The Psychology of People Who Are Unhappy On Holidays

It usually starts sometime in mid-November.

You walk into a grocery store, and you hear the first few notes of a holiday song playing

over the speakers, or you see a neighbor putting up lights way too early, and instead of

feeling a spark of joy, instead of feeling that warm, nostalgic glow that movies tell

you you're supposed to feel, you feel something else entirely.

You feel a heavy, dull, thud in your chest, or maybe you feel irritation, or maybe, and

this is the most common one.

You feel absolutely nothing, a profound, echoing numbness.

You look around you, you see people rushing to buy gifts, you see co-workers wearing festive

sweaters, you see friends posting perfectly curated photos of their decorations, and you

feel like an alien species observing a strange ritual you no longer understand.

You are performing the motions, you buy the gifts, you attend the parties.

You say happy holidays, but inside the lights are off.

The house is empty.

People might call you a Scrooge, they might call you a Grinch, they might ask, where is

your holiday spirit in that accusing tone that implies a moral failing?

But losing the holiday spirit is not a character flaw, it is not about being negative, it is

a complex psychological response, it is a defense mechanism, and for many people it is the

brain's logical reaction to a specific type of emotional overload.

Today we are going to deconstruct exactly why the most wonderful time of the year often

feels like the most exhausting.

We are going to look at the psychology behind the holiday blues, the impact of forced nostalgia,

and why your brain might have decided to opt out of the celebration to save itself.

Why do we put so much pressure on this day?

Because we are chasing a ghost.

For many who have lost the spirit, the problem is not the present, it is the comparison to

a mythological past.

Psychologists refer to this as rosy retrospection.

This is a cognitive bias where we judge the past more positively than we judged it when

it was actually happening.

You remember being seven years old, you remember the magic.

You remember the specific smell of the pine tree, the size of the prisons, the feeling

of safety.

You added out the arguments your parents had.

You added out the long boring weight for dinner.

You added out the cold.

You distilled the memory into pure dopamine.

And now, as an adult, you are unconsciously trying to recreate that distilled feeling,

but you can't, because you are no longer seven.

You are now the one buying the presents, not the one receiving them.

You are the one cooking the dinner, not the one eating it.

You have moved from the role of the receiver of magic to the creator of magic, and creating

magic is hard work.

This creates what is known as the expectation gap.

Happiness is often defined by the equation, reality minus expectations.

During the holidays, our expectations are set by movies, by commercials, and by our

own edited memories.

They are set at an impossible 10 out of 10.

So even if your reality is a very decent 7 out of 10, you register it as a loss.

You register it as a failure.

You feel a phantom pain for a version of the holiday that never really existed.

And that disappointment slowly erodes the spirit until you stop trying altogether.

Now moving to the atmosphere itself.

The holiday season is unique because it is the only time of year where there is a societal

mandate to be happy.

And not as a suggestion, but a requirement.

The songs tell you to be jolly.

The ads tell you to be merry.

The cultural narrative is that if you are not smiling, you are doing it wrong.

Psychologically, this creates a state of cognitive dissonance.

It is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who holds two or more contradictory

beliefs, ideas or values.

In this case, the conflict is between your internal reality and the external expectation.

Your internal reality might be, I am tired.

I am broke.

I am grieving.

I am stressed.

The external expectation is, I must be radiant.

I must be generous.

I must be full of light.

When you force yourself to perform happiness when you are actually suffering, you are engaging

in what psychologists call surface acting.

This is a form of emotional labor where you suppress your true feelings to display the

emotions required by the situation.

It is exhausting.

It burns glucose in the brain.

It depletes your willpower.

But worse than that, it creates a sense of alienation from yourself.

This is often exacerbated by toxic positivity.

The holiday season is the Olympics of toxic positivity.

This is the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should

maintain a positive mindset.

Good vibes only.

It is Christmas, cheer up.

When you are told to cheer up without having your underlying pain addressed, your brain

rebels.

It perceives the holiday spirit not as a joy, but as a threat to your authenticity.

So you shut down.

You lose the spirit because the spirit feels fake.

You retreat into numbness because numbness is safer than the exhaustion of pretending.

For many, the holidays are not associated with magic.

They are associated with trauma.

And even if you think you have moved on, your body remembers.

This is known as the anniversary reaction or the anniversary effect.

It is a unique set of unsettling feelings, thoughts or memories that occur on the anniversary

of a significant experience.

If you grew up in a volatile household, Christmas might not have been about Santa.

It might have been about walking on eggshells.

It might have been the day your father drank too much.

It might have been the day the financial stress made your mother snap.

It might have been the day the fighting was the loudest because everyone was trapped

in the house together.

As a child, you likely developed a state of hypervigilance during the holidays.

You were scanning the room for threats.

You were trying to manage the emotions of the adults around you to stay safe.

Now, 20 years later, the calendar turns to December.

You are safe.

You are an adult.

But your amygdala, the alarm bell of your brain, does not know that.

It sees the tree.

It hears the music.

And it activates the old neural pathways.

Danger.

It whispers.

Be careful.

Don't let your guard down.

So you feel anxious.

You feel on edge.

You can't relax and enjoy the spirit because your nervous system is preparing for a fight.

Or you might experience the empty chair syndrome.

