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It usually starts sometime in mid-November.
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You walk into a grocery store, and you hear the first few notes of a holiday song playing
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over the speakers, or you see a neighbor putting up lights way too early, and instead of
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feeling a spark of joy, instead of feeling that warm, nostalgic glow that movies tell
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you you're supposed to feel, you feel something else entirely.
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You feel a heavy, dull, thud in your chest, or maybe you feel irritation, or maybe, and
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this is the most common one.
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You feel absolutely nothing, a profound, echoing numbness.
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You look around you, you see people rushing to buy gifts, you see co-workers wearing festive
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sweaters, you see friends posting perfectly curated photos of their decorations, and you
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feel like an alien species observing a strange ritual you no longer understand.
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You are performing the motions, you buy the gifts, you attend the parties.
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You say happy holidays, but inside the lights are off.
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People might call you a Scrooge, they might call you a Grinch, they might ask, where is
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your holiday spirit in that accusing tone that implies a moral failing?
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But losing the holiday spirit is not a character flaw, it is not about being negative, it is
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a complex psychological response, it is a defense mechanism, and for many people it is the
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brain's logical reaction to a specific type of emotional overload.
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Today we are going to deconstruct exactly why the most wonderful time of the year often
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feels like the most exhausting.
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We are going to look at the psychology behind the holiday blues, the impact of forced nostalgia,
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and why your brain might have decided to opt out of the celebration to save itself.
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Why do we put so much pressure on this day?
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Because we are chasing a ghost.
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For many who have lost the spirit, the problem is not the present, it is the comparison to
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a mythological past.
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Psychologists refer to this as rosy retrospection.
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This is a cognitive bias where we judge the past more positively than we judged it when
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it was actually happening.
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You remember being seven years old, you remember the magic.
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You remember the specific smell of the pine tree, the size of the prisons, the feeling
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You added out the arguments your parents had.
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You added out the long boring weight for dinner.
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You added out the cold.
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You distilled the memory into pure dopamine.
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And now, as an adult, you are unconsciously trying to recreate that distilled feeling,
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but you can't, because you are no longer seven.
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You are now the one buying the presents, not the one receiving them.
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You are the one cooking the dinner, not the one eating it.
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You have moved from the role of the receiver of magic to the creator of magic, and creating
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This creates what is known as the expectation gap.
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Happiness is often defined by the equation, reality minus expectations.
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During the holidays, our expectations are set by movies, by commercials, and by our
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own edited memories.
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They are set at an impossible 10 out of 10.
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So even if your reality is a very decent 7 out of 10, you register it as a loss.
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You register it as a failure.
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You feel a phantom pain for a version of the holiday that never really existed.
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And that disappointment slowly erodes the spirit until you stop trying altogether.
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Now moving to the atmosphere itself.
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The holiday season is unique because it is the only time of year where there is a societal
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mandate to be happy.
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And not as a suggestion, but a requirement.
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The songs tell you to be jolly.
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The ads tell you to be merry.
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The cultural narrative is that if you are not smiling, you are doing it wrong.
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Psychologically, this creates a state of cognitive dissonance.
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It is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who holds two or more contradictory
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beliefs, ideas or values.
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In this case, the conflict is between your internal reality and the external expectation.
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Your internal reality might be, I am tired.
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The external expectation is, I must be radiant.
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I must be full of light.
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When you force yourself to perform happiness when you are actually suffering, you are engaging
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in what psychologists call surface acting.
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This is a form of emotional labor where you suppress your true feelings to display the
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emotions required by the situation.
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It burns glucose in the brain.
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It depletes your willpower.
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But worse than that, it creates a sense of alienation from yourself.
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This is often exacerbated by toxic positivity.
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The holiday season is the Olympics of toxic positivity.
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This is the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should
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maintain a positive mindset.
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It is Christmas, cheer up.
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When you are told to cheer up without having your underlying pain addressed, your brain
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It perceives the holiday spirit not as a joy, but as a threat to your authenticity.
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You lose the spirit because the spirit feels fake.
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You retreat into numbness because numbness is safer than the exhaustion of pretending.
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For many, the holidays are not associated with magic.
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They are associated with trauma.
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And even if you think you have moved on, your body remembers.
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This is known as the anniversary reaction or the anniversary effect.
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It is a unique set of unsettling feelings, thoughts or memories that occur on the anniversary
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of a significant experience.
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If you grew up in a volatile household, Christmas might not have been about Santa.
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It might have been about walking on eggshells.
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It might have been the day your father drank too much.
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It might have been the day the financial stress made your mother snap.
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It might have been the day the fighting was the loudest because everyone was trapped
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in the house together.
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As a child, you likely developed a state of hypervigilance during the holidays.
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You were scanning the room for threats.
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You were trying to manage the emotions of the adults around you to stay safe.
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Now, 20 years later, the calendar turns to December.
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But your amygdala, the alarm bell of your brain, does not know that.
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And it activates the old neural pathways.
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Don't let your guard down.
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So you feel anxious.
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You can't relax and enjoy the spirit because your nervous system is preparing for a fight.
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Or you might experience the empty chair syndrome.
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If you have lost someone significant, apparent, a partner, a child, the holidays act as
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a magnifying glass for that absence.
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The rituals emphasize the loss.
