The holidays are supposed to be magical. Cozy gatherings, meaningful traditions, quality time with loved ones. So why do so many of us end up feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious, and desperate for January?
It’s not a character flaw. It’s your nervous system responding to a perfect storm of stressors — and understanding how that system works is the first step to navigating the season without burning out.
Why the Holidays Are So Hard on Your Nervous System
Let’s be honest about what the holiday season actually asks of us. Travel and disrupted routines. Financial pressure. Family dynamics that can range from mildly tense to deeply triggering. Packed social calendars. Sugar, alcohol, and foods we don’t normally eat. Less sleep. Less downtime. Shorter days and less sunlight. The pressure to make everything perfect and meaningful. The grief that comes when holidays remind us of people we’ve lost or traditions that have changed.
That’s a lot. And here’s the thing — your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between different types of stress. Whether it’s a work deadline, a difficult conversation with a family member, financial worry, or simply too many commitments, your body responds the same way: by activating your stress response.
A little bit of stress is fine. Your system is designed to handle it. But when stress is constant, layered, and unrelenting — which is exactly what the holidays deliver — your nervous system can get stuck in overdrive. And that’s when you start to feel it: the exhaustion, the irritability, the anxiety, the sense that you’re just trying to survive until it’s over.
Understanding Your Nervous System: A Quick Primer
Your autonomic nervous system — the part that operates below conscious awareness — has two main branches that work like a gas pedal and a brake.
The sympathetic nervous system is your gas pedal. It activates your fight-or-flight response, releasing cortisol and adrenaline to help you respond to perceived threats. Your heart rate increases, your breathing becomes shallow, your muscles tense, and your digestion slows down. Blood flow shifts away from your internal organs and toward your limbs so you can fight or run. This is incredibly useful if you’re facing actual danger, but your body can’t tell the difference between a tiger and a tense dinner conversation. It responds the same way.
The parasympathetic nervous system is your brake. Often called “rest and digest,” this branch helps you calm down, recover, digest food, sleep deeply, and repair tissues. When you’re in a parasympathetic state, your heart rate slows, your breathing deepens, your muscles relax, and your body can focus on maintenance and healing.
In an ideal world, these two systems would balance each other. You’d experience brief periods of stress, then return to a calm baseline. But modern life — and especially the holiday season — can keep us stuck with the gas pedal floored and the brake disengaged.
When your sympathetic nervous system is chronically activated, you might notice symptoms like trouble falling or staying asleep, digestive issues (bloating, heartburn, constipation, or the opposite), a racing heart or heart palpitations, shallow breathing or frequent sighing, tension in your neck, shoulders, and jaw, feeling wired but tired, difficulty concentrating, irritability or a short fuse, anxiety or a persistent sense of dread, getting sick more easily, and feeling disconnected from yourself or others.
Sound familiar? These are all signs your nervous system needs support.
The TCM Perspective: Stress and Your Vital Energy
Traditional Chinese Medicine has understood the effects of stress on the body for thousands of years — long before we had the language of the autonomic nervous system. In TCM, chronic stress disrupts the smooth flow of Qi (vital energy) throughout the body, leading to stagnation, imbalance, and eventually illness.
The organ system most affected by stress in TCM is the Liver. This doesn’t refer solely to the physical organ, but to an entire energetic system that governs the smooth flow of Qi and emotions, flexibility and adaptability, the tendons and eyes, and the processing of anger and frustration.
When you’re under chronic stress, your Liver Qi becomes constrained or stagnant. You might notice tension headaches, tightness in your neck and shoulders, jaw clenching, irritability, mood swings, digestive issues, menstrual irregularities, or a feeling of being stuck or unable to relax. In TCM terms, your energy isn’t flowing — it’s bound up.
Interestingly, this maps well onto what we understand about chronic sympathetic activation. When you’re stuck in fight-or-flight, tension accumulates in your muscles, digestion is impaired, and your emotional regulation suffers. The Liver’s role in TCM — ensuring everything flows smoothly — is essentially what a well-regulated nervous system does.
The Liver also has a close relationship with the Heart system in TCM, which governs the mind, consciousness, and emotional wellbeing. When Liver Qi stagnation persists, it can generate heat that rises and disturbs the Heart, leading to anxiety, insomnia, palpitations, and feeling emotionally overwhelmed. Again, this mirrors the Western understanding of how chronic stress affects mental health and sleep.
