The Season of Almost Breaking
How to Protect Your Peace During the Holiday Overwhelm
by Dr. Zelana Montminy
We call it the most wonderful time of the year. But for many, it’s the most overstimulating. The lights get brighter. The music starts earlier. The noise in our minds matches the noise everywhere else. And before we’ve even taken a breath, our nervous systems are already in overdrive.
We scroll past perfectly decorated homes and cheerful captions about joy, gratitude, and togetherness , and somewhere between grateful and gutted, we start to feel it. That quiet hum of exhaustion no one really talks about other than laughing it off as standard.
That low-grade pressure to keep up with a pace we never agreed to. The holidays haven’t even started, and we’re already bracing.
The Cultural Speed-Up
Somewhere between the last pumpkin and the first string of lights, the world accelerates. Our calendars fill before our hearts catch up. Emails multiply. Group texts ping. Every store tells us it’s time to celebrate (and buy everything), but most of us are still trying to recover. We move through our days slightly clenched, thinking we’re “getting ready,” when really, we’re rehearsing overwhelm. The mind races ahead while the body lags behind, and that gap between what we’re doing and what we can hold, that’s where the cracking starts. We call it productivity. Our bodies feel it bracing.
The Science of Anticipation
Cortisol doesn’t wait for chaos. It rises at the first sign of expectation. Your nervous system doesn’t know the difference between preparing for a party and preparing for a threat. It hears “busy” and translates it as “danger.” So even when nothing’s wrong, you feel wired, restless, scattered. You can’t focus. You forget small things. You get snappier than usual. That’s just physiology. When we live in anticipation for too long, the body never returns to baseline. It just stays ready.
And the longer it stays ready,
the harder it is to feel joy when joy finally comes.
The Myth of “Getting Ready”
We’ve mistaken busyness for readiness. We think if we can just get ahead, plan the meals, buy the gifts, answer the emails, book the events, we’ll earn calm. But calm doesn’t come from control. It comes from rhythm.
Our bodies were designed for waves: effort, rest. Effort, rest. But we live like tides that never go out. Even joy has become something to manage. So we decorate our calendars before we decorate our homes. We RSVP before we rest. We try to orchestrate connection, but all the rushing disconnects us from ourselves. We prepare for everyone else’s joy and forget our own regulation.
The Overstimulation Loop
When you’re flooded, even beauty can feel like a threat. The lights too bright. The noise too loud. The pace too much. The same neural circuits that register awe are the ones that register alarm. When you overload them, you start to confuse excitement with anxiety. And so the very season that’s supposed to fill us often empties us instead. It’s not that we’ve lost our gratitude, it’s that our bandwidth is gone.
The Reframe
Maybe this is the year we prepare differently. Not by doing more, but by softening more. Not by rushing toward magic, but by making space for meaning. Because the nervous system doesn’t respond to schedules, it responds to signals. To slowness. To quiet. To rhythm. Calm now is capacity later. Stillness isn’t laziness, it’s leadership. It’s how we regulate before we rupture.
So before the season of giving, comes the season of grounding. Before the lights go up, let your shoulders drop. Before you start showing up for everyone else, remember you have a body that needs you first.
This year, maybe we don’t need more sparkle. Maybe we need softer light. Maybe the real preparation isn’t in what we plan, but in what we protect.
Protect your peace.
Protect your presence.
Protect the still moments that remind your body it’s safe to slow down.
Because what good is a beautifully set table if you’re too burned out to sit at it?
Finding Focus is here. And it’s for you. Order your book today!
With you in this.
Love,
Zelana