The holiday season can be a stressful time. With the combined stressors of holiday shopping, financial strain, difficult relatives, travel stress and a busy schedule of demands, many people find themselves more stressed than usual. Women, who often shoulder the bulk of the added holiday burden as far as baking, shopping, coordinating, party-throwing and planning are concerned, are often particularly stressed during this time.

This added stress can come out in many different ways. Some people respond to stress emotionally, either feeling anxiety, depression or anger and frustration. Others respond with a weakened immune system, getting sick more frequently (which is more of a danger during this season anyway, as people crowd indoors and swap germs in airports and malls). Others just power through and find themselves battling burnout by the end of the year.

As people try to cope with all these stressors, relatively few people take the time to learn new stress management practices; most just use their regular coping tactics, but to a greater degree. This is fine for people who normally cope with stress in a healthy way. For many people--people who do use some healthy coping techniques--also cope with stress in unhealthy ways, either with 'comfort food', a glass of wine, a shopping trip or something similar. These behaviors aren't the healthiest coping techniques to begin with, but they aren't generally as harmful as when they're taken to an extreme. Under increased pressure, mildly unhealthy coping becomes emotional overeating, excessive drinking, chain smoking, compulsive buying, and the like. And these responses to stress generally add more stress.

How does one deal? By replacing unhealthy coping with healthy stress management techniques.

First, finding some healthier ways to reduce stress can make quite a difference here because, when there is less stress to react to, unhealthy responses can diminish. Also, when healthy coping skills are substituted for unhealthy ones, it's easier to let go of unhealthy habits. Finally, after working harder at healthy stress management (which can include ideas mentioned in the resources below), if you still find yourself feeling overwhelmed with stress or coping in a way that causes problems in other areas of your life, it might be a good idea to talk to someone and find resources to help.

Holiday stress can be a bit daunting, but it can also be just the thing you need to cause you to reexamine your lifestyle and your reactions to stress, and create healthier habits for the coming year, and for your future. Here are some resources to help.

Coping Resources from Elizabeth Scott

Unhealthy Responses to Stress: What Are They?

Quiz: Is Your Stress Level Unhealthy?

Building Resilience to Stress

Healthy Coping Strategies

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Find More Holiday Stress Relief Resources In The Holiday Survival Guide

Whether you're dealing with holiday stress (from excessive busy-ness and other things), financial stress (from buying masses of gifts), school stress (finals? mid-terms?), family stress (revertigo, anyone?), or general life stress, this time of year often brings additional stress. Sometimes this stress affects us in obvious ways--we feel stressed!--and sometimes the stress sneaks up on us.

We may not realize that we're doing too much until we feel panicked from having no time to do what needs to be done; we may not realize the extent of our anxiety at seeing extended family until we find ourselves dreading getting on that plane. Sleepless nights, headaches, and other symptoms of stress might clue us in before we realize on our own that our stress levels have gotten too high.

Why not get proactive, and manage the stress before it surprises us or feels overwhelming? Take a minute to check-in with yourself, looking inward to scan your feelings, and mentally scanning your body for tension and physical symptoms of stress. Examine what you're feeling, and pinpoint the areas that are causing the most stress. And manage stress with a multi-layered approach. The resources below can help.

• What Is Stress, and How Do I Manage It?

• How To Tell When It's Too Much Stress

• Stress and Immunity

• Common Symptoms of Too Much Stress

• 5 Minute Stress Relief

When have you known that your stress levels were too high and you needed to take some real steps toward stress management? What did you do, and what worked well? Share you story here, or in the comments, and enjoy other readers' stories as well.

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There's a lot said about holiday stress, and for good reason: the holiday season has earned itself a reputation for being one of the most stressful times of year for good reason! All the gift shopping and money-spending, the time with difficult family and co-workers whom we might usually avoid, the high expectations and extreme busy-ness of it all can take their toll. Still, while the holidays can be a surprisingly stressful time, they are also often an unsurprisingly wonderful time. And the things we love about the holidays are also things that can relieve our stress and feed our souls: the connection with others, the spirituality and meaning, the fun of all the parties and activities, the altruism of giving and the gratitude that comes with receiving. These are all things that most people look forward to when we think of the holidays, so with Hanukkah here and other holidays soon to come, now is the perfect time to stop and really savor everything that's going on around you and within the holiday season!

The following resources can help with holiday stress understanding and stress relief, so you can really savor and enjoy the holidays:

• Understanding and Managing Holiday Stress

• Spirituality and Stress Relief

• Holiday Shortcuts to Try

• Free, 5-Day Holiday E Course: Get It Done!

What do you love about the holidays? What do you do to make them more special? How do you relieve holiday stress? Share your suggestions in the comments section, and have a wonderful holiday season!

Yes

No

(If you answered 'no', you have passed this test, and are on the right track. If you answered 'yes', don't worry--this test doesn't count toward your grade!)

All joking aside, there are steps you can take to make studying for and taking these major exams more or less stressful, helping you to be more or less successful at them. The following are my best tips for stress relief during this Time of Tests. Good luck!

• Studying and Test-Taking Traps to Avoid

• Success Tips for Studying and Test-Taking

• How To Manage Test Anxiety and Do Better On Exams

• Stress Relievers for Students

What are your best stress relief, studying and test-taking tips for students? What worked (or works) best for you? Share your wisdom in the comments section.