Navigating the Holiday Season with Anthea Jane, Eliza Brearley, Fehraz Lateef, Liz Baird, and Kai Ash

The end of year holidays can be a both joyful and stressful time. The changes to routine and increased social demands – among other things – can lead to overwhelm and exhaustion.

Whether or not we celebrate Christmas, we often engage in activities at this time of year because we think these ‘should’ or ‘need to’ be done, or done in certain ways.

This year, we invite you to consider tailoring your December to meet your own – or your child’s – needs.

Please join us as several members of our Autistic community share some of their experiences and tips for navigating the holidays in ways that are responsive and respectful of their needs.

Transcript

Fehraz Lateef:

Christmas time. It’s a special time of the year when we come together with family and friends to share a meal, exchange gifts, and to reconnect, and give thanks for what we have. But it can also be a deeply challenging time with added demands, pressures, and expectations. What with Christmas shopping, Christmas presents, specialty foods, parties, Santa, it can easily become an overwhelming time. This year, we invited members of our community to share with us how they navigate this often challenging time. Kai Ash reminds us that we’re all different and finding what works for us can take some time.

Kai Ash:

When I first learned about Autism and how being Autistic had shaped my life, it was revelatory. This knowledge suddenly gave me access to a whole new toolbox of potential strategies to help make my life better. But here’s the thing, there’s no one-size, fits-all approach, as I learned one Christmas a few years back. Going in, I was very keen to put in place some changes to help me manage the usual Christmas Day stress. One idea that I thought would be perfect for me was to have a hidey-hole, a quiet place that I could escape to whenever I needed it. I’d read from other people that it had been very useful for them, and I figured that it would be the same for me too, but I was wrong about that. Sure, having a quiet, solitary space was nice, but it was also quite lonely. I was cut off from everyone else. I’d prepared them all ahead of time, telling them that I might need to duck out to recharge. So they were trying to be supportive by just, well, leaving me there. They were doing all these Christmas things, and I was on my own, and far from being a relief, it was unpleasant, and that was a surprise. I hadn’t realised how much I liked these family get-togethers. I was so taken up by the overwhelm that I would often experience, that I’d forgotten that I actually like seeing my extended family. I like Christmas. I just needed to find a way to make it easier to cope with, and hiding away, separating myself was not it. Not for me, and that’s okay. I chalked that year up to experience and tried again with something else the next year.

Fehraz Lateef:

Liz Baird reminds us that making time for ourselves in the days leading up to and after Christmas can help us better prepare and recover.

Liz Baird:

One thing that I have learned about myself is that I need time to adapt to any changes in my routine. Even though Christmas break is an enjoyable time for me, I do notice that I feel even more tired after finishing work for the year. This took me a while to wrap my head around, as I didn’t understand how having more time to rest seemed to lower my energy levels. My work tends to operate up until Christmas, about the 23rd of December, which does not give me much time to prepare for Christmas day. I find that either taking a few days off before the closing date can help me give the time I need to adjust, as does ensuring that I have a very relaxing week after Christmas and can recoup then. I find that acknowledging and accepting my needs helps me to plan for a Christmas that is enjoyable for me, which has far better outcomes than expecting myself to push through and deal, like everybody else seems to do.

Fehraz Lateef:

Liz also reminds us of the importance of approaching Christmas mindfully.

Liz Baird:

I have found that I need to be more mindful leading up to the holiday season and prepare myself for the busyness that extends throughout the whole month of December. I find that there are a lot of demands leading up to Christmas, including additional social obligations, such as Christmas parties and tasks to complete, such as buying presents. This is on top of finishing up my work for the year, all while feeling tired from the months prior and needing a break. For me, I need to evaluate where I am at and what’s achievable for the week ahead. This means making these additional obligations as easy as possible for me to take on, but also recognising that sometimes I need to say no. Examples are prioritising the tasks and events that are important to me, meeting closer home in a quieter and less busy environment and for shorter timeframes. I remind myself that I can’t do everything in this busy time, but also, that I don’t have to.

