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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). ​

With the holidays fast approaching, this can be a good time to pause and reflect on why this season of thanksgiving and joy can often be so stressful. Do you find yourself anxiously working to anticipate every detail or need in attempt to orchestrate the perfect holiday, the perfect family get together, the perfect scrapbook moment? Or are you pulled by the gnawing suspicion that no matter how hard you try, how badly you want this year to be different, that things will go wrong. Again. Just as they have so many times before?

When you find yourself pulled between these two intense emotional states and expectations, it can be easy to blame yourself for what has or what will go wrong, to feel or anticipate feeling blamed by others, or to blame others for behaving in what feels like a predictable destructive pattern. 

Author researcher and storyteller Brené Brown offers wise words on the underlying meaning and fallout of this tendency to rush to blame. By blaming ourselves or others we attempt to regain a sense of control, but we also lose out on opportunities and relationships in the process.