How to Cope with Holiday Depression

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Rachel Blackston and I am here on behalf of Expert Village and I am a private practice mental health counselor in Orlando, Florida and I work at a private practice called Twelve Stone Counseling Center and it is located in Ovieda, Florida. I am here to talk about how to deal with depression over the holidays. Again, I want to mention that if you are clinically depressed to see a doctor or psychiatrist or a professional counselor. But if the case is if you are just having a simple case of the holiday blues and let's talk about some coping strategies. The first is to connect, connect, connect. It is an extremely busy time of year. It is people running from one holiday party to the mall and so in the midst of that chaos, it is so important that you talk about what is really going on. That you give yourself room to recognize that this can be a very difficult time of year. So it is important that you talk to close family, friends and loved ones about what is it like to be without grandpa this year if you lost grandpa last year at Christmas. To talk about how does it feel to have a miscarriage so close to the holidays. I think a lot of times you know trying to not talk about deep sadness and lost over the holidays is like trying to hold a beach ball under water so it is important that you give yourself space for that. Another coping mechanism for the holiday blues is to set realistic expectations for yourself. It is impossible to have the perfect Griswold light display as well as having the perfect holiday spread that is straight out of Martha Stewart Living. Consider the part of the holiday that is the most important to you. Time with family, celebrating those holiday traditions, talking about loss and grief. Again, it is so important that you set realistic expectations because I think that everyone wants to have the perfect Christmas card, the perfect decorations, the perfect present and that can really set you up for a lot of disappointments. The next coping mechanism for dealing with the holiday blues is setting a budget. If you don't do that, then you could set yourself up for guilt and you don't want to have debt following the holidays because that will be very overwhelming and stressful. The next thing that you can do to get ready for the holiday blues is get plenty of rest. The holiday is typically a time that people are running from one party to another, spending an entire day at the mall and this really sets you up for discouragement and irritability. People tend to eat too much, drink too much and not get a lot of sleep and that does not help with a case of the holiday blues. "