Post Holiday Blues: PTSD Bites

Things looking bleak, feeling uninspired,
and just plain worse?
Holiday cheer can turn to holiday blahs
and intermingle with PTSD.

Post “Holiday Season” there’s special brand of the blues that can hit us in our heart and soul. Even mid-holiday season, our emotions can take a nosedive. Though not much is said about it, for most people feel a lag in our energy and inspiration after the holidays. And this year… geez louise.

heal ptsd post holiday blues narcissistic abuse recovery

If you’ve drooped, it’s okay. Know you’re not imagining the drop in desire or ability to motivate or cope or take down that sagging Christmas tree.

Even without the PTSD and the endured trauma, this kind of holiday lethargy hits many people.

When all that holiday stuff is combined with PTSD in the aftermath of a life-jacking, things are even heavier and muddier after the festivities wane. We can feel like we’re mired up to our necks with inertia and just plain “sad”.

Along with all that we’re going through, we just might get hit double-hard with the normal flavor of post-holiday season blahs and blues. Luckily… we can stir our souls back to life.

What does recovery mean for you? You get to decide.

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PTSD Dips Post-Holiday to Blahs and Blues and Sad and Stuck

The holidays are all about tradition, nostalgia, and sentiment. There’s lots of emotion as the holidays trigger the past; the good, the bad, and maybe the nightmare. It begins just before Thanksgiving, builds in intensity, and lasts into January.

Mainly for me, this time of year punches a hole in my momentum and this year I let it. I sat back and ate and drank and was quite merry with myself and the one household I mix with during 2020, my sister’s family.

A few days ago I thought, “Gosh, I need to make a new blog post, and send out a New Year’s newsletter and … stop eating … and do some work, but I think I’ll just watch this entire season of Bridgerton again and then maybe some of the Office since it’s about to leave Netflix and…then I’ll get…. ZzzZzZzzzzz…” I pulled myself together long enough to write this…

Tis’ the Season

It’s all okay… we’re supposed to relax. Yet this numb-out comes along in broken routines beginning with the Turkey-Day prep. And even in 2020 it builds up into the holiday expectations.

Work lags, or stalls altogether…this can be added financial stress an we’d really like it to feel like a great time to relax. Kids are home, or the house reverberates with emptiness. Everything seems to be reflected starkly in an extreme against the backdrop of so much shiny, and bright expectation. The holidays trigger the past; the good, the bad and the nightmare.

PTSD Dips Post-Holiday Season Mingled with Holiday Blues

No matter what, our attention and focus was either joyfully or begrudgingly required – maybe jolted – to shift into gift buying, stressing over what to give and to whom, shipping it early enough, then spending more, eating too much, ordering grocery deliveries or venturing out into the still masked world ourselves in time before the 2020 store closures… cooking, baking…?

There’s that thought, does any of it matter? Or does it matter more than ever? And this year, torturous thoughts of guests or no guests, travel or stay home… and still the decorating even if it’s for a solo holiday with our cat.

Holidays Sharpen Loss and Lack

The season can easily stir up emotions of feeling we’re not enough, don’t have enough, and similar thoughts. For some of us the holiday blues come in with a slam of hyper-awareness of what’s missing in our lives. A slew of what doesn’t work lodges in our heads and yet we’re all expected to stick-in and carry on chirping, Happy New Year with all our teeth showing in massive exuberance.

If we’re here at this time of year in a phase of recovery from a parasitic predator, depending on where we are in it all, it’s okay if you’re dished up a double dose of grief and loss. Maybe the pain is sharpened. It can feel as if isolation is deeper. Keep it togehter and know it’s okay to feel sad… and I promise eventually …the freedom rings clearer.

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Up From the Emptiness and Void

Where ever you are in this, you’re not imagining it if you’re feeling empty, or if lethargy tugs you again to sit back down. The holidays are not all jolly and bright, and in the aftermath of one of these narcissistic hijackings, the added holiday pressure, and the strange era we’re in are another sag felt in the heart.

There are some things we can do to alleviate the nebulous, aching pain and desire to hibernate. At the top of the list is to keep in mind that this is happening. Hold in our mental awareness that the Holidays are a societal and cultural whammy that hits everyone, even those of us not in the aftermath of a faux-lationship.

Post-Holiday Motivation Kick Starters

Simple things signal our body back into motion. Tiny bits of things can move us towards an active rhythm of life and out of stagnation. Here’s are some ideas and helpful things to get the body, the mind, the spirit wriggling and moving again.

Drink lots of water: Dehydration makes us more tired and foggy-brained. Add freshly squeezed lemon or apple cider vinegar to one of our daily eight to ten glasses.

Winter is dehydrating, even here, in sunny California. We’ve maybe been drinking pints of eggnog and New Year’s champagne. We drop the healthy habits we’ve managed to get into place for the rush of getting ready for parties, visitors, or just out of the collective Holiday “permission” to take a “me” day, or a week, or two.

Clean and Brighten

Tidy Up: We got new stuff and there’s no place to put it. There are sagging Holiday decorations and pine needles or tinsel and lights wilting around the house.

My favorite clutter clearing, tidying-up style is by Marie Kondo, Tidying Up, now a Netflix series and a book on Amazon. Marie has the best clutter clearing and tidying system I’ve ever seen and I used to work as a professional organizer.

As Marie says, keep what “sparks joy”, and move the rest out of your life. Pack Holiday things in labeled bins; stack them in their very own storage space; a shelf, a closet that’s their “home” until next year. Sort through clothing and move the unworn, unused, unloved clothing to a donation box or the bin.

Maybe rearrange the furniture. If you can’t make a massive change, start with one small focus: that “junk drawer” we all have, or our shoes.

Awaken the Senses

Sniff invigorating scents and aromas: There are essential oils that have the ability to stir up things in the brain or psyche. Citrus, peppermint, spearmint, eucalyptus, ginger, cinnamon, rosemary and more! You can also sniff fresh citrus; maybe make a simple arrangement that includes fresh rosemary and eucalyptus.

Move your body: It’s so easy to keep on sitting, lounging, movie watching and eating. It’s cold out with snow, rain, wind, and the air has that winter feel. It gets dark early, it’s cold… It’s hibernation season.

There are so many reasons to stay in and bundled up. Stretch, go walking, aerobics of any kind. Anyone remember Jazzercise?! Man alive, I used to love it. It’s still around! And now it’s online! Sign up here for a two-week trial of online Jazzercise and then only $19.99 per month.

And there’s the craziest thing called, gaga – created by famous choreographer, Naharin, of the Batsheva Dance Company. He believes the body doesn’t need to move perfectly and be in symmetry or precise in dance. That’s revolutionary.

Out of this kind of compassionate, forgiving, and embracing concept, he’s developed a dance or movement therapy that reminiscent of acting classes where you’re meant o walk through the room as if you’re the wind and that kind of thing. – Arty minded and super effective. Gaga is used by his company dancers in classes and also in therapies for wheelchair bound or elderly.

Awareness Feeling Down Helps Alleviate the PTSD

The holidays can be a trigger; the weeks post-holiday loom heavy with loads of sad. Remember, this isn’t a permanent slump. It’s a lull compounded with the after-effects of our experience. Potentially we can be tripped up into thinking “we’re worse”.

We aren’t “worse”, we are feeling the effects of the holiday season build-up and post-holiday let-down, blahs, intertwined with the post-trauma of narcissistic abuse.

Walkthrough it, talk our selves through it with self-talk. Know that tons and tons of us, all around us, after experiencing narcissistic abuse or not, lots of people are feeling the post-holiday slump. It’s normal. It’s not permanent. You are awesome.

Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!

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As a certified coach upholding ICF standards and ethics, I strive to inform, educate, co-plan, co-strategize, advise, consult, refer, recommend, train, teach and coach people in guided recovery and discovery specific to these crimes, and from hell and broken in the aftermath to whole again, and more. We decide what winning is. We win.