Blues from the holidays through Valentine’s Day: Four tips for beating winter blahs

Americans in general run one frantic gauntlet from Thanksgiving through the first part of the new Year. We tend to overbook the calendar in December… when January hits there's little on the schedule. We overeat, overspend, undersleep, and underappreciate during the holidays… when the New Year arrives, the scale screams, the bills put you in a funk, the alarm seems to come too early and you reflect on relatives you saw but now miss dearly. Then there’s Valentine’s Day, which for some is a lonely time.

You're not alone.

Call it holiday blues, holiday depression, post-Christmas blues, or winter blahs, these commonly used terms depict the mental distress occurring after the turning of the calendar. This is an entirely common, mild, mental distress. Professionals observe the condition often when people are dealing with daily life stress and change.

Here are four ways to rediscover feeling good in 2018.

1) Take some of what made you feel good during the holidays and continue that well past Easter. If you enjoyed having lots of plans and looked forward to being out with others, make sure you make some plans now. Volunteer, invite people over, see a movie, visit a museum, take a class, sign up for the gym, take up a hobby. Get out, and get active. Connect, or reconnect

2) Go easy on yourself. Gaining weight isn't the end of the world. The credit cards don't have to be paid back in one fell swoop. You’re not physically weak, financially irresponsible, or lacking in mental willpower. Newsflash: You’re normal.

3) Resolve to not make a New Year's resolution this year or a ‘by-Spring-I-will- ____’ promise. About the same percentage of people make such proclamations (41 percent) as the percentage who never make them (42 percent) according to StatisticBrain.com. Nine of ten people who make a resolution fail to meet the goal… most of them beat themselves up over it. See #2 above.

4) Talk. Open up greater dialogue with your spouse, friends and children about the things you bottle up inside. And talk to a professional. We can work together to discover what's a temporarily issue, and what could be an underlying stressor to resolve for a happier, healthier 2018 and beyond.

 Photo by Trudy Wilkerson, used with permission.