It’s officially that time of year: Pumpkin spice everything, crisp mornings, and early sunsets. With just under two months left until the end of the year, maybe you find yourself feeling excited for your family gatherings, Christmas shopping, and reruns of your favorite holiday movies. Who doesn’t love celebrating the holidays with Clark Griswold or Will Ferrell in a green coat and yellow tights?
Despite all the excitement, however, maybe you also notice an underlying anxiety beginning to broil underneath the surface. If so, I don’t blame you. This time of year can bring up many complicated dynamics related to family, expectations, disappointments, and even grief. Maybe you find yourself celebrating the holidays away from your family for the first time in your life, or maybe the anticipated joy of the holidays pour salt onto an already strained relationship in your life. Perhaps you got married this year and find yourself having to navigate the challenges of splitting the holidays with two families that you love. Whatever it might be, if the holidays are starting to bring up feelings of anxiety and overwhelm, know that you’re not alone. Here are some reasons why this time of year can feel more challenging than not:
Conflicting (Unspoken) Expectations
As the holidays come up, maybe you have ideas in mind of how you want things to go. Imagine this: Maybe you plan on visiting home and you expect to spend half the time with family and the other half with friends you haven’t seen in a while. At the same time, maybe your family is expecting you to spend every day with them and don’t understand why you’d want to spend any of your limited time together away from them. On top of that, maybe none of you are actually saying what you’re hoping for, so then unmet expectations turn into silent tension, passive aggressive comments, and an eagerness to go back to your normal routine. If this sounds similar to what you’re experiencing or anticipating, you are not alone! It’s likely that your expectations don’t fully align with those of the people you’ll be spending the holidays with, and that is okay. It may be helpful to have a conversation before the holidays related to expectations and boundaries so you don’t find yourself feeling guilty or resentful when the time comes. It’s not wrong to have conflicting expectations, it just means you’re human. Having conversations ahead of time can help set you and your loved ones up for a more enjoyable time over the next couple months.
Relationships Change
Part of being a human means living in a world where not every relationship stays the same. Maybe you’ve had a hard year with a family member and you don’t find yourself feeling as close to them as you used to, or perhaps you’ve experienced a loss this year and this will be your first holiday without a loved one. Whatever it might be, experiencing a shift in relationships can feel especially hard during this time of year. If you resonate with this, know that you have permission to feel sad or even angry about these changes. Rarely do we love feeling a loss of connection to those we care about, and the holidays can serve as a painful reminder that those connections are strained or even gone. Give yourself permission to feel and grieve the way you need to, and remember that you’re not alone. Reach out to someone around you for the kind of support and reassurance you might need, or reach out to therapist who might be able to help you work through these difficult experiences together.
Reflective Disappointment
The end of the year is often a time when we reflect on our goals, accomplishments, challenges, or even disappointments from the past year. While this can be a healthy and productive thing to do, it can also bring about feelings of guilt, shame, or embarrassment if you find yourself ruminating on perceived failures or unmet expectations. This can feel especially difficult for those who carry perfectionist tendencies. Remember that you are human, and being human means that we carry a wide range of experiences from successes and celebrations to mistakes and disappointments. All these things are allowed to co-exist. If you find yourself feeling stronger about the “failures” than the wins of this past year, consider that failing to meet certain goals does not have to mean that you are a failure as a person.
As you approach the end of the year, give yourself grace to not do it all perfectly. You have full permission to be human, in all the complexities that come with it. If you do find yourself struggling in a way that feels difficult to work through on your own, don’t hesitate to reach out to a trusted friend or a therapist for support. I work with individuals in Kansas who want to process feelings of anxiety, depression, self-doubt, self-hatred, and perfectionism. You can follow the buttons below to book a session or schedule a free consult to see if we could be a good fit: