Tis The Season To Be Stressed Out (But You Don't Have To)

There’s something in the air as the winter weather settles in and holidays get closer (and it’s not just snow, Christmas music, and the smell of peppermint lattes). Whether you’re braving the cold to get to work or school, nearing year-end often means turning up the pressure on work projects, university deadlines, and all kinds of team meetings. 

As if there wasn’t enough going on with the weather getting darker and that somewhat unpredictable family gathering being planned, now you have a to-do list that’s longer than it’s been all year, and you’re wondering how you’re going to do it all without falling apart.

If that sounds a little too familiar, you’re not the only one who’s feeling the pressure. The good news is that you don’t have to “just buckle down and get it done.” 

This article will explore some of the ways you can cope with a high-stress season at work or school and release some of the pressure you’re feeling so that you don’t come back to work in the new year wishing you could have a holiday from your holiday.

What I’m Not Going To Suggest

I’m assuming that by the time you’ve found this article, you’ve already tried a lot of the standard tips and tricks for dealing with the stress of important deadlines and work piling up. Take breaks, prioritize the work, try some deep breathing, block off time for uninterrupted focus, manage your time well, delegate to team members… Phew! Yeah, we’re not going there today.

Your motivation might be to keep up your GPA, to set yourself up for a promotion, or to avoid disappointing someone on your team or in your personal circle. This matters to you and you feel like you’ve tried everything. So we’re going to come at this from a different angle.

It’s Deeper Than Deadlines

Chances are you’ve already experienced this. Your stress isn’t just about feeling overwhelmed with work anymore. When you feel like you might let someone down or be viewed as less competent, you start to worry about more than how it will impact your grades or the outcome of that work project, and the stress starts to impact how you feel and think about yourself. 

There is a mode of therapy called Internal Family Systems that imagines your mind like a family, with different members with different roles and perspectives on how to move through life. IFS gives us a framework to look at the stress, overwhelm, panic, or dread you might feel about the tasks looming over you right now.

See if you recognize any of these internal family members (or “parts”) that might be popping up in the middle of your work stress:

The Protector

When deadlines pile up, your protector parts start working through lunch, taking on other people’s tasks, and rewriting group project sections at 2 a.m. “just to make sure it’s done right.” They’ll have you saying things like, “I’ll just handle it,” and “It’s faster if I do it myself,” and “I can squeeze that in.” Your protector parts operate under the assumption that if you can control the situation, nothing will be able to hurt or disrupt things for you (but we know it doesn’t often work that way).

The Peacekeeper

This is your classic people-pleaser. To shield you from ridicule, judgement, rejection, or criticism, your peacekeeper parts have you stressing over tasks that might not need to be top priority out of fear for how you’ll be viewed if you produce anything less than exactly what others expect of you. You don’t speak up when you know you’re at capacity and avoid asking for support when you need it so you don’t bother anyone, which only makes the panicked feeling worse.

The Inner Critic

If even well-delivered feedback on a project is your worst nightmare and you pride yourself on a spotless record at school or work, your inner critic parts might be getting a little too much air time in your mind lately. To keep you safe, these parts shoot for nothing less than perfection, and your overwhelm or brain fog moments can send them into overdrive, hoping that if you can criticize yourself first, you’ll catch and fix everything before someone else has the chance to.

If some of these internal parts sound like they’ve been showing up as you’ve tried to tackle everything on your plate lately, here are some ways you can work with them to navigate the stress you’re feeling.

Get to Know Your Internal Family

Whether you do it through journaling, recording yourself talking about your stress and listening back to it, or working with an IFS therapist, you can start to identify which internal parts have been complicating your experience with your to-do list. Pay attention to the things that come up that sound like a certain part “speaking”. What does that part of you tend to fixate on? What kind of acknowledgement does that version of you need that you don’t often receive? Knowing how they show up in you can help you flag when these protector parts are overdoing it.

Acknowledge and Negotiate

IFS therapy is built on the understanding that all of your parts are well-intentioned. They are ways that you’ve developed to keep yourself safe (that’s a good thing), but their methods may not be the most effective or might be causing unintended side effects like the overwhelm, anxiety, and stress you’ve felt as your workload has gotten more intense.

An important step to helping these parts of your mind feel safe to quiet down and give you space again is recognizing the ways they have been trying to help you. Once you’ve helped your brain understand that you see that it needs to be safe, you can start negotiating a new way to get that safety (which might not feel safe at all at first). 

Maybe instead of skipping meals to get more work done, you prep snacks to bring with you to work and set aside 5 minute breaks away from your work to eat something small throughout your day. At first you inner protector might feel worried that if you slow down to eat, you won’t finish the work on time, and you’ll be judged for it. A little at a time, you show yourself that you can still meet your needs and get things done, and that a coworker’s disappointment might sting in the moment, but that you have what you need to get through it.

Other Things to Try

When the stress spiral starts twirling you around like a holiday snow globe, a few simple practices can help you steady yourself again. These don’t have to be grand life changes. Just small shifts that give your system a breather when everything feels a bit extra. Here are a couple of options that can help you reset and actually enjoy the season:

Try Somatic Techniques

You can support your brain by giving your body outlets for stress that are backed by psychological research. You might want to start with these.

Work with a Therapist

A trained IFS therapist can help you find ways to work with your inner protector parts and find ways to step out of the stress cycle this season.

Conclusion

When the year winds down, it’s easy to think the only way through is to push harder, stay later, and shush the parts of you that need rest until…. well, next year?! Real stress resilience is measured by how you bring yourself out of the stress spiral and back to a place of clearheadedness and calm so you can approach your work the way you really want to, and Internal Family Systems work can help you do that so you can actually sign off and enjoy the holidays.