Mental Health During the Holidays

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is Star one oh five point seven. Good morning. It
is West Michigan's Christmas station. On this Wednesday, it's Schmitty
And I thought this would be a really important interview
to have because I'm sure I'm not the only one
feeling the best way you can put it, a little
over stemmed, a little overstressed, little overtouched. Right, it's a
very busy month. It's a magical month. It's a month

(00:23):
full of love and gratitude, don't get me wrong, but
especially as a parent, when you're keeping everything straight on
top of potentially posting an upcoming holiday or serving or volunteering,
keeping kids school programs set, it can be a lot.
So Nick Bayer is with Wedgwood Christian Services and kind

(00:44):
of talks about the mental side of this whole thing.
And Nick, I want to start out with that anxiety.
You've got everything on the list and it feels like
your list might be even bigger than Santa's. What are
some really great ways to kind of deal with that?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, and that's a real common problem we kind of
see with folks in the hall and things like that,
because you know, it's something that is supposed to be
picture perfect. It's supposed to. You know, we see advertisements,
we see stories, there's movies about it, where it's supposed
to be something where this is a perfect happy situation
when that's maybe not always the case. So do something
that we often call safety planning, so that can kind
of be when knowing your own needs and your own

(01:19):
limits in that maybe that's making sure there's a space
for you take a five or ten minute break between
being around a lot of people. Maybe your safety plan
is that you need to be around a lot of
people and having making sure you're in those spaces in that,
you know, deciding what fills your cop what doesn't fill
your cop in different things like that. So kind of
going in with a game plan is a pretty good idea.
A lot of times is getting an ally with that.

(01:40):
Maybe if you have a partner or another family member,
making sure that they know sort of what your needs
are and know that if you disappear for some ghosting time,
that's not that you dislike your children, it's that you
just need about five minutes where there's not noise going
around your ears.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
All this is a hard time too. Let's talk about grief. Yeah,
I mean, boy, that really rears its ugly head around
the holidays, and that can be a tough.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
One, absolutely, and that is something of you know, because
it's such a time with traditions. So there's someone that
you may have lost in the ear even even a
while ago, that is present that is you see the
lack of their presence with that, so different ways to
deal with that is, you know, maybe having photos or
different things to make sure they're present. Sometimes that can
be something like cooking their particular meal or dish that
maybe they brought every year for something like that to

(02:21):
support that. A big part of grief support and something
I'm really passionate about is there's this idea that when
someone is lost or someone passes away that you know,
the goal is to kind of get over them. And
really the truth is there's always going to be that
person sized hole in your life, and you build around that,
there's never gonna be a point you don't miss that person.
So that's something that I really encourage to acknowledge that

(02:43):
if you know there's someone that was a real presence
during the holidays that's not there anymore, is to bring
that out of you know, talk about them, talk about
their stories, have photos of them, different things like that
and make sure that they're still present in some way,
and that's that's really okay.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
It's some really good stuff, you guys. So if you're
dealing with any of these emotions and they feel so
heightened at the holidays, it's pretty incredible stuff to get
the guidance like this. Nick Bayer with Wedgwood Christian Services.
I'm gonna piss up at West Michigan Star dot com
because when you feel really good, I just think that
makes the merriest Christmas of all