Fehraz Lateef:

Whether it’s sitting down to a meal together, or playing cricket after lunch, or dressing up as Santa to hand out gifts, we all have traditions that are unique to our families. Regardless of how we may feel about these traditions, we are often expected to participate. Eliza talks about feeling anxious about one of her family’s traditions and how she gradually overcame that anxiety.

Eliza Brearley:

If someone was to ask me if I like Christmas, I would say, yes, and it’s the best time of the year, but it wasn’t always like that for me. Hi, my name is Eliza, and something that you may not know about me is that I didn’t always like Christmas, and that was tricky, especially when my grandmother, mum, sister, aunties, and cousins, all loved getting into the spirit of Christmas and continuing our family traditions. So, the good thing about traditions is that they become more predictable and you know what to expect.

In our family, my mum was taught her Christmas traditions through her mum, for example, taking Santa photos which allowed her to continue those traditions with her kids. The Christmas traditions of taking Santa photos was fine for my sister, but not so much for me. For someone who was on the Autism spectrum, I was very overwhelmed seeing the big man in the red suit. My mum told me the story that every time I saw Santa, I would cry and scream the place down and she would have to take me home. Unfortunately, that year, the Christmas photos didn’t work out, but mum came up with the idea of still doing a photo, but it was a Christmas theme instead without Santa. The Christmas-themed photo worked really well, because the person that I was petrified of, Santa, was not around, and it made me more comfortable. I saw it from when I was eight years old, that my auntie wanted all the grandkids to be in a Santa photo to give to our grandparents. Until this point, I was still avoiding Santa photos, but I really wanted to be in the Santa photos with my cousins for my grandparents. I had to face my fears, and I was in the photo, but I was standing the furthest away, but I was still in the photo. So that was the first of many Santa photos to come and to build my confidence around Santa.

Fehraz Lateef:

Another thing we can do is create our own traditions, traditions that meet our needs.

Liz Baird:

One change that I suggested to my family a few years ago was to introduce a secret Santa for Christmas dinner. I find that buying gifts takes up a lot of capacity for me, and that it is difficult to buy an individual gift for each family member, even though I have a relatively small family. Doing a secret Santa means that now I only have to organise one gift for Christmas dinner which makes a big difference for me, and I think, for some of my relatives as well. While there was some initial resistance to changing this process, this is now how we organise our gifts every year.

Anthea Jane:

As a lot of you know, with Autism, a big thing can be sensory issues around food and that sort of thing. So, what we do is we do whatever it is for the adults in the family which can be quite a traditional meal, or something in between. And for our children, we go and get them McDonald’s. We get them a Happy Meal for Christmas Day, and that’s what they have for lunch. They know that’s what they’re going to have. They know that’s what they’re going to expect. It’s going to be the same as it always is. And yeah, it just helps to keep things a bit more relaxed for them. We’re re not trying to make them eat things that they’re not used to on a day that’s already with heightened stress, lots of sensory noises and you know, smells as well from a Christmas lunch that they’re not used to.

Eliza Brearley:

I pick my own Christmas present, so I know that I love it, so I don’t get stress and anxiety when it comes to opening my presents on Christmas Day.

Fehraz Lateef:

I look forward to Christmas, but when the day comes, I generally have difficulty coping. It has been this way every year, until three years ago, when my family and I decided to try something different. I’ve written a poem about it. The poem was inspired by something my eldest son said to me at the end of Christmas Day, that first year when we first made the change. Here is the poem.

‘Today was the best Christmas ever’, he tells me as he hugs me tightly. ‘You didn’t get angry once.’ I’ve always loved Christmas. The anticipation, the music, the sweets, and decorations. But come Christmas day, I freak out and ruin everything. This year, we had Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. It freed Christmas day up. We spent the day opening presents and enjoying leftovers. And then Shalome and the kids went for a swim, and I took some time for myself. Stress free. Pressure free. It was a good day. But even more than that… it was the best Christmas ever. I didn’t get angry once.”

