It’s not always about twinkly lights and good cheer – learn to cope with a festive season that induces anxiety and stress

19 Dec 2022

For many of us, another year coming to an end does not bring about cheer and happy thoughts, which may cause us to feel like a failure.

At the end of 2021, futurists and scientific and political forecasters augured that 2022 would be “another year of living dangerously”. At the time, the array of uncertainties – an unpredictable pandemic, the climate emergency and the risk of resurging interstate conflict – was enough to ignite anxiety in most, if not all, of us who had already navigated through the debris of uncertainty and fear for two years.

As I write this, I’m not sure if South Africa’s president will still be in office by the end of this year. But the curtain is about to fall on the year that was, and in spite of this major potential political shift we’ll look to the holiday season for a brief respite from the hustle we’ve come to accept as living.

Over the next few weeks we’ll step into the basket of a merry hot-air balloon festooned with ribbons of revelry and make our way over into the next chapter. We’ll continue the kinds of traditions in which we feel compelled to overspend on gifts and fill our time seeing as many people as possible. We’ll take measure of the 12 months past, of course, and then escape into a haze of happy cheer.

For a great number of people, however, the holiday season signifies the beginning of a period that must somehow be endured. Across the world, mental health statistics show that for many people the end-of-year holiday season brings higher levels of loneliness, anxiety and depression.

At the beginning of December, the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (Sadag) issued a statement saying that the year-end holidays bring financial stress and family difficulties to the fore, leading to an increase in anxiety, depression and loneliness.

When fewer than one in 10 South Africans with a mental health condition receive the necessary healthcare intervention, it should come as no surprise that Sadag’s toll-free suicide helpline manages more than 3,000 calls a day.

Most calls relate to the financial stress caused by inflation and unemployment, as well as depression, anxiety and trauma. Sadag reports that in the holiday period suicide rates may rise as a result of these and other life challenges.

Potential triggers

Though the triggers for summer holiday angst lie hidden beneath a number of sources, it is critical to acknowledge that nearly everything is amplified by another year drawing to a close. The Mayo Clinic cites “pressure from others, yourself or your bank account” as the biggest sparks setting off a seasonal emotional roller coaster.

In the spirit of “the season”, you might find yourself compelled (perhaps by tradition) to wish everyone well, party into the sunset, spend thousands on holidays and, most importantly, spare everyone’s feelings.

It is just not the time to recall all the ways in which you’re failing to see the wonder of a starry night sky, or complain that you couldn’t be bothered to go to the merry family gathering.

Of course, everyone has their own personal history with holidays. For some, twinkly lights, happy thoughts and heartwarming gestures are the order of the day. And we’ve been socialised to think that if you’re falling short on this relatively rudimentary level, then perhaps something is seriously amiss.

This perceived sense of failure may snowball into elevated levels of anxiety, which set the foundation for what a friend recently coined the “new apology tour”.

Read in Daily Maverick: “Helpless, anxious and depressed — how Eskom blackouts hit ordinary South Africans”

The new apology tour is born out of anxiety, which sometimes manifests as a set of behaviours that may hurt people’s feelings. These behaviours could include not responding to texts or forgetting to call people back. So you find yourself going around apologising to everyone you may or may not have slighted by just… being yourself.

One other holiday trigger is the memory of a lost loved one. For grieving people, even the happiest times are punctuated with an awareness that someone is missing. Whether it’s the first or the 10th of December without a person you loved, the air of melancholy, brought on by the empty chair or the favourite shared song, can reawaken feelings of grief and depression with renewed intensity.

With the rising cost of living, there is less money to spend and any piece of tinsel in a shop can trigger anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. Some people may worry that they don’t know what to put on the Christmas lunch table, and the shame and anxiety associated with it can be debilitating.

Alongside this is the sudden isolation brought on by comparing your own life to what you see on social media. This feeling can be especially acute when it coincides with a period marked by free time and socialising. I am personally aware of quite a few people who delete their Twitter and Instagram posts if they do not achieve satisfactory personal engagement targets.

This behaviour may inadvertently be linked to the findings from studies illustrating how social media users internalise beliefs that they are not popular, funny or good enough based on this absence of sufficient gratification (a lack of enough “likes” or engagements), which in turn intensifies feelings of anxiety and loneliness.

New traditions

With the happy hot-air balloon basket’s gentle sway, many of us will soon find ourselves peering over the edge at the crossover. For some, a tolerance for uncertainty has meant that we’ve grown accustomed to not knowing and making do. But for others, uncertainty can be extremely stressful and a heightened intolerance thereof is a necessary condition for anxiety of any nature.

Perhaps this time of the year should therefore also be an observance of the many ways in which people close to us sometimes cannot cope with the jolliness of jingling bells.

Maybe it’s time we call for new traditions – the kind where we’re especially tolerant of people who don’t call you back and those who choose not to spend time with people they don’t want to see.

What if, while we’re out buying stocking fillers, we also research how to help ease the holiday-induced isolation of others’ individual inner spaces? Or perhaps, while planning a holiday getaway, include the creation of a new memory to help thaw someone’s numbing, grief-related heartache.

We could do all this, and more, even if simply out of gratitude for the privilege of still being here. DM168

Florence de Vries is a communications specialist and journalist whose primary research interests are in the fields of mental health and the ethics of care.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.

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