Not long ago, Niro Feliciano sat down to wrap Christmas presents for his four children at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, after attending a candlelight church service and hosting a dinner for family that same night.
It was a hectic end to a hectic Christmas season and the moment he realized something had to change.
“I thought this is just not healthy,” said Feliciano, a psychotherapist in Connecticut and frequent guest on the “Today” show. “And I started thinking, 'We need to do this differently.' Not just for me. For my family.”
Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books, all with the goal of learning how to live a fuller life.
Feliciano loves the winter holidays with all their cozy rituals, but for most of her adult life she struggled to fit cookie baking, Christmas parties, Christmas movies and the occasional scenic sleigh ride into her already crowded life running a private practice while raising four children with her surgeon husband.
“We ran at an insane pace all the time, so as soon as I started hearing about vacations I was stressed. There was no bandwidth, there was no time,” he said. “And I kept thinking, 'How am I going to do this?'”
In her new book, “Everything is Calm: How to Feel Less Frantic and More Festive During the Holidays,” published in October, Feliciano describes how she consciously changed her relationship with the holiday season by choosing to slow down, do less, and focus on “connection over perfection,” as she puts it. In 31 short chapters, one for each day of December, she offers down-to-earth personal stories and advice for people who feel overwhelmed by the winter holidays, whether because they're trying to do too much or because they're dealing with heartbreaking issues like grief, loss, loneliness, or illness.
“Over the 20 years I've been working as a therapist, I've found that this is the most difficult time of year for people,” Feliciano said. “My thought was: Who doesn't need a therapist on vacation?”
Her clients used to joke that they wished she could come home to them and talk to them during the season.
“The answer to that is no,” he said. “But now I can at least give them a book.”
Feliciano spoke with me about how she began to feel more present throughout the season, her transformative practice of “silent mornings,” how to handle grief around the holidays, and why gifts have long been a trigger point for many of the women she knows, including herself.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)
What is your relationship with vacations?
My relationship with vacations has evolved. Especially when I was young and discovering family and so impacted by social media, I felt like we had to do what everyone else was doing so our kids wouldn't feel left out. We would do it all, but in the end I felt exhausted and joyless.
I didn't want my kids to feel like this is how we do it, where you sacrifice all your joy for others. Then they started to see me slow down, they started to see me doing less and hopefully feeling like I was more present and connected to them while also taking time for myself.
How does social media affect our experience of Christmas celebrations?
It's huge. I think it has affected us on two levels. The first is comparison, which affects our perception of what we really want. Look at my horrible decorations compared to this woman who isn't Martha Stewart but could be. Then suddenly I don't feel so happy. I'm not so satisfied.
But scrolling through social media also has a literal impact on our brain chemistry. We get these hits of dopamine and then our body tries to compensate and that puts us in a state where we are more irritable, more anxious and more depressed. It's kind of a trap because we're so exhausted and tired that what do we do? We move on to mindless entertainment and the dopamine hit.
I didn't want my kids to feel like this is how we do it, where you sacrifice all your joy for others.
-Niro Feliciano
in your book, you describe a practice you call “ssilent metrotomorrow,“ where you wake up early, light a candle, drink coffee and enjoy time alone, reading, journaling, praying or just sitting quietly before starting your day. I've been doing it and find it transformative. What does it do for you?
During the holidays, I did it several times a week and I think that made the biggest difference in how I felt at the end of the season. I felt like I had created something that was just for me, it was beautiful and it was something I looked forward to and relaxed about. Even if it was only for five or ten minutes, it made a difference.
We no longer have a real tree, so I always had a pine-scented candle that evokes memories of winter and nature. I think part of this is figuring out what something beautiful will evoke for you and then incorporating that into the silent morning.
It seems like we're supposed to experience joy during the holidays, but after the year we've had in Los Angeles: devastating fires, ICE raids, layoffs in the entertainment industry. and beyond – Some of us may find it difficult to achieve joy in this season. What do you suggest?
I return to this idea that arises from dialectical behavior therapy: two things can be true. We may be experiencing very hard and painful circumstances and it is important to recognize this and also recognize that there are ways to experience joy; It's just a question of where to look. I often think that you have to choose that you want to experience joy and that you are going to seek it.
It may take you a while to figure out how to do it, but if you think about what matters most in your life and if you have some of those things, those are the areas that we can connect with to find joy.
The holidays can be especially challenging for grieving people. What advice do you have for them?
I would say, for example, give yourself the grace to not do things the way you've always done them. If it's too painful, you can try something new. Also, don't put pressure on yourself to make all these plans. Maybe you don't know how you're going to feel until that day. I think you just have to honor your feelings in the moment and surround yourself with people who will honor them for you.
Especially if this is a new grief, trust your intuition for what you need at that moment. Think of a person who you feel safe with, who wants the best for you, who you can be yourself with and spend time with that person during this season. It will help.
You also have a chapter on the conflicts that can arise around disappointing gifts. Is this something that comes up a lot?
That has always happened to my clients. Many women are disappointed by that particular piece. It's like, we do this for everyone else, why can't anyone do it for us? It's especially meaningful to me because my husband and I have struggled with this as well. We've been married for 22 years and now I plan to buy myself gifts, hand them to him and say, “Hey, wrap this for me,” but it was a serious point of contention from the beginning.
In part, my parents were very busy immigrant doctors who came to this country to work. They didn't have much time all the time, but giving gifts was a way to express love. For my husband who grew up in a very poor Puerto Rican home where there were no gifts, he never knew how to do it, he never received it, so it wasn't important to him.
It's only been in the last two years that I've discovered why this is so important to me: that it feels like, “You don't love me if you don't think about the gifts,” and not acknowledging that he never learned that language. It was my language. Now I can do this for myself and appreciate what my husband does to express love for me: breaking up at 11pm when he had 16 surgeries that day and suffering through it with me.
