How to Navigate Depression (During the Holiday Season) | Ep. 414

In this episode, Kimberley Quinlan shares practical strategies for navigating holiday-related depression, from setting boundaries to finding small moments of joy, so you can create a season that prioritizes your mental health.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How to identify common holiday triggers like grief, loneliness, and financial stress.
• The importance of redefining holiday expectations to fit your mental health needs.
• Tips for setting loving boundaries with family and friends to protect your well-being.
• Creative self-care ideas to bring moments of comfort and joy into your holiday routine.
• The role of mindfulness and behavioral activation in managing depression.
• Why asking for help and going gentle on yourself are key to thriving during the holidays.

Navigating Depression During the Holiday Season: Tips and Strategies for Self-Care

The holiday season is often portrayed as a time of joy, celebration, and togetherness. But for many, it can also bring feelings of depression, grief, and anxiety. If you find yourself struggling during this time, you are not alone. In this article, we’ll explore the triggers of holiday-related depression and provide actionable strategies to help you manage your mental health during this season.

Common Triggers for Holiday Depression

Before diving into coping skills, it’s essential to identify common triggers for depression during the holidays. Recognizing these can help you prepare and manage your emotions more effectively.

1. Grief and Loss

The holidays can intensify feelings of grief for loved ones who are no longer with us or for the life milestones we haven’t achieved. This could include:

• Missing past traditions.
• Reflecting on unfulfilled goals or expectations.
• Grieving relationships that have ended.

Grief has many stages, from sadness to anger to bargaining, and it’s vital to give yourself permission to experience these emotions fully.

2. Family and Social Pressures

Family gatherings often come with expectations—whether it’s about your appearance, career, or lifestyle choices. Feeling judged or needing to “perform” for others can take a toll on your self-esteem and mental health.

3. Loneliness and Isolation

Whether due to distance, strained relationships, or life circumstances, loneliness can hit hard during the holidays. This isolation can lead to self-criticism and hopelessness, making it crucial to find ways to connect or care for yourself.

4. Financial Stress

The commercialized nature of the holidays often brings financial pressure. Gift-giving, parties, and travel can add to the stress, making the season feel overwhelming instead of joyful.

5. Anxiety-Inducing Triggers

For those with anxiety disorders, the holidays can amplify stress. Social gatherings, dietary concerns, and specific triggers like family dynamics or traumatic memories can compound feelings of depression.

Coping Strategies for Holiday Depression

The good news is that there are effective ways to manage depression and create a holiday experience that works for you.

1. Reconfigure Holiday Expectations

Social media and society may set unrealistic expectations for what the holidays “should” look like. Instead of striving to meet those ideals, redefine the holidays in a way that aligns with your values and mental health needs.

• Ask yourself: What feels right to me this season?
• Let go of the need to “do it all” or “get it perfect.”

2. Set Boundaries with Love

Protecting your mental health might mean declining certain events or addressing uncomfortable topics with family members. Here are some ways to set boundaries:

• Politely decline invitations: “Thank you for inviting me. This season is overwhelming, and I’m focusing on self-care, but I’d love to catch up after the holidays.”
• Address sensitive topics: “I’d appreciate it if we could avoid discussing [topic] today. I really want this to be a positive day for all of us.”

3. Plan Your Day with Intention

Carrying depression can feel like walking through thick mud, so planning your day to support your mental health is essential:

• Prioritize sleep and rest: Overbooked schedules can worsen fatigue and depression.
• Schedule pleasurable activities: This concept, known as behavioral activation, helps counter depressive symptoms. For example, enjoy a warm cup of tea, take a short walk, or wear a cozy sweater to feel comfortable.
• Limit overstimulation: Say no to late-night parties or events that might exhaust you further.

4. Challenge Depressive Rumination

Depressive rumination—the act of repeatedly thinking about what’s wrong—can magnify feelings of inadequacy. Counter this by:

• Practicing self-compassion: Acknowledge that you’re doing your best.
• Redirecting your focus to the present moment or something you appreciate about yourself.

5. Embrace Mindfulness

Mindfulness helps anchor you to the present, allowing you to find small moments of joy amidst the chaos:

• Observe the twinkling lights on a tree.
• Savor the smell of a holiday treat.
• Appreciate the sound of seasonal music, even if it’s just for a moment.

