How to STOP Overthinking | The Holiday Edit: Calm Confidence for Ambitious Women

If you are a successful, motivated woman struggling with overthinking, anxiety, and burnout, this special Holiday Edit episode is for you. 

Certified coach Megan Devito helps you find calm and confidence by teaching you what actually works to stop the thought spiral that sabotages your peace and presence.

In this episode, you will learn the 3 essential steps for a joyful season:

Set Real Boundaries: Discover how to set time limits, say no to commitments and gift exchanges, and protect your time off without guilt. We talk about the feeling of being "overcommitted and overwhelmed" and how to stop that monster cycle.

Regulate Your Nervous System: Learn techniques to get out of your head and signal to your body that you are safe, even in a "fight or flight" state, so you can think clearly. We cover alternatives for those who feel anxious about breathwork.

Practice Self-Compassion & Intentional Planning: Stop the shame spiral of "trash talking yourself" and start building a schedule and rituals that are aligned with your personal values—not what you think the holiday should look like.

Ready to change the game this holiday? 

The Holiday Peace Bundle is your complete system to navigate the season without people pleasing or waking up at 2 a.m. to overthink. It includes:

• A Self-Guided Boundaries and Balance Audit.
• 10 Scripts to shut down awkward conversations with kindness.
• Nervous System Regulation Quick Practices.
• A 30-Day Calm Calendar (like an advent calendar for self-care).
• The Less Overwhelm - More Life audio course.

Grab the bundle now to ensure you are ready to go before Thanksgiving! 

Thanks for listening!

You can help others find the help and encouragement they need when you leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review wherever you listen.

Connect with me on LinkedIn
Join me for a Boundaries and Balance Audit

You can feel calmer, clearer, and more confident in just 5 days with my audio course, Less Overwhelm - More Life! ($49)

Transcript

Hey there, welcome back to this week's episode of More Than Anxiety. I'm so excited to be able to talk to you about overthinking the holidays and how those two things happen to mix together to sabotage all of the peace and joy and presence that we really want. I'm gonna help you find a way to feel really good without going down that thought spiral that gets you stuck inside of your own head. So whether you're overthinking gifts, commitments, family dynamics, finances, people pleasing,

Let's talk about why overthinking happens during the holidays and what actually works to stop it. If we've not met before, my name is Megan Devito. I am a certified coach and I help successful, motivated women stop overthinking, break free from burnout and anxiety so that they can feel calm and confident at work, set boundaries that actually stick, and finally have the energy and peace of mind to be fully present for the people and the moments that really matter for them, not just during the holiday season, but all year long.

So let's talk about the problem first. Let's talk about overthinking. Well, here we are. It is, I'm recording this in the middle of November and that pressure is already building to have that perfect holiday while still achieving all of those Q4 goals that you set way back last January. You've got all kinds of different demands coming at you all at once. You have family expectations, like are you gonna show up for Thanksgiving? Will you be there early? Will you spend the night? How long can you stay? 

Or maybe you have school programs for your kids, where they have two programs on the same night. And never mind the fact that there's also sports and you have that presentation the next day, nobody's paying attention to how many things are on your calendar. That's your job. Maybe you're supposed to go visit Santa and make things extra merry and bright, and you're wondering how you're going to squeeze that in or how you're going to pay for it. Maybe there's social obligations like that office party that you're not really wanting to go to. Maybe you want to volunteer, but not for that one place that asked you.

Maybe you have strategic planning after hours, your cousin's boyfriend's last minute cocktail party, the neighbors want to go caroling and they need you to come, or it's just not gonna feel right if you're not there. Gift lists and secret Santa exchanges, finances, travel, and all of the shoulds that are ruining the merry in your holiday. So why can't you just say no? Why do you have to overthink all of it? Well, let's talk about what overthinking does to your brain.

I want you to think back about all of those past awkward moments you've had. Maybe it was a party, maybe it was a conversation that you had at work, maybe it was a gift that you purchased that you questioned for months after you gave it to somebody. What happens when we overthink is that we are pre-worrying about the future. We're worrying about what someone else will think about us, about our gift, about whether we showed up, how we behaved, what we said. We're just wondering ahead of time about things that haven't even happened yet or

Maybe you're wondering about the past, all of those things that I mentioned. So you could also be wondering about things that you know are coming down the line, things like Christmas budgets. How am I going to respond to things that haven't happened yet? I know I have to have a conversation with my cousin. The last time we talked, it was really tense, and they're going to be at dinner this holiday season, and ugh, what am I going to say?

