Tips to Beat the Holiday Blues

By Melanie Haiken, Caring.com

Even when you know life doesn’t always live up to the sentiments of a Hallmark card or Verizon commercial, it can be really hard to admit that the holidays bring you down. For many of us, this time of year isn’t all candlelit dinners, smiling faces, and sentimental toasts. Instead, it can be full of reminders of people we’ve lost, relationships in distress, happier times gone by.

Even if we’re lucky enough to have the blessing of family celebrations in our life–and many people don’t–family gatherings can be tense and stressful. It’s all too common–especially for caregivers or those with major family responsibilities–to wake up the next morning feeling let down, exhausted, or overwhelmed as we look forward to the next set of holiday events to plan.

At the same time, we want desperately to enjoy the holiday season, to savor the wonderful moments, and store up good memories to carry us through the rest of the year. Here are some suggestions that experts say can help fend off the holiday blues.

1. Beware of Unrealistic Expectations.
This is probably the number one holiday saboteur for most women–the feeling that it’s your job to create the “best holiday ever” for those you love. Why is this so dangerous? Because you’re setting yourself up for failure; things will go wrong, certain things won’t turn out as planned–that’s just life. A therapist taught me an interesting trick, that works really well when the “it has to be perfect” and “but what if they’re disappointed?” tapes start playing in your head.

She told me to look back and make a list of holiday “disasters”–the times that things really did go wrong. How large do they loom in your memory now? Have some of them become favorite stories, retold to gales of laughter every year? Doing this helps you realize that some of your family’s most memorable moments were times when things went awry. And even true disasters, like the Christmas my daughter overheard us saying there was no Santa Clause and was sad all day–don’t loom as large when you look back in the context of all the many holidays you’ve spent together.

2. Allow Yourself to Say No to Things that Bring You Down.
If there’s something you know will make you sad, it’s okay not to do it this year. Really–it can be that simple. There’s no need to endure something that brings up bad feelings or sad memories. Here’s my example: Every year at Christmas, my dad and I used to take my daughters to ride the Tilden Park Merry Go Round, a wonderful historic carousel that’s lavishly decorated for the holidays to raise money for charity. When I tried to go the year after he died, I cried and had to stay in the car. So for many years we didn’t go, and I would feel terrible about that when my kids looked at photos and asked why we couldn’t do that anymore. But when enough time passed and I finally felt able to resume that particular family celebration, it became that much more meaningful. Now we shout “To Beepa!” (their name for their Grandpa) as we take our first ride, and it’s become a ritual of remembrance.

Tips to Beat the Holiday Blues originally appeared on Caring.com.