Speaking of Psychology - The Holiday Blues, with Elaine Rodino, PhD

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

For many people, the holiday season can be a time of stress rather than joy even in the best of times. And this year, of course, the holidays will be different for everyone, as the coronavirus pandemic forces us to forgo holiday gatherings and family visits. Elaine Rodino, PhD, discusses the "holiday blues" and how to get through the season, this year and every year. Links Elaine Rodino, PhD Music "A Christmas Tale" by lena_orsa courtesy of freesound.org Sponsor APA 2020 Virtual Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you feel anxious when Christmas lights start appearing in your neighborhood every year? You're not alone. For some people, the holiday season brings with it not joy and cheer, but stress, loneliness, and sadness. For others, the holidays are a happy time spent reconnecting with family near and far, sharing great meals, engaging, and cherished traditions, but not this year. This strange year, nothing about the holidays will be normal, as many of us will be foregoing family visits, holiday parties, and other traditions. For some people, these changes will be hard to take.

For others, they might be a welcome relief. I'm talking about the holiday blues. You've probably heard the term, and while there's no formal diagnosis of holiday blues, these feelings are quite real for some people. What exactly are the holiday blues? How might they be different this year? And for those of you who are sad at the thought of a holiday season, unlike any other, what can you do to cope this year?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. If you enjoy speaking of psychology, the conversation doesn't have to stop when the podcast is over. Get unlimited access to hundreds of videos about the latest in psychology for just one low price by registering for access to APA's 2020 virtual convention. Start with some of our selected videos featuring psychology's biggest names, discussing topics such as COVID-19, racism, and stigma,

or let your curiosity take the lead and use our on-demand library to explore any topic. Go to convention. .APA.org slash podcast. That's convention. a.org.org slash podcast. My guest today is Dr. Elaine, Rodino, a psychologist in private practice in State College, Pennsylvania. She's an APA fellow and a former president of APA's division of psychologists in independent practice. She's also had a longstanding

interest in the holiday blues and has helped many of her patients with this issue over the years. Welcome to speaking of psychology, Dr. Rodino. Thank you. Good to be here. Let's start with a broad definition. What are holiday blues? As I said earlier, there's no actual diagnosis, but is it a real condition and what are its hallmarks? Yes, it is a real condition and I'm really glad you noted that it's not a diagnosable condition. So that it's a condition that usually appears around the holidays and then fades away some time in January. And what are they?

What are these feelings? They could vary. To some people, it's a feeling of malaise. They just feel tired. They can't get to things. Other people, it's the traditional bah humbug attitude. They hate the holidays, can't wait until they're over, that kind of thing. And to some people, they're just stressed out.

They're like just scattered all over the place and just in a frenzy of needing to do so many things. So, however this affects people, and for some people, they don't have this at all. So it's not that you must have one of these conditions. And, you know, and again, it's good to know that they do fade away in January. How did you first become interested in this topic? Ah, that's an interesting story. This was way back when I was an intern in psychology at the Los Angeles Suicist, suicide prevention center, which since that time has now been taken over by the D.D. Hirsch

Mental Health Center in Los Angeles. Well, the center at that time was the very first suicide prevention center. The leaders there were the ones that created the programs for suicide and suicide hotlines. And media would very actively come and talk with people, interview us. And that's actually how I also started doing work with media and get comfortable working with the media. Well, they would come every holiday time and want to know, is true more people commit suicide in December? And the response is, no, they don't. It's not a higher suicide month. But, But what the gurus at the suicide prevention center started to formulate was and coined the term holiday blues, that there were these feelings of blues, but not a diagnosable depression or suicidalness.

Why do you think that myth persists that there are more suicides around the holidays? It is, well, I think it's decreased over time because I've been. doing interviews about holiday blues since that time. And I have seen decrease. In fact, I haven't been asked that question in many years. So I think people are now focusing on holiday blues rather than suicide. Or they're reading the statistics and they see that it's not actually there, perhaps. Right. So you've been a practitioner for a long time. And is this something that you see commonly in your practice among your patients? Do you see an uptick in blues during the hospital? holidays? Well, I don't believe I have ever had anyone actually come to therapy because of holiday

blues. But almost all my patients discuss it in their sessions. You know, during the holiday time, there's always conversations about how they're going to get through the holidays, what they're doing, what the stresses are, how they're going to deal with getting together with family. And this year, With the pandemic, it's, you know, totally, you know, another whole layer of issues going on. And by the way, there are fewer issues in some respects because many people are not doing face-to-face gatherings. So there's a reduction in some of the stress that goes on with that. So you're hearing that the people, for example, who are afraid to get together with, you know, Uncle Mori because we don't agree on politics, you're not going to see Uncle Mori. this year. Absolutely. But it still comes up because they're worried about Uncle Maury showing up on

