FAACT's Roundtable

Ep. 270: Taming Holiday Stress & Anxiety with Food Allergies

• Season 5 • Episode 272

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The holiday season is a time for laughter, togetherness, and creating special memories. But for families managing food allergies, it can also bring unique challenges—extra planning, heightened stress, and the worry of staying safe during celebrations. In this episode, we’re talking about how to balance the joy of the season with the realities of food allergy management. We’re joined by licensed psychologist, Amanda Whitehouse, PhD, who will share thoughtful strategies for reducing holiday stress and anxiety, so you and your loved ones can focus on what truly matters—connection, celebration, and peace of mind.

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Thanks for listening! FAACT invites you to discover more exciting food allergy resources at FoodAllergyAwareness.org!

Caroline: Welcome to FAACT's Roundtable, a podcast dedicated to navigating life with food allergies across the lifespan. Presented in a welcoming format with interviews and open discussions,

each episode will explore a specific topic, leaving you with the facts to know or use.

Information presented via this podcast is educational and not intended to provide individual medical advice.

Please consult with your personal board-certified allergist or healthcare providers for advice specific to your situation.

Hi everyone. I'm Caroline Moassessi and I am your host for the FAACT Roundtable podcast.

I am a food allergy parent and advocate and the founder of the Grateful Foodie Blog. And I am FAACT's Vice President of Community Relations.

Before we start today's very interesting conversation,

I just want to pause for just a moment to say thank you to DBV Technologies for being a very kind sponsor of FAACT's Roundtable Podcast.

Please note that today's guest was not sponsored by DBV or compensated in any way by the sponsor to participate in this specific, specific podcast.

The holiday season is a time for laughter, togetherness, and creating special memories. But for families managing food allergies, it can also bring unique challenges,

extra planning, heightened stress, and the worry of staying safe during celebrations.

In today's episode, we're talking about how to balance the joy of the season with the realities of food allergy management.

We're joined by licensed psychologist Amanda Whitehouse, PhD,

who will share thoughtful strategies for reducing holiday stress and anxiety so you and your loved ones can focus on what truly matters, connection,

celebration, and a peace of mind.

Welcome back, Amanda, to FAACT's Roundtable podcast. You have been popular, and so I'm just so happy that you're back here discussing really important topics with us. So welcome.

Amanda: Thank you for having me back again. I'm excited to be here.

Caroline: Well, I'm very excited about today's topic because the holidays and family, boy, it can get really tricky.

So for listeners who might be joining us for the first time, can you share just a little bit about your personal and professional journey and then what led you to the work that you're doing today?

Amanda: Of course, I am a food allergy mom. Like so many of us in this space,

you know, I was just working on trying to figure it out on my own for my family as I was developing my practice as a psychologist.

And so a lot of that overlapped and I find myself working mostly with a food allergy and chronic illness populations of people with a very strong emphasis on nervous system regulation.

So I think that's the key when we're managing a lot of medical stuff. It has a biological and physical effect on our bodies, not just purely what's happening in our thoughts and in our heads.

Caroline: And a quick side note for our listeners, I'll make sure I put in the show notes, links to Amanda's previous two podcasts, which speak to the nervous system and things she's talking about.

So I definitely suggest everyone tune in. And so, again, Amanda, thank you for being part of our family. I think it is so helpful for you as a practitioner who also walks the walk, and I think that gives you a deep insight into what we go through.

Amanda: Absolutely. I've struggled with it myself and still do. You know, it's an ongoing process. It's something that we manage, and I get it from the inside out.

Caroline: That's right. And you're going through all the ages and stages with us, too?

Amanda: Yep, absolutely.

Caroline: Turning to our subject, the holidays can already be just very stressful in general, and managing food allergies can add a whole nother layer to that stress.

How do food allergies affect the typical holiday stress and anxiety families experience?

And what are some warning signs that stress and anxiety might be rising, not just for the patient, but for the caregivers as well? Because I know sometimes our stress is going up and we don't realize it until.

So we're snapping at somebody or yelling at the dog.

Amanda: Absolutely.

We catch it when we react, not when it's building. Right. What I think about with the combination of food allergies and the holidays is we have safety concerns anyway. Right.

We obviously have a medical condition that is a genuine safety concern that we have to control a lot of things, monitor, plan, prevent all of those things that we do, usually to keep ourselves safe.

