Mental Health During the Post-Holiday Season: When the Most Wonderful Time of the Year Isn’t So Wonderful
Content warning: This article discusses mental health (specifically depression and anxiety). I do not intend to speak on the experiences of all folks with mental health conditions or all with my diagnoses (see my footnotes for clarification and further information). If you or someone you know needs help, please seek professional mental health care and stay safe.
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SAMHSA Hotline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
Going home for winter break is typically, for college students, a desirable end to the semester. Being with family, seeing old friends, being back in a childhood home, or playing with your dog are often the lucrative prizes for finishing a hectic finals season. Hearing peers talk about this desire is vicariously lovely — I often wish I felt the same.
It’s not that I have a bad home — I come from privilege and have much to be grateful for. But going home for the holidays as someone with mental health conditions can provide a sharp contrast to the cheer and joy of the season. For me, coping with depression and anxiety during a time when all should be merry and bright is exhausting, debilitating, and frustrating.
The holidays can bring out acute mental health issues for many folks not living with chronic mental illnesses — bouts of anxiety or depression are very common during the holiday season, often referred to as the Holiday Blues. And for folks with mental health conditions (like me), the holidays can actually amplify existing mental illnesses — in one survey by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 64% of people with mental health conditions reported that the holidays made their condition worse. Despite the stresses of the season, for some folks with diagnosed or diagnosable mental illnesses, the holidays may be a genuine relief, where it may be comforting or easier to be with family who know you and to be in a home where you’re loved. However, in my experience, going home for the holidays consistently ends up being one of the most difficult times, though coming home at any time of year is often accompanied by waves of emotions and immersion in potential triggers*.
In the weeks leading up to the end of fall semester, the feeling looms that going home will send me into a depressive episode** (or worsen an existing one). It’s more than the stress of shopping for gifts or planning a huge family dinner that makes preparing for the holidays hard — it’s a deeper, more underlying fear that grows as the holidays approach. During all of finals season, I’m not just worried about my exams or that long research paper I have to write; I’m paralyzed thinking about how trapped I will feel at home in a matter of days, surrounded by the holiday spirit while I’m struggling to get out of bed every morning.
Going home also means being away from the support system I’ve spent the last four years building — a support system consisting of my college friends who see me and, in some cases, my illnesses, every day. Once I step foot off of campus, that safety net disappears, and I’m left to flounder for weeks, feeling alone and misunderstood amongst festivities. Beyond that, though the holidays can be busy with trivial things, the transition from consistent work during finals to the quiet lull of no work, no class, and nothing to do but busy-work holiday tasks can be quite stark. For my depression, the lack of work can make it near-impossible to find purpose or motivation to do anything; for my anxiety, the stress of getting the right gift or what to wear to dinner becomes inordinately overbearing. The combination of the uncomfortably familiar environment of my hometown, being away from my collegiate bubble, having little meaningful things to keep me busy, and the forced happiness of the holidays often leaves me with little other than emptiness and an oncoming depressive episode.
Pretty consistently, within a few days of being home, I’m spiraling. With too much time to think and lots to think about, my distortions become deafening. A depressive or anxious episode can be explicitly triggered by many things — a fight with my mom, cancelled plans with friends, seeing a snap story from a college friend having fun at home. Or, it can be triggered by seemingly nothing at all. In fact, going home for the holidays has become its own trigger for me, in that going home in and of itself can set me off. I used to be nervous to go home and thought I could try to avoid depressive episodes by avoiding specific triggers. Now into my final year of college, I finally know that as winter break begins, I will inevitably start to sink lower, and preventing it isn’t really realistic or necessary. Reframing winter break as a time I will likely feel at minimum some increased symptoms isn’t creating a self-fulfilling prophecy; it’s being honest with myself and using understanding and kind self-talk for things I can’t control.
Not only am I working on how I talk to myself about this time of year, I’m also trying to improve how I communicate with others in my life. This is of course complicated by the fact that the onset of a depressive episode is often invisible to the people around me, likely due to a fun mix of my constant desire to please and anxiety about appearing normal to the outside world. In fairness to family and old friends, I’ve experienced most of my illness outside my hometown (the onset of my conditions occurred after high school), so they might not even know what to look for. And beyond that, if you’ve witnessed my depression at all up close, you know I live my life as a consistently highly functioning depressed person — I don’t exactly make it easy to tell if I don’t want you to know. I also often experience irritability during this time of year, a common symptom of depression (and anxiety) with unfortunate effects when all should be holly and jolly. I am not only exasperated by reasonable requests and normal behaviors; I also find myself resenting the happiness around me that I’m meant to be partaking in and becoming exhausted trying to keep up with acting okay. I wonder how those around me are happy, and resent the fact that they don’t notice my mental state, despite my acuity at hiding it and knowledge that that isn’t their fault. When I’m at home, I often spend a lot of my energy performing happiness or suppressing irritability.
In reality, the holiday season is a lot about performing — keeping the kids from knowing about Santa, showing how much you spent on someone’s gift, posting New Year’s resolutions or years in review to seek validation or praise. I grew up pretty solidly immersed in Roman Catholicism, so I’ve spent my whole childhood witnessing and partaking in ceremoniously performative rituals and traditions. In a sense, that makes me feel less out of place during these days — it’s easy to revert to those norms of smiling in the church choir, reacting happily when opening a gift, or exchanging pleasantries at Christmas mass. Being a highly-functioning depressed person is, in a sense, acting. Maybe all those years of musical theater really did count for something — they were preparing me for the consistent part I’m meant to play.
It makes sense that my instinct and defense mechanism is to perform stability. However, I’m trying to allow myself to take off the mask once in a while and be more honest about how I feel during this time of year. This doesn’t mean talking about how depressed I am every second, but it does mean a self-examination of when I’m talking about it, when I’m not, who I’m talking about it with, and why. When people want to help, they often ask, “What can I do?” There is hardly an easy answer to this question — sometimes, I actually don’t know what you can do. Still, my mental state often worsens when I feel like the people around me don’t understand or know me and my depression, so I’m trying to feel less guilt from being honest about it. Trying to let people in to the little things has helped clue them in to what I experience.
I’m trying to remember that it is not the fault of my friends and family if they don’t know my triggers or recognize an episode, and that any way they may set me off is not only unintentional and not their fault, but could be something they’re oblivious to. I’m fighting to untwist the distortion that the people at home don’t know me, don’t try to know me, and don’t care to know me. Of course they know me and care — and repeating that to myself is actively working to push away my distortions.
All in all, the Most Wonderful Time of the Year isn’t always Wonderful, and I’m learning to accept that fact. Really, that’s all I can do. Like people always say, it’s okay to not be okay, and that applies just as much during those days of cheer as it does any other bad day. Keep waking up to smell the pine trees, and stick it out — regular post-holiday winter is right around the corner.
*Note: I use the word “trigger” throughout this piece to describe actions, events, stimuli, words, or other factors that can contribute to or set off symptoms of depression (e.g. negative self-talk, cognitive distortions, etc) or a depressive episode (clinically understood to be a period of time characterized by depression symptoms lasting two weeks or longer). “Trigger” also has many meanings separate from but related to depression, including related to other mental illnesses such as PTSD, anxiety, or substance use – for more information on triggers, check out this helpful resource.
**Note: I use the phrase “depressive episode” to refer to a period of time in which depression symptoms are heightened, significantly worse than normal, or life-consuming. For a clinical definition of a depressive episode in the context of Major Depressive Disorder and for more information on depression and MDD in general, check out this helpful resource.
About the Author
Elena Phethean (she/her/hers) is a junior from Pleasantville, NY studying Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Community Health at Tufts University. There, she is the co-coordinator of Tufts Sex Health Reps, a student group bringing comprehensive and inclusive sexuality education and sexual assault prevention to campus. She also loves music and sings with her a cappella group, the Tufts Jackson Jills. As a queer woman, she is especially passionate about women’s/gender minority health and queer sexual health outcomes, as well as working with survivors.