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Every tradition highlights the person who is not there to perform it.
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Grief during the holidays doesn't just feel like sadness.
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It feels like a physical weight.
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It is difficult to feel the spirit when you are carrying a ghost.
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Then there is the gathering itself.
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Have you ever noticed that you can be a highly functioning, successful, therapy-going adult
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for 11 months of the year?
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But the moment you walk into your parents' house for the holidays, you turn into a moody
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This is a very real psychological concept known as regression.
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It is a defense mechanism leading to the temporary or long-term reversion of the ego to an earlier
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stage of development.
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Families are systems.
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And systems resist change.
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Psychologists use the term homeostasis to describe how families try to maintain their established
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patterns even if those patterns are unhealthy.
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When you were growing up, you were assigned a role.
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Maybe you were the golden child, maybe you were the black sheep, maybe you were the fixer,
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When you return for the holidays, the system exerts immense pressure on you to step back
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If you are the fixer, you will feel a compulsion to solve everyone's problems.
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If you are the black sheep, you will feel the familiar prickly defensiveness, waiting
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This role-playing is exhausting.
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It feels inauthentic.
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You are wearing a costume of your past self that no longer fits, and the effort it takes
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to either play the role or fight against it leaves you with zero energy for joy.
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You aren't losing the spirit, you are losing your autonomy, and the brain hates losing
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We cannot ignore the engine that drives the modern holiday, consumerism.
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Psychologically, the holidays tap into the hedonic treadmill.
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This is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level
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of happiness, despite major positive or negative events or life changes.
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We buy things to feel good.
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We give things to feel good.
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But the dopamine hit from material goods is short-lived.
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It spikes, and then it crashes.
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The holidays trap us in a cycle of materialistic value orientation.
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We are told that love is quantifiable.
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If he loves you, he will buy you this.
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If you are a good parent, your child will have this many gifts.
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This triggers deep-seated status anxiety.
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We are social creatures wired to compare ourselves to others.
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Social media has weaponized this.
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You scroll through your feet and see the perfect families with their matching pajamas and
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their mountains of gifts.
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This triggers social comparison theory.
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You compare your behind-the-scenes footage with everyone else's highlight reel.
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You feel inadequate.
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You feel financial stress.
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The cortisol, stress hormone, caused by financial anxiety directly counteracts oxytocin,
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the bonding hormone, and serotonin, the happiness hormone.
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You cannot buy the Christmas spirit, but you can certainly go into debt trying to fake
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And when the bill comes, the resentment sets in.
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For a significant percentage of the population, the loss of the holiday spirit is simply a matter
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of biology and neurology.
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We live in a world that celebrates the extrovert ideal.
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The holidays are designed for high stimulation seekers.
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Light flashing lights, loud music on loop, crowded malls, constant social interaction,
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If you are an introvert or a highly sensitive person, this is not fun.
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HSPs have a nervous system that processes sensory data more deeply than others.
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While an extrovert walks into a holiday party and gets energy from the crowd, an HSP walks
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in and feels like their brain is being microwaved.
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This leads to depletion.
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Your social battery drains rapidly.
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You experience introvert hangover, a physical feeling of fatigue, irritability, and brain
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fog that occurs after too much social interaction.
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Finally, we have to look at the environment.
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In the northern hemisphere, the holidays coincide with the darkest days of the year.
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For many, the loss of the spirit is actually a symptom of seasonal affective disorder.
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This is a type of depression that's related to changes in seasons.
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The lack of sunlight disrupts your body's internal clock.
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It causes a drop in serotonin, the brain chemical that affects mood.
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It disrupts the balance of melatonin which plays a role in sleep patterns and mood.
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So if you are listening to this and nodding along, if you feel like the ghost at the
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feast, what do you do?
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Do you fake it until you make it?
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The psychology of recovery starts with acceptance.
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You have to stop gaslighting yourself into believing you should feel something you don't.
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You have to accept that your reaction, whether it is grief, exhaustion, or numbness, is valid.
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You might need to practice Jomo, the joy of missing out.
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You might need to set boundaries that feel terrifying.
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Maybe you don't go home this year.
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Maybe you don't buy presents.
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Maybe you stay in your pajamas and order Chinese food and watch a movie that has nothing
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You have to separate the performance of the holiday from the essence of the holiday.
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The performance is the lights, the parties, the spending, the noise.
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The essence, if you strip it all away, is supposed to be about reflection, rest, and connection.
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And you can have connection without the circus.
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You can have rest without the guilt.
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You're allowed to rewrite the script.
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You're allowed to create new rituals that actually serve your nervous system, rather than destroying it.
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If the old traditions hurt, burn them down.
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Build something small, something quiet, something real in the ashes.
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The world has enough people performing happiness.
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What we need more of is people who are brave enough to be real, even when it's uncomfortable.
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Even when it's December 25th.
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If this analysis resonated with you, if you felt that sense of relief that comes from finally
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having a name for what you are feeling, hit that like button.
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It helps us find the other people who are sitting silently in the corner of the party.
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It helps us build a tribe of people who understand that it's okay to not be okay.
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And if you want to explore more about the hidden mechanics of your own mind, subscribe.
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We are figuring this out together.
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And remember, the date on the calendar does not get to dictate your emotional state.