Strong Leaders Can Struggle, a Reminder for the Anxious Heart During the Holiday Season
Written by Coach JoyGenea with support from Notion AI and Nano Banana AI Images
If you’re reading this any day between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and you’re feeling that familiar tightness in your chest, the overwhelm creeping in, the anxiety that seems to amplify around the holidays… you are not alone.
And more importantly: you are going to be okay.
I have witnessed some of the strongest leaders brought to their knees by holiday family gatherings. Emotions can be heavier than any weight we lift in the gym. We need to be mindful of that. It is just a known fact in emergency services that during the holidays, they will be dealing with more heart attacks than at any other time of the year.
Based on the research, December and January are the months with the most heart attacks in the United States.
A study analyzing Los Angeles County death certificate data from 1985-1996 found that January had the highest number of coronary deaths at 1,925 per month, followed closely by December at 1,808. In contrast, the summer months (June through September) had the lowest rates, ranging from 1,371 to 1,424 deaths per month.
More specifically, the three deadliest days for heart attacks are:
- December 25 (Christmas Day) – the single deadliest day of the year
- December 26 (the day after Christmas)
- January 1 (New Year’s Day)
The spike in heart attack deaths during the holidays is attributed to multiple factors, including increased stress, changes in diet and alcohol consumption, delayed medical care (people not wanting to “ruin the holidays”), colder weather, and disrupted routines.
Let’s make sure that you take care of yourself during the holidays because your business, team, and family want you to continue to lead them in your unconventional style in the coming year.
This Time Will Pass
I know it doesn’t always feel like it in the moment. When you’re surrounded by expectations (family obligations, gift-giving pressure, the endless social events, the comparison trap of “perfect” holiday celebrations on social media), it can feel suffocating.
But here’s what I want you to remember: This time will pass.
It has for centuries. The holiday season swings back around every year, and every year, we make it through. Sometimes gracefully, sometimes messily, but we make it through.
🫁
Your reminder right now, in this moment: Just take a breath.
Seriously, put your hand on your heart, feel your feet on the ground, and take one deep breath. Then another.
This Is Your Life Too
If you’re feeling really stressed out, if other people are putting extreme expectations on you, if you’re bending yourself into impossible shapes trying to please everyone, I want to say something important:
This is your life, too.
I get it. I’ve been there. The guilt of setting boundaries during “family time.” The fear of disappointing people. The internalized pressure to make everything magical for everyone else while your own tank is running on empty.
But you matter. Your nervous system matters. Your peace matters.
What Does Self-Care Look Like Right Now?
This isn’t about bubble baths and candles (though if those help, great!). This is about survival-level self-care:
- Permission to say no to one event, one obligation, one thing that will drain you
- Five minutes alone in your car, your bathroom, anywhere you can just breathe
- Letting go of perfect and embracing “good enough”
- Asking for help instead of carrying it all alone
- Stepping outside for fresh air when the walls feel like they’re closing in
You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to make it through today.
The Neuroscience of Holiday Anxiety
Holiday anxiety has several scientific foundations:
Stress Response System Overload
Your amygdala (the brain’s threat detection center) can’t distinguish between physical danger and social/emotional stress. Family dynamics, financial pressure, and scheduling overwhelm trigger the same fight-or-flight response as actual threats. This floods your system with cortisol and adrenaline, creating that physical tightness and racing heart.
Disrupted Routines = Dysregulated Nervous System
Your brain craves predictability. The holidays disrupt sleep patterns, eating schedules, exercise routines, and daily structure. This dysregulates your autonomic nervous system, making you more reactive and less resilient to stress.
Social Comparison & the Prefrontal Cortex
When you’re comparing your reality to idealized holiday images (social media, family expectations, cultural narratives), your prefrontal cortex is working overtime trying to close the gap between “what is” and “what should be.” This creates cognitive dissonance and mental exhaustion.
Heightened Emotional Memory
The hippocampus (memory center) has strong ties to the amygdala. Past holiday traumas, disappointments, or family conflicts are easily triggered by sensory cues (smells, songs, traditions), reactivating old stress responses even when current circumstances are different.
Decision Fatigue
The holidays require hundreds of micro-decisions (gifts, meals, schedules, responses to invitations). Each decision depletes your prefrontal cortex’s executive function, leaving you more vulnerable to emotional reactivity and poor self-regulation.
Seasonal Factors
Reduced sunlight (especially in winter for people north of the equator) affects serotonin production and circadian rhythms, which can amplify baseline anxiety and make stress harder to manage.
Why Breathing Helps
Deep, intentional breathing activates the vagus nerve, which signals safety to your nervous system and shifts you from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) mode. It’s one of the fastest ways to interrupt the stress cycle.
I Want to Hear From You
Please, leave some comments or reach out. I would love to hear:
- How are you handling the holiday stress this year?
- How are you taking care of yourself?
- What has self-care looked like for you in the past during this season?
- What do you want it to look like in the future?
Your story matters. Your strategies matter. And sometimes, just knowing we’re not alone in this makes all the difference.
You’ve got this. And if you don’t feel like you’ve got this? That’s okay too. Just take the next breath. That’s all you need to do right now.
Coach JoyGenea
Video Transcription:
Happy holidays for those of you that are celebrating. I was raised in a Catholic church, and growing up I grew up Catholic, and so obviously Christmas was a very important time. So I continue to appreciate, um, Christmas and this holiday season, and a time of giving and considering others and engaging more in that. I also, as a coach who deals with unconventional and different thinkers, know that the additional family gatherings, the additional, um, gift giving items can sometimes, can potentially bring additional anxiety. And so I just wanted to send out a nice video to tell you, you are not alone if you are feeling some of that anxiety right now at this time of year. You are also going to be a OK. This time will pass. It has for centuries, as we will have learned, and it will continue to swing back around next year. And it’s just, take a breath. That’s my reminder, just take a breath. If you are feeling really stressed out and so forth, remember this is your life too. And if other people are putting extreme, um, pressures on you, ask, ask to take a breath. Ask them to cut back. Maybe this year you’re not able to do gift giving. Maybe this year you don’t make the family event, or you come later, leave early. Those are all kind of classic signs from unconventional and different thinkers, people that experience anxiety around their family. Not a big deal, not a big deal at all. So take care of yourself. That’s my reminder this holiday season. Take care of yourself. Make sure that you are taking care of yourself, because you are very valuable. And this is just a holiday. It is not, um, it’s not the most important moment in the world. It’s just a holiday, and it’s meant to be positive and happy and uplifting. And if it’s not doing that, then it’s time to reexamine how you’re doing the holidays and maybe do them differently so that you take care of yourself. That’s my reminder this beautiful holiday time. So I hope that you’re having a lovely Christmas and, and a wonderful time, either taking care of yourself or engaging in what you would like to do this holiday season. Thank you, I’m JoyGenea, unconventional leadership coach, international neurodiversity coach, and different thinker extraordinary. And yes, the holidays sometimes can be really stressful for me too, and this year actually is gonna be one of the least stressful for me. So thanks for asking, and I’d love to hear in your, in the comments, um, yeah, if you stumble across this video and you’re like, I get her, I, I get that, like I’ve, I’ve been there, please leave some comments, leave some feedback. Would love to hear how you’re handling that, how you’re taking care of yourself, and, and what maybe that’s looked like in the past and what it’s gonna look like in the future. Thank you so much. Bye now.