Tips for Managing Holiday Season Spending and Reducing Financial Stress
Many of our end-of-year holiday traditions involve gift-giving. It is wonderful to give and get gifts. Who is on our list and who isn't speaks to their importance in our life. It is often part of our love language.
Gifts strengthen bonds and solidify relationships. They build annual expectations of joy. We feel appreciated as receivers and cherished as givers.
Being generous is a valuable and valued virtue. We enjoy the positive expressions of gift-giving, such as gratitude, friendship, loyalty, love, humanity, community and respect.
But our cultural enthusiasm for gift-giving can lead to an over-zealous search for these desirable feelings. As a result, we end up with uncomfortable obligations, unequal exchanges, embarrassment, frustration and even anger.
It becomes a balance of expectations and needs met, all colored by our unresolved emotional history.
The holiday season brings joy, celebration, and often a long list of gifts and expenses. While giving to loved ones is fulfilling, holiday season spending can quickly add up and cause financial strain. To fully enjoy the festivities without stress, it’s essential to set realistic budgets and prioritize meaningful, thoughtful gifts over high-cost items. Consider alternatives like handmade presents, experience gifts, or group contributions that allow you to spend wisely. This season, find balance in holiday spending, focusing on creating lasting memories and heartfelt gestures instead of excessive spending.
Do we play a particular role in the gift exchange?
Designated Giver: Assuming an attitude of obligation, duty or properness to give that is fulfilled at any cost. For example, they shoulder the role of "the giver" because of social status or financial situation.
Unworthy Receiver: An inability to receive, not because of your actions, but because of who you are. For example, a stepmother/father/child is treated differently than a full-blood mother/father/child.
Martyr Giver: Forced into the role of giver by a higher authority. For example, complying with family directives to give generously and often even if it's too much or you don't like that person.
Of course, these dynamic roles are expressed on a sliding scale. We play a greater or lesser part depending on who the gift exchange is with and what is at stake in the relationship.
Genuine giving versus Over-giving
Genuine gifting comes from authentic, uncomplicated generosity and is fulfilled through excess time, money and energy. This giving leaves us feeling good about ourselves and those people and lives we’ve enhanced.
Over-giving comes from a need for appreciation, praise or relief of guilt, whether from the gift receiver or someone else in the dynamic. We'll feel depleted when we give too much and likely feel annoyed with ourselves or others. Over-giving is a sign of codependency—getting our self-value from the reactions of others or outside of ourselves.
If we are giving to affect our relationships by
Maintaining appearances,
Pressuring or manipulating, or
Covering up insecurities
Then, an uncomfortable emotion is driving us to these actions.
Yes, there can still be moments of genuine excitement during the exchange and follow-up thank-yous. But, if we are trying too hard or giving beyond our means, time, and energy, it’s time to resolve the emotions pushing us around.
Making Gift Giving Better
Resolving emotions around gift-giving won’t make us stop giving gifts! It will help us make better, more realistic choices as we lavish our time, money and energy on others. When buried feelings that trigger our actions are not involved, we’ll find more meaning and joy in our relationships. We’ll give generously from an undeniably true place. And we won’t have regrets later from over-giving.
EmRes makes quick work of triggered emotions
Emotional Resolution or EmRes is an emerging technology that uses emotional reactions to current situations to process those old, stuck emotional memories.
By addressing questionable reactions and feelings about gift-giving you are currently experiencing, EmRes resolves and removes the buried emotional component that causes its expression.
This is a case where the behaviors triggered by the emotion, such as overgiving, may be more pronounced than felt feelings before, during or after. Either way, EmRes sessions help you process the unresolved emotion at the root, eliminating it from your subconscious’s repertoire forever.
With the unresolved emotion gone, the felt and subconscious emotions expressed as behaviors change for the better.
Results are immediate, and usually, only a few sessions are required. EmRes “treatment plans” are self-directed and flexible to your needs and current situation.
Create a great gift-giving season with EmRes
References
The Importance Of Gift Giving And Holiday Gift Traditions, https://swoonsoiree.com/2016/12/importance-gift-giving-relationship/
The even darker side of gift-giving: Understanding sustained exploitation in family consumption system, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14705931231199386
Generous Person, or Over-Giver? Always Gift-Giving?, https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/generous-person-or-over-giver.htm
3 Ways Gift-Giving Can Cause Relationship Stress, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/irrelationship/202111/3-ways-gift-giving-can-cause-relationship-stress
Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash
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