Do family gatherings make you feel anxious?
You’re at a get-together, heart racing, palms sweating. A well-meaning family member notices and says, “Just relax! It’s Thanksgiving!” Instantly, you feel worse. Now you’re anxious and ashamed that you can’t just “snap out of it.”
“Just relax” might be the most common (and most harmful) advice given to anxious people during the holidays. While it feels supportive to the speaker, it lands as invalidation to the listener.
As a therapist at DC Metro Therapy, I work with clients every day who’ve internalized this message and learned to hide their anxiety rather than understand it. I want to help you understand why this phrase lands so poorly, and what you can do instead when coping with anxiety this season.
“Why Does Just Relax Make Me Feel Worse?”
Anxiety Is a Biological Response, Not a Choice
Anxiety isn’t something you decide to feel. It’s a nervous system response. When someone says “just relax,” they’re essentially saying “just turn off your nervous system,” which is about as useful as telling someone with a broken leg to “just walk it off.”
The autonomic nervous system doesn’t take orders. You can’t command yourself out of a fight-or-flight response any more than you can tell your heart to stop beating.
Your brain is involved in both insomnia and anxiety in ways that many people don’t realize. The harder you push anxiety down, the more it resists. Anxiety isn’t something we can command away.
It Triggers Shame and Self-Blame
When you can’t follow the “simple” instruction to relax, you internalize a painful message: What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just relax when anxious? Everyone else can stay calm. I should be able to do this.
This shame creates a second layer of suffering on top of the original anxiety. Now you’re not just anxious, you’re anxious about being anxious.
Research shows that chronic emotional invalidation in childhood is linked to increased anxiety, depression, and difficulties with emotion regulation in adulthood. When our feelings are repeatedly dismissed with phrases like “just relax” or “calm down,” we learn that our emotions aren’t valid, and that message can follow us for years.
It Turns Anxiety Into a Battle Instead of Information
“Just relax” frames anxiety as the enemy, turning it into something you need to defeat or suppress. But anxiety is rarely the “final stop.” It’s a signal that deeper emotions are pushing up: fear, sadness, anger, or guilt.
I teach my clients: anxiety is a smoke alarm. Don’t silence it, figure out what’s burning.
True healing means giving space to the anxiety, asking what it’s protecting, and noticing the emotions underneath.
The Holiday Context: When “Just Relax” Hurts Most
Why the Holidays Amplify Everything
The holidays bring a lot at once.
- Complex family dynamics and old wounds
- A pressure to make everything perfect or be joyful (even if you’re not feeling it)
- Grief over people who are no longer at the table or relationships that have changed
- Financial strain and jam-packed calendars
- Unrealistic expectations of joy, gratitude, and togetherness
When someone says “just relax” during this intense time, it dismisses all these real pressures you’re experiencing.
Family Roles Get Reinforced
In family systems, “just relax” often reinforces long-standing roles: the “calm one,” the “dramatic one,” the “overreactor.”
If you grew up hearing “calm down” or “you’re too sensitive,” you likely carried that script into adulthood. The holidays bring you right back into that old family story, where your feelings weren’t welcome and anxiety was treated as a character flaw.
What Invalidation Does to You
Invalidation Teaches You to Distrust Your Own Emotions
When your feelings are repeatedly dismissed, you learn a dangerous lesson: that your emotions aren’t valid and you can’t trust what you feel. Worse, you learn that it’s not okay to feel what you feel, which makes feelings themselves feel unsafe.
Chronic invalidation erodes your ability to:
- Recognize your own needs
- Set healthy boundaries
- Ask for support when you need it
- Feel difficult emotions
- Trust your gut instincts
Studies show that if emotion invalidation is characteristic of a person’s childhood environment, they are more likely to experience anxiety and difficulties with emotion regulation as an adult. When we’re conditioned to believe our emotional responses are wrong or excessive, we lose connection with our internal compass.
