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As psychologist Guy Winch explains, "Much as accountants' busiest time of year is tax season in April, we therapists see our practices overflow in November and December. Why? ‘Tis the season of family gatherings."

Family gatherings have the potential to help us feel connected and loved, but even within the best of family dynamics, cooking, cleaning, and coordinating schedules can be stressful. And the fact of the matter is that not every family shares the best dynamics on display in Hallmark Holiday Specials. Family gatherings can bring old wounds to the surface, and leave many feeling less connected, less understood, and alone despite the holiday crowds. For those who live far from family and friends, singles, and those who are newly separated, divorced or grieving, the family-focused holidays can be a painful and lonely time. Add these factors to the days getting shorter, the weather colder, spending less time outdoors in the sun, and it is easy to understand how the holidays can leave us feeling stressed out and blue. 

​The following resources can help you survive and thrive through this holiday season:

• Psychologist Guy Winch writes a thoughtful column on dealing with loneliness at the holidays, including suggestions on developing your own traditions and tribe. (Guy also has much-loved TED Talks on the importance of emotional first aid and healing a broken heart.)
• PsychCentral has compiled a master list of resources to help you navigate the holidays. Find help with everything from reducing holiday stress, maintaining healthy boundaries through the holidays, navigating the holidays when you struggle with depression, and much more.
• The Mindfulness and Grief Institute compiles resources to help in managing grief during the holidays.
  
• The American Psychological Association (APA) hosts a Holiday Stress Resource Center covering topics such as managing difficult family conversations (including politics) and dealing with financial stress during the holidays.
• Finally, this Psychology Today blog post by Dr. Michelle McQuaid is an oldie-but-goodie, describing small (research-based) changes you can make to help you flourish during the holiday season and throughout the upcoming year.

If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed with stress or sadness, know that you are not alone. Talking with a therapist about coping with the holidays specifically, or untangling long-standing relationship patterns, can be useful and help you move through the holidays and into the new year with less stress, more understanding of yourself and others, and more skills to navigate this time of year with more grace and less stress in the future.

The Heads Together campaign has partnered with this weekend's London Marathon to help raise awareness and encourage people to speak up about and prioritize their mental health (all the runners will be given Heads Together headbands, modeled by the Royal Family above). ​

Journaling can be an invaluable resource for therapy. When someone describes an unusually good (or bad) day in session, I often ask them to reflect on what was different. Answers of "I don't know." or "Nothing, I think." are supremely frustrating in that they leave a person feeling helpless, as though a good or bad day comes out of the blue or passes them by completely outside of their control. More often than not, there are concrete things someone did, thought, or felt that either contributed to a better day or perhaps kept a bad day or experience from "taking over" or becoming unmanageable.

Take for example the few pounds we all may or may not have added over the holidays. We can be perplexed when we look at the scale now and wonder, "How did that happen?" But we also know that people who log everything that they eat or drink 1) tend to eat and drink more mindfully and healthily, and 2) can readily identify that pumpkin cheesecake or second helping that likely added to the scale come January. Journaling can provide that level of insight for your mental health.

Identifying patterns can be empowering and can provide you with your own individual data on what works, and what doesn't, what contributes to a great week, and what behaviors, skills, and experiences help you nip anxiety or depression in the bud. This process can help you clarify thoughts and feelings and solve problems more effectively.

Journaling can improve your body as well as your mind. University of Texas social psychologist and researcher, James Pennebaker has found that regular journaling strengthens immune cells (lymphocytes). A study published in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment noted improvements in both physical and psychological health in clinical and non-clinical groups after just 3-5 15-20 minute journaling sessions. Other research suggests that journaling offers not just emotional, but physical benefits to individuals battling terminal or life-threatening illnesses. Perhaps we see these benefits because, as Pennebaker suggests, writing about stressful events helps you come to terms with them and reduces the impact of these stressors on your physical health. Remind you of therapy? Journaling and therapy can beautifully complement one another. The work that you do journaling over the week can build on the momentum, insights, and positive changes you are developing in therapy. 

Adding space for a gratitude journal can provide time and space to reflect on positive thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a way that can actually help re-train your brain to more readily identify (rather than discount) positive experiences.

Including self-care ideas for when you notice triggers or early signs of depression or anxiety can help you easily identify tried and true methods to change course or help manage those negative feelings before they become overwhelming.

Here are some additional tips to get you started:

• Write every day. Whether you are more comfortable writing page long entries, drawing about your day or feelings, or using bullet points to capture the essentials, writing every day can help you build a consistent practice of mindful reflection. This can begin to change not just how you reflect on experiences after the fact, but also how you live them in the moment. If you have a negative interaction with a co-worker or spouse, you may find yourself thinking, "This is definitely going in the journal." That thought begins to change the experience. You begin to think about how you might write about it. Will your journal entry say that this conversation kicked off a terrible day? Or will you write about how you used the opportunity to practice stopping a spiral of negative thoughts, or how you used other coping skills to turn it around?​
• ​Make it easy. Before you set up a goal or "resolution" (e.g., to exercise 5 times a day or get 8 hours of sleep each night) start with tracking where you are now. Be curious, mindful, and take some time to learn about your current baseline. Once you've established that, you'll be better able to set realistic goals. ​

​Make it yours. Your journal can be as minimalistic and straightforward or artistic and detailed as you want. Are you the type of person (this month) who delights in a To Do list? Or does a listing these tasks and obligations bring you additional stress? If so, you may find you are better served by a "Done" list. Find your own style and what works best for you. The beauty of making a journal your own is that it can change with you from week to week, and month to month. Build on what works for you, and leave what does not behind without guilt (recognizing each of these is progress in and of itself!).

​Finally, I'm personally a proponent of putting pen to paper. One of the benefits of a journal that you physically create yourself is that you have complete control in customizing it to fit your needs as opposed to having pre-printed pages that you don't love or use in a day planner or maintaining multiple tracking apps. That said, if a physical journal just feels too analog for your life, there are a number of apps out there that track habits, moods, and provide space for journaling. Just be aware of protecting your privacy and online presence if you choose a digital route.

Happy journaling!

Additional Journaling  Resources:

BulletJournal.com offers a videos, tips, and tutorials on how to start a bullet journal.

Rachel Wilkerson Miller and Anna Borges at Buzzfeed offer a lighthearted and insightful collection of ways to use journaling to track and improve your mental health.

Steven Stosney at Psychology Today, describes the research on the results of journaling and gives tips for reaping the benefits of journaling while avoiding the pitfalls. ​

Mental health practitioners speak of and research common symptoms of depression including avolition and anhedonia. Avolition refers to the loss of motivation to initiate and carry out purposeful activities (e.g., cooking dinner, balancing your checkbook, keeping a dinner date with friends), while anhedonia describes a loss of pleasure in once valued activities. Journalist and author Anneli Rufus published a piece this week which appears on Psychology Today eloquently describing the lived-experience of these losses: depression's theft of one's passion, pleasure, and awe.

Those who have not endured or born witness to depression often struggle to understand the experience beyond what we think of as ordinary "blues." Rufus's poetic voice speaks to the depth of loss that is at the heart of depression. Her words may move you to a better understanding of those you love who have been robbed by depression, or it may give voice to your own struggle and help you know that you are not alone.

Read Anneli Rufus' full piece here.​