Interpersonal Edge: Managing holiday blues

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By Dr. Daneen Skube
Tribune Content Agency
Interpersonal Edge

Q: The holidays are coming up and I dread them. Too much to do, end of year deadlines, complicated family reunions, and spending too much money. By the end of the year, I’m seriously depressed. Are there strategies you coach your clients on to manage holiday pressures?

A: Yes, the main ingredient that makes many people feel like depressed fruitcakes during the holidays is unrealistic and unachievable expectations. If you change what you expect, you’ll change what you do, and not end the year like a burned-out Christmas light.

The media often portrays fantasy holiday images that no one is experiencing. You know the ones, there’s a family crisis, all the bad people turn good, and in the final scene a light snow falls as everyone lifts a champagne glass. Trust me on this, no one is having that holiday experience.

If we realize that the holidays are an average week with some time off, we may plan better. Trying to spend more, bake more, or have lavish parties would burn the best of us out. You are not uniquely overwhelmed by these ambitions.
Holidays also bring the following challenges:

1. We re-engage with our families with lots of unresolved history.

2. We experience “anniversary” reactions as we go back through the holidays. Anniversary reactions are emotional residue from holidays past back to childhood.

3.There’s less natural light and many of us react to less light by getting depressed (known as Seasonal affective disorder — SAD).
If you find yourself feeling blue as soon as the sun fades during winter, get a full spectrum light and put it by your computer. These lights replicate the benefits of sunlight and for people with SAD, improve mood.

If you’ve never done any therapy on your family issues, finding an experienced therapist who has done a lot of their own therapy, is the way to go. With remote work, you can go to anyone, anywhere and get help via Zoom or Skype, etc. Our unresolved history can get heavy, painful, and even cause physical symptoms if we try to ignore it.

Since you now know that family skeletons don’t stay in the closet during the holidays, be prepared that your family will not transform like a Christmas miracle. Everyone will show up and be who they have always been. The more you predict the habits in your family, the more prepared you’ll be. You don’t need to stay if everyone is drunk by 2 p.m. You don’t need to argue, if your dad gets abusive. You don’t need to join any family power struggles. Merely giving yourself permission to vote yourself off the island of family patterns may bring much relief.

You also will not buy love. When I was a starving student, I couldn’t afford gifts. My family expected lavish presents. I proposed we all just stop buying gifts, except ones for kids, and it turned out that everyone was relieved. You don’t want your first New Year’s resolution to be paying off big credit card bills.

If you manage your time off work well, you’ll have more energy to respond to workplace stress at the end of the year. Again, the solution is to manage your expectations (now say that three times). You won’t create world peace, stop war, and cure cancer in the next month. Make your work goals bite sized, and you can feel calm and competent as you end your year.
The last word(s)

Q: We have a son who is worrying about what he’ll do when he graduates. Do you have some good advice on choosing a career?

A: Yes, as Katharine Whitehorn (1928-2021), a British journalist and columnist, advised: “Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.”

Daneen Skube, Ph.D., executive coach, trainer, therapist and speaker, also appears as the FOX Channel’s “Workplace Guru” each Monday morning. She’s the author of “Interpersonal Edge: Breakthrough Tools for Talking to Anyone, Anywhere, About Anything” (Hay House, 2006). You can contact Dr. Skube at www.interpersonaledge.com or 1420 NW Gilman Blvd., #2845, Issaquah, WA 98027. Sorry, no personal replies.