You Spend the Holidays Taking Care of Everyone: This Quiz Shows You How to Finally Take Care of Yourself

It was mid-November 2024, and I was standing in my kitchen staring at my holiday planner.

Page after page of lists. Thanksgiving menu with every dish planned out. Gift ideas for seventeen people with notes about what each person would love.

I flipped through the entire planner looking for something specific... my own name.

It wasn't there, not once.

Every single page was filled with tasks for everyone else.

Detailed plans for making sure everyone else felt special, loved, taken care of.

But nowhere in that planner – nowhere in my entire holiday season – was there a single thing I was doing for myself.

And the worst part? This wasn't just this year, because I'd been doing this for twenty years.

Last Christmas, I spent three full days cooking.

Planned every dish, prepped everything from scratch because I wanted it to be special for everyone.

They loved it.

Everyone raved, asked for seconds, told me I'd outdone myself.

I was too exhausted to enjoy any of it. I barely ate.

Just kept clearing plates, refilling drinks, making sure everyone was comfortable.

By the time I finally sat down, everyone had moved to the living room.

I ate alone in the kitchen, standing at the counter, picking at leftovers while everyone else laughed together in the next room.

The year before that, I'd spent weeks finding the perfect gifts for everyone.

Thoughtful, personal, showing I really knew them.

Christmas morning came. They opened everything, delighted and grateful.

I didn't get myself anything, told myself it didn't matter, and told myself their happiness was enough.

But that night, after everyone went to bed, I sat on the couch surrounded by torn wrapping paper and empty boxes and felt completely hollow.

Every Thanksgiving? Same pattern.

I'd manage everyone's emotions, smooth over tensions, never resting. Always moving from task to task, need to need.

When someone would say, "You should relax," I'd wave them off.

"I'm fine! I like staying busy!" But I wasn't fine.

I was disappearing so I didn't have to feel how empty I was.

Every holiday photo from the past two decades? I'm in the background. Or not in the frame at all.

Because I was always the one taking the picture.

I wasn't a participant in my own holidays. I was the invisible stage manager.

So there I was, mid-November 2024, standing in my kitchen staring at that planner filled with everyone's needs but my own.

"And a soft & exhausted voice inside of me said: 'I can't do this again.'"

Two days later, I was having coffee with my friend Sarah.

She asked how I was feeling about the holidays.

"Honestly? I'm already dreading it, exhausted just thinking about everything I have to do."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"Have you ever noticed that you completely disappear during the holidays? You're physically there, but not actually present. Just managing and fixing."

I stared at her.

"It's a pattern," she continued.

"You've been doing it for years. Every holiday season, you take care of everyone else and abandon yourself."

She then pulled out her phone.

"I took this quiz a few months ago. It's about shadow patterns – the hidden cycles that keep us stuck. Mine was about perfectionism. Yours might be about disappearing."

She sent me the link. "Just take it, it's like three minutes."

I took it that evening.

Just sitting on my couch after dinner, curious but defensive.

The questions went deeper than I expected.

"Do you feel guilty when you rest during the holidays?" Yes.

"Do you measure your worth by how much you do for others?" Yes.

"Do you disappear into tasks to avoid what you're actually feeling?" Yes.

The results: "The Invisible Caretaker Pattern"

It explained everything.

Why I couldn't say no without guilt, why resting felt like failing, and why I felt selfish for having needs.

But here's what shifted everything – the results didn't say something was wrong with me.

They explained I was caught in a pattern.

A cycle I'd been running so long I couldn't see it anymore.

I'd been operating from my shadow – the parts I'd hidden away, the self-doubt I'd buried under busyness.

For the first time in twenty years, I didn't feel like a tired person who needed to try harder.

I felt understood, and change felt possible.

The quiz led to an app called Work With Shadow, and I started the next morning. Ten minutes a day, with simple practices.

Over the next few weeks, small things shifted.

When my sister asked if I'd host Thanksgiving "like always," I felt the pattern activate.

The automatic "yes" forming. I paused, and said no, for the first time in fifteen years.

The guilt tried to flood in, but I'd been practicing awareness. I didn't have to obey it.

I also bought myself something beautiful on Black Friday.

Just something that made me feel cared for.

Christmas morning, I took a walk alone before the chaos.

When it was time for the family photo, I handed my phone to my husband.

"You take it, I want to be in it." And I was, front and center.

The holidays didn't become perfect. But I stopped disappearing during them.

It's the beginning of December now... just a few weeks left of the year.

You're already making lists, planning meals, buying gifts for everyone else.

But when was the last time you did that for yourself? You've been the invisible one while you disappear into tasks and other people's needs.

But you're caught in a pattern.

And you can't break free from a pattern you can't see.

You have a few weeks left in 2025.

Either a few weeks until you're drained and invisible again...

Or a few to discover the pattern running your life.

Take three minutes, discover your shadow pattern, and start breaking free.

Not next year, because you deserve to stop disappearing.