When Christmas Feels Heavy: Why This Time of Year Can Hurt - and How Therapy Can Help

Matty Sweet
4 days ago
4 min read

Can You See The Wood Through The Trees At Christmas?

For some, Christmas is a hard time. It could be that the cost of living makes present buying difficult because of the pressure. There might even be an expectation that you be around people who make you feel unsafe. It may be that Christmas was a period during which harm was caused. It could also be that you just don’t get it, which is the category that my perspective comes from.

The Weight of Expectation

Let’s look at the behavioural change which takes place when our money is tight, and the latest ‘must-have’ item is on our screens. We hope to have enough pennies saved to be able to get the gifts our loved ones want or need. It could be that there are items which get brought online with the credit card that will be paid off in January. The challenge here is seeing how love and value are expressed in the art of giving. For some, it is shiny, good and great. For others, there are emotions and feelings like annoyance, anxiety and disgust. Yes, sadly, some people are about to make it through one more Christmas with negative beliefs about people, events and places. This could be conscious or unconscious processes happening in your affect regulation, where your mind and body form memories in life to date.

We may like a heart-warming advert or song that makes us forget the reality we are faced with. There are ways that marketers hope to provoke our emotions and feelings into action. Just as this blog does - we are human beings after all. The reason why clients want to work on Christmas in psychotherapy or counselling comes from the connection individuals, persons, or roles we have with others.

The Emotional Load People Bring to Christmas

Here’s why it matters when people enquire from the homepage based on a Google search for Therapist Near Me, or Best Therapist near me. There are some challenges to telling their story straight away. After all, it feels hard to tell a stranger that they have been physically, mentally and emotionally harmed by another who took their power and control away from them. The memories which people experience from harm caused to them as children, or cared for by caregivers, are a key part of the psychodynamic and humanistic work in the therapy room. In therapy terms - or the geek out space in my therapeutic relationships - it is known as attachment schemas, or how we tell people we are attached to others, and these are fundamentally relational to ourselves, also known as those harmed, and with the person causing harm. The parts of the narrative that is person sits with in private, or speaks up about in the privacy of the therapy room, are known as social memory, which often informs how we see ourselves in roles, and are explored through compassionate questions.

What Trauma-Informed Therapy Can Offer

As a trauma-informed practitioner, this is where talk therapy can be useful to look at the challenges you may be feeling in adulthood. From the earliest memories and how the brain works, to the way affect regulation is changing your life based on those hard memories, or ongoing harm which might be happening in your life. I use the 50-minute or therapeutic hour to explore the non-verbal communication, body movements, and reactions in the body that hold trauma. A good example of this would be the gap between the head and shoulders, which often shortens when we are worried or overwhelmed. This work uses professional expertise and personal interpretation to learn more about you, and work on pathways to develop change together by challenging unhealthy distractions and the constant actions that are able to make ‘just for today’. I do appreciate that this content is written about the therapeutic process. I aim to invite you into a safe and confidential space to be you - possibly for the first time. And it is here that the work is bespoke to your needs.

For me, the ability to support someone in psychotherapy and counselling for mental health and emotional regulation is a vital part of the work to address the silence someone is using. I have found that people arrive at events like Christmas with a heavy weight of inactivity, inappropriate actions like substance misuse, feelings of shame, internal criticism and a sense of rejection.

If This Feels Familiar, You Don’t Have to Manage It Alone

If any part of this blog feels familiar — the heaviness, the pressure to “be okay,” the memories you’d rather not revisit — you don’t have to figure it all out on your own.

I offer a free 30-minute phone conversation where you can: