Post-holiday recovery

By the time you’re reading this, Christmas Day has come and gone. Some of you may have had a whirlwind social calendar of parties and reunions (including the compulsory performance at the office party). Others may have had a much more quiet season, whether by choice or by circumstances. The thing about holidays is that they end, which brings us to an almost universal experience: post-holiday blues.

There is inevitably a sense of emptiness after a celebration. Have you ever experienced enjoying yourself at a gathering or an event but as soon as you step away from the noise and revelry, your mood gets contemplative, somber, and perhaps even sad? Artists, for example, commonly experience what they call post-performance depression, especially as they have been preparing and rehearsing for months only for it to end abruptly once their show was over. Music lovers also experience post-concert depression, where the euphoric high one gets at a musical event crashes the moment they get home.

We should not confuse the “depression” in these labels for its clinical counterpart, however. The crash in mood is as natural as a sugar crash after a rush. Similar to the laws of physics, what comes up must come down. It is simply our bodies’ way of bringing us back to our emotional baseline. If this sounds—well—depressing, then I hope it’s a source of comfort to know that the corollary holds as well: we don’t usually stay sad forever. For most people, this is simply an emotional transition that they must ride out.

So how do we recover from the post-holiday blues?

Take a holiday from the holidays. Yes, you read it right. It absolutely makes psychological sense to take a break after the holidays. The more hectic and jam-packed your holiday, the more you need to take a break before you go back to work. Think of it as a smooth transition period to make the return to reality and work less jarring. When possible, give yourself a schedule-a free day to decompress before you go back to the daily grind. It is worth cutting your trip short by a day and have time to recover from fatigue rather than having to go to work immediately. If a day is not possible, then give yourself a few hours or even a few minutes. Think of self-care experiences that you’d like to keep in your non-holiday routine. Perhaps a cup of hot chocolate along with your pandesal for breakfast before you resume your duties?

Don’t hoard your gifts—use them. A lot of people derive joy in receiving presents but then set them aside to be forgotten (and worse, let them expire!) To sustain the joy, remove them from their packaging and use them right away. This way, you’ll get a sense of “new” and revitalize your daily routine. You can cap off your nights with your newly gifted skincare and toiletries. Wear your new clothes to work. Redeem those gift certificates.

Relish your alone time. While the holidays allow us to get together and enjoy our connections with one another, all that social exertion can tire us out. Post-holidays are the perfect time to ease back into our me time. It is absolutely okay to do a social detox and stay away for a while. Reconnect with yourself and what you enjoy without having to compromise with others. Immerse yourself in a book, listen to your favorite music, watch your favorite shows, or resume your fitness routine. Stay home all day without feeling guilty about it—this is the ultimate prize for busy adults.

Reminisce, not mourn. That sense of emptiness and loneliness we feel after a joyous moment is part of what it means to experience happiness. Instead of mourning that the holidays are over, we can befriend our internal feelings and reminisce on the experiences we have just had. We can write in our journal or collate pictures together to concretize our memories so that we can look back with fondness instead of dissatisfaction.

For employers, allow employees to ease back to work. This means no high-stakes meetings or deadlines right away. Check in with workers’ motivation and energy levels and have a plan rather than merely expecting them to be raring to go.

Post-holiday blues can also partly explain why Filipinos celebrate Christmas for as long as possible: to avoid the emotional hangover that comes after. The more contrasting our holiday experience is from our everyday reality, the bigger the hangover. When every day is hellish and you get a holiday reprieve, who in their right mind would want to return to work? So aside from simply coping with the transition, I hope we can collectively make our holiday and non-holiday lives less incongruous. Both public and private institutions should value creating a sense of ease in people’s environments, be it in our day-to-day tasks or in our social interactions. The best way to prevent a post-celebratory crash, after all, is to incorporate small joys that sustain us along the way.

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