These small practices can create a sense of calm and presence during a stressful time.

Creative Self-Care Ideas for the Holidays

Self-care doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. Here are some ideas to make the holidays more manageable:

• Create new traditions: Start a simple activity that brings you joy, like watching holiday movies or crafting homemade gifts.
• Simplify your celebrations: Instead of elaborate events, find comfort in small rituals like lighting a candle or journaling your thoughts.
• Ask for help: Whether it’s a friend helping with chores or someone checking in daily, don’t hesitate to lean on others for support.

Gentle Reminders for the Season

• Be kind to yourself: Depression is a bully that thrives on self-criticism. Speak to yourself with the same compassion you’d offer a friend.
• Reach out for support: If you’re struggling, let loved ones know or contact a mental health professional.
• Focus on what matters: The holidays don’t have to be perfect. Prioritize what feels meaningful to you and let the rest go.

The holidays can be challenging, but with intentional strategies and self-compassion, it’s possible to navigate this season with care and resilience. Remember, it’s a beautiful day to do hard things. You’re not alone, and you’re doing the best you can. 

Transcription: How to Navigate Depression (During the Holiday Season)

I have my ugly holiday sweater on and I’m here to speak with you about navigating depression during the holiday season. My name is Kimberly Quinlan. I’m an anxiety specialist, and I have seen a huge increase in my clients reporting an uptick in depression over the holiday season. If you’re someone who’s experiencing more depression or more debilitating depression over the holidays, you’re absolutely not alone. 

Today, I’m here to talk with you about how to identify triggers for depression, how we can use some effective skills to help you manage that depression as it shows up, how you might set some boundaries with family members and friends during the holiday season, and we’re also going to talk about some creative ways that you can really take care of yourself.

So if this would be helpful for you. Let’s go. 

Okay, so with all the holiday cheer and tradition and events and parties, sometimes alongside that comes depression. There is a lot of pressure put on us during the holidays to be cheery and happy and in the mood for all the celebrations, but for many reasons, you may not be in the mood to celebrate the holidays.

And so what I wanna first. What really bring home here is you’re allowed to reconfigure what the holidays mean to you. It might look like social media wants you to make it look like. You’re going to, in this season, have to readjust that to what works for you and what works for your mental health. So the first thing I want to say is is let’s just take all of the expectations on how you are going to show up, how you are going to cope.

Let’s take the expectations on how you’re supposed to do this holiday season and check in with what feels right to you. And I’m going to give you a ton of ideas on how you might do that. Now, before we get into it, let’s just take a look at the most common triggers people experience around the holidays.

The one that I see the most is grief. A ton of grief comes up over the holidays. Grieving past loved ones who won’t be there for you. Grieving the idea of what the holidays used to look like compared to what they are now. Maybe grieving lost relationships, friendships, grieving the experience of the year that’s just gone by.

Often people come in to the end of the year beating themselves and grieving what they didn’t achieve. There is so much grief that comes up. A lot of grief also comes up with, you know, this idea of the way you wanted the holidays to look. Maybe by now you wished you had a family and had Uh, you know, you were pregnant.

Maybe by now you wish you had that job that you were trying to get a promotion. Maybe you wish that things worked out differently. Maybe you wish you didn’t have depression for the holiday. Grief is a very normal part of what shows up during the holiday and we want to slow down and be as gentle as we can so that you can move through that grief process.

Remember, we don’t grieve with a big smile on our face. Grief has different stages. Some of that may be anger, sadness, depression, disbelief, bargaining. There are so many stages of grief and your job is to give yourself permission to go through those stages as we do. The second trigger that we often experience when we go into the holidays is really this pressure from family members.

Feeling like you have to show up to the Christmas holidays or the Hanukkah parties in a certain way so that people perceive you. Whether that’s you look a certain way, you’re a certain weight, you’ve cooked a certain thing, that you’ve performed. This, it becomes very performative and this can be so painful for us on our identity, on our self esteem.

When we feel like, We are not keeping up with the Joneses. I’m going to give you some skills here too on how you might set some boundaries with family, particularly if that’s something that you’ve struggled with.  Another big thing that shows up during the holidays that can create depression, I know I have experienced this a lot, is feeling alone, feeling isolated, missing your family.