TCM also recognizes that prolonged stress depletes your deeper reserves — your Kidney energy, which we discussed in our winter wellness post. Running on adrenaline and cortisol is like taking out loans against your future vitality. Eventually, you have to pay it back — usually in the form of exhaustion, burnout, or illness.
How Holiday Stress Shows Up in Your Body
Stress isn’t just a mental or emotional experience. It lives in your body, and learning to recognize its physical signs is the first step to addressing it.
Tension patterns: Notice where you hold stress. For many people, it’s the neck, shoulders, and upper back. Others clench their jaw, furrow their brow, or curl their toes. Some people notice their hands making fists without realizing it. These tension patterns are your body bracing for threat — and if the threat never resolves, the tension becomes chronic.
Breathing changes: When you’re stressed, your breathing often becomes shallow and concentrated in your upper chest. You might find yourself holding your breath or sighing frequently (sighing is actually your body’s attempt to reset your breathing pattern). Deep, slow belly breathing is a hallmark of the parasympathetic state — and most of us rarely breathe that way.
Digestive disruption: Your gut is sometimes called your “second brain” because it contains its own nervous system with over 100 million neurons. It’s exquisitely sensitive to stress. When your sympathetic nervous system is activated, digestion essentially gets put on hold. Blood flow decreases to your digestive organs, enzyme production slows, and gut motility changes. This is why stress can cause bloating, heartburn, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, or that “knot in your stomach” feeling.
Sleep disturbances: Cortisol and melatonin have an inverse relationship. Cortisol should be highest in the morning and lowest at night, while melatonin rises in the evening to help you sleep. Chronic stress can flip this pattern, leaving you wired at night and exhausted in the morning. Even if you fall asleep, elevated stress hormones can prevent you from reaching the deep, restorative sleep stages your body needs.
Immune suppression: Short-term stress actually boosts immune function — it’s part of the body’s preparation for potential injury. But chronic stress suppresses immunity, making you more susceptible to colds, flu, and other infections. There’s a reason so many people get sick during or right after the holidays.
Emotional reactivity: When your nervous system is dysregulated, your window of tolerance shrinks. Things that wouldn’t normally bother you become triggering. You snap at your partner, feel overwhelmed by small decisions, or cry at commercials. This isn’t weakness — it’s a sign your system is overtaxed.
Practical Strategies for Staying Regulated
The good news is that your nervous system is adaptable. With the right inputs, you can shift from sympathetic dominance back to parasympathetic balance. Here are practical strategies that actually work:
Breathwork — your fastest reset. Your breath is the one autonomic function you can consciously control, and it’s a direct line to your nervous system. Slow, deep breathing with an extended exhale activates the vagus nerve and signals safety to your brain.
Try this: Inhale for a count of 4, hold briefly, then exhale for a count of 6-8. The longer exhale is key — it’s what engages the parasympathetic response. Even 5-10 breaths like this can shift your state. Use it before walking into a family gathering, when you notice tension building, or anytime you feel overwhelmed.
Another powerful technique is physiological sighing — two short inhales through the nose followed by a long exhale through the mouth. Research from Stanford has shown this is one of the fastest ways to reduce stress in real time.
Protect your sleep fiercely. Sleep is when your nervous system recovers and recalibrates. Sacrificing sleep to get more done is a false economy — you’ll pay for it in reduced capacity, impaired decision-making, and increased stress reactivity.
During the holidays, commit to a consistent bedtime as much as possible. Limit alcohol, which fragments sleep architecture even if it helps you fall asleep initially. Keep your bedroom cool and dark. And if you’re traveling, bring whatever helps you sleep — your pillow, an eye mask, earplugs, a white noise app.
If you’re lying awake with a racing mind, try the 4-7-8 breath (inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8) or a body scan meditation. Both help shift you out of mental spinning and back into your body.
Move your body — but match intensity to capacity. Movement is one of the best ways to discharge stress and shift your nervous system state. But the type of movement matters.
If you’re already depleted and running on fumes, intense exercise can add to the stress load rather than relieve it. Gentle movement like walking, stretching, yoga, or swimming may serve you better. On the other hand, if you’re feeling pent-up and agitated, sometimes you need to move that energy — a run, a dance session, or even shaking your body can help complete the stress cycle.
The key is to tune into what your body actually needs rather than forcing yourself through workouts out of obligation or guilt.