This comes up so often on coaching calls. Somebody will say, I just don't know. I keep practicing and I don't know what to say. My question is always, well, how would you? You don't even know what they said to you yet. Our brain is so great at coming up with stories so that we can have the right response or that we can have the best response or no response. I'm going to make that easier for you and I'll talk about that later, but I have a holiday bundle that's going to give you 10 scripts to help you shut down awkward conversations with kindness so that you don't have to overthink.

So if we talk about the costs of holiday overthinking, it's not just that your brain is spinning in madness. It also affects your sleep because it's gonna keep you up at night thinking about all of the things that you're trying to solve that may or may not happen or have happened. You're exhausted. So when you get to work, you're not showing up well. You can't think clearly. Your presentation or your project isn't going to go the way that you hope it does because your brain is not thinking, one, about what it needs to be thinking about because you're so focused on other situations, but it's also not working well because you didn't sleep very well last night. 

Another way that overthinking can really sabotage your holiday or any time during the year is that it steals your presence, not present, not the little boxes under the tree with the beautiful bows, but actually physically being there  with your family, enjoying a movie or a game or laughing or the food or the lights, whatever it is that gets you excited about the holidays, you're thinking about what comes next or what already happened. You're three steps ahead or three steps behind. The other way that overthinking can mess up your day, your week, your year or your holiday is by stealing your joy.

The season becomes something to survive rather than to really be part of. Do you remember when you were a kid? And maybe this was your experience and maybe it wasn't. Certainly not everyone has great memories of the holidays. But do you remember sitting there and just being so excited for something? Like, it was the best thing. And now as an adult, you're wondering what in the world? What happened? Why do I feel this way? I just want to feel the way I felt when I used to sit down and watch Charlie Brown Christmas with my dad and

It was so much fun. We ate popcorn. It was a tiny little thing, but you were there and you were enjoying the moment. We want to get back to that place. The other thing that overthinking takes from you is connection. You're too worried to be yourself, to show up and just laugh and joke and enjoy the people that you're meeting, whether they're new people or old friends or family. And you don't have any energy anyway because you're burned out before the holidays even get there.

It is the middle of November. We've got a ways to go. And I want this to be a holiday that changes the game for you. But there's a bigger problem than just overthinking. Because you probably know that you're overthinking, right? Like, you know that your brain's on fire. But now you're overthinking why you're overthinking. So you're overthinking your overthinking. And this gets real meta real quick, doesn't it? Because being aware that you're overthinking doesn't necessarily stop it. 

If it did, you would just think your way out of it. And that doesn't work. And this is why the other things that you're trying don't work. The first one that I just mentioned was you're trying to think your way out of thinking. And what you do when this is happening is you do things like make more lists. If I could just get everything out of my head and onto paper, and there's some validity to that, if I could plan more, if I can anticipate more and write down my solutions then I would be okay, I would just stop thinking. 

But that doesn't work because you can't solve overthinking with more thinking. It's like digging yourself out of a hole. The more you dig, the deeper you get. The more you think, the more you think. And most of our thoughts aren't true and they're not real. They're just either habits or projections of the future or memories of the past. They're not actual problem solving thoughts, especially overthinking. The second thing you do is you distract yourself.

And we're pretty good at this because we have one of these with us all the time. It's so easy to look down and wonder how our phones got in our hands and what happened to get us there. You don't likely grab your phone and intend to spend 45 minutes or an hour on TikTok or Instagram Reels. You just scroll and dang, it feels good because you're not thinking about anything and the dopamine is flowing.

So you scroll on social media or you binge watch TV. You stay busy doing all sorts of things, cleaning, cooking, running errands, planning projects, thinking. But that doesn't work either because as soon as you stop, all of those thoughts that you never solved for and never dealt with come running back in even louder. You just postponed the inevitable. You didn't process it. And there's that word, right? It takes processing.

Another solution is that you just criticize yourself because you say things like, know I'm being ridiculous, but, and then you just go right back to all the reasons that you were being ridiculous and sort of have a self-fulfilling prophecy. You might compare yourself to other people that you've seen in the office or your family or your friends who seem just fine and you can't figure out why in the world you can't be too. So then you feel shame on top of the anxiety. That doesn't feel any better. And that's just, again, because we didn't process it.

So now you're overthinking why you're just bad at Christmas or bad at Hanukkah or bad at New Year's or bad at Thanksgiving or bad at Kwanzaa or bad at any other holiday that's coming up for you. So you start saying yes to things, because maybe that'll help. But all of a sudden, you've agreed to all the invitations that you've been invited to, and you're overcommitted and you're overwhelmed and it feels even worse. And now you're overthinking the schedule that you've created. And it's just one monster on top of the next.

