5 Tips for Managing Stress Around Thanksgiving
Here’s the Gist
Thanksgiving can bring both joy and pressure, especially for men balancing family roles and emotional expectations.
You can prepare by setting clear boundaries, grounding your body, and managing triggers before they take over.
Emotional regulation, not perfection, is the key to surviving (and even enjoying) the holidays.
These therapist-approved strategies help you navigate family stress, avoid burnout, and protect your mental health.
Working with a trauma therapist before the holidays can help you approach family gatherings with more confidence and calm.
When Gratitude and Pressure Collide
Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time for gratitude, family, and connection. But for many men, it’s also a time when expectations skyrocket and patience wears thin.
You’re juggling family dynamics, travel plans, emotional labor, and the quiet pressure to make everything look effortless. Maybe there’s tension in your family that never quite goes away. Maybe there are awkward conversations you can already predict word for word. Or maybe you just feel the weight of being “the steady one” when inside, you’re not feeling steady at all.
Thanksgiving can bring joy, but it can also feel overstimulating, exhausting, or isolating…especially for men with trauma. Family gatherings can stir up old roles, unresolved emotions, or the unspoken responsibility to keep everyone else comfortable.
This post isn’t about pretending the holidays are easy. It’s about helping you manage stress, stay regulated, and move through Thanksgiving with more intention and less overwhelm.
Here are five therapist-approved tips to help you do just that.
Tip #1: Set Expectations Ahead of Time
A lot of stress comes from what you don’t talk about. You might assume everyone knows what you need, but families rarely work that way. Setting clear expectations ahead of time helps reduce uncertainty and create structure before the chaos begins.
Ask yourself a few simple questions before the day arrives:
How long do I realistically want to stay?
What topics are off-limits for me this year?
What would make this gathering feel tolerable or dare I say, enjoyable?
Once you’ve identified those answers, communicate them if needed. That might mean telling your partner, “Let’s plan to stay until dessert,” or letting a family member know you’d prefer not to discuss politics or work.
Boundaries aren’t about control, they’re about protecting your energy. When you set expectations early, you’re not reacting in the moment; you’re making thoughtful choices in advance.
If you’re a man who’s always been the one to “keep the peace,” setting expectations might feel uncomfortable at first. But that discomfort is often a sign you’re breaking an old pattern of overfunctioning.
Tip #2: Have a Strategy
Even with the best intentions, family dynamics can still knock you off balance. Someone’s comment hits harder than you expected, the noise feels overwhelming, or you catch yourself zoning out halfway through dinner. That’s your nervous system responding, not a personal flaw.
The goal isn’t to eliminate those reactions, it’s to regulate them.
Grounding techniques help your body return to a state of calm when stress hits. Here are a few practical ones you can use quietly and without drawing attention:
Deep breathing: Try a slow 4-6-8 pattern: inhale for four counts, hold for six, exhale for eight. Repeat until your body starts to relax.
Step outside: A quick walk or even a few breaths of fresh air can reset your system faster than you’d expect.
Physical grounding: Focus on sensations (your feet on the floor, the feel of your chair, the weight of your hands). Bring your attention to what’s real in the present moment.
Mantra or reminder: Have a simple phrase ready, like “I’m safe right now” or “I can leave when I need to.”
These techniques aren’t about suppressing emotion. They’re about giving your nervous system the support it needs to come back online.
If you’ve experienced trauma, grounding helps interrupt the automatic survival responses—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—that can make family situations feel unpredictable or draining.
Tip #3: Limit Over-Commitment
Thanksgiving can turn into a marathon if you’re not careful. Between travel, hosting, and trying to please everyone, it’s easy to end up spread too thin.
People-pleasing often disguises itself as generosity, but underneath, it’s about control…trying to manage others’ emotions so you don’t have to face your own discomfort. The problem is that it backfires. Overextending yourself only increases resentment, anxiety, and exhaustion.
Instead of saying yes to everything, choose what actually matters to you. Maybe that means skipping a second family dinner or letting someone else take over the cooking this year. If guilt comes up, remember that guilt doesn’t mean you’re wrong, it means you’re breaking an old rule about self-sacrifice.
As a trauma therapist, I see this pattern often with men. They’re taught that being reliable means saying yes to everything and that boundaries make them selfish. The truth is the opposite: boundaries make you more dependable because they help you show up as your best self, not a depleted one.
This holiday, practice saying yes with intention and no without apology.
Tip #4: Prepare for Emotional Triggers
No matter how much progress you’ve made, family gatherings have a way of hitting sensitive spots. Maybe a parent’s comment takes you right back to feeling like a kid who couldn’t do anything right. Maybe your brother’s sarcasm sets off frustration you thought you’d outgrown.
Those aren’t signs of weakness, they’re signs of memory. Your body remembers old emotional patterns even when your mind has moved on.
Before Thanksgiving, take some time to anticipate possible triggers:
Who or what tends to activate your stress response?
What conversations or situations have led to conflict before?
How do you usually respond, and what would you like to do differently this time?
Preparation gives you power. You can decide in advance how to protect your emotional space instead of being caught off guard.
If you’ve been through trauma, triggers can feel especially intense. They might not even make logical sense in the moment. That’s where therapy, or even a therapy intensive—can help. In an intensive, you have the uninterrupted space to explore these patterns, understand the origins of your reactions, and practice new ways to regulate when old wounds resurface.
Doing that work before the holidays means you walk in with tools instead of tension.
Tip #5: Prioritize Rest Before and After
Thanksgiving isn’t just one day; it’s an event that can take days to prepare for and days to recover from. Yet rest is often the first thing to go.
Many men push through exhaustion by default. You tell yourself you’ll relax after the holidays, but by then, you’re already running on empty.
This year, plan rest like it’s part of the event. Protect your sleep, keep your meals consistent, and build in downtime before and after the gathering. That could mean taking a quiet morning to yourself, going for a solo drive, or simply turning down one invitation so you have space to breathe.
Rest isn’t weakness. It’s maintenance.
For men with trauma, rest can also be triggering because slowing down gives your mind space to notice emotions you’ve been avoiding. That’s where therapy comes in, to help you tolerate rest, not just endure it.
When your body and mind are regulated, you handle family dynamics with more patience and less reactivity. You listen better, recover faster, and leave feeling grounded instead of drained.
Schedule a Therapy Consultation Before the Holidays
You don’t have to grit your way through another stressful Thanksgiving.
If you’re already feeling anxious about family gatherings, therapy can help you prepare, regulate, and show up differently. Whether you choose a therapy intensive for focused work or weekly sessions to build consistent support, investing in your emotional health now can change how the entire season feels.
This isn’t about learning to “just be grateful.” It’s about giving yourself the skills and structure to move through family dynamics without losing yourself in the process.
Schedule a free consultation call today to talk about what kind of support might help you most. You’ll walk away with a plan for how to navigate family stress, protect your boundaries, and approach the holidays with more calm and control.
Because the best version of you doesn’t come from holding it all together…it comes from finally learning how to let yourself breathe.
About the Author
Brittany Shannon, Ph.D., is a trauma therapist for men with more than 10 years of experience. She trained in the VA system, working with veterans at both outpatient and residential levels of care, and brings that expertise into her private practice today. Based in Kentucky, Dr. Shannon offers virtual therapy across all 43 PSYPACT states, specializing in trauma recovery, PTSD treatment, and men’s mental health. Her work focuses on helping men heal from painful experiences, break free from survival mode, and move forward with clarity and confidence.
You don’t have to keep pushing through this on your own.