The holidays threaten or change or take away from us. So suddenly our meals are different. It's unpredictable. We don't have as much control over things. We have more things on our plates,

not literally, but figuratively in our minds that we're trying to manage on top of what we already have in our brains every day. So all of those things that we do to manage allergies and just as humans, that make us feel safe, predictability, control,

routine,

all of them change at the holidays. We lose all of those. And so when we feel unsafe, you know, we talk. I've talked often about our nervous systems, and we go into that fight or flight mode.

So recognizing it as you're asking before we explode at somebody is a matter of understanding how our bodies are responding.

So the cues physically, I've talked about in other episodes. But we all need practice tuning into what our body is trying to tell us more subtly before it's yelling at us that we need a break.

But I was thinking about this episode in terms of. For us and for our children,

thinking about how those show up. Literally. Think about those words, fight or flight.

We're all familiar with that phrase, but what it means in our daily lives. When you feel like,

you know what, I just need to get out of here. I can't take. I need to buzz out of work 15 minutes today. I'm frustrated or this event isn't what I thought it was going to be.

I need to leave. When we start feeling that, like,

I need to get away from this feeling or fight. Right. When we are getting angry with people, we want to speak up to people in a way that we wouldn't usually do.

We can use those not just as a. These are the negative things I do,

but as a sign that our body is in that mode and wanting to find a way to protect ourselves and get us out of that situation.

Does that make sense?

Caroline: Oh, yes. I'm actually sitting here thinking, wow, where were you a few years ago when we were dealing with family over the holidays and they're not understanding why? I have an issue with.

With the pistachios that are in the mesh bag in the fridge,

and I'm just wanting to run. You're right. Just wanting to run and scream and not realizing that's acute of me.

Amanda: The way that you said it is a perfect reminder. Because when it's still building and we haven't snapped yet, or sometimes we don't snap out at others, we just implode, right?

We crawl into bed or we hop in the shower and we implode. But it's. I want to, right? I want. I want to yell at them. I just. I want to not even go to Christmas this year.

I want to just stay at home and avoid everybody. When we start to feel those urges inside or in our. Have those thoughts in our minds, that's the indication that that is building and starting to feel overwhelming.

Caroline: And so when that happens, then what are the next steps? So say we recognize that I don't want to go. I mean, that's happened to me how many times?

I don't want to go. Even though I love the people and I want to be with people, but I'm just sitting here physically, literally saying to my husband, I really don't want to go.

So what do we do once we feel that. That stress and anxiety is there?

Amanda: Well, I think there are two ways we have to look at that, if it's already there and I'm in the moment, and then we can back it up and learn from it and say, okay, next year I'm going to do these things right?

So either way, if we think about that in terms of those things that I said, the holidays take away from us, they take away our routine, they take away predictability,

control over what's going on.

So any way that we can reintrod some level of that will help us to make ourselves feel safe again and to start to regulate our bodies again.

So if you can incorporate a part of your routine,

what you would usually do or what you would usually eat, if you can manage a part of the dinner, even if you can't control what everyone's going to bring and who's going to put pistachios in the fridge, if you can bring, you know, many people will say, I bring the one safe dish and it's covered and we serve ourselves first before people.

You know, that's control.

That's a little bit of predictability or routine that we can incorporate into the day.

And then in the moment, if it's too late and you're already there, it's holiday time and you haven't done those things yet,

think back to that fight or flight.

So if you're feeling, oh, I just want to leave, I didn't want to come here anyway. Find a smaller way to allow yourself to remove yourself from the situation. So, you know, I tell people this all the time, not just on the holidays, but take a five minutes in the bathroom,

you know, walk out on the front porch and breathe some fresh air.

It's a coping skill that we all know of, but we don't think of it in terms of, I literally, I need to get out of here for a minute, and when I do, my body will feel safer.

Then you can think about the first part of your question, which is, okay, now what do I do? How do I handle this situation? If no one's in immediate danger, we can always take a minute to give ourselves a break.

I forgot my purse in the car. I'm gonna run out to the car for a minute, sit there, call your best friend. If you need to call someone, you know, that will make you feel safe, give yourself a break, and then regroup and decide what do I need to do to make this work or keep myself safe.

Or maybe the decision is not to. Maybe the decision is genuinely, this is not safe and we do need to go, but then it won't be done in A I'm flying out here or I'm slamming the door, or I toughed it out and now I'm feeling really resentful and angry,

or I was snapping at people at the gathering. It's in more of conscious,

responsive way instead of being reactive.

Caroline: Right. You're giving yourself a moment to regroup basically and get control back. And honestly, the bathroom and the car idea is perfect because who's going to argue that I have to go to the bathroom?

Amanda: No one's.