It’s often hard for me to identify what my needs are. It’s not like I suddenly realised what my needs are and decided to make a change. It actually happened the other way around, where making a change helped me identify what I needed. After having Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, I found that I wasn’t stressed on Christmas day, and it’s then that I realised what I needed, which was more time and to spread things out. Once these needs were met, I could relax and my, we have all enjoyed our Christmases so much more since.”

Here are some final tips from our contributors.

Kai Ash:

For those who celebrate Christmas, there’s often a strong expectation that we’ll be experiencing happiness on that day, but we might instead find ourselves feeling sad or alone and isolated, even when surrounded by our loved ones. Families tend to know us from our very first day. We grow up together. We remember every mistake each other make, and every poorly planned adventure. We think we know each other best because we’ve known each other for the longest. This means that families aren’t always accepting of the changes we make in our lives, as we learn more about our Autistic selves and our needs. They may even deny that we are Autistic, particularly if we’re identified later in life or are skilled at masking. This has, at times, been my experience with some family members struggling to accept and embrace me for who I’ve become. And without being fully aware of it, I was carrying around a lot of sadness about that; sadness that I didn’t want to look at too closely. But then one Christmas, I read an article on ABC News. It was by a fellow trans man who was struggling with his family’s behaviour at Christmas. He wrote this line that floored me, and it was this, “We’re allowed to feel sad at Christmas.” In one line, he gave me permission to feel the sadness I was carrying, and amazingly, just by letting myself feel sad, I found that I was able to save myself a lot of stress and angst, as I was no longer putting pressure on myself to feel cheerful. Even better, I found that once I accepted my sadness, it didn’t stick around for that long. It was almost like it needed to be acknowledged and felt before it could leave.

Liz Baird:

My tip for dealing with changes in routine over the holidays is to recognise the impact that this may have on you, and to accept this, even if it seems to be illogical. I find it challenging to notice my energy levels and so need to be consciously looking out for signs of how I am feeling, and linking these to recent events. It may also take me several occurrences to work this out, but once I do, it is much easier to plan for ways to make future events more manageable.

Eliza Brearley:

So my tip for family is just to continue your family traditions and find ways to include your child and support them, and don’t give up. Because Christmas always felt so far away and I was super unfamiliar with it, my anxiety around Christmas and the celebrations, made me not the biggest fan of the festivities. Each year, it got easier and easier, and the not so familiar became familiar. Now, I love Christmas and all the Christmas traditions that we do as a family.

Anthea Jane:

Thinking outside of the box of what things are traditional, what are socially accepted, you know, you can, it’s your family. You can make the event work for your family, because the other thing that I say is doing these things, to help regulate people keep sensory overload at bay, emotional overload at bay, all of that really helps to reduce the risk of meltdowns and shutdowns at the end of the day, at the end of the week, whenever it may be. If you’re still feeling a bit funny about it all, and people are going to say, oh, why are you doing things differently? Those people that you’re trying to please likely aren’t going to be there at the end of the day when either yourself, your children, or all of you, are having a meltdown or shut down, and really struggling. Those people aren’t going to be there to help you through. So thinking, you know, let’s make this work for our family the best we can, so that we can have a great time, and we don’t have to deal with any or as many meltdowns or shutdowns afterwards. You know, if there are still some, then that’s okay, but you know, you’ve done things in the way that works for you and for your family.

Kai Ash:

My tip for managing our needs over the holidays is the old cliche, “Try, try, and try again.” Not every strategy will work for you, and you’re allowed to misstep along the way.

Fehraz Lateef:

From everyone at Reframing Autism, have a safe and happy holidays.

Anthea Jane:

I wish everyone a happy holidays and yeah, hopefully this was useful to you.

Eliza Brearley:

Merry Christmas.

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