Managing Holiday Stress With COPD

Managing holiday stress can be challenging for anyone, but when you have COPD, the extra demands can make the season feel overwhelming. The pressure to prepare, travel, cook, and entertain can add up quickly, impacting your energy and breathing.

Through the years, I’ve found a few ways to simplify the season, lower stress, and still enjoy it all. Here’s how to make this holiday season more manageable so you can focus on what matters most.

Simple ways to manage holiday stress with COPD

Recruit help

For many of us, we have help or others to do it for us but if not, see if you can get a friend, family member, or caregiver to help you. If you don't have the help, just do as much as you can without overdoing it.

Planning for the holiday season

It can take us twice as long to do something as it does a healthy person. Between taking several breaks, and moving slower than others, we should start preparing and planning sooner rather than later.

Prepping

Prep as much as you can a little at a time, in days in advance if possible. Whether it's for holiday shopping, cooking, decorating, prep, etc., prep and shop as early ahead as you can. You can even make some of the holiday cooking and baking ahead of time and freeze until needed.

Cleaning

Start early and clean as you go. Clean up one thing before you start another project. Sometimes my ADHD brain has me running in circles, but when I manage one task at a time it's much less stressful.

Wrapping presents

When wrapping presents, wrap as you buy the gifts so you aren't wrapping everything at once. I have made this mistake many times and it makes for a long, stressful day and also leads to sloppy wrapping.

Travel

If you are traveling, make sure you have everything you need from oxygen, batteries, chargers, medicine, and all of your medical devices like CPAP, nebulizer, etc. Pack early and for enough medicines for emergencies.

Let others know when you are leaving and what route you plan to take. Make a list and check it twice.

Eating and sleeping

Make sure to keep eating the right things and not overeat to hinder your breathing. Try to stay away from the things that make our breathing more difficult like carbs, alcohol, sugar, etc. You can still enjoy those holiday treats, just try to do it in moderation.

Try to get a full 8 hours of sleep. Less sleep can be bad for our immune system and our body needs that rest to recoup for the next day.

Some of us may need more than 8 while others may need less. I think our bodies will remind us of what we need. For me, it's usually 7 hours. If I get more or less I seem not to be able to function at my best.

Exercise

Like every other day, we need to keep exercising. It's not only good for our lungs but of course our wonderful mind as well.

I don't know about you, but I can sure tell when I miss a day of exercise. For a great article about exercise, you can find that here.

Cooking

So you don't have so much to do, assign a side or main dish for each one of your family members if they don't already do so. My husband has taken over most of the cooking in my house. He loves to do it and it also lets me concentrate on other things that I would like to get done. My kids and their spouses also contribute so that not one person is doing so much.

Be mindful

Take care of yourself and try not to get too overwhelmed. If things feel too stressful while trying to prepare for the holidays, take a day off.

Do something that you enjoy or that will help you take your mind off of whatever is stressing you. That could be a day of pampering like getting your hair or nails done, a shopping trip just for you and not related to the holidays, or just calling a friend that you haven't talked to in a while.

Taking care of ourselves is so important to our health. Be sure we do as good taking care of ourselves as we would if it was our kids or grandkids that we were taking care of.

I hope this list that helps me, will be as helpful to you as well. What other tips can you add? Please write them in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you.