Your Invitation to Meet Yourself This Holiday Season — A guide to Capacity.
- Amrit Bhullar
- Dec 5, 2025
- 5 min read
The holiday season often arrives with glittering lights, cheerful music, and invitations to connect. For many people, it's a time filled with warmth, excitement, and long-awaited traditions. And yet, in counselling sessions in December, a different story emerges - one of overwhelm, exhaustion, emotional heaviness, and strained capacity.
These two truths can exist at the same time: the holidays can be both joyful and draining. As counsellors, we help people navigate that paradox with gentleness and awareness. A key concept in this process is capacity.
Capacity refers to your emotional, cognitive, and relational bandwidth—the internal space you have available to feel, think, respond, connect, and cope during the holidays and beyond.
Unlike a fixed resource, capacity shifts from day to day based on stress levels, sleep, trauma triggers, life transitions, and sensory input. Understanding your capacity allows you to move through the holiday season with more awareness, choice, and compassion, recognizing when you're approaching your limits and adjusting accordingly. This self-knowledge creates space for genuine joy rather than forced merriment, helping you experience an authentic holiday season that honours both your excitement and your exhaustion.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY CAPACITY?
In therapeutic terms, capacity refers to your emotional, cognitive, and relational bandwidth—the internal space you have available to feel, think, respond, connect, and cope.
Capacity is dynamic, not fixed. It shifts from day to day and season to season based on factors like:
Stress load
Sleep and physical health
Trauma triggers
Financial pressures
Recent life transitions
Relationship dynamics
Sensory input
Time demands
Understanding your capacity allows you to move through life with more awareness, choice, and compassion—especially during high-stimulation periods like the holidays.
Why the Holidays Often Shrink Capacity
Even when the holidays feel exciting, there are often hidden emotional and cognitive demands operating under the surface. From a counselling perspective, this season tends to compress capacity because it often includes:
1. Increased Relational Demands
More gatherings, more conversations, more emotional labour. Even an enjoyable connection requires energy.
2. Heightened Emotional Load
The holidays can activate grief, nostalgia, loneliness, or unresolved family dynamics. Old roles and patterns often reappear without invitation.
3. Cognitive Overload
Planning meals, coordinating schedules, making travel arrangements, choosing gifts—each of these draws on thinking and decision-making bandwidth.
4. Sensory Overstimulation
Crowds, noise, lights, travel, and disrupted routines can strain the nervous system.
5. Pressure to "Feel Merry"
Many people feel they must be joyful even when they're tired, depleted, or emotionally tender. This internal conflict can further drain capacity.
In other words: You may feel excited and grateful—and simultaneously exhausted. Both experiences are valid. Part of staying grounded during the holidays is learning to recognize when you're approaching the edge of your window of tolerance. Common indicators include:
Feeling overwhelmed by tasks that normally feel manageable
Irritability, impatience, or emotional reactivity
Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
Withdrawing from social situations
Feeling numb, shut down, or disconnected
Losing access to your usual coping skills
These signs are not failures—they're internal signals asking for care.
Practical Guidance:
Supporting your capacity during the holidays isn't about avoiding everything or lowering expectations to zero. It's about staying aligned with what your nervous system can realistically hold.
Set Gentle Boundaries It's okay to say no, modify plans, or leave early. Honesty with yourself supports authenticity with others. | What this might look like:
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Build in Recovery Time Rest is not optional. Schedule quiet space between gatherings, errands, or events. | What this might look like:
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Simplify Where You Can This may mean fewer gifts, fewer traditions, shorter visits, or scaled-back hosting. | What this might look like:
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Pay Attention to Your Body Physical cues—tightness, fatigue, tension, restlessness—often reveal capacity limits before your mind catches up. | What this might look like:
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Choose Connection Intentionally Spend time with people who feel safe, grounding, and emotionally reciprocal. | What this might look like:
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Release the Pressure to Perform Emotionally You don't need to manufacture joy. Let your emotions be what they are. | What this might look like:
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Use Grounding and Regulation Tools Deep breathing, sensory breaks, movement, warmth, mindfulness, and co-regulation can help widen your window of tolerance. | What this might look like:
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Honouring Capacity Creates Space for Genuine Joy
When we stop forcing ourselves to meet unrealistic expectations, we create room for genuine connection, presence, and meaning. The goal isn't to have a "perfect" holiday—it's to have an authentic one.
By tuning into your capacity and adjusting accordingly, you offer yourself something deeper than holiday cheer: self-awareness, self-compassion, and emotional safety.
This season, allow yourself to feel the excitement and the exhaustion. Respect both. Listen inwardly. Let this be your reminder to pay attention to your capacity, and let it guide you toward a holiday that feels manageable, grounded, and real.
If you're noticing that the holidays consistently stretch your capacity beyond what feels sustainable, you don't have to navigate this alone. Sometimes having a space to explore these patterns with gentleness and curiosity can shift how you experience not just the holidays, but the whole year.
FAQ Section
How do I know if I'm honouring my capacity or just avoiding things? There's a difference between protection and avoidance. Honouring capacity means you're making conscious choices aligned with your wellbeing—you're saying no to preserve energy for what matters. Avoidance often comes with anxiety, guilt, or a pattern of withdrawing from all connection. If you're unsure, ask yourself: "Is this decision helping me stay grounded, or is it driven by fear?" Working with a counsellor can help you discern the difference.
What if honouring my capacity disappoints other people? Disappointment is a natural part of relationships, and you cannot manage everyone's emotions. When you honour your capacity, you're modelling healthy self-awareness and authenticity. People who truly care about you will want you to be well, even if it means adjusting plans. If someone reacts with anger or pressure, that may reveal more about their expectations than your worth.
Can I expand my capacity, or is it fixed? Capacity isn't fixed—it can grow over time through nervous system regulation, healing work, secure relationships, and building resilience. However, expanding capacity is a gradual process that requires support, not force. The goal during the holidays isn't to push yourself beyond your limits but to work within them, with kindness. Therapy can help you safely expand your window of tolerance over time.
How do I communicate my needs this holiday season? Honest, clear communication works best. You might say, "This year, I'm focusing on simpler traditions so I can be more present," or "I need more rest this season, so I'll be joining you for shorter visits." You don't owe anyone a detailed explanation. If your family is used to you overextending, they may need time to adjust to this healthier version of you.
About the Author
Amrit Bhullar, RCC is a Registered Clinical Counsellor at Eterna Counselling in Abbotsford, BC. Amrit specializes in trauma-informed therapy, nervous system regulation, and helping individuals develop greater self-awareness and emotional capacity. Her approach is grounded in gentleness, curiosity, and respect for each person's unique journey.
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