Hi, Katie, welcome to Preview Alliance Podcast. I am so happy to have you here today with us. So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

So I've already told our listeners a little bit about you, but I want to give you a minute. Tell us,

introduce yourself for them in your own words. Yeah, my name's Katie Martin. I'm a licensed

marriage and family therapist. I have been creating online educational content surrounding mental

health since 2011. So definitely like an OG creator in the mental health space and online space. And yeah, I've

written three books. My third book, why do I keep doing this? Is coming out in December. And I educate. I speak

at schools. I really just have a deep passion for breaking down the stigma of mental health

treatment and helping people better help themselves today. Now, we love that.

And, you know, the title of this episode is the holiday anxiety and why do we keep doing this?

So I feel like this is a perfect time that your book coming out and us in the holiday season right now

of saying, okay, let's try to get this right. So first, you know, the holidays, it's like a pressure

cooker, right?

It's like we're cooking that turkey, but that's us inside there. Why do you think it brings out more anxiety than joy when it's supposed to be the joyous time of year? That's a great question. And I've always kind of hated that people say it's like the happiest time of the year. I love the holidays. Don't get me wrong. But there is, we have our

regular life going on, which can be stressful enough, especially if we're balancing work, family,

if we have children, if we have animals, and we have family coming into town, right? You think of

like layering on top of our basic life, all of these extra things. Like I have to shop for people. I need to make sure I get the right gift. I might have extra social events for myself, for my children, for my family as a whole, not to mention hosting more people. I think it's just the expectations that we have have gotten so great and it becomes unmanageable for a lot of people, or at least at the very least, just overwhelming and stressful. And not to mention the amount of money you spend. I mean, we could talk about all the facets of it, but it's really just, it's a lot. And it's a lovely time of year, but we also need to recognize that it can be super stressful too. No, absolutely. In your new book, why do I keep doing this? You talk about patterns and habits

we get stuck in and you're calling me out on some of those there. How do you see those patterns

seeing around like holiday stress, right? Because it's like every year the holidays come back

around and we may have said, okay, why do I do this to myself? But I'm right here again in

the middle of Target, last minute

shopping, or stressed out because ain't birth is coming. There are two main patterns I talk about

my book that I think apply, especially during the holidays. Number one is perfectionism. And I struggle

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