I say this with all the love in the world because my friends have done it too. All of us have. Unless you are like a born boundary setter, you're probably trying to control everything. And that's the next thing. You try to micromanage all those little details. You know what I mean? I'm just going to sit here for a minute and I'm going to craft the perfect text response. I'm going to plan this party to the hilt, like down to the minute, everything we're going to do. And that doesn't work either because control is exhausting and it's a myth. 

There are too many variables to try to control everything and then when something doesn't go right, you either think that you failed or that you didn't plan it properly. One small change means that you have an absolute meltdown because my gosh, how did I screw this up too? Because none of these are the actual solutions. The real issue with all of these things, with all of these approaches is that you're trying to get rid of discomfort.

Because when you're overthinking, it's an anxiety response or it's causing you anxiety. And your body feels awful. And we don't tolerate discomfort well. We don't tolerate boredom well. We don't tolerate sitting in the feeling. We don't know how to just be uncomfortable without spinning out of control. We have to have different tools entirely to fix this. So here's what you need instead. You ready?

If you don't have a pen and paper, you could just pause this right now and come back, because I'm going to tell you what you need to do instead. You have to make little small changes. I don't want you to overhaul your entire life. That's going to freak you out and stress you out even more. But the first thing you have to do is you have to have some boundaries. And those probably feel uncomfortable. So you can decide. Do you want to overthink and feel uncomfortable? Or do you want to do something that's actually going to help you change.

The one change that we have to create is the foundation to have a calm body, a really peaceful and joyful holiday season. So let's talk about real boundaries. What do they look like during the holidays? It means putting time limits on events. If you only have 45 minutes to go to your neighbor's cocktail party, don't stay for two hours. And don't say, sure, I'd love to come and then break your own boundary. If you set 45 minutes, you can handle that with grace. I have a script for this Tell them, thank you so much for inviting me and enjoy the time that you set. Another way that you can set a boundary is choosing gift exchanges to take part in and saying no to the ones that you don't have any room in your budget for. And this might be the secret Santa at the office.

It might be the holiday exchange that you're gonna do with your second cousins. You get to decide. Whatever it is that works for you, go for it. Enjoy it. Enjoy shopping. Have fun wrapping. Feel excited about that opportunity to be a part of something that you wanna do. But if it doesn't fit and you're going to feel awful or guilty or overwhelmed or shame or anything else on the other end, it's okay to say no. Again, there's a script for this.

How about time off, knowing that you're going to have a crazy week between Christmas and New Year's? Like, I need this time to collect myself. But then you decide, OK, fine. I'll just come in anyway. I'll forget my time off. I just won't take it this year. Mm-mm. That was your time off. And you have to stick to your guns on that one. And I know it feels uncomfortable, because you probably have all kinds of thoughts about what your boss or your coworkers think. And they may think that, or they may not. They may think, damn.

Good for her for actually standing her ground. You get to decide what you think about that. Maybe you just need a night of nothing. Maybe you want to sit on the couch and watch the snow fall. Or maybe you just want to be able to go to bed at 7 o'clock, and that's OK. If you need personal space and personal time, and you don't take it, you're going to be exhausted. You're going to be resentful. And you're going to wonder why in the world you just can't hold that for yourself, because you don't have anything left to give anyone else.

So there's a trap involved here. If you're always trying to prepare for everyone else's disappointment, for what you could have said, what you should have done, what you might have, you know, what might have been, you're gonna be stuck forever. But the truth is that boundaries make you more present and more pleasant. Nobody wants somebody to show up to volunteer at a, like at the Salvation Army, you know these guys that are like out there ringing the bells in the cold? You can tell when they don't wanna be there, right? Like somebody signed them up for that and they're snarling and they're just standing there shaking their bell and they're like, I hate everything about this. Nobody wants to, nobody wants to give that guy money. But when you're excited about it, when you volunteer for something that makes you feel giddy with excitement.

If you are delivering gifts to kids who are in the hospital and you get to walk in and hand them something when they just don't feel good because they're in the hospital with the flu or something else and that lights you up, that's such a different kind because you showed up because you wanted to. We want you to be present, but we also want you to be pleasant here. Most of us need help with this. We need an actual script or a framework or a system. Like just tell me what to do. Yeah, that's in the bundle.

It's in there, all of it. The second thing we need is some nervous system regulation. Also, again, you have to get out of your own head. Here's why. Your nervous system is activated when you feel overwhelmed, when you feel anxious, when you feel stressed, or anything else. And you can't think your way out of that feeling.

It's actually almost impossible to think your way out of fight or flight because that part of your brain that does the rational thinking isn't turned on. So what actually works is to learn how to regulate your nervous system. Yes, through breath work. That breath work actually signals to your nervous system that you're okay, that you're safe. And now if you are somebody that's really anxious about the way that your breathing feels, breath work isn't for you. I've had lots of people who I've worked with who said,

Yeah, don't talk to me about breath work because then I start focusing on my breathing and it freaks me out because then I think I can't breathe. That's okay. There's lots of other ways to regulate your nervous system. There are techniques all over the internet and if you've had trouble finding one that works for you, message me. I will walk you through the process and help you find a way to calm your nervous system that does not involve focusing on your breathing. I get it. My daughter does not do breath work because that doesn't make it any better for her. She's got her own techniques that work.

and she can flip her nervous system over from fight or flight to nice and calm, it's simple. You just have to find the one that works for you and we can talk about that. It's super duper easy. The other thing that you can do that is really gonna help you keep that nervous system regulated through the holidays is move your body. If you live somewhere where it's cold, go outside and take a walk in a cold, bundle up, put on a coat and hat and a mitten and scarves and whatever else you have to put on and go outside.

And if you're like, absolutely not, no thank you, I'll go outside in May, yeah, I feel you on that one. That's OK. You can dance in your kitchen. You can do Pilates, yoga. You can meet somebody at the gym. You can just stand there and sway back and forth. Whatever it is to move some of that energy out is going to help you feel better. It's going to release tension. It's going to help you think clearly and to be able to make better decisions. Also grounding techniques to be more present.

All of these tools are going to interrupt that program that's running in the background of your head that is trying to get you to solve problems by thinking more. And again, remember, most of those problems are problems that we've created to try to feel safe, to feel connected to people, to make sure no one's mad at us, to make sure that they don't think bad things about the gift that we bought or what we wore or what we should have said in the meeting or how our presentation went or how we're failing at work, all of which are just thoughts that are scaring you.

Once you've grounded yourself, the next step is to make sure you're getting enough rest. Not because you're like, yay, guess what? I'm home alone. I can go to bed early tonight. Are you strategizing rest? Are you making sure that you're going to bed at the same time every night and waking up at the same time every morning? I know it's not easy. I know you have commitments that take up space and time, and that's OK. You can work around those things. But if your schedule is consistently not a schedule, you have to have some sort of consistency in there to make sure that you're not exhausted. I don't want you to collapse because you've pushed so hard and used all of your energy before the fun happens. I want you to be strategic about it. I want it to be preventative rest. So think about this like taking time to recover after you went to a party because you're an introvert. If you're an extrovert, you're probably all charged up. But if you're an introvert, you might need some quiet time. 

And that might mean just going to sit in your room by yourself. It might mean driving around and listening to music, whatever that looks like. You also might have to schedule in buffer days between commitments. Like, you know what? I'm not doing something Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I might do something on just Fridays, or I might say, you know what? I could do Tuesday and Friday. Whatever works best for you, having those buffer days there so that you can say no and save space to build up the energy and the peace of mind and to finish the other commitments that you have. And then actually creating rituals that give you the energy that you're looking for. Things like little self-care habits, right? Maybe you like bubble baths. Maybe you like to journal. Maybe you like to play Secret Santa for people. Playing Secret Santa and being giving and practicing gratitude are incredible ways to practice self-care, we're surrounded by these opportunities that somehow feel overwhelming when they can actually refill us. 

To do all of these things, though, you have to stop saying that rest is lazy. You have to be intentional about it, and you have to know that it makes things sustainable, especially during a very busy season. And finally, you have to have some self-compassion.

Honestly, if you're shaming yourself all the time and telling you everything you're not doing, where you're failing, how your cookies aren't as good as somebody else's, or your gifts suck compared to Uncle Bob's or whoever else's, that's not gonna make you feel better. Trash talking yourself never helped anybody because that shame spiral is gonna keep the whole thing swirling downwards. So when you start saying things like, why am I like this? Or what do I need to do to stop?

If you're comparing yourself to people who seem fine, who may be just as overwhelmed as you, you're just playing games with yourself and making yourself feel worse. You don't need to do that. There's so many reasons that this season is hard for people and overwhelming for people. Self-compassion isn't just some sort of special thing that you get every once in a while. You have to choose this.