Zoom. Don't give him the link. Well, you can always somehow have a technical malfunction and disconnect. Sorry, I can't hear you. Well, who is most at risk of getting holiday blues? Well, I kind of see there can be some what you may think of as bad reasons and you may think of other reasons as good reasons. I find most of the time it's related to issues that happen to people earlier in their lives. and under the bad category, the examples would be having an alcoholic parent, often an alcoholic parent would have a way of just really ruining a holiday. You know, as the drinking goes on during the day,

they may become hostile, aggressive, and somehow really make an ugly Christmas day or Thanksgiving Day. or, you know, or, you know, kind of the Uncle Maury's stories that they remember. And that's why those kind of jokes persist because they did happen. There could be some pretty hostile family arguments and people storming out. And, you know, I never heard of food fights. But, you know, and for children, it could be pretty memorable in negative ways. People may feel uncomfortable with holidays without even particularly remembering why,

but they just are uncomfortable with it. On the good side, some people have early childhood memories of everything being so perfect. They had families, you know, maybe their father decorated the house and it was the best, most lit up house in the whole neighborhood. or, you know, their mother baked 300 cookies and wrap them beautifully and delivered them to all the neighbors. Well, these then get taken on as traditions and people feel they need to do that kind of special over-the-top holiday. And, you know, so that can bring a lot of stress, the expectations of what they feel, either negative or positive. So then for this year, I mean, the people who are. have those good memories, they may not be able to share them. And what's going to happen to those folks?

Well, yeah, well, see, even those good memories become problems because it adds to the stress that they feel that they need to follow in those traditions that their parents did. And I always advise people to start their own traditions, either, you know, as yourself or family. If people always just followed traditions. My favorite thing to say is, if we never changed and evolved, we would still be celebrating the way they did in the medieval times. Things would have never changed. So clearly, people, you know, zig and thag and create new ways of doing things. And this year is, you know, a major change. So people do need to become creative. and think up new ways to celebrate.

You have some strategies or your clients asking you or just discussing what you might do instead? Yeah, you know, what I would also advise is just Googling ideas for pandemic holidays. And in fact, preparing for this interview, I Googled it to see what was there. And there are pages of ideas. So, you know, there's something. for everyone. A survey that we did at APA quite a while ago was actually 2006. It found that women were more likely than men to report higher stress during the holidays.

And I think we theorized that a lot of the work of preparing for these celebrations falls on women. Does this ring true for you? Is it your experience that women experience the holiday blues more severely or in greater numbers? I, yeah, and no, I don't, I don't think I can say statistically in greater numbers, but the issues are different. I think the men have more often been concerned about the Uncle Maury situations and the women more worried about the 300 cookies. And that would be the doing more. But the men also would be decorating the house to be. the best of the neighborhood. So for people who are feeling trepidation right now or looking ahead to

November and December, what would you advise people to do in order to cope, particularly if they're feeling stressed already? Well, one thing is realizing that it's time limited. Another is doing self-care things, you know, making sure you keep up with the usual self-care things that you do, you know, whether it's exercising, taking a warm bath, just taking a break and reading a book. So there needs to be just some time that you just check out from the holiday stress part. So wearing your therapist hat, what about people who were having the holiday blues and feel really bad? I mean, how do you know when you're slipping from just basic holiday blues that will go away into something that could be more serious or long-term? Yeah, and I think it is the two things.

One is how dysfunctional is it making you during the holiday time? You know, are you just staying in bed, pulling the covers over your head, just waiting for the calendar pages to slip by? And then the other thing is, how long does it last into January? Usually this starts fading the first couple of weeks in January. So if people are still feeling that by, say, the second, third week of January, then they really should talk with a psychologist because there could be issues that really need to be sorted out and process. Speaking of January, so the blues might go away, but then you've made some New Year's resolutions and maybe by the third or fourth week. You're saying, well, I can't go to the gym and it's really hard to work out at home.

And are people beating themselves up because they're not keeping the resolutions? Yeah, that's another whole set of issues, right? The New Year resolutions, that's actually another podcast you can do. Oh, yeah. Because there are tips on making them reasonable and not have this kind of magical thinking that you're going to become this different person on January 1st. Well, I think it would be good maybe to talk a little bit about that now because then people can be prepared, you know, that you start thinking about it in December.

Like, you know, the January 1st is coming. So what are realistic ways of preparing for trying to be better, say, in the new year, but not going over the top? Well, exactly the way you said it. I think it is good to think ahead and think, well, it's a new year, fresh start. Hopefully, 2021 will be a better year. And, you know, what do I want to accomplish? What do I want to do?

And have it be reasonable because, you know, as I said before, you are still you. You know, don't think you're suddenly going to be this super human being capable of, you know, these grand things. You're not going to do an Iron Man kind of thing if you don't even take. Iike. And what about you, do you have some coping strategies that you're working on for this year? I think just hoping that we can all get out and socialize again. But in the meanwhile, in terms of coping strategies, I do a lot of video virtual meetings. You know, aside from my practice being totally virtual, I do socialize a lot.

And I'm so surprised that I almost have to remind myself that I'm not needing people in person. So it's really helpful. Yeah, yeah. So that's a good thing to keep in mind, I think, as we get toward Christmas and you can't go see the grandchildren, but you can zoom with them. Right. That's right. Well, this has been very helpful. I hope that a couple of these tips will make people feel better as we get into the holiday season. so I want to thank you for joining us today, Dr. Rodino.

Thank you. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www. www.spokenof Psychology.org or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, email us at speaking of psychology at APA.org. Speaking of psychology is produced by Lee Wynerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