Westport’s Dr. Jennifer Guttman offers advice for dealing with holiday season stress

Yes, it’s that time of the year again – and for many people, the jollity associated with the holiday season eludes them while a growing sense of anxiety and depression takes over their emotions.

“I think that the holidays have always been a stressful time for people,” said Dr. Jennifer Guttman, a Westport-based clinical psychologist and author of the recently published book “Beyond Happiness: The 6 Secrets of Lifetime Satisfaction.” “As a culture, we’re more anxious and I’m sure that is bleeding into the holiday season.”

Guttman theorized that part of the problem regarding holiday season malaise is that “we have lost the meaning behind the holidays. And I think for that reason, it’s important for people to meditate and think about what they’re trying to get out of the holidays in advance of the holidays, and to have mindful conversations and transparent communications with family members before the holidays about what they want to get out of it. I’ve encouraged a lot of my clients to do that.”

Family gatherings are integral to many holiday season festivities, though Guttman acknowledged that for some people such gatherings result in heated confrontations. She recommended that it was crucial to have “productive conversations with family members about what conversations there should be a moratorium at the table – I think it’s really important to set these kinds of boundaries that are thought out mindful. And so, you’re going into the holiday with a set of rules and guidelines that will make you have less anticipatory anxiety, and also feel like you can be focused more on the holiday than on all of the things that you may be despairing about the rest of the year.”

Still, some holiday gatherings involve at least one person who enjoys a disruptive fight. Guttman stated there was nothing wrong if people absented themselves as a pre-emptive measure to avoid strife.

“I think that it is always okay to set a boundary around anything that makes you uncomfortable,” she said. “And you can mindfully do that by explaining why it’s not going to work. I have a client right now who would have to travel a long distance for a short period of time because of the amount of work that she had. It wasn’t comfortable for her family members that she had to decline the invitation for Thanksgiving, but she was able to explain in a mindful way that it really wasn’t going to work for her. She preferred to stay where she was and celebrate Thanksgiving with people in the city in which she currently resides.”

Guttman advised people who want to keep unpleasant family members and raucous friends at arm’s length during the holidays to question why they should be attending stress-inducing functions. She questioned if submitting oneself to a potentially unpleasant event is for “people pleasing reasons” rather than personal happiness.

“Do something that I call a ‘resentment check’ when you’re asked to go to a holiday event,” she said. “Ask yourself, ‘Am I going to feel resentment about going to this holiday event if I go and people don’t appreciate the effort that I put into this, either because of my mental health issues or because of work or other complicating factors?’ And if you feel uncomfortable and you’re thinking that people aren’t going to recognize your effort, then maybe you want to figure out a way to mindfully communicate this to them. However, if you think about it and you really feel okay with the idea of going, then that would be a good sign that it’s okay to go to the event.”

Guttman added that one key element that many people associate with the holidays – an increased level of alcohol consumption – can make a bad situation worse.

“It’s something to be mindful of when you start drinking around family members that you might be more likely to fall into an old role pattern,” she said. “If there’s the potential for you do that, then you might want to be particularly aware that there may be a time that you want to step away, give yourself a break, take a walk, or set a limit on how much alcohol you’re going to drink. If you’re around family members, particularly if there’s any tense or fractured relationships among family members, alcohol could be a contributor of some tense situations. I think it’s important to be mindful that alcohol does bring your inhibitions down. And when they are down, we are more likely to communicate thoughts that are in our mind that we might suppress if we have not been imbibing.”