Caring Through Change: Holiday Support for Caregivers
by Kovaco Care Path a caregiving support initiative from Kovaco
The holiday season is often presented as a time of joy, connection, and celebration. Yet for many caregivers, it also brings a quiet heaviness. Supporting a loved one through mental health or addiction challenges can feel like holding your breath between responsibilities, carrying both your own emotions and someone else’s at the same time. During the holidays, that invisible weight often grows heavier.
Caregivers may find themselves managing their loved one’s emotional shifts while trying to appear calm for others, anticipating crisis moments even during gatherings meant for rest, or juggling holiday routines on top of the ongoing mental load. Isolation can set in, even when surrounded by people, because caregiving is often misunderstood or unnoticed. Many caregivers push down their own grief when traditions are disrupted, or feel pressure to create a “normal” holiday while privately navigating unpredictable moments, emotional withdrawal, or signs of relapse.
These experiences are real, and they deserve acknowledgment. This article was created in collaboration between Evelyn Offei, a mental health and addictions counsellor, and Cheryl Koval, founder of Kovaco Biomedical Consulting Inc. and creator of the Kovaco Care Path. By blending compassionate clinical insight with practical systems of support, we hope to offer guidance that acknowledges the full weight of what you’re carrying and makes this season feel just a little less heavy.
What You Might Be Feeling (The Emotional Landscape)
Caregivers often navigate a complex mix of emotions when supporting someone living with mental health or addiction challenges. These feelings tend to intensify during the holidays, a season that brings additional expectations, routines, and emotional triggers. Many caregivers experience:
Fear: The constant worry about a crisis emerging right before or during a family gathering.
Helplessness: The difficult truth that you can't control your loved one's choices or emotional shifts.
Guilt: Feeling responsible for their struggles or feeling like you're "failing" if they don't get better.
Exhaustion: Juggling the demands of holiday prep (cooking, organizing) on top of the constant mental and emotional load of caregiving stress.
Don't allow guilt, learned behaviours or societal pressures silence your needs while taking care of others.
The Difference between Support and Carrying
It's crucial to know where support ends and where carrying begins:
- Supporting means being empathetic, listening without judgment, and offering practical, sustainable help, like running errands or connecting them to professional resources.
- Carrying means doing things the person is capable of doing for themselves, or absorbing their emotional burden until you become their only source of stability. This leads to burnout for you and unintentionally stunts their growth.
- Boundaries Protect Everyone: Healthy emotional boundaries mean you are both responsible for your own emotions. This prevents you from getting overwhelmed and actually makes your caregiving effort much more sustainable.
Quick Ways to Cope (Practical Strategies)
When stress hits, you need strategies that work fast to help you stay grounded:
Breathe: Try the simple 10-second technique: inhale, gently hold for a count of 10, and slowly exhale. This calms your nervous system quickly.
Ground Yourself: Use the "Five Senses" technique to bring yourself back to the present moment. Look for 5 things you can see (the Christmas tree, lights), 4 you can touch (a soft blanket), 3 you can hear (music, laughter), 2 you can smell (candles, food), and 1 you can taste (maybe a holiday cookie!).
Create a "Reset Space": Identify a quiet spot ahead of time, your bedroom, a closet, or a back room, where you can pause, breathe, or regulate yourself before reacting to a stressful situation.
Move: Do simple movements throughout the day (stretching your arms, rolling your shoulders, pressing your feet down on the floor) to release stored tension and break the stress loop.
Structure is Your Friend (The Care Path Mindset)
You don't have to navigate chaos. Structure protects your bandwidth and reduces mental load.
Routines are Stabilizers: Simple, consistent routines (like a regular rest time, or predictable meal schedules) reduce decision fatigue and bring a sense of order to a chaotic role.
Build a Care Map: Don't rely on memory in a crisis. Write down who to call and when to reach out (your loved one's therapist, a crisis line, a trusted friend). This shifts the burden from your memory to a simple, concrete plan.
Use Micro-Boundaries: These are small, manageable limits that protect your energy. Examples include: a time limit for heavy conversations, or defining communication habits like, "Let's check in at 5 p.m. instead of throughout the day."
From Chaos to Calm: Navigating Boundaries
You can love someone deeply without sacrificing your own stability.
Empathy + Limits:
Boundaries are not a sign of a lack of care; they are essential for sustainable caregiving.
Watch for Enabling: Shielding a loved one from the natural consequences of their actions can overextend you.
Support aligns with your capacity; enabling overextends it.
Boundary Examples to Use:
Emotional: "I hear how difficult this is, but I need a short break to reset, and we can talk calmly after."
Time/Energy: "I love spending time with you, and I just need a 30 minute break for myself before we continue."
Financial : "I care about you, but I’m not able to lend money this holiday. I am here to explore other resources with you."
Handling Uncertainty and Relapse
Change is a constant in caregiving, but you can build stability around it.
Create Anchors (Care Rituals): Establish small, consistent touchpoints, like a brief daily check-in or a shared quiet practice, that offer steadiness when everything else is fluctuating.
Prepare for Shifts: The holidays increase emotional intensity. Prepare by identifying known triggers, reducing optional commitments, and setting flexible expectations around traditions.
Have a Relapse Pathway: This is a predefined plan for who to contact and what safety steps to take if regression happens. Having a plan makes decisions less overwhelming and helps you remember that relapse is a part of the recovery path, not a failure. Change, whether expected or sudden, can feel destabilizing for both caregivers and their loved ones.
