We do not need to simply accept the end of year as a stressful season. Let’s talk about a few impactful strategies that can ease some of the challenges. And make this time of year more manageable.  

Catching our Automatic Negative Thinking Traps (ANTs). We all have patterns of thinking that can sometimes make challenges feel bigger than they are. These thinking patterns – called ANTs – are common and can happen to any of us. And they can add unnecessary stress to an already busy time of year. One common ANT during this season is Should Statements – thinking in terms of what must be or must be done. You may be thinking things like “I should have everything perfect” or “I should be able to handle this all easily.” Try to pay closer attention to your thoughts. Next time a Should Statement shows up – ask yourself, “says who?”.  

Breaking down your time and to-dos. When everything feels urgent and overwhelming, it can help to break it down. Write down everything you have to get done. If you have a bigger task, break it down into smaller tasks that will take no longer than 30 minutes. Once you have your list written out, prioritize it. Consider urgency. This is how time sensitive each task is. You will also want to consider importance. This is how important a task is in the long-term. Then choose three high priority tasks to focus on for the day. You can always add more after completing your first three.  

Practicing Present Awareness. When the end of the year leaves you feeling a mix of emotions, it can be easy to lose sight of what is most important. Practicing mindfulness during this busy season can help you slow down and actually enjoy the moments that matter most. If stress or anxiety starts to feel overwhelming, you can practice bringing your attention to the present moment. You can do this by noticing: 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.   

The goal here isn’t to eliminate all stress. Some stress around meaningful events is normal and even helpful. But the next time you find your mind spinning and anxiety spiking, consider using these tools to help you manage end-of-year stress in a way that allows you to live a full and meaningful life. 

Our thoughts can often fall into unhelpful patterns that can make times of loneliness feel even worse. Being aware of these thought patterns (called Automatic Negative Thinking Traps or ANTs) is an important first step in easing the sense of isolation. Here are some ANTs that commonly show up during the holiday season: 

• Feeling Makes Fact is where we feel something so strongly, we believe it must be true. Our feelings of loneliness may feel so strong that we believe it is our permanent truth.  

• All-or-Nothing Thinking is where we think in extremes. This might sound like “I need to make time for all my loved ones this season otherwise the holidays are ruined.” These types of thoughts do not allow for the reality that you can feel lonely and still have meaningful connections. 

• Focus Only on the Bad is where we focus only on the bad parts of our situation. Thoughts like “Nobody reached out to me today” might show up, while you ignore that your sibling called the day before.  

When you notice unhelpful thoughts, you can pause and check-in with yourself. Are there any ANTs showing up here? Does this thought have any evidence behind it? This quick check in can help us spot when our thoughts are making our feelings of loneliness worse. And then step away from the thinking traps rather than getting caught in them.  

We can also look at taking action to feel more connected. Behavioral activation is a tool that focuses on engaging in meaningful activities. Think about some ways you may be able to connect with others – big or small. You could send one text to someone you haven’t connected with recently. Or reach out to ask a family member to grab coffee with you. Maybe what you are hoping for is new connections. You could try attending a community event or volunteer for an organization that aligns with your values. 

Once you decide what you would like to do to connect with others, it is helpful to schedule it in. You could try a weekly text check-in. Or a monthly coffee. Community or volunteer events may already have a schedule once you get going. But it may be helpful to schedule in a time for yourself to sign up or do some research on what organization or event you would want to do. You could schedule time daily or weekly. If you would like to make it a habit, it is best to schedule it after a habit you already have. This could be something simple, like committing to do 15 minutes of research each night after dinner. Or sending a text check-in each week after your morning workout class.  

The holiday season can be tough when we are feeling lonely. But the next time you find yourself feeling alone, remember that you now have tools to respond differently. You can take steps toward a more meaningful and connected holiday season.  

Transitions can lead to heightened stress in both parents and children. And this can be the case whether expected or unexpected. Negative or positive. The good news? Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) tools can offer your family powerful ways to get through these times of transition together. CBT teaches us that our thoughts drive our feelings and behaviors. During transitions families can face thoughts. These thoughts might sound like “This change will be terrible”. Or “I just cannot handle this stress.”

