Glitter Ghosts and Gravy Boats: A Nervous System Survival Guide for the Holidays
The only gym where the equipment is your childhood and the membership started before you were born
The holidays are a neurological hostage situation with better food. Your skeleton has been running cloud storage for three generations of family trauma, and this is the week everyone decides to sync at once. Your bandwidth is insufficient. Your system is overheating. And grandma just uploaded another file called “why_arent_you_married_yet.exe” that’s crashing your entire operating system.
Your blood remembers every holiday before your brain catches up. Your tissue holds time differently than your calendar. That clench in your stomach when you hear a car door? That’s not anxiety. That’s archaeology.
Welcome to the annual Nervous System Olympics. Events include: competitive people-pleasing, synchronized eye-rolling, and the freestyle “I’m fine” while your cortisol does a floor routine that would get a standing ovation at the Anxiety Olympics.
Your throat already knows which words it will swallow today. Your jaw has been rehearsing its clench since you saw the calendar flip to December.
You…
