Holiday Triggers & Your Nervous System: A Mind–Body Guide to Staying Grounded

The holiday season often looks joyful on the outside, yet for many people it quietly reactivates old wounds, unresolved tensions, and familiar emotional triggers.¹ During this time, your inner landscape deserves as much care and planning as the celebrations on your calendar.

I share this with deep compassion, having watched over decades of practice how subtle emotional shifts can ripple through a person's entire physiology.² This season, consider permitting yourself to pause, to respond rather than react, and to protect your mind–body balance with intention and grace.

Plan Your Response, Not Your Reactivity

Your thoughts, emotions, and inner dialogue are not "just in your head"; they directly influence your biology. Research in psychoneuroimmunology shows that chronic psychological stress and negative emotional states are linked with higher inflammatory markers (such as CRP and IL‑6), immune dysregulation, and impaired cellular repair.³⁻⁴

When you ruminate, replay painful conversations, or become stuck in worry, your body often interprets this as a persistent threat signal. Perseverative cognition – ongoing rumination and worry – has been associated with prolonged activation of the stress response and a sustained "low-level stress mode" that burdens cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune systems.⁵

Instead of reacting automatically to emotional triggers (old family dynamics, criticism, unmet expectations), try inserting a brief pause. Take three slow breaths, name what you feel ("this is anger,” "this is grief,” "this is fear"), notice where it sits in your body, and then choose your next step from a more centred place. This simple pattern interrupt supports emotional resilience and reduces unnecessary wear and tear on your nervous and immune systems.⁶ 

The Mind–Body Bridge: You Are Not Divided

In the clinic, when someone arrives with fatigue, digestive issues, hormonal symptoms, or chronic pain, treatment never focuses on the body in isolation. Thoughts, beliefs, and emotional tone shape key pathways, including gene expression, inflammatory signalling, and neural circuitry.³

The physiology of stress is ancient. Whether the "threat" is a physical danger or a cutting remark at the dinner table, your autonomic nervous system can react in similar ways: faster heart rate, cortisol release, blood shunted to the limbs, digestion down‑regulated, and immune surveillance altered.⁷ The body does not reliably distinguish between external threats and internally generated stress, which is why chronic emotional strain can gradually erode resilience and deepen vulnerability to illness.⁷⁻⁸

When triggers are repeated, and emotional distress becomes habitual, the body can remain in a state of low‑grade "alarm." Over time, this pattern disrupts restorative sleep, impairs tissue repair, and may reduce your capacity to fend off infections.⁷⁻⁹

Five Heart-Centred Practices for Holiday Peace

Below are five practices I share with the Rejuv community each December. They are simple, soul‑nourishing rituals designed to help your nervous system recalibrate, even when family dynamics or inner wounds feel activated.

1. Gentle Morning Intent Ritual

Rather than beginning your day by checking emails or scrolling, start by tending to your inner state. For example, enjoy a glass of warm water with lemon, fresh ginger, and mint to hydrate while you sit in stillness. Then mentally walk through your day like a short "film," seeing yourself respond with clarity, kindness, and calm in potentially uncomfortable moments.

This type of embodied visualisation functions like a rehearsal for emotional steadiness, training your nervous system to access calm more easily when stress arises. Mindfulness and imagery practices have been shown to reduce stress reactivity, modulate inflammatory gene expression, and promote more resilient brain network patterns.¹⁰⁻¹¹ When overwhelm appears, returning to three slow, intentional breaths can become a reliable inner refuge.

2. Self-Love & Inner Child Integration

Many holiday triggers are echoes of earlier experiences, moments of abandonment, rejection, criticism, or feeling unseen. When someone provokes a strong reaction in you today, it is often an old, younger part of you that is being activated. Inner child work involves bringing warm, compassionate attention to that part of yourself, offering the reassurance, love, and validation you may not have received at the time.

This can look like placing a hand on your heart, picturing your younger self, and silently offering phrases of kindness and forgiveness in your own words. Practices that cultivate self-compassion have been associated with reduced stress, lower markers of inflammation, and improvements in anxiety and mood symptoms.¹² Over time, this softens patterns of self‑criticism and shame, helping you meet life from a steadier, more grounded self.

