How Do You Protect Your Mental Health During the Holidays?
The holidays are a magical time, aren’t they? Your soul lifts. Your heart warms. We gather and our love flows a little more fully and freely than usual.
Everyone feels happier and kinder. Who wouldn’t want it to be like this all year? Who wouldn’t wish that every day could be like Christmas?
Except the holidays aren’t always easy, are they? Every bit isn’t always fun or joyful, or even welcome.
Whether it’s the pressure of finishing shopping and wrapping, cleaning for company, travel, gathering with people you could do without seeing, not being able to be with those you’d like to see, enduring church services you don’t really buy into to make certain family members happy, having to work on the holidays, or even spending the holidays alone…it can be rough.
So, how do you care for your mental health during the holidays? The answer is simpler than we may think.
Be mindful of your perspective. And give yourself permission to do what you need.
That’s it. That’s the secret. There’s the trick. Though applying this may take a bit of creativity sometimes.
Take gift giving.
Personally, I love it. I love shopping. I love trying to find the perfect gift for someone.
I start my Christmas shopping in October because I have such fun doing it! Mom and I meet once a week, get dinner, and go shopping until we’ve checked off everyone on our lists. It’s a ritual I look forward to every year.
But even I will admit it's not always fun. And sometimes that impending deadline of celebrating Christmas with [insert-loved-one’s-name-here] can transform the fun of shopping into a tangled web of anxiety, if not the tightening vise of panic. That’s no fun!
So, be creative.
Years ago my friend Miranda and I cracked this problem (and to not be humble about it in any way, shape, or form, it has been the envy of many people we’ve shared it with ever since). As much as I’d love to be able to take even partial credit for this, I can’t. This was all Miranda’s idea.
One day—a day which shall live on in myth and legend—Miranda came to me and said, “We know we care about each other. We know we love each other. We know how important our friendship is to each of us. What if, instead of forcing ourselves to find gifts in time for each other’s birthday and Christmas, we just got something for the other when we see something we know they’d like?”
No deadlines. No pressure. No guilt. Some years we may not give the other a single gift, some years we may give a bunch. Miranda completely divorced gift-giving from any sense obligation…and I loved it! What a brilliant idea!
It could’ve felt terrible, like we were “slacking” or being “lazy” or even being “a bad friend.” But, mindful of the perspectives that shape our sense of when and why we should give each other presents, we created a new routine that liberated us from any pressure whatsoever and instead, became a real celebration of our friendship.
Gifts as true gifts, separated from any sense of economic exchange (if you feel you must give a gift because someone gave you one, it’s not a gift…you’re buying their present to you with the one you give them). So it didn’t feel like slacking. It felt like freedom.
We’ve been doing it ever since.
What about having to work on the holidays?
That sucks. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I have spent my entire adult life—as a youth minister, later as a teacher—with jobs that guarantee me time off for the holidays.
I won’t lie and pretend that’s not part of why I chose those jobs. So yeah, it is a shitty hand to be dealt to have to work on the holidays.But again, being creative and shifting our perspective can change things a bit.
For all the people who love the holidays, there are also those who really struggle, right?
Christmas Day is a HUGE day at the movie theatre. Some families have traditions of going together but also people who don’t celebrate Christmas or don’t have anyone to celebrate with go to the movies as an escape from that silence and sadness—that sense of being “alone” or “left out.”
I’d always remind my students who had to work at the movie theatre or a restaurant the day of, or retail stores the day before and after Christmas, yes, it’s rough you can’t be with your family all day but, on these days especially, it’s not *just* a job.
It’s a vocation. It’s ministry work. Because by being at those jobs you may be the only warm, smiling face someone sees that day and by being there, you are letting them do something fun—go to the movies, get something to eat, go shopping (or return things).
You are giving up a part of your holidays but, in so doing, you may be the brightest spot of someone else’s solitary day.
I experienced this firsthand at Thanksgiving. Half my family ended up sick so we cancelled the family dinner. It was the first time in my life I didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving with my family and it felt weird.
Honestly, it’s mid-December now but in some ways it doesn’t feel like the holidays have started yet for me, having missed Thanksgiving with everyone.
But on my Thanksgiving Day, I saw an 11:20 matinee of Zootopia 2 with Bella and Ki (of this very magazine!). As I got my snacks from the concession counter, I thanked the kids working there. I said I couldn’t see my family today so I was very grateful for them because they gave me a reason to get out of the house for a bit.
Then, the afternoon and evening was spent with Kalie, one of my best friends, as we read, wrote, and played Monopoly (during which she crushed me). It was an unconventional Thanksgiving but Bella, Ki, Kalie, and everyone at the movie theatre still made the day beautiful for me 😊
So what about those anxiety-inducing, teeth-gritting, white-knuckling-to-get-through holiday gatherings with work, friends, and family?
Especially those people who may be on the opposite side of the political and ethical spectrum from you and they may be pretty loud about their beliefs and they may like to fight about it?
