplified with the expectations and just simply the stress of the holidays themselves. One common stressor during the holidays with regard to family and friends is if you have people staying with you. If you are staying together in close quarters for an extended period of time, people can, with their different emotions and different needs and different expectations, really begin to stress each other out.

One thing you want to make sure that you do, a really great tip is, when you have friends and family coming to stay, never give up your bedrooms. You always want to have that heaven as your place to go when you just cant get away from at all. A timeout is a good thing to have. Now speaking of timeouts during relationships and family interaction times of the holidays, you want to make sure that you understand that sometimes people need timeouts. Now to have an adult have a timeout doesnt mean to have them sit down in the corner and stay for a while.

It certainly doesnt mean scolding and berating them, but what it means is dont engage negativity. If you have a family member or friend who is being extremely negative, dont engage it. You can simply be quite, go about what you are doing, dont engage the conversation, dont argue with the negativity. Sometimes, when you are engaging a negative person, it just basically adds fuel to the fire. So you can give that adult something that you can call a timeout. Of course, don't tell them that you are doing it, just be calm, take a deep breath, and know that this too shall pass, its only for a short while.

Families that have a lot of difficulties in close quarters or interactions during the holidays, might want to consider adding a non-family member guest to the mix. People can really become more aware of their behavior and can often be on their best behavior, might actually stop the drama queen or the instigator in the family from playing up their usual role.

During the holidays, another thing can really relieve stress of relationships is to surround yourself with friends. There have been many wonderful holidays celebrated by single people who created their own family with friends that have like-minded interests enjoy the same kind of celebration for the holidays. So surrounding yourself with friends, good positive energy can be something that really eliminates the stress of the holidays.

So I hope that some of these tips for maintaining relationships and relieving and eliminating the stress of family interactions during the holidays has been helpful for you. Next, we are going to be talking about overindulging in food and alcohol during the holiday season.