Hopefully, for you, the holidays are a time for connections, happiness, and joy. However, they can also be a challenging time if your family, friends, or social gatherings trigger emotions stress, and anxiety around food and your body.
It’s okay to set boundaries with family members who don’t support your intuitive eating journey and desire to undiet your life.
Undieting is a process of letting go of food rules and rigid exercise routines. This process can trickle into other areas of your life like work, friendships, and intimate relationships – especially if they create extra stress around food and body image.
How can you reclaim happiness and joy this holiday season and still practice intuitive eating? By setting a couple of boundaries (or more).
- It’s okay to decline traditional holiday gatherings if trigger anxiety and stress. Find joy in making new traditions – maybe with different friends or family members.
- It’s also okay to search for holiday happiness and joy even in challenging, unhappy circumstances like caring for a sick loved one.
In November 2017, my Mom tried to recover from major surgery to remove a cancerous tumor the size of a golf ball from her left lung. The incredible surgeon with piercing blue eyes said he could do the surgery but not without significant risk.
After 8+ hours with the surgical oncology team, plastic surgeon, and 2 new ribs, my Mom was in the recovery room. Dad and I were happy the surgery had gone well. But there was a looming suspicion this wasn’t the end of Mom’s battle with cancer.
And it wasn’t.
Weeks later, we gathered with Mom’s entire family to celebrate Christmas. Joy, laughter, and delicious smells filled my Aunt and Uncle’s house. No one invited the elephant in the room, but there it was. Would this be my Mom’s last Christmas?
Yes. My Mom loved Christmas. How would we all find joy in the Christmas to come?
Let’s dig into the definition of happiness and joy more deeply.
According to my guest on this week’s episode of the Savor Food and Body Podcast, happiness is a binary construct. You’re either happy or you’re not. Joy, on the other hand, is an embodied experience. It’s a physical sensation you feel in your body.
“Happiness is a binary construct, an evaluation of your life. If you can’t find happiness because of cultural norms or ideals, you feel broken. On the other hand, joy is a deeply embodied deep well in our body, the same as our pain. It comes from our capacity for meaning for love, for connection. The same reasons we have pain in our life are the exact reflections of what brings us joy.”
Dr. Tanmeet Sethi, MD
Dr.Tanmeet Sethi, MD is a board-certified Integrative Family Medicine physician and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
She has spent the past 25 years working on the frontlines of the most marginalized
communities, as well as globally with victims of school shootings, survivors of
hurricanes, citizens impacted by police violence, and psychologists in Ukraine
under attack.
Tanmeet has created entire Integrative medicine programs from
the ground up, including the first-ever fellowship in Washington state. Her
expertise is widely recognized in both local and national work which includes
leading programs on healing from trauma, thought-provoking presentations (to
both medical and non-medical organizations), and multiple articles and
textbook chapters on Integrative Medicine.
In our conversation about happiness and joy based on Dr. Sethi’s recent book Joy is My Justice; Reclaim What Is Yours, you’ll hear:
- Dr. Sethi describes the difference between Joy and happiness, and how she’s experienced both in her life.
- Why the wellness world’s definition of resilience isn’t helpful in times of stress and what you can do instead.
- Why finding joy is critical for marginalized communities as a path to
- healing from oppression.
- How does healing trauma and finding joy affect your genes and heal your ancestral body story?
Dr. Sethi leaves you with a few tools described in her book that you can use to activate your vagus nerve of the nervous system and help cultivate Joy
The Christmas of 2017 we all felt joy, connection, and love as we celebrated my Mom’s recovery from surgery. And if you asked anyone at the holiday party, I doubt they’d say they were happy with the elephant in the room. Did the surgery get rid of all the cancer? How long would it be there?
The following September 2018, my Mom slipped away after nine months of living with cancer and looking out her bedroom window at the beautiful Eagle Cap Mountains, towering above our neighbor’s carefully tended garden. Even though it wasn’t a time of happiness, we all experienced joy as we sat with Mom, told stories, and helped her find a sense of peace.
If the holiday season feels heavy for you for whatever reason, try to separate happiness and joy. Can you find even the smallest spark of joy in the face of challenges you’re facing?
Resources to find happiness and joy
Book: Joy is My Justice; reclaim what is yours (bookshop.org affiliate link)
Connect with Tanmmet on social media – Instagram and Facebook
