hi my name's carol ricard and welcome to the well you show i am joined by my they're no longer guests they're co host i call the pain detective and julie maddox who i refer to is the wellness coach and so welcome ladies so excited to be here so this is your first time tuning in to the well you show let me just tell you what it is  was a social worker at work at hospitals for twenty five years and the goal was to give people the tools before they go into hospital in order to live well so we've kind of that's what we're doing here today and we have a great show we're about interesting change from last year yeah i have well and what i always did in the hospital was i would actually i could have somebody in their first week with me do a worksheet and then five weeks later do a worksheet and  know that's the idea of our show and how i like to think of you know cause because i do workshop yesterday and i kind of describe the holidays is like a coin you have stress that goes along with holidays but if you look at the other side of the coin there's also what you can look forward to and the joy and kind and we can't separate distress away from the holidays so the question is can we manage it or minimize it  and so that's the idea of this holiday stress tug of war all right and i actually have some worksheets that i want to give the ladies and this is we're going to i used to tell my patients is this hospital that quite honestly is trying to pull you in now where we go any further do you all if you get too much stress do you notice physically your health changes oh yeah we have regis talking about that i was saying that i wasn't feeling well and i don't know how much of it is if there's something going around or the amount of stress yeah yeah and so it comes out physically yeah  more yeah yeah and for me it was like my head migraines and headaches you know and so so that's why i mean most of us all know that too much stress is not good for our health so particularly during the holidays is really the time and so kind of give you guys for you i didn't pick your brain so we're not flying you know just from zero point here but here is the idea of how this tug of war works is that if you have something in your yes it is what i'm going to write traffic is up here and if i have traffic that stresses me out even if i'm not going to shopping like you would if you know i'll go on like christmas shopping or anything i have to give shopping but you're going to do your regular old grocery shopping you still have to deal with yeah yeah and so if i got traffic on this side it means that i have to counterbalance it over here like it and distraction or coping a coping mechanism yup yup and what it should actually end up being is my music that while i'm stuck in traffic i could be listening to some kind of music graduate creates this balance now ultimately what we're going to do here today and all these work she said everybody's going to have access to because we like to put them up on the web page  i want to have more on that side and i have on this site and so that's kind of our goal we're just going to brainstorm and create our our combine tug of war if you want to general health  comments or related to the traffic i want to know about stress so if you've got stress on this side what do you want to do to manage the stress on that feeling and you know and we'll probably come up with some other stuff too because the goal is with my but you guys got an idea and you know what i want to use these two markers i think that'd be nice if we have a different color so you can see we can see which side stronger ok you want to start so i i'm going to go on what i had before because it's yours totally different and it has a little bit of stress because it's so different you get to that but i'll go back in time and out what it was like so i would say because i used to buy for clients for friends for multiple presents for family members aunts and you know i was exposed extreme well well you know what i was thinking was there was the selecting the presidents yeah but if you're saying that he had this other thing coming to mind actually when you said president it's the first thing that popped in my money yes oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean it's both sides to the president as you know because even if you didn't spend today that you're no change this year is major change so what's the change the change is that my son is out the country i have a lot houseful of his stuff so there's no room and i'm taking care of his  circumstances that created this difference but the truth is that we can make that difference not even having the circumstances we have so for example you know kind of the kind of agree you know because people have passed away their family disagreeably and so this is all right so we got to remember everything she's saying because those are really i'm sorry i don't know yeah it's ok it's ideas so even if you can't think of them i want to file them away so how about for you i had presents but also decorating the whole holiday feeling from the past i would do a lot in the house with trees there's a lot times we actually travel during the holidays activates you know do so much and then well let's just put this word up here expectations because a workshop i was doing at a company yesterday and we were dealing with holiday stress that was one of things we talked about was expectations what  just this this idea of you know just getting it all done to and that we talked about just kind of simplify and i think i want to put the other thing you set up here because i think this is another way we can deal with it is pick out favorites and that's one of the ways to the limits are set limits with your selfish the faith that's a good point because i said all right you know because i was so overwhelmed i'm not nothing nothing at all yeah and then i took out a few decorations and i heard i thought show you what we were going to have christmas at all but i'm like we have so much from yours i mean you know like a storage unit a  i think that you know and then because i used to feel like well you have to do the cookies because that that's kind of traditional so some point you got to make some cookies and and i used to be also go driving in looking at christmas decorations the lights yeah yeah so you put that on yourself yeah yeah well and again it kind of comes down to kind of expecting yourself to be able to do everything be superwoman you know  but yet i think traditions are really important because sometimes traditions we can get trapped by tradition feeling like we have to live we have to and they could be you know passed down from  generations and i'll never forget the best so i got to hear jamie lee curtis one time she was in princeton and she was speaking about eight nine years ago and she talked about her family dynamics was of on wellness and she was talking about alcoholism and how you know her family and her two greatest accomplishments in life were one her daughter and two getting sober because if you look at her family history proves good lord you know there were riots and she that when she had her daughter she decided that the chaos that happened around their gatherings actually i will put gatherings or that she's put family where you have good and sometimes when you bring people together  that she didn't want her daughter to have to experience what she experienced and