I live in Los Angeles. All of my family is in Australia. I miss them during the holidays. And this can be a time where you start to examine yourself and your decisions and your life. And you can feel pretty hopeless and helpless about your decisions and about how far you are away from your family.

Whether it’s because you’ve chosen to be away or right now, it could be. The world, the way the world is, might be what’s separating you from your loved ones and causing a great deal of grief and isolation over the holiday period.  Another huge piece that can increase depression is financial stress. The holidays are so expensive.

The expectations are so high that you need to present these grand gifts. I know even with me, with my kids, it gets overwhelming. At all of the other families and what they’re doing and where they’re traveling to and what they’re giving from from their parents. The pressure of finances can be a huge weight on people and can contribute to their experience of depression. 

Now I’m an anxiety specialist, so I’m always going to look at this through the lens of anxiety as well. And for those of who have anxiety, The holidays can be a very depressing season because it increases the amount how anxiety might get triggered. For me, when I had an eating disorder, the holidays were so stressful because I had to feel so stressed about what foods were being prepared and were being presented to me.

Let’s say if you have social anxiety, you’re going to have a lot of anxiety and sadness about how distressing these family or work or school events are going to be. If you have OCD, there could be so many reasons the holiday events and, and parties are going to trigger you. This is very true for, for post traumatic stress disorder as well.

Seeing family members, particularly if there’s a trauma there, all of that compounds. So not only is it the stress of the holidays, But it’s the anxiety of these triggers and then it’s the feeling overwhelmed by these triggers which can again lead to depression. So what we want to do is we want to acknowledge all of that.

We’re not going to judge ourselves for the fact that the holidays trigger us. It’s very normal to be triggered by the holiday season. So let’s go in gentle and we’re now going to talk about some coping skills that you can practice. Some of these you may love. Some of these you may not, that’s fine. Just take what helps you leave the rest and be as gentle with yourself as you can.

So let’s get into it.  So tip number one is just do what you can. I want to give you permission to just do what you can. Do what you can. Take a look at your schedule, see what the holidays have planned for you, and then make some very informed and insightful and intentional decisions about what will work for you.

What are you capable of? Now I know here on the podcast, I’m always talking about it’s a beautiful day to do hard things. We can do hard things and bring it on. Absolutely. We want to approach the holidays with that mindset as well.  But we’re not going to push ourselves so much that we’re even more depressed.

That does nobody any good. So I want you to get really clear on what can you do and set really reasonable expectations. Now on the heels of that tip, I’m going to bring you in with the second one, which is You’re allowed to say no. to events. You’re allowed to say, I’m really sorry. The holidays are very overwhelming for me and I’m going to have to decline.

But once the holidays are over, let’s make sure you and I hang out together at a coffee shop or whatever it might be. If that doesn’t appeal to you, you might say to them, I’m really sorry. That week is so filled for me. And I’m really trying to prioritize my mental wellness and my self care. And so I’m going to have to decline, but please don’t feel like this is me rejecting you, or it doesn’t mean anything about how much I care about you.

I’m just really trying hard to prioritize my self care in this season. That’s okay to say. Now, it’s also okay to say, I’m sorry, I can’t. Make it simple. And that’s all you have to say. But what I want to encourage you to do is you don’t, you don’t need to come up with elaborate excuses. You can. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But it’s also okay just to be honest and say the holidays make my depression really bad and I’m really trying to make sure this year is a time where I repair and heal from that and go really gentle with myself. So I’m going to say no, but please know that I still love you and care about you and Please let me know how I can support you.

That’s okay to say too. Depends on what you’re comfortable with.  Now the next thing I really want you to think about is scheduling the day so that you can thrive. Carrying depression with you is so hard. It is like trudging through the thickest mud. And so we want to make sure that you are planning the day with the priority of your mental health.

Now we have a whole online course about this called Time Management for Optimum Mental Health. I’m not going to go into that too much here, but, because you can take that course if you want. It’s at CPTSchool. com. But in that course, we talk about looking at your day and scheduling pleasure and sleep first, because you’re going to need to take care of yourself.