Again, be creative and explore your mindset.
First, can you just not go? Or maybe go late or duck out early? I know, I know. Thinking about bailing on a holiday gathering seems like the HIGHEST FORM OF SACRILEGE. But I promise, the world won’t end for considering it, nor will the world end if you skip holiday parties.
And if I’m wrong and it does, well there’d be no consequences to speak of since the world ended, so it’s not worth worrying about.
One of the first things I had to learn when I started therapy and was diagnosed with my anxiety disorder was how to get comfortable saying “no” to people.
I’m happy to report I’ve gotten a lot better at it! But THE STRUGGLE WAS REAL. I didn’t want to hurt or disappoint anyone so I found myself doing everything for everyone all the time and it would often reduce me to a crying mess before or after one of those self-created-obligatory events.
I have vivid memories of being so overwhelmed with what I let my life become that the simplest of decisions left me on my knees, weeping in the middle of my kitchen because I just. couldn’t. choose.
So, I had to start saying no and, once I got the hang of it, (yay for therapy! yay for therapy homework!) it started to feel really good. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always easy. And I still go to things I’d rather not at times.
But simply acknowledging that I could give myself the permission to skip something felt even more liberating than Miranda completely redefining the way we give each other gifts.
Okay, but let’s say you really can’t skip the holiday gathering you’re dreading. Again, be creative.
Have you ever cried on the way to a function you’d rather not attend? And/or given yourself permission to sneak off to a spare room or a bathroom to have a good cry while you’re there?
You disappear and give yourself five-to-twenty minutes to just cry it out. Then you splash some water on your face and you’re right back out there! As someone who has done each one of these things, I can personally attest to their effectiveness.
But you don’t have to take my word for it! Breaking down what happens in our bodies when we cry, we see:
“After a good cry, your parasympathetic nervous system (the system of nerves in your body that allow you to “rest and digest”) can take over. That allows you to shift out of a “fight or flight” response. That shift can make you feel as if a weight is lifted and things become clearer…Researchers in the 1950s and ‘60s compared crying to a safety valve that releases “superfluous emotional energy or relief of tension.” Keeping the valve shut tight, they said, could cause a backup of negative energy that could be mentally and physically detrimental.[1]”
Some of us are more comfortable crying on our own (I’d know; I’m pretty great at that). While others would rather cry with someone else there with them (I’m even better at this one!).
So, while “all crying is not created equal,”[2] in a pinch, any cry will do to help open that emotional safety valve and shift you out of the “fight or flight” response, even if just a little bit. This releases some of that anxiety and tension and makes the function you’re at easier to handle.
So, don’t underestimate a good cry!
Being mindful of our perspective—when it comes to people I struggle to be around, I call to mind one of my favorite Doctor Who Christmas specials.
During the special, Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) finds herself trapped in a dream state which she must wake from or perish in the dream. She doesn’t want to leave because her boyfriend, Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson), is there with her…and he had died in real life. I find what he tells her to be as poignant as it is beautiful.
Clara – [crying] “When I wake up, you won't be there.”
Danny – “Do you know why people get together at Christmas? Because every time they do, it might be the last time. Every Christmas is last Christmas, and this is ours. This was a bonus. This is extra. But now it's time to wake up.”[3]
Then they kiss and she wakes up. Yeah, I’m a mess and I sob every time I watch it, too.
But I think about this often when I’m struggling to be around someone. They may not be my favorite person, and that’s why I don’t spend all my time with them, but they are in my life. And someday they’ll be gone, whether they pass away or we drift apart.
You never know which Christmas is going to be last Christmas so it’s important to savor each and every one, even and especially with those people who try your patience. Because every Christmas is last Christmas and one of the beautiful things about loving someone is it doesn’t have to be tied to liking them all the time.
And if awkward, trying political conversations happen to come up, well Reid already wrote a great piece helping us all handle that which you should totally check out if you haven’t already!
Now, to be clear, these are all just suggestions. I make no claims that any of these ideas are “the right ones” for you in your holiday struggles. That’s where the creativity part comes in!
You know you better than I ever could. So all I’d suggest for you, if you’re struggling this holiday season, is be mindful of the fruit your perspective is yielding and give yourself permission to get creative and try things. Identify what you need and then let your creativity work to bring it into being.
Most of all, in all your struggles big and small, love yourself and know that I love you, too. That may seem an odd sentiment, dear reader, as we’ve never met—but, as you read these words I’ve written, we are very much connected, just as we are connected by the shared experience of living.
And even though I do not know you and may never meet you, laugh with you, or cry with you, I love you with all my heart.
📚Want to dive deeper? Here are the studies and books that informed this article📚
[1] “Why You May Feel Better After Crying,” Cleveland Clinic. Published November 16, 2022. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/benefits-of-crying
[2] “Why You May Feel Better After Crying.”
[3] Paul Wilmshurst, dir. “Last Christmas,” Doctor Who, Christmas Special 2014, BBC, 2014.