Suppressed Emotions Don’t Disappear, They Relocate
When you push anxiety down, it doesn’t go away. It often resurfaces as:
- Insomnia and disrupted sleep
- Chronic pain and tension
- Digestive issues
- Panic attacks
- Emotional numbness or disconnection
The body carried what we don’t process. What you don’t process emotionally, you often experience physically.
Anxiety Becomes Something to Hide
When “just relax” is the message you receive, anxiety becomes shameful, something to perform away rather than understand.
You learn to:
- Over-perform calmness
- Disconnect from your feelings
- Avoid vulnerability with others
- Battle your own nervous system
This creates the very cycle you’re trying to break.
What Helps When You’re Anxious During the Holidays
Managing stress during the holidays starts with changing how you respond to your own anxiety. Here are evidence-based strategies that work.
Validate Yourself First
Instead of trying to force yourself into a relaxed state, try saying to yourself:
- “It makes sense I’m feeling anxious right now.”
- “My feelings are valid, even if others don’t understand them.”
- “I don’t have to be calm to be okay.”
Self-validation doesn’t mean agreeing with every anxious thought. Instead, it means acknowledging that what you feel is real and understandable given your circumstances. You can heal your chronic symptoms when you have the knowledge and tools.
Give Yourself Permission to Feel
Replace self-criticism with permission:
- “It’s okay to feel anxious”
- “I don’t have to hide this or fight it”
- “Let me notice what I’m feeling without judgment”
Permission conversely reduces anxiety’s intensity. When you stop fighting it, it loses power.
Get Curious About What’s Underneath
Shift from fighting anxiety to exploring it:
- “What do I notice in my body right now?”
- “If this anxiety could talk, what might it be trying to tell me?”
- “What feelings might be underneath this?” (fear, sadness, anger, guilt)
Mindfulness-based approaches that foster curiosity about anxiety rather than avoidance have been shown to reduce anxiety symptoms and improve emotional regulation.
Want help identifying what you’re really feeling?
Many of my clients struggle to name the emotions underneath their anxiety. I created a free emotional awareness worksheet to help you start identifying and tracking your feelings. It’s a simple tool that can make a big difference in understanding what your anxiety is trying to tell you.
Practical Grounding Techniques for Holiday Anxiety
When anxiety is high, these can help you regulate your nervous system:
5-4-3-2-1 grounding: Name 5 things you see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you hear, 2 things you smell, 1 thing you taste.
Bilateral tapping: Gently tap alternating knees or shoulders to calm the nervous system.
Longer exhales: Breathe in for 4, out for 6. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
Naming emotions: “I notice I’m feeling anxious. I also notice some sadness underneath.”
What You Can Ask For (Instead of Fighting Alone)
You deserve support that helps. You can ask for:
- “Can we take a break from this conversation?”
- “I need a few minutes alone to ground myself”
- “It would help if you could just sit with me, not try to fix it”
- “Can you acknowledge that this is hard for me?”
The Bottom Line
“Just relax” isn’t helpful advice; it’s invalidation cloaked as support. It communicates that your feelings aren’t welcome and fuels shame, suppression, and disconnection.
The holidays amplify this dynamic. Old family patterns resurface, stress runs high, and anxiety becomes something to hide rather than understand.
But there’s another way.
When you validate your own anxiety, make space for it, and get curious about what it’s protecting, you break the cycle. You learn that anxiety isn’t the enemy, it’s information. And the feelings underneath (fear, sadness, anger, grief) deserve your attention.
Next Steps This Holiday Season
Notice the pattern: When do you tell yourself to “just relax”? What would self-validation sound like instead?
Practice permission: Let yourself feel anxious without making it mean something’s wrong with you.
Explore what’s underneath: What is your anxiety trying to protect you from?
If you’re in the DC Metro area and struggling with holiday anxiety, family dynamics, or chronic invalidation, reach out to DC Metro Therapy. We offer compassionate, evidence-based therapy that helps you understand your anxiety, not fight it.