It's choosing to give yourself grace and space. So let's be honest about the limits that you have, right? We can set these limits and be really intentional with them when you have boundaries. The last thing you really need is some intentional planning. How can I plan ahead, not plan for catastrophes, but make plans that are aligned with my values? And this is really different for everybody. Do you know your personal values?

This is a different form of control, really. So like everything that you choose has to fall in line with your boundaries or it's outside of something that's going to be exciting for you. So if you value time with family, if you value giving, if you value work, if you value being with your kids, if you value home cooked meals, if you value going to church or mosque or temple or anything else, those things have to be on your calendar.

And if you're not putting those things in the calendar and you're running everything else over the top of the things that are important to you, of course you're overthinking and feel overwhelmed because you're not getting what fills your cup. And don't try to compare your cup to somebody else's because their values, they need those. I have said this since the first day that I started my business. And that is we need everybody running on all cylinders. I want everybody doing their very best from their own personal gifts and why they were created.

Because if everybody learns how to do that, and I realize this is lofty and maybe like a little head in the clouds, but I'm OK with that. If everybody does that, everybody else benefits. And when we're all taking care of ourselves and benefiting everyone else, things are pretty great. So get clear on what you want to feel this season. Not what you think it should look like, but what you actually want to feel. Because this clarity on what's important to you is the filter for every decision that you're going to make. You're going to start thinking, does this actually align with what I want to feel? And this is the opposite of overthinking.

So let's talk about what I've got inside this bundle, because I've mentioned it an awful lot of times in this episode, haven't I? It's called the Holiday Peace Bundle. And I'm going to tell you how you can actually make it work for you. So I created this to give you everything that you need to navigate this holiday season without burning out, without people pleasing, without waking up at 2 o'clock in the morning and overthinking. Here's what you get. You get a self-guided boundaries and balance audit. So I've been doing these Boundaries and Balance audits on phone calls with people for almost a year, They're fantastic. And what it does is it runs you through seven different areas of your life where you get to rate those areas. And then you're going to ask yourself, why did I rate at this? And I just want you to list out, what did I do? There's going to be step-by-step guidance in there to see, OK, what keeps coming up? And if you want to go deeper with that, we can totally get on a call. And I will help you so that you can start seeing, ⁓ wait.

These are the things I keep doing and this is what I need to do instead. You're also going to get scripts for really common scenarios that I mentioned inside this episode so that you know exactly what to say with kindness, Whatever it is you need to say, there are scripts in there that you can use in 10 different situations.
everything from your job to your personal life to politics and anything in between so that you win the awkward conversations and you don't have to overthink those anymore. You got a plan. It's right there for you. I'm going to help you make decisions and learn how to handle pushback so that you can move forward and feel great about what you are doing for your family and for yourself this holiday. 

You're also going to learn nervous system regulation so that you've got quick practices that you can use before gatherings or tools when you feel overwhelmed to help you fall asleep at night so that you can go in and really enjoy the time that you've got because you're going to know how to set boundaries with kindness, with intention, and without explaining yourself. You're also going to get, yes, I know there's so many things in here, a 30-day calm calendar. It's like an advent calendar. And every day for 30 days, I'm going to give you either a little activity, a self-care prompt, a journaling prompt of something that you can do to give yourself a little bit of space, kind of a little hug for yourself, find a little more peace and a little more joy this season. 

Just fun things that don't take a ton of time. 10 minutes tops, unless you want them to take a lot longer. All of these things go together along with the Less Overwhelmed, More Life audio course, five days of audios that last six to eight minutes so that you can listen to them on your commute while you're chopping vegetables, while you're decorating Christmas cookies, wrapping presents or anything else to take things off of your calendar and out of your head in real time. No guilt, no shame, just more time and more intention about what it is that you want to do. You get to figure out what you actually want and then make decisions. This is absolutely perfect for people who are white-knuckling their way through the holidays, who just want to enjoy the season, not survive it get it now, be ready to go before Thanksgiving even arrives, which is next week by the time this episode airs. So the holidays are gonna be imperfect. There will be awkward moments, there will be chaos, there will be things that don't go as planned.

But you don't have to freak out, and you don't have to spend weeks trapped in your own head. You don't have to run endless scenarios to try to prevent chaos or lose sleep or be exhausted and grouchy and grinchy. You can be joyful. You can have fun. You can still do the things you want to do and say no to the things that make you cringe a little bit. I hope this was helpful. I hope that you know that you can stop thinking now, that you can calm your body, and that you can really enjoy the season.

Again, thank you so much for listening. If I don't talk to you this week, I will be back next week. Take care.