so she created her own new tradition a new tradition and there are all holidays you know and would invite people over over no family i don't know about you all i don't have family close by so this hasn't been a part of my stressors for a good number of years but sometimes when we have family there body that can be the source of stress especially if people don't get along goes on on the holidays for people with family and what i came up with was that we have to fill this i think it is right but i doing up with saying if you have a particular sibling or getting along with my brother like we don't have to put it all together and we can avoid some of that chaos that goes on with that and and i guess is you know we've got we've got no guests but i'm also going to put here all right i just did that in florida we were down for a holiday season and in the past guess what would come up politics and the rule was no politics you year you know i have a lot of christmas cards but it's not in the back in the day when you know you would just get out your address book and you'd go through and then a hundred cards out or whatever besides the fact that the postage is is higher where we were how do you deal with that carol where do you feel your you feel your you have to send these cards and people do some people do i mean and i think is you know you can do an e mail sort of now i stopped doing christmas cards and i started doing new year's car ok and i just wait and actually i need a i just bought blank things in kind of bought a couple little stamps and just kind of stamp them up in a little color and it was wishing you and those cards are the tradition that they want to carry on and for others like myself i just you know a scaled down my what a quarter but it couldn't be could feel guilty or stressed if if you get these cards or you're like are they going to be mad because i'm not reciprocating so here's what i do i say to myself i guess work is because somebody else does or doesn't mean it i have to do it and they will get back at me by taking me off the list next year now but i think i think the end it comes back to sinking because you said a good as good as they're going to and i think i think the other thing that you kind of thing to do is socialize and if you think about computers and phones and even if i'm sending texts and technically socializing even if i don't feel like talking to anybody and i think that still an important tool we can use your whole to kind of do that you said exercise and what i always say to people is is that a lot times during the holidays people's exercise goes out the door and they think it's having a plan you've got a plan and build it into your kind of routine and even if it's just this five minute that five minutes is going to be better because it's going to balance it out it doesn't matter how long we kind of do these things for some of these doesn't matter how long i listen to music the question is if i listen for one minute it shows up on this side of the  yeah or like you said cinnamon and i think we can use things around home because lord knows you don't want to be out the traffic going charlie yet and i don't that no i was thinking back in the day shopping yeah you know you know there's going to be the stores are going to be  crowded try to go out off times maybe get there if you can i don't have to worry about that this year but if you can get there early before you because who wants to stand in lines that stressful everyday stress what's really important is to recognize that they can also work when it comes with holiday you know obviously this one because if you're dealing with family which none of us necessarily or you know what you might need to walk away say it's a good if if you do you walk away so you don't say something but it can also be one of our triggers as people walk away when you want to talk about it and yeah yeah so it's kind of like that aides and i want to give you guys they give everybody watching this the ace so number a number one is except what that means is that we he can't change any like we can't change the dynamics and me so you just have to accept the situation is what it is try the other one know kind of goes to what you said and that was of ward and if i can avoid bringing up stuff like me no politics if we can avoid politics everything kind of runs smoothly if you know there's a particular issue that somebody kind of just to avoid that and and even if you know somebody is going to come to you it's ok to avoid that person you know or meet that person when you have some some support around you there you could say ok clark so if you were my sister and i knew that our aunt you know macy was going to just kind of like an arrow on you and kind of try to cut you down when i saw her coming she the last one is alternatives so we can make different things so great idea i heard yesterday actually about money and presence this woman said did they greet no presence not for the kids not for the adults but what they did was they created an experience and so they all got together and they went to this like you know i don't know she said something i'm thinking like wasn't chuckie cheese but it was some kind of fun sort of fun plex thing and they all went there and instead of buying gifts you give people a great periods because you know even if things were different this year there's so much we have so much stuff we don't need more stuff to help to wrap to put in the tree so that looks like a lot of in fact she said this is the kids don't need any even more toys i mean they haven't they're oh i want to tell you guys this story because i learned this one last night i saw mattie at the open house for not me and she told me her granddaughter didn't need any more stuff for her birthday and i think it applies to christmas so what she did was she asked instead of giving gifts she went to the local is pca and asked them the animal shelter what they needed so she sent out to people a list of what the animal shelter was needy and it wasn't all new stuff it could be you she through this and instead of giving her gifts they loaded up a whole truckload of stuff and even people gave her some money but she used the money to do so mash one store nonprofit foundation called birthdays for a great yeah yeah and i guess is to me it comes down to the meaning right and quite honestly to me the meaning is ok if somebody gets pissed at me you know if i say well listen i donated fifty dollars to task you know in your name it's what i know that i help and i put it on the outside and said take two for my sister each person's was personalized and it was jelly beans oh ok but i wanted to put in the yeah yeah what what this is kind of like make a little bit a sale here because believe it or not ladies oh my goodness that's a good lives there you know and any idea is it if we could have family here and we can think of two or three things visions of needed to be the stronger team so that when we get through the holidays if you can enjoy the holidays and not have to have the stress the pain or just feeling pretty crappy because this side is winning instead of the strike over here so yeah but once we have our positive side more more yeah yeah yeah so so what we're going to do is i mean you know i want to thank you ladies for being here again today and we'll get all of this stuff up and you know we want to thank you and so here's to living well today