When someone is navigating mental health or addiction challenges, even small shifts in routine or environment can disrupt emotional balance. Caregivers often become the steady point in this turbulence, but holding that role without support can be exhausting.
When It's Time to Get Help (For You!)
Reaching out for support is a courageous and empowering act.
Watch for these signs:
- Overwhelm is frequent and difficult to manage.
- You feel numb, detached, or unable to engage with your loved one.
- You are constantly exhausted, or your sleep is severely disrupted.
- You are missing important tasks or personal obligations.
- Friends or family members are expressing concern about your well-being.
Resources Exist:
- Individual/Family Therapy
- Peer Support Groups (so you can connect with others who get it)
- 24/7 Crisis Services
- Psychoeducation Programs (to better understand addiction/mental health)
- Medical Support
Forget the Stigma: Seeking help does not indicate weakness or failure. It's a sign of courage and a commitment to your own health, which is essential for sustainable caregiving.
Final Word: Focus on the 3 Rs
As you move through this season, remember that resilience doesn't mean constantly pushing through. Sometimes it means allowing yourself to rest.
Support yourself by returning to the 3 Rs:
Rest: Prioritize sleep and physical recovery.
Recharge: Engage in activities that bring you joy, comfort, or renewal.
Repeat: Make rest and replenishment part of your daily rhythm, not just a last resort.
When you pour back into yourself, you strengthen your ability to care for others in a sustainable way. The holidays and life more broadly can be complex, emotional, and unpredictable for many families. You are not alone in this experience. Taking one small step today toward rest, support, or self-compassion is a meaningful act of care for you and for those you love. If you or someone you know is supporting a loved one through mental health or addiction challenges, please share this with them. No one should navigate caregiving alone.
Written By: Cheryl Koval, Founder (Kovaco Biomedical Consulting Inc.) and Evelyn Offei, Harm Reduction Counsellor
Published: December 23rd, 2025
Goal Planning from a Global Perspective: Aligning Teams and Respecting the Work
When you’re leading cross-functional, global teams—whether it’s R&D, regulatory, product, or operations—goal planning isn’t just about setting high-level objectives. It’s about bringing together diverse teams, respecting those who do the work, and ensuring that goals are actionable, measurable, and in sync with strategic milestones. With experience in goal planning efforts across different organizations, including:
🔹 Aligning a lab team with strategic leadership and hospital administration, which required a deep understanding of operational realities, relationship building, and translating strategy into practical goals.
🔹 Bridging development teams with global operations, ensuring that product development timelines, regulatory submissions, and operational readiness were aligned across multiple regions.
These experiences taught us a few key lessons on how to plan goals that respect both the people doing the work and those tracking progress:
1. Build Cross-Functional Alignment by Splitting Large Goals Across Teams
Big strategic goals, like product launches or regulatory submissions, rarely belong to one team alone. The key to successful alignment is breaking large goals into smaller, function-specific objectives that contribute to the overall milestone. For example, if the goal is a global product launch, break it down as:
Development Team: Ensure prototypes meet requirements by X date.
Regulatory Team: Submit required packages to health authorities by Y date.
Marketing Team: Have business plans for key markets finalized by Z date.
Operations Team: Ensure logistics and distribution plans are in place by Q date.
This way, each team has clear ownership of their part in achieving the big-picture goal, fostering accountability without overwhelming any single function.
2. Ensure Function Heads Engage Early and Maintain Visibility
Cross-functional goals—especially global-reaching ones—require early engagement and proactive relationship management. Function heads play a critical role in ensuring goals are aligned across departments, and that key stakeholders are brought in early to build a shared understanding of priorities and expectations. Encouraging early alignment ensures that:
- Stakeholders are engaged before decisions are made, reducing friction later.
- Teams have the necessary visibility into upcoming dependencies and timelines.
- Leadership is involved at key decision points to remove barriers and drive progress.
Function heads should prioritize ongoing relationship management—not just during goal-setting, but throughout the execution phase—to maintain alignment, foster trust, and ensure goals stay on track.
3. Make Goals Actionable and Ensure Leadership Alignment When Needed
Respecting those who execute also means knowing when leadership is needed to drive progress. Not every goal can or should be executed independently—some require leadership alignment to remove roadblocks, secure approvals, or provide resources. Clearly identify when leadership involvement is required and schedule these checkpoints as part of the goal plan. This keeps momentum high and ensures alignment at the right time.
4. Engage Those Who Track and Measure Progress
Don’t overlook the importance of those who manage the process—program managers, PMOs, or operational leads. These individuals play a critical role in ensuring that progress is tracked and communicated effectively. Involving them early helps prevent last-minute surprises and ensures that reporting aligns with what leadership expects. When goals are aligned across functions and progress is well-tracked, teams can course-correct faster and stay on target.
5. Be Flexible While Staying Focused
Respecting regional and functional differences is key in global goal planning. While strategy should be consistent, execution might need flexibility. Encourage teams to adapt goals to local realities—but keep everyone aligned on the ultimate outcome.
Goal planning can be complex, especially when you’re working across regions, functions, and leadership levels. How do you ensure early engagement, visibility, and alignment in your organization’s goal-setting process? We'd love to hear how you approach cross-functional or global goals!
Reach out to info@kovacobiomedical.com should you or your team need assistance in aligning on your global strategies or wish to partner or collaborate on an innovative solution.
#GoalSetting #CrossFunctionalAlignment #GlobalLeadership #RelationshipManagement #StrategicPlanning #TeamSuccess #KovacoBiomedical
Written By: Cheryl Koval, Founder (Kovaco Biomedical Consulting Inc.)
Published: January 23rd, 2025