Set boundaries without apology. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and you cannot regulate your nervous system while constantly overriding your own needs. Boundaries aren’t selfish — they’re necessary.
This might look like leaving a gathering earlier than expected, saying no to hosting duties you don’t have capacity for, taking breaks during family time to be alone, limiting conversations with people who drain you, not responding to every text or email immediately, or letting some traditions go this year.
You don’t have to explain or justify your boundaries. “That doesn’t work for me” is a complete sentence. Protecting your energy isn’t optional — it’s how you show up as your best self for the moments that matter.
Limit stimulants and depressants. Caffeine and alcohol both affect your nervous system in ways that can compound holiday stress.
Caffeine stimulates cortisol production and can increase anxiety, especially if you’re already in a heightened state. If you notice you’re more anxious or having trouble sleeping during the holidays, try cutting back or switching to half-caff or green tea.
Alcohol is a depressant that might feel relaxing in the moment but actually disrupts sleep, depletes nutrients, affects blood sugar, and can increase anxiety the next day (sometimes called “hangxiety”). You don’t have to abstain entirely, but be mindful of using alcohol as a coping mechanism for stress, which can create a counterproductive cycle.
Create micro-moments of calm. You may not be able to escape to a spa for a week, but you can create small moments of regulation throughout the day. Five minutes of morning quiet before the chaos starts. A short walk around the block between activities. Stepping outside for fresh air and a few deep breaths. Putting your feet on the ground and noticing the sensations. A few minutes of stretching before bed. A cup of tea enjoyed without multitasking.
These micro-moments add up. They remind your nervous system that you’re safe and give it brief opportunities to recover.
Use your senses to ground yourself. When you’re feeling overwhelmed or dissociated, sensory input can bring you back into the present moment. This is the principle behind grounding techniques like 5-4-3-2-1 (name 5 things you can see, 4 you can hear, 3 you can touch, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste).
Other sensory strategies include splashing cold water on your face (this activates the dive reflex and quickly calms your heart rate), holding ice cubes, smelling essential oils like lavender or peppermint, stepping barefoot onto grass or earth, or giving yourself a firm hug or pressing your hands together.
Stay connected to what matters. It’s easy to get so caught up in the logistics and obligations of the holidays that you lose sight of why you’re doing any of it. Take time to connect with what actually matters to you about this season, and let that guide your choices.
Connection — real, meaningful connection — is also one of the most powerful regulators of the nervous system. We are wired to co-regulate with others. Spending time with people who feel safe, who see you, who you can relax around, is deeply nourishing to your system.
How Acupuncture Helps Regulate Your Nervous System
Acupuncture is one of the most effective tools for nervous system regulation. It works directly on the mechanisms that govern your stress response, helping shift you from sympathetic dominance into parasympathetic balance.
Here’s what the research shows: Acupuncture has been demonstrated to lower cortisol levels and reduce other stress hormones. It activates the vagus nerve, the main pathway of the parasympathetic nervous system. It influences the release of neurotransmitters including serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins. It reduces inflammation, which is both a cause and consequence of chronic stress. And it modulates the HPA axis — the system that governs your stress response.
From a TCM perspective, acupuncture moves stagnant Liver Qi, calms the Heart and mind, and restores the smooth flow of energy throughout the body. Points are selected based on your specific pattern of imbalance, whether you’re more anxious or exhausted, whether stress is affecting your sleep or your digestion, and what your body needs in this moment.
Many people notice an immediate shift during acupuncture treatment — the nervous system settles, breathing deepens, muscles relax, and the mind quiets. With regular treatment, these effects become more durable. You build greater capacity to handle stress, recover more quickly from challenges, and spend more time in a regulated state.
If the holidays tend to leave you depleted, anxious, or unwell, acupuncture can help you navigate the season differently. Think of it as preventive maintenance for your nervous system — supporting your resilience before you hit the breaking point.
You Deserve to Actually Enjoy This Season
The holidays don’t have to be something you just survive. With awareness of how your nervous system works and intentional support, you can move through this season feeling more grounded, present, and even joyful.
Give yourself permission to slow down. Set boundaries that protect your energy. Notice the signs that your system is getting overwhelmed and respond with care. And remember that taking care of yourself isn’t selfish — it’s what allows you to truly show up for the people and moments that matter.
Ready to give your nervous system the support it needs?