3. Make Peace with Your Triggers

Triggers are information, not enemies. Begin by gently listing what tends to trigger you over the holidays – particular people, topics, environments, or behaviours. Then separate them into two groups: those you can influence (for example, how long you stay at an event) and those you cannot (someone's opinions or choices).

For what you cannot change, practise emotional letting go through the breath, inner witnessing, or quietly repeating a grounding phrase such as "this moment will pass." Pausing when you feel triggered, softening your gaze or briefly closing your eyes, and breathing slowly for 30–60 seconds can interrupt the sympathetic "fight or flight" cascade, reduce cortisol, and support a calmer heart rate.¹³

Alongside these behavioural tools, some people benefit from gentle nutritional and herbal support for their stress response, such as adaptogenic herbs used under professional guidance.¹⁴ Consider speaking with your practitioner about whether a targeted adrenal or stress-support formula from the Rejuv range could complement your emotional work this season.

4. Healthy Boundaries Without Guilt

Many of us have learned to overextend ourselves during the holidays in the hope of keeping everyone else happy. With time and experience, it becomes clear that constantly appeasing others often leads to exhaustion, resentment, and physical burnout. Choosing smaller doses of interaction, changing the subject, or quietly stepping away when necessary are all forms of self‑care, not selfishness.

Clear yet compassionate boundaries protect your emotional and physical energy so you can show up from a place of fullness rather than depletion. Evidence suggests that assertive communication and boundary‑setting are linked with lower psychological distress and better overall wellbeing.¹⁵ Those you love still receive your kindness – the difference is that it now comes from a place of stability rather than self‑sacrifice.

5. Support Your Gut–Brain Axis

Your gut does far more than digest food – it constantly communicates with your brain through the vagus nerve, immune messengers, neurotransmitters, and microbial metabolites.¹⁶ Chronic stress and complex emotions can alter gut motility, microbiome composition, and barrier integrity, which in turn can influence mood, cognition, and inflammation.¹⁶⁻¹⁷

Unprocessed grief, long‑standing worry, or ongoing emotional suppression may contribute to gut dysfunction, increased intestinal permeability, and neuro‑immune activation in susceptible individuals.¹⁷ Supporting a healthy gut–brain axis during the holidays can therefore be a powerful way to steady your mood and energy.

Over the holidays, try to:

• Choose calming, whole foods such as warm soups, slow‑cooked dishes, and gently cooked or fermented vegetables.
• Prioritise meals that combine protein, healthy fats, and fibre to help stabilise blood sugar levels, which strongly impact mood and focus.¹⁸
• Minimise sugars, refined carbohydrates, and high‑glycaemic drinks, including some alcoholic beverages, which can drive inflammatory pathways and destabilise energy.
• Eat slowly and mindfully – chew well, pause between bites, and avoid eating while scrolling or revisiting conflict, so your nervous system can remain in "rest and digest" mode.
• If you use supplements, consider a high‑quality brain and gut support protocol guided by your practitioner; targeted probiotics and specific nutrients have been associated with benefits for mood and cognition in some studies.¹⁹⁻²⁰

These choices help reinforce gut integrity, modulate immune function, and create a more stable internal environment for emotional balance.

Your Invitation: Choosing Peace Over Panic

You are not required to repeat old patterns or play the role of emotional caretaker at the expense of your own wellbeing. This season, you can choose presence, self‑respect, and alignment – one conscious breath and one small boundary at a time.

If you find yourself slipping into reactivity, remember that this does not mean you are failing; it simply means you are human. Pause, breathe, notice, and gently come back to yourself. Healing rarely unfolds in a straight line – it is more like a spiral, in which you may revisit familiar wounds while gradually meeting them with more kindness and skill.

Lean into your spiritual practices, your dreams for the year ahead, and the communities that help you feel seen and supported. Above all, treat self‑compassion as a daily discipline; it is one of the most potent, research‑backed pathways to resilience we have.¹²