A lot of these parties go into the late night, which means tomorrow you’re going to feel exhausted, increasing your chances of being more depressed. Schedule your day to set up your tomorrow. And schedule your day so that there are things you’re looking forward to. One of the key components of depression management is what we call behavioral activation.

This is where we purposely schedule time. To do the things that give you a moment of relief and warm, loving, kindness, that give you a moment of feeling mastery over something, or confidence in something, or joy in something. We talk about this in our online course for depression called Overcoming Depression a lot.

Schedule your day so that there’s more pleasant things. It could, it doesn’t have to be expensive either, it could be as simple as sitting down with a cup of tea. before you go to the event. Or, bringing with you something to the event that feels warm and loving to you. Maybe it’s me, you, wearing your warm, fuzzy, easy sweater instead of getting dressed up.

In fact, I chose this sweater as a reminder to tell you it’s okay not to get all dressed up for these holiday parties. If you’re more comfortable just coming in a t shirt and  Please do that. I don’t want this to be even more expectation that you have to get dressed up and dolled up. Just do what you can and try to do the things so that you can gently add in some pleasure and kindness as you go. 

So one really important piece of managing a And the holidays, especially if you have depression, is setting boundaries. We all know those events where you go and people feel the urge to ask questions that are inappropriate, or make comments that are inappropriate, or that make you uncomfortable. Maybe you’re sensitive about it, maybe it’s triggering for other reasons.

What we want to do here is Prepare for these questions. Be aware of what you think will be asked or what will be said, and come up with appropriate responses. Now, these are some examples. Family members are known for commenting on people’s weight. Commenting on their skin, commenting on their hair, commenting on their job, commenting on their sexuality, commenting on who they chose as their partner or friends, commenting on their cooking.

There is, we’re commenting on whether you are early or late. There are so many reasons that we can get stressed out anticipating what they’re going to bring up. So what we want to do is instead of ruminating about it, because ruminating about it is not helpful, I’ll talk about that here more in a second.

Instead of ruminating, what we want to do is be intentional at planning how we are going to respond to this. Or, planning on how we are going to address it before it happens. So one example could be, if you always have a family member who has to bring up, you know, something about your weight, you might come into the event and say, whether it’s before the event or during, and say, listen, I really love you, um, I would really appreciate if we could not talk about my weight today. 

Right? Or, let’s say someone always makes a comment about your Personal choices that you’ve made you might say listen, um, it always really hurts me when we bring up politics or my choice in partner or my choice in whether I having kids or not or my choice to Where I live it could be I mean, it’s unlimited, but you might bring that up and say It would mean so much to me if we could avoid having that conversation today.

I really want this to be a special day. Would you be okay with us not discussing that today?  If there’s someone who would say no, you could just say I would appreciate if we don’t discuss this today. And even if they bring it up again, you could say I really understand your desire to talk about this, but I’d prefer not to.

Thank you.  Okay, there’s always ways in which you can respond with kindness and love so that you don’t engage in the conflict of that thing. It’s so important. Now, if let’s say something comes up where you weren’t anticipating it, that’s okay, too. You can say to them again gently, Listen, I’m feeling really uncomfortable and I prefer not to talk about it.

And during the holidays or any season at all, you’re allowed to remove yourself from from the situation if you don’t feel like you can both have a mature, respectful conversation. It’s okay, you get to leave if you need to. And you can do it lovingly, and you can do it in a way where it doesn’t exacerbate more conflict.

Now, let’s go to the point I made before. Often over the holidays, when we have depression especially, one of the biggest actions we do, one of the symptoms of depression. is rumination. We ruminate about how bad we are, and how bad it’s going to be, and how it’s not as good as we wanted it to be, and it should be another way, and we compare ourselves to other people.

That is what we call depressive rumination. And very similar to anxiety, we want to reduce and In a perfect world, remove that depressive rumination wherever possible. If you take one thing away from today, it would be, number one, be kind during the holidays. But keep an eye out for that depressive rumination.

We can be really mean to ourselves during the holidays when we’re ruminating about all the things that we do. didn’t do good enough at, how we’re not enough, how we’re stupid and ugly and not successful enough and don’t have enough money and all the things. We want to catch that depressive rumination as fast as we can and bring ourselves either back to the present or bring us back to some kind of appreciative comment where we can appreciate the efforts that we’re putting forward and acknowledge that we’re doing a the best that we can. 

