Coping With Holiday Depression In A Healthy Way

With the passing of Thanksgiving comes the beginning of this holiday season.  By the end of this week, the holiday season will be about halfway through.  Many people have difficulty during this time of year.  There are as many reasons for people to have trouble with the holiday season as there are people.  Anything can make it difficult.  And one of the things that usually does not make it easier to deal with is when others do not understand how hard it can be, why it is hard, or remind you that you can get over your holiday depression by just being grateful for the things that you have.

Practicing Gratitude

Gratitude is, in theory, an easy concept to grasp.  Gratitude is all about acknowledging all of the things that you have in your life and having an extra appreciation of them.  Gratitude is actually really hard to have.  As a species, humans are hard-wired to fixate on the bad things because the bad things could be a threat.  Good is something that can be glanced over because it is not a threat to survival.  However, as conscious beings, it is possible to move past our biology.

Holiday depression is often one of the times that feels the bleakest.  The weather is darker and the air is generally colder so more people are staying indoors.  Even in those times when you feel like everything is falling apart, and your life will never be good again, it is usually possible to find something to be grateful for.

 What You Can Do To Combat Holiday Depression

Take some time to try an experiment.  Take a few minutes each day to write down one or two for which you can be grateful.  Starting small is the key.  There is no reason to find fake things that you feel like you should be grateful for, but you are not really.  Find things that are truly good even if they are small.  Think about things that can and do make you happy.  They do not need to be great big things that will change the world or effect your whole life.  Small things to be grateful for could be being able to get out of bed in the morning, a cup of your favorite tea, or your dog.  You could be grateful for a sunny day, the good mood of the teller at the bank, or missing a really long red light on your way to work.

Even if you are experiencing holiday depression, there are things for which you can be grateful.  If some of your depression stems from not being able to be with friends or family, or not having people to share your holiday with, you could be grateful for the freedom that you are afforded or the peace that comes with solitude.  If the whole holiday experience is too much for you, you can be grateful that it is a relatively short season.  If you are missing loved ones who have passed away, you can be grateful for the good times you had and that there are others who know how you are feeling.

At the end of a week, go back and read over the things that have made you happy that week.  Then move on.  Do the same for another week.  It is possible that after that second week, you will find yourself looking for ways to be grateful and passing that positive energy on to others.  You might find that you generally start to feel better about the state of your life.  You might even start making plans to yourself feeling good and effecting positive change in your own life.

It is possible for acts of gratitude to really change your life.  When you start to recognize the good things in your life, no matter how small, you may be able to start finding more and more things that you can be grateful for.  The Law of Attraction says that like speaks to and attracts like means that when you look for the good things you will attract more good things.  It may seem difficult at first to find the things in your life for which you are grateful.  Like almost anything else, it is likely going to feel like yet another chore you have to do.  But as you progress, it will get easier, and you will find that gratitude starts to come naturally.