If these thoughts go without question, they can lead to unhelpful emotions and behaviors. You can help support your whole family by shifting the perspective. You can reframe these hard times as an opportunity for growth. Consider some powerful strategies you could practice with your family:

• Thought Inspection. Family members can write down worries about the coming changes. Then challenge these thoughts with evidence. Maybe your child is worried about making friends. Then they might be able to recall previous years when they successfully connected with new classmates.
• Active Problem-Solving. Teach your children to approach changes on step at a time. Help them to identify the specific concern. Brainstorm solutions. Weigh the options. Then choose one to try. You can help them to reassess as needed.
• Gratitude. Try creating a family ritual of gratitude. You can have each person share one memory they will cherish from the previous season of life. As well as one thing they are looking forward to in the new season.

As a parent, you also have the important responsibility of serving as a role model to your family. Children watch how adults handle change. You can practice self-compassion and use some of these tools during stressful transitions. That will help to show your children how they can successfully work through tough transitions and life changes.

As summer fades into fall, these tools can offer a path forward. They can help you with the back-to-school transition by turning these times into opportunities for flourishing.

Does this reaction sound familiar? If so, you likely know that the season’s focus on gatherings can intensify social anxiety. And sometimes the disconnect between others’ excitement and our own feelings of dread can leave us feeling isolated and ashamed.

Fortunately, there are practical tools, grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), that can help. You can take steps to overcome social anxiety and fully engage in your social calendar this summer.

Step 1: Identify specific situations. You may notice yourself dreading the “social calendar” of summer as a whole. Try breaking it down. Is it making small talk at your kid’s birthday party? Is it the idea of wearing summer clothing that fills you with dread? Or maybe you are nervous about events with a lot of new people. Whatever it is – being able to identify specific situations can help you take the next steps of addressing social anxiety.

Step 2: Explore your thoughts.  Many people are surprised by the fact that it is actually our thoughts about situations that lead to our anxiety. Not the situations themselves. Try to identify any thoughts you have in relation to the specific situation you identified. This might be “They will think I’m boring.” Or “I might stumble on my words and sound stupid.” You can explore these thoughts with a few simple questions like:

• Do I know for sure that this thought is true?
• Imagine my thought is not true. Could this turn out okay or even well? What would that look like?
• Even if my thought is true, will this moment feel like a big in 5 years?

Step 3: Practice Fear-facing. Sometimes we find that we remain afraid of situations even after identifying problems with our thoughts. That is where Fear-facing comes in. Fear-facing means purposely putting ourselves in the situations we fear. And this helps us learn at a deeper level that we don’t have to be afraid. You can start small. Maybe you make a friendly comment to a stranger at a park. Then over time, you can work up to more challenging situations, like sparking conversations at a small gathering or attending your annual neighborhood barbecue.

There are resources to help you reduce anxiety and build confidence so that enjoying your summer schedule feels more manageable. And you may even start to look forward to those invitations to connect with others.

During Stress Awareness Month, it is important to understand that chronic stress is not just an uncomfortable feeling. If ignored, stress can disrupt our body and mind in serious ways. Long-term stress can make our blood pressure go up. It can make it harder for our body to fight off sickness. And it can slow down digestion. It can also affect our brain. It can make it harder to think clearly, remember things, and get good sleep. 

The good news is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) gives us powerful tools to tend to our stress. One effective tool to use is a Stress Tracker. This is a daily log of stress triggers, physical sensations, and stress levels rated on a scale of 1-10. When we know what makes us stressed, we can spot it early and deal with it before it gets too big. The things we write down help us understand ourselves better and know when we need to use our tools. 

Another simple but powerful tool you can start to practice today is Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR). This helps with stress by relaxing your body, which often helps your mind relax too. To do PMR, sit or lie down in a comfortable position. Start with your toes – squeeze them tight for about 15 seconds, then relax them for 20 seconds. Notice how different it feels when your muscles are tight versus relaxed. Then move up to your feet, legs, stomach, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, and face, doing the same thing for each part. 

Just like a garden needs regular care to grow well, our mental health needs regular attention too. When we understand how stress affects us and use tools like the Stress Tracker and PMR regularly, we can create a peaceful mind where calmness and strength can grow

• Be active – connect with friends, take on projects, learn new things, and help others.
• Spend time outside on sunny days to get more vitamin D.  
• Exercise to reduce stress and make you feel happier.  
• Eat healthy foods and drink plenty of water.  
• To handle stress, practice being mindful and grateful.   
• Get as much natural light as you can inside your home.  

