Battling Emotional Exhaustion

{Note from the Editor: This article deals with mild emotional exhaustion and tips on how to handle it. If you or someone you love finds themselves dealing with more extreme bouts of exhaustion or depression, please seek the help of a medical professional!}

With the holidays upon us it is inevitable that we will all encounter some form of emotional exhaustion. Whether it’s from the overwhelming task of creating and serving Thanksgiving dinner, hosting your family, deciding whose family to spend the holidays with this year, or battling even more extreme things like a recent loss, there are steps we can all take to relax and truly learn to enjoy the beauty of these stressors.

Let’s Hope.

This weekend was a rough one. My dad had emergency open heart surgery, and as someone who has a track record of multiple death scares (dad, not me), the stress level was even higher (see: nine lives?). But in the midst of the stress and the fear and the smell of hospitals (what is that smell anyway? Nevermind, don’t answer that), we came down from the terror of the experience to being eternally grateful that now our biggest worries were just when he would be discharged and if he could take a shower.