In just a few days (if not today!) the madness of the holidays will begin to settle in for most people. And, while I’ve talked about being prepared before, now is the time to actually utilise your strategy. What’s that? You haven’t built a strategy yet? Oh boy.

The only way you’re going to get through this period of stress is by having a good strategy upfront to avoid relapsing or hitting rock bottom. As we all know, stress is a major contributory factor in addiction/relapse so we need to be very careful to avoid it where possible.

However, that’s often easier said than done! Here are our top 3 tips this holiday season to avoid stress or triggers:

• Holiday Recovery Tip 1 – Have a plan of escape. No seriously! Think of ways that you can find to get out of situations when you absolutely need to.
• Holiday Recovery Tip 2 – Find ways to relieve stress – quickly! One tip I’ve used before is nipping off to the bathroom and doing a quick meditation on the old white porcelain can. Crude but effective.
• Holiday Recovery Tip 3 – Practice. Make sure you practice saying “no” when it counts. If you’ve practiced saying no in a ton of different ways it won’t be as much of a struggle to say no.

The holidays can be incredibly stressful but if you keep in mind those 3 easy tips then you should be good to tackle just about anything. It won’t be easy and you’re going to be challenged but recovery is about building resilience and over time it does get better.

It is so important to have a great strategy going into the holidays so that you don’t relapse or end up in situations you don’t want to be in. Research indicates a dramatic spike in the holiday season – so we definitely recommend you do something about it now to be prepared.

What has been effective or what kinds of struggles have you faced during the holiday seasons?