Caroline: No, you can't,

you know, or no, you can't run out to the car to see if you drop something on the floor. Those are two really great suggestions.

So now let's turn to adults for a moment here.

When they're managing children and let's say they're in the moment, the holiday stress and anxiety is there and it's really peaking.

How do they,

in that moment deal with it with the children right there? I know you're, you're suggesting we go take a break, but if I've got a five year old with me, then what happens?

Amanda: Yeah. So if we have a child that we have to obviously be supervising and keeping safe, we can't just take off and escape.

For some of us, the easiest way to do that because we feel the best when our children are with us,

when we know our child is safe. Right. So if you can find a way to give yourself again a little bit of a break, a little bit of flight or escape from the stressful part in a way that keeps your child with you, for most of us as parents,

that would be the most effective thing. So we're going to leave the kitchen, let's go find the Uno game or let's get out Scrabble, maybe, you know what, we can take it on the porch or there's a playroom in here, you know, remove yourself a little bit from where the food is or maybe,

you know what, let's go for a walk around the block or, you know, something that you can engage the child or it's an easy escape sometimes to just get the kids in the family involved in an activity that doesn't involve food.

It's still friendly, you're still connecting with your family members,

but you are removing yourself from the part of the day that is feeling stressful at that moment.

Caroline: That is clever. So clever. Playing off of that same situation.

What if the child is actually starting to get upset and really freaking out and thinking there's maybe danger that really isn't there?

Then what do we do?

Amanda: That's even harder because then of course, we react to our kids too. And we talk about CO regulation. If we can stay regulated, then we can help them. But when they are not regulated, our bodies naturally respond to that and we get really upset too.

So again, obviously, the ideal is that we're preparing for this in the long term, we're working on it. But when we find ourselves there in the moment,

the CO regulation is the biggest thing that you can do to help your child. So even if it feels selfish, even if, you know the child is anxious, but they're dysregulated because they're upset, but they don't know what to eat, even if it's against what the child wants to do.

Like they want to stay in the kitchen. They want to figure out what they're going to have for dessert because they're upset and they don't know what's safe, and they can't believe that whatever it might be about the dessert wasn't safe for them.

What you have to do to get yourself calm is what's necessary for your child, even if it's not where your child wants. So that's when it's okay to do what you need.

We're not having dessert right now.

First we need to,

you know, again, and then remove yourself from that situation. The child really needs you to model and need you to experience physically, not just say, take a deep breath. But I'm not even taking a deep breath.

I'm over here yelling at grandma in the corner because she didn't listen to me about which ingredients that will affect our child regardless of what we're doing,

telling them to do or saying that they should do. So any of the skills that we would use to calm ourselves down again, get yourself moment, give yourselves a breather and a little bit of space.

Do those skills with your child.

So anything that brings you back into the moment and into your body being okay now are the skills that we like to use.

Really.

Being physical with kids is one of the most effective ways to do it. So again, let's go put on Christmas songs and let's have a silly Christmas dance party or let's have a reindeer race and we're gonna do something, you know, anything creative that you can come up with to move your body will get your brain connected with your body.

We talk about mind body connection again. And then you will realize and your child will forget about, you know, whatever they were nervous about. Not forget, but redirect their attention to I'm okay, I'm having fun I'm connected to my mom or my dad.

My cousins and I are laughing and smiling and all of those things should help to shift us into rest and digest mode, out of fight or flight and get that chemical and biological change initiated that we want to do in the body.

Singing and dancing are like the easiest ways to do it every time.

Sorry.

Caroline: And easy to do. And you can do it at any minute. You don't need any tools, you don't need any toys or balls or any objects. You could just do it.

Amanda: Absolutely.

Caroline: These tips are just phenomenal. I just appreciate them so much. And so being greedy. Do you have any more must do tips or tricks for, for staying calm?

Amanda: Well, I mean, I think staying calm is different than calming down after we're not upset. Right. So I'll talk about that specifically because,

you know, a lot of what we were talking about is if I'm already upset, what should I do? But to stay calm,

the preparation is key. We are going to talk about how do I, like I said, exert some routine,

some control, some predictability. How do I insert that into this situation? That is the opposite of all of those things. The more that you can do ahead of time, the better.

And the same goes for all of these skills that I'm practicing about. So if we plan ahead,

talk to our kids about it, practice these skills ourselves at home, practice your breathing, you know, and then our body is familiar with them, they're more effective.

And we talk to each other again. If we, we can do this on our own or if we have a child,

plan ahead for the event. I remember last year when it came time for dessert, you were a little concerned or whatever the hiccup might have been in the past.