Learn New Ways to Cope 

At Learn to Live, we teach members how to catch negative thoughts like “I’m always going to feel rotten” or “I’m probably the only one who feels this bad”. Just noticing that we’re having these thoughts can help us change them. Try to focus on thoughts like “I might feel better before long, especially if I get up and take a walk”.

Even when it’s cold and gray out, doing enjoyable things and seeing people can boost your mood. Learn to Live’s online Depression program teaches us about “activation”. It’s an idea that can help defy depression’s pull toward being inactive. It gives us the tools to gently nudge ourselves to do small, rewarding things like taking a walk or connecting with others. Doing these rewarding activities can start to shift how you’re feeling and improve your mood. Engaging with the world, in ways big or small, can lift the spirits.  

This experience normally falls into one of three categories:

1. Winter Blues: this is the most common form. You tend to feel sluggish, have difficulty sleeping, and find yourself a bit down as the days get shorter. It’s not severe enough to be a diagnosable condition, but it sure doesn’t feel good.

2. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): this is another one you may have heard of. It’s a bit more serious than the Winter Blues. You might experience low mood and lack of pleasure along with a number of physical and behavior markers like the urge to sleep more, low energy, isolation, etc. Interestingly, a small minority of people experience SAD in the summer instead.

3. Seasonal Affective Disorder +: the final one is essentially an extreme version of SAD. In the case of SAD+, the deep discouragement of winter is offset by periods of extremely high energy and mood levels in the summer. These extremes can be exhausting for people.

Understanding the cause of our struggles is an important step in helping us address them. However, despite research into circadian rhythms (our body clock), neurotransmitters, genes and other factors, we still don’t know exactly why each person struggles in a particular way when winter comes. The good news is that even if we’re not sure of the cause, we have solid data on solutions that work. As a psychologist who is passionate about behavior change and the role of thoughts and behavior, activation, or our level of engagement with life, is one of those solutions. If we disengage from activities as the temperature drops, our mood tends to drop as well. Not everyone who has winter blues or SAD becomes sedentary in the winter, but our level of activation appears to play a strong role.

Here are three research-based solutions: medication, lights and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

1. The medications usually include some form of antidepressant used for other mood disorders. These are effective for many sufferers.

2. Light therapy involves sitting in front of a light box with bright non-UV lights for an extended period of time. This type of therapy is best done under the care of a provider who can recommend the best light and assess the risk, which is particularly high for bipolar individuals.

3. While meds and lights are very good options, the research points to CBT as the strongest solution. You may already know that CBT involves examining your thoughts and emotions. But many people, including some providers, are unaware that it includes behavioral tools, like activation. When we increase our level of activity despite our rainy-day mood, we nudge ourselves to engage in activities that normally bring us joy.

Activation is incredibly powerful and very simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do when you’re feeling really down. It still requires some will power. The good news is that the more you do it, the easier it becomes. It’s such an effective tool that we included it as the first lesson in our Learn to Live Depression program. So, if you’re feeling the seasonal pull of the shorter winter days but aren’t at the point where you want to consider outside help, then activation may be a good option for you. Start with something small. Take notes. Jot down your mood before and after. Try to choose recurring activities, like a daily morning walk or a regular bike ride. Make it part of your schedule. Winter doesn’t have to be a season of discouragement. Try activation and see how much different you can feel.

Life can be overwhelming at times. If you’re struggling with depression or anxiety, or feeling stressed by juggling too many things at once, it’s easy to forget about taking care of YOU. For many of us, our jobs, spouses, children, aging parents, or even hobbies take priority. It’s easy to focus on these people and things because you need to or want to, but it’s important to leave room for yourself, even if it’s just 15 minutes a day.

Here are some ways to show yourself a little love during this holiday dedicated to amour:

1. Think of 3 things you love about yourself. We all have flaws, and people struggling with anxiety or depression are usually excellent at acknowledging them. Give a shout out to your strengths instead. Maybe you’re a great friend, or have mad breakfast making skills, or a voice sort of like Adele. Enjoy it, be grateful for it, smile about it, and give yourself a little pat on the back.
2. Move your body. Not because you want to fit into smaller clothes or win a race, but because it’s good for you. Exercise is like a love note to your body and your brain – from you.
3. Practice . Harboring anger and holding on to past grievances can eat you up inside. Letting go of anger is a gift to the other person but also, and more importantly, to you.
4. Have fun. Just because you’re older than 12 doesn’t mean everything has to be serious. Laugh aloud, do karaoke, play a board game, have a dance party in your kitchen.
5. Reward yourself. Maybe you reached a goal you’ve been striving for, or maybe you just made it out of bed this morning (and that may have been a big accomplishment for you). It doesn’t have to be something big or fancy, but go ahead and splurge on the latté, the hot bath or an extra 20 minutes of your favorite show.

