How to Deal With Holiday Blues

Holiday Blues: For some, the holidays brim with joy, happiness, and love. Family traditions go off without a hitch and everyone’s happy to be jolly together. Others aren’t so lucky. For many, the holidays bring feelings of dread, loneliness, and depression (looking at you, seasonal affective disorder). If you find yourself anxiously anticipating Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day, know that it’s not just you — and there are strategies to make the holidays a little less overwhelming.

The Benefits: Disrupted routines, family dynamics, financial stress, and the pressure to feel cheerful can amplify loneliness or low mood. Implementing some practical holiday strategies can help protect your mental and physical health, and make the “best time of the year” feel easier to navigate.

How to Do It: Two approaches show up again and again in expert guidance because they’re broadly applicable. The first is managing expectations — your own and everyone else’s. Psychology professionals suggest that distress often comes from the gap between how we think the holidays should feel and how they actually do. The second? Setting boundaries. Giving yourself permission to opt out of certain traditions, limiting time with draining relatives, or redefining what “enough” looks like can significantly reduce stress.