We talk about it and we plan how we're going to do it.

So you really wanted that pecan pie looked so good, but you're allergic to pecans. What should we do? Maybe we can make this instead. And giving the child and yourself that control, that plan will help you move into it with a little bit more predictability of the situation.

We can't anticipate everything we don't want to over anticipate. And maybe I can talk about that as the other problem. We also can't control everything.

So some of us get really in our heads. We're so worked up before we get there because we've been trying to anticipate every food, get every person to tell us what they were going to bring and tell us every ingredient in the food, which some families that works.

And if everyone's doing that.

Cheers for you. For most families, it's a challenge. And so realizing what parts do I need to have control over, it's natural for me to want to control everything,

and I can't. And here are the parts that we need to control to make me or my child safe. And then making a plan for those aspects of thing, rather than just getting lost in thoughts about every possible thing that could go wrong.

Caroline: And it feels so empowering as you're speaking of this. It's like, yeah, we're gonna do the best we can. We're gonna plan ahead. We're gonna have our tools in our toolbox, but we're gonna know that we can pivot.

We're gonna know that we can leave or we can stay or we can problem solve. But that just feels so reassuring.

Amanda: I think so. And I want us to give our kids that reassurance too. So one of my favorite things that we do in my family and I talk to my clients about is helping the kids know that they have a say in that too.

And I'll give them, like, a code word. We have a secret word in our family that means,

I'm not comfortable. I need a minute. I need you to listen to me. And so in a big family gathering with people who aren't as familiar to them, and it's uncomfortable for kids when all these grownups that they don't know are squeezing their cheeks, and that's overwhelming.

So the child will feel much safer, even if they don't have to use it. If they have a word or a signal, you know, if I tug my ear, whatever it might be, if I say basketball, whatever, it might make sense, and your child might remember.

It gives them a sense that they have control over whether they have to stay in a situation. They're uncomfortable, and they know they feel connected to you. And there's that co regulation because you have said to them, if there's something you're uncomfortable with, do this or say this, and we will take a minute and I will figure it out with you.

Even if I'm in a conversation with someone, do this, and I will make sure that I am there with you listening to what you're concerned about so we can make you feel safe.

Caroline: I think that is so brilliant to have that secret word. We had not a secret word with my son when he was 5. And this came from the help of a child psychologist who was working with us.

And he just said we had to have three things that we could do that would make my son Feel safe. So one of them was a backpack carrying his epinephrine.

The second one was that if he felt unsafe in, in any situation,

he could bring it up and we would step to the side with him and we would figure it out. I mean, any situation, if you were at a wedding or at a soccer game.

And that calmed him down so much and calmed us down.

Amanda: I'm glad you're talking about that. I think a lot of families do this now in terms of like if you're sleeping at a friend's house, if you accidentally find yourself at a party and other kids are drinking.

But they don't have to be just for those extreme situations.

So mine with my kids is if they just walk up and grab my hand, if they do three squeezes. One, two, three. For I love you. That means I need you right now.

I listen to that every time. Big or small emergency,

huge disastrous emergency, I will come and save you. Or just everyday situation like this, I need you and I've got your back.

Caroline: Gosh, such powerful information. Thank you so much. And our time is done. That again, went so fast. Before we say goodbye today, is there anything else you want our listeners to hear from you?

Amanda: I think it's important to just focus when you're moving into the holidays on what you want to create, how you want your holiday to look. Not what I'm afraid will happen,

avoiding. So think of staying in that energy of love. I think for most of us, of the holidays or connection or joy or celebration, whatever word it is,

find ways to create that rather than putting your energy into avoiding what you don't want to happen or how you don't want it to be.

Caroline: Excellent words of wisdom. Thank you so much. And listeners, I just want you to know in the show notes, I'm also going to add the links to Amanda's website and she hosts a fabulous podcast,

so I'm going to make sure you have the link to that too. But thank you again, Amanda, so much for your time. You're so busy and we just appreciate you choosing your time to spend with us.

Amanda: Well, I appreciate that you want to hear from me, so I'm available anytime. Thanks for having me again.

Caroline: Thank you.

Once again, I would like to say thank you to DBV Technologies for being a very kind and generous sponsor of FAACT's Roundtable Podcast.

Please note that today's guest was not sponsored by DBV Technologies or compensated in any way by the sponsor to participate in this specific podcast.

Amanda: Thank you.

Caroline: Thank you for listening to FAACT's Roundtable Podcast.

Stay tuned for future episodes coming soon.

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Have a great day and always be kind to one another.