20 Ways to Ease Holiday Stress

The list-making, the shopping, the parties, the dinners. Cooking, cleaning, dressing up, no slowing down. The holidays, lovely as they are, are some of the most stressful weeks of the year. Even if you love the heightened state of everything, you need to manage the stress in order to get through. Keep in mind these tips for easing holiday stress.

Take periodic breaks to just calm down. Step away from your desk (or the half-decorated tree), sit down, stop making lists in your mind. Just take five minutes to regroup—or more, if you need it.

Try to stick to your usual routine. Eat breakfast at the usual time, go to group meetings or therapy if that is part of your life, call your mom at the regular time. You'll feel more in control and less stressed.

If you usually only go out once or twice a month, the holidays can be a shocker. Don't pack your schedule with absolutely everything that's going on. Pick a few favorites, and enjoy them as much as you can.

When holiday stress is getting to you, take it easy with music. Cue your favorite playlists or find calming classics on Spotify. Or, if you need to head-bang, we're not stopping you. Whatever takes away the stress and makes wrapping presents, shopping for Christmas Eve dinner or decking the halls more fun.

Don't like Elf on a Shelf? Get rid of him. Hate Christmas caroling? We won't tell. But don't go. Do only the holiday traditions that you truly enjoy. All the rest are just sucking up your time and energy.

Christmas and New Year's are times we often spend with extended family, which isn't always a good thing. If that's your situation, make sure you're also spending as much time as you can with people that you like. Organize get-togethers that are fun and easy to go to.

Exercise is a great way to manage stress, including the kind covered in snowflakes and presents. Pull out the yoga mat between office holiday parties and your New Year's Eve haircut and color. Go for a run in an indoor track a few hours before you need to start cooking. Even if you can only stretch, mindfully focus on your body and feeling good when holiday prep is at 11.

Between Christmas cookie exchanges and over-the-top ham dinners, week after week of holiday fun can leave you feeling bloated and overfed. As much as you can, choose healthful foods, saving the carb and sugar overloading for special meals.

See if you can step away from technology, at least for a few hours every day. The relentless texts for picking up guests at the airport, the wishlist searching, and not wanting to miss beautiful shots for Instagram can leave you feeling depleted. Really enjoy the lights downtown, the conversations with friends, the taste of the meal (not just how great it looks in this lighting). Being constantly connected can elevate stress levels, which you don't need in the holiday frenzy.

If you start feeling a stress headache coming on, start pinching the skin between your thumb and index finger. Activating this pressure point, according to acupressure specialists, can have the effect of relieving tension and headaches. Give it a shot.

Whether decorating with kids or cooking with Grandpa, you might start stressing about how slow and how messy everyone is. Ignore the temptation to do it all yourself in the interest of efficiency. The point of the holidays is to celebrate and have fun. That's way more important than getting stuff done.

So, the tree leans a little, you can't find the perfect gift for your best friend and you've never made a Christmas ham before. Your approach to this and any other disappointments during the holidays should be to look on the bright side. Negative self-talk has been shown to increase stress. Maintaining a positive attitude, even when you're not 100 percent excited about the outcome, will help keep stress at bay.

If you're a stress-eater, consider stocking up on foods that are thought to ease stress. Oatmeal, lentils, almonds and foods high in antioxidants (like raspberries and blueberries) are among those. These stress-reducing foods could energize you and help get you through the final days of the holidays.

What better way to reduce stress than a little naked one-on-one time with your favorite partner? Sex is a great stress-reducer. Plus, you'll get your brain out of all those to-do lists. If it's really good, you might emerge from the bedroom with a new perspective and let the little things wait until next year.

New research has shown that just looking at a tree can reduce your stress level. Walking over to stand under one works even better. Take a moment and get away from the holiday madness to go on a walk somewhere that has at least one tree.

We all know that it's better to give than to receive. It turns out, being generous has real health benefits, too. It reduces stress, lowers blood pressure and boosts your mood. It might even help you live longer.

If you can say yes to something, you can also say no to it. And it's important to do both. During the holidays, parents are inundated with signup sheets for things to do in the kids' classes. Employees have to sign up for the office potluck. Who wants to run the cookie exchange? Only say yes to things you feel compelled to do out of love and generosity. Say no to anything else. Setting boundaries is healthy.

Sniffing a lemon apparently has the same effect as taking a Xanax. The stress-reduction benefits are immediate. And there are no side effects. In the midst of holiday overload, stop and smell the lemons.

If you really want to reduce your stress this holiday, make this the year that you ask for help. You don't have to go it alone—and you shouldn't. Everyone will enjoy themselves more if they're given a job, allowed to pitch in and don't have to watch you reach the edge.

Just being outside, away from the dry air of the furnace, the loud noise of all that activity and the constant reminders that the house is a mess and you have a closet full of presents to wrap, is an immediate blood pressure- and stress-reducer. You don't have to hike mountains or walk along a beach in the winter cold to derive the benefits of going outdoors. Just put on your shoes and a coat, and step outside. Ahh, happy holidays.