Now, one of the core components of managing depression, especially during the holidays, is to develop some kind of mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is the skill of bringing your attention to the here and now, without judgment, without resistance. And that is going to be so important during the holidays.

And I’ll show you why. During the holidays, there actually are so many moments where we can experience some joy. It mightn’t be this  overwhelming of joy that we’ve seen on social media or that we would expect, but there are moments of small bits of joy. It might be just looking at the Christmas tree and seeing the lights twinkle. 

With mindfulness, we can take that in just for now and observe a moment of some joy if you experience it. Again, we don’t want to have it be 10 out of 10 joy. Maybe it’s just 1 out of 10 joy, or 2 out of 10 joy. It might be as you sip on hot chocolate. Acknowledge and observe.  That there is some pleasure here in the holidays.

We don’t want to judge it. We don’t want to judge ourselves for not having enough. We don’t want to judge it for any reason at all. We just want to be present with the smell of the chocolate.  Or, the sound of the Christmas music, if that’s something that has brought you pleasure in the past. Or, the joy of somebody opening a gift, even if it’s something you made.

1. S. Note, if financially this is a stressful time, make your gifts for people. Write them a letter. You will be shocked at how much pleasure that brings people, way more than a 100 gift, or a 500 gift. And so I want you to get creative about ways you can do it without adding financial risk and expense to yourself.

But going back to the mindfulness piece, how can we plan pleasurable activities  and be mindful about them,  be present with them? It mightn’t be that it lasts, you may have depression that comes back, that’s okay. We’re just doing minute by minute, day by day, one day at a time, one moment at a time, one experience at a time.

Try your hardest to stay as mindful as you can.  So one other really huge thing I want you to think about, especially during this holiday season, is to implement new traditions.  What can bring you some joy?  Here is an example, and I know I’ve talked about this on the podcast before.  In my family, there are like five days in a row where we celebrate with food and drinks and presents and all the things.

But when I moved to America, my husband has a friend whose family made a new tradition because they were overwhelmed by the expectations of that, and they made a deal and a tradition that on Christmas Eve, They go to In N Out. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a chain burger place on the west coast of America.

And they do this on Christmas Eve every year. They go through the drive in, they don’t even go in to eat, and they eat it in the car. They’ve created a new tradition that is okay for them, that feels good to them. Now what I want you to do is create new traditions that feels good to you too. They don’t have to be traditional.

They don’t have to be what the world says, you get to create your own traditions. Maybe it’s that on the holidays, you don’t wear many makeup. Maybe it’s in the holidays, you watch a Christmas movie every evening instead of doing something else. Maybe you listen to Christmas music while you brush your teeth every day.

Often when we have depression, we fall behind on our basic self care. So maybe you marry your self care and hygiene with something that you do enjoy, that will make it feel like, this is the one time of the year I get to do these things. These are all just ideas, you’re going to have to get creative for yourself.

I know for us, when we do advent calendars, it makes us excited about all the days instead of getting all the gifts on Christmas day, but It’s like a little gift we give each, give to our children each day and it could be like two or three dollars each one. If you need something like that to make you feel a little more excited about the holidays, maybe you get a lip gloss one day or a Starbucks gift card for five dollars the next day, breaking it up over the holidays can make you feel a little more festive and have a little more to look forward to as you ease into the holidays. 

Okay, the last thing I want to remind you guys is please, please go gentle, please  be as gentle as you can. If you’re struggling and this is so overwhelming and you feel yourself sinking, reach out for support. Ask a loved one to help you, even that’s if they come over and help you do your laundry or your dishes with you.

Have them come over and just sit with you if you need someone just to be in the presence of you. If you need space, that’s fine, but ask them to check in on you once a day. Depression can be a really mean, demanding bully in our brain. So it’s important that we Surround ourselves with support and we get good at asking for help when we need it.

I hope this has been helpful for you. If you’re navigating depression during the holiday season, you’re so not alone. I’m sending you every ounce of love. Please know that I am here sending you loving kindness every single day of this holiday season. And do remember, it is a beautiful day to do these hard things. 

See you next week.  Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbt school.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting ccbt school.com.