Top 5 Posts: How to Prevent Holiday Flares

By NJR ZA (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

It’s that time of the year again. Thanksgiving, Christmas, cooking, shopping, decorating, parties and other holiday activities can lead to over-doing things. Throw in the expectations (and demands) of family and friends and you get  higher stress levels, too. Add it all together, and you get the perfect recipe for a serious flare, which can totally ruin your the season for you.

It doesn’t have to happen though. There are dozens of ways to cope with the holidays, and I’ve collected five posts and articles full of helpful tips for simplifying your celebrations, pacing yourself, and coping with the physical and emotional stresses of the season.

• Being Prepared in the Car With Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – With family visits, shopping trips, and parties, we all tend to spend extra time traveling around in cars. Adrienne has some excellent suggestions for reducing the chance that these trips will cause a problem and being prepared for the unexpected.
• Head-Off Holiday Stress by Educating Loved-Ones About Your Health Limitations – Family expectations can push us to do more than we should, especially if our illness isn’t visible. Toni provides ways to explain your limitations to your family, as well as some ways to pace yourself during the season.
• PFAM Carnival: Is Help a Four Letter Word? – Asking for help is hard for everyone, but it can make your holidays much easier on you. This collection of posts on ways to ask for help when you need will give you tons of options.
• Top Ten Tips: Easing Pain Around the Holidays – Higher pain levels can trigger a flare, as well as being part of one. This list from the American Pain Foundation will help you keep your pain levels down during the holidays, minimizing the risk that short-term pain will lead to a long lasting flare.
• ‘Tis the Season – Don’t “Give” til it Hurts – My personal list of coping mechanisms for the holidays. From cards and gifts to decorating and cooking, I share ways to reduce (and eliminate) the extra work that goes with the holiday season.

Living with chronic illnesses is difficult enough during the rest of the year, but around the holidays it gets even harder. These posts are full of ways to keep it manageable while still allowing you to enjoy the season.

(If there’s a post on the subject that you’ve written, or one that’s helped you survive the holidays, please leave a comment with a link to it. The more options there are, the more everyone can enjoy the celebrations without making their symptoms worse.)

Happy Holidays to all . . .