Strategies for finding joy this holiday season, from doing less to ‘silent mornings’

Not long ago, Niro Feliciano found herself sitting down to wrap Christmas presents for her four children at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, after already having attended a candlelight church service and hosted a dinner for extended family that same night.

It was a frantic end to a hectic holiday season and the moment she realized something had to change.

“I was like, this is just not healthy,” said Feliciano, a psychotherapist in Connecticut and a frequent guest on the “Today” show. “And I started to think, ‘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 aim of learning how to live a more complete life.

Feliciano loves the winter holidays with all their cozy rituals, but for most of her adult life she struggled to squeeze the cookie baking, holiday parties, Christmas movies and occasional picturesque sleigh rides into her already jam-packed life running a private practice while raising four kids with her surgeon husband.

“We run at an insane pace all the time, so as soon as I started hearing about holidays I used to get stressed. There was no bandwidth, there was no time,” she said. “And I kept thinking, ‘How am I going to do this?’”

In her new book, “All is Calmish: How to Feel Less Frantic and More Festive During the Holidays,” published in October, Feliciano describes how she mindfully shifted her relationship to 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 find themselves overwhelmed by the winter holidays, whether that’s because they are trying to do too much, or because they are dealing with soul-crushing issues like grief, loss, loneliness or illness.

“Over the 20 years now that I’ve been working as a therapist, I’ve found this is the time of year that’s the hardest for people,” Feliciano said. “My thought was, who doesn’t need a therapist during the holidays?”

Her clients used to joke that they wish she could come home with them and talk them through the season.

“The answer to that is no,” she said. “But now at least I can give them a book.”

Feliciano spoke with me about how she started feeling more present throughout the season, her transformative “silent morning” practice, how to handle grief at 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 to the holidays?

My relationship to the holidays has evolved. Especially when I was young and figuring out family and so impacted by social media, it felt like we needed to do what everyone else was doing so our kids didn’t feel left out. We would get it all done, but at the end of it, I was feeling drained and not joyful.

I didn’t want my kids to feel like this is the way we do it, where you sacrifice all your joy for everyone else. So they started to see me slowing down, they started to see me doing less and hopefully feeling I was more present and connected with them while also taking time for myself.

How does social media affect our experience of holiday celebrations?

It’s huge. I think it has affected us on two levels. The first is the comparison, which affects our perception of what we really want. Like, look at my crappy decorations compared to this woman who is not Martha Stewart but she could be. Then all of a sudden comes, I don’t feel as content. I’m not as satisfied.

But scrolling on social media also has a literal impact on our brain chemistry. We are getting these dopamine hits and then our body tries to compensate for it and that puts us in a state where we are more irritable, more anxious, more depressed. It’s kind of a catch-22 because we’re so exhausted and tired that, what do we do? We go to mindless entertainment and the dopamine hit.

In your book, you describe a practice you call “silent morning,” where you wake up early, light a candle, drink coffee and enjoy time by yourself, reading, journaling, praying or just sitting quietly before beginning the day. I’ve been doing it and I 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 most difference for how I felt at the end of the season. I felt like I created something that was just for me, and it was beautiful and it was something to look forward to and relaxing. Even if it was only for five or 10 minutes, it made a difference.

We don’t have a real tree anymore, so I always had a pine-scented candle that evokes the memory of winter and nature for me. I think part of it is figuring out what is going to evoke for you something beautiful and then incorporate it into the silent morning.

It feels 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 joy elusive this season. What do you suggest?

I go back to this idea that comes from dialectical behavioral therapy: Two things can be true. We can be living in very hard, painful circumstances and it’s important to acknowledge that and also recognize there are ways to experience joy; it’s just a matter of where to look. Oftentimes I think you have to make the choice that you want to experience joy and that you are going to look for it.

It may take a while to figure out how to do that, but if you think about what most matters in your life and if you do have some of those things, those are the areas we can connect with to find joy.

The holidays can be especially challenging for people who are grieving. What advice do you have for them?

I would say, for one, give yourself 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. You may not know how you are 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 that for you.

Especially if it’s new grief, trust your intuition for what you need in that moment. Think about one 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 conflicts that can arise around disappointing gifts. Is this something that comes up a lot?

That has come up with my clients forever. So many women feel so disappointed by that particular piece. It’s like, we do this for everyone else, why can’t anyone do it for us? It is especially significant for me because my husband and I have struggled with this too. We are 22 years married and now I’m very intentional about buying myself gifts and giving them to him and saying, “Hey, wrap this for me,” but it was a serious point of contention early on.

Part of it was my parents were very busy immigrant physicians who came to this country to work. They didn’t have a ton of time all the time, but gift giving was one way they expressed love. For my husband who grew up in a very poor Puerto Rican household where there were no gifts, he never saw how to do it, he never received it, so it wasn’t important to him.

It’s only in the last couple years that I’ve figured out why this is so important to me — that it feels like, “You don’t love me if you don’t put thought into gifts,” and not recognizing 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: It’s wrapping at 11 o’clock at night when he’s had 16 surgeries that day and suffering through it with me.