The Holiday Survival Guide
Your companion for navigating family, emotions, and connection this season
The holiday season can be a time of warmth, reflection, and connection, but it also brings some of the most common mental health challenges of the year. As routines shift, expectations rise, and old emotional patterns get stirred up, many people find themselves feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or unsure how to care for their well-being.
The Pressures and Patterns That Shape Holiday Mental Health
Across all ages and backgrounds, we see predictable seasonal patterns: higher stress from family dynamics, increased financial pressure, spikes in loneliness and grief, and a significant rise in emotional burnout. Moments that are supposed to feel joyful can highlight unresolved tension or surface memories of loss. For many, the season can also amplify anxiety, depression, and substance-use triggers.
Finding Your Way Through the Holiday Season
This guide is designed to support you through the moments that matter most. Whether you’re navigating family conflict, managing grief, staying grounded in a busy season, or working to protect your recovery and emotional balance, each topic in this guide provides preventative tools, practical strategies, and evidence-based support.
Our goal is simple: To help you stay connected, centered, and well—no matter what this holiday season brings.
Your Holiday Well-Being Guide Starts Here
This guide is organized around the most common challenges people face during the holiday season, because everyone’s experience is different, and every feeling deserves care.
When family stress and conflict take over
Even the closest families can slip back into old patterns during the holidays. This seminar gives you practical tools to communicate clearly, set boundaries, and protect your peace even when emotions run high.
Jeffrey Brandler
M.A, LMFT, SAP, CAS, and NBCCH
When emotions feel heavy
The season often highlights who’s missing, what’s changed, or what still hurts. This seminar guides you through grief and emotional weight with gentleness, validation, and space to breathe.
Theresa Giunta
MS, Certified Mental Performance Consultant
When you need help regulating
From travel logistics to packed schedules, the holidays feel like a nonstop emotional upswing. See how to recognize your triggers, steady your nervous system, and return to a grounded state.
Jennifer Goggin
Personal coach and Licensed Psychotherapist
When mindfulness and gratitude feel far away
If joy feels forced or you’re just going through the motions, you’re not alone. These tools bring you back into presence — helping you notice what’s real, not what’s expected.
Chris Robinson
Certified Recovery Coach, SMART and Refuge Facilitator and RYT 200 Yoga and Meditation teacher
When addiction or recovery triggers surface
Seasonal gatherings can stir painful memories or situations that test your progress. Gain strategies to move through triggers with strength and stability.
Lori Lauridsen
Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Master Certified Addiction Professional
When you’re craving connection
Sometimes the hardest part of the holidays is feeling alone, even in a room full of people. Learn how to rebuild meaningful connection, with others, with community, and with yourself.
Monalisa Bryant
MA, LPC-S, Clinical Director, Lead Therapist and Speaker
Your Season of Care
You Don’t Need a Perfect Holiday to Feel Peace
The holidays don’t have to be perfect to be meaningful. They don’t have to look like anyone else’s version of joy. What matters most is how you care for yourself gently, consistently, and without judgment.
Your Feelings Deserve Space and Compassion
This season may bring moments of comfort and closeness, or it may surface stress, loneliness, old wounds, and unexpected emotions. All of that is human. All of that is allowed. When you pause, acknowledge what you’re feeling, and offer yourself support in real time, you create space for a steadier, more grounded kind of peace.
Let These Tools Be a Companion, Not a Checklist
Use what you need, when you need it. Return to the resources that help you breathe easier. Set boundaries that protect your energy. Reach for connection when it feels nourishing. Pull back when you need rest. There is no “right” way to move through this season.
Your Well-Being Matters, Especially Now
More than anything, remember this: Your well-being matters, deeply. Not after the holidays. Not when life quiets down. Now.
You deserve a season that makes room for your healing, your comfort, and your joy—exactly as you are.
Warm Wishes From the Spirence Team
From all of us at Spirence, we wish you a season filled with moments of rest, connection, and genuine care. However the holidays look for you this year, we’re honored to support your well-being and grateful to be part of your journey.
Wishing you a peaceful and meaningful holiday season.