We can get hard on ourselves when life gets busy and everyone and everything is competing for our time. It is precisely during those times when those of us struggling with anxiety or depression need to take a step back, breathe and think about our own needs as well. This Valentine’s Day don’t forget to show some love to yourself.

“You name it – I can worry about it. My mother would tell you I “came out worrying.” For most of my life I accepted the worrying as part of who I am, much like my short stature or brown eyes. It’s just the way I was made! Sure, sometimes I couldn’t sleep or worried myself sick (literally – like urgent bathroom trip sick) before tests or important events, but for the most part I didn’t let on to anyone other than family or close friends that I was worrying or anxious. I could put on my game face and power through a speech, playing sports or performing in front of someone.

After college, I moved to a small town and began working as a medical professional. I didn’t know anyone there and I began to worry more and more about everything in my life- not just specific things like public speaking, but “How am I going to do this job? Am I ever going to meet anyone in this small town? How do I manage all these new bills and responsibilities of being an official adult?” One night as I was driving home from working at the local hospital, my worrying spiraled. I began having what I can now identify as a panic attack. I was breathing fast and felt light-headed. That episode was different for me, more intense. It led me to seek help.

I found a local psychologist who did individual therapy, but also recommended I join a group of other young women with similar experiences and feelings. The therapist and the women helped me immensely. I didn’t know it at the time, but she practiced cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). I made lists of my thoughts and then examined them rationally. I learned how to stop my “stinkin thinkin” (her words, not mine). The group of women became my community. We supported one another, laughed, cried, and gave each other reality checks. Gradually, I learned to stop the anxious feelings and worry before they gained any momentum. I was able to take away tools that have helped me in almost every situation in life: a new job, a new relationship, waiting for medical test results, even exciting (but potentially anxiety provoking) events like getting married or going on a vacation. I’ve learned that I can’t control the situation, but I can control my thoughts, attitudes and actions. There isn’t much that makes me anxious these days…well, there is one thing: swimsuit season.

The last time I was excited to wear a swimsuit I was 12. It was red and had “Coca-Cola” written all over it. It was cool. I was cool. The next summer, something changed. I noticed my body in ways I hadn’t before. I became acutely aware of a birthmark on my leg, and felt my larger thigh (yes, I actually measured them to determine that one was indeed slightly larger than the other!) jiggle conspicuously. Everyone was looking, right?!? I must have the strangest birthmark, weirdest shaped leg and wobbliest bits of anyone at the pool. Walking in front of people was a chore that I avoided at all costs without a large towel or cover-up. My swimsuit-body-anxiety was only amplified by magazines showing only “perfect” airbrushed bodies (I didn’t know that at the time) that were nothing like mine.

Oh, hindsight. Had I known the tools of CBT  that I know now, I would have used them in the dressing room under the fluorescent lights as I dissected my body or before I walked in front of the “crowd” at the pool. I would have made myself examine my thoughts:

• “Is everyone really looking at you?” No – they are too worried about themselves or have fallen asleep in the sun or are chatting with friends.
• “Is your birthmark really that bad?” No – it’s unique and in a strange spot, but most people probably don’t even notice. Remember that one person who actually told you it was cute?
• “Can everyone tell that your one thigh is larger than the other?” No – not unless they take a tape measure and wrap it around your leg. Are you kidding me?

I would have encouraged myself to look around, engage with people, splash and play, have fun! I don’t have the same swimsuit anxiety that I did when I was younger, but each year I still feel some negative thoughts creeping in as I try on swimsuits or anticipate being in front of others in a suit. A few weeks ago I had a wonderful swimsuit shopping experience. Yes, you heard me correctly! I took my 7-yr-old daughter to pick out a suit. She tried on 10 suits, and with EVERY SINGLE ONE of them she said, “Oh! This is my favorite! Don’t I look great in this? I can’t wait to play on the beach in this!” Wow. If I could bottle that and pass it around… she taught me a lesson: Love yourself. Be excited for new experiences. Rock those wobbly bits and birthmarks and whatever you have that may be “different.” Life is too short to let those negative thoughts creep in. Get out there and enjoy it! Happy Summer…”