If you have lost someone significant, apparent, a partner, a child, the holidays act as

a magnifying glass for that absence.

The rituals emphasize the loss.

Every tradition highlights the person who is not there to perform it.

Grief during the holidays doesn't just feel like sadness.

It feels like a physical weight.

It is difficult to feel the spirit when you are carrying a ghost.

Then there is the gathering itself.

Have you ever noticed that you can be a highly functioning, successful, therapy-going adult

for 11 months of the year?

But the moment you walk into your parents' house for the holidays, you turn into a moody

teenager.

This is a very real psychological concept known as regression.

It is a defense mechanism leading to the temporary or long-term reversion of the ego to an earlier

stage of development.

Families are systems.

And systems resist change.

Psychologists use the term homeostasis to describe how families try to maintain their established

patterns even if those patterns are unhealthy.

When you were growing up, you were assigned a role.

Maybe you were the golden child, maybe you were the black sheep, maybe you were the fixer,

or the scapegoat.

When you return for the holidays, the system exerts immense pressure on you to step back

into that role.

If you are the fixer, you will feel a compulsion to solve everyone's problems.

If you are the black sheep, you will feel the familiar prickly defensiveness, waiting

to be criticized.

This role-playing is exhausting.

It feels inauthentic.

You are wearing a costume of your past self that no longer fits, and the effort it takes

to either play the role or fight against it leaves you with zero energy for joy.

You aren't losing the spirit, you are losing your autonomy, and the brain hates losing

autonomy.

We cannot ignore the engine that drives the modern holiday, consumerism.

Psychologically, the holidays tap into the hedonic treadmill.

This is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level

of happiness, despite major positive or negative events or life changes.

We buy things to feel good.

We give things to feel good.

But the dopamine hit from material goods is short-lived.

It spikes, and then it crashes.

The holidays trap us in a cycle of materialistic value orientation.

We are told that love is quantifiable.

If he loves you, he will buy you this.

If you are a good parent, your child will have this many gifts.

This triggers deep-seated status anxiety.

We are social creatures wired to compare ourselves to others.

Social media has weaponized this.

You scroll through your feet and see the perfect families with their matching pajamas and

their mountains of gifts.

This triggers social comparison theory.

You compare your behind-the-scenes footage with everyone else's highlight reel.

You feel inadequate.

You feel financial stress.

The cortisol, stress hormone, caused by financial anxiety directly counteracts oxytocin,

the bonding hormone, and serotonin, the happiness hormone.

You cannot buy the Christmas spirit, but you can certainly go into debt trying to fake

it.

And when the bill comes, the resentment sets in.

For a significant percentage of the population, the loss of the holiday spirit is simply a matter

of biology and neurology.

We live in a world that celebrates the extrovert ideal.

The holidays are designed for high stimulation seekers.

Light flashing lights, loud music on loop, crowded malls, constant social interaction,

small talk.

If you are an introvert or a highly sensitive person, this is not fun.

It is an assault.

HSPs have a nervous system that processes sensory data more deeply than others.

While an extrovert walks into a holiday party and gets energy from the crowd, an HSP walks

in and feels like their brain is being microwaved.

This leads to depletion.

Your social battery drains rapidly.

You experience introvert hangover, a physical feeling of fatigue, irritability, and brain

fog that occurs after too much social interaction.

Finally, we have to look at the environment.

In the northern hemisphere, the holidays coincide with the darkest days of the year.

For many, the loss of the spirit is actually a symptom of seasonal affective disorder.

This is a type of depression that's related to changes in seasons.

The lack of sunlight disrupts your body's internal clock.

It causes a drop in serotonin, the brain chemical that affects mood.

It disrupts the balance of melatonin which plays a role in sleep patterns and mood.

So if you are listening to this and nodding along, if you feel like the ghost at the

feast, what do you do?

Do you force it?

Do you fake it until you make it?

No.

The psychology of recovery starts with acceptance.

You have to stop gaslighting yourself into believing you should feel something you don't.

You have to accept that your reaction, whether it is grief, exhaustion, or numbness, is valid.

You might need to practice Jomo, the joy of missing out.

You might need to set boundaries that feel terrifying.

Maybe you don't go home this year.

Maybe you don't buy presents.

Maybe you stay in your pajamas and order Chinese food and watch a movie that has nothing

to do with snow.

You have to separate the performance of the holiday from the essence of the holiday.

The performance is the lights, the parties, the spending, the noise.

The essence, if you strip it all away, is supposed to be about reflection, rest, and connection.

And you can have connection without the circus.

You can have rest without the guilt.

You're allowed to rewrite the script.

You're allowed to create new rituals that actually serve your nervous system, rather than destroying it.

If the old traditions hurt, burn them down.

Build something small, something quiet, something real in the ashes.

The world has enough people performing happiness.

What we need more of is people who are brave enough to be real, even when it's uncomfortable.

Even when it's December 25th.

If this analysis resonated with you, if you felt that sense of relief that comes from finally

having a name for what you are feeling, hit that like button.

It helps us find the other people who are sitting silently in the corner of the party.

It helps us build a tribe of people who understand that it's okay to not be okay.

And if you want to explore more about the hidden mechanics of your own mind, subscribe.

We are figuring this out together.

And remember, the date on the calendar does not get to dictate your emotional state.