Coping With Holiday Stress: How an Attachment Resource Can Help

For many people, the holidays bring joy and connection. For others, they stir up stress, sadness, or old emotional wounds — especially when family dynamics are complicated. If you notice yourself feeling “off,” overwhelmed, or emotionally younger this time of year, you’re not alone. This is actually a very normal nervous-system response and it is important that we are gentle with ourselves when we have such experiences.

One tool I often use in therapy to help clients feel grounded during the holiday season is the Attachment Figure Resource. An attachment resource can be real or imagined and is meant to bring in positive qualities such as warmth, compassion, connection, and safety. It might be a mentor, coach, pet, spiritual figure, or simply someone you trust and feel safe with. Whether the attachment resource is real or imagined doesn’t matter: what matters is the felt sense of comfort and support it brings.

Holiday triggers often activate old emotional patterns, and the Attachment Figure Resource can help by bringing a sense of calm when emotions run high, soothing younger or overwhelmed parts of you, helping you feel less alone in challenging family moments, and supporting healthier boundaries and emotional regulation. It becomes an internal anchor—something steady you can return to whenever you need it.

A simple way to use this tool is to take a slow breath and bring to mind someone or something that feels kind, steady, or protective. Imagine this attachment resource truly being there with you—beside you, behind you, or offering comforting support—and allow yourself to really take in that sense of presence. Notice how your body responds, even if the shifts are subtle. Let that supportive presence stay with you as you move through whatever feels difficult, and if it helps, you can follow this by a few rounds of gentle EFT tapping to deepen the sense of grounding. Even a few seconds of connecting with this inner support can help you feel more centered and present.

If the holidays are hard for you, nothing is wrong with you. Your system is remembering old experiences and doing its best to protect you. From an EMDR and Adaptive Information Processing perspective, you’re not creating or imagining something that isn’t real—you’re accessing adaptive information and internal support that already exists in your nervous system, even if it sometimes gets overshadowed by older, maladaptive neural networks. With the right resources, including the Attachment Figure Resource, you can move through the season with more steadiness, grounding, and compassion for yourself. Please be kind and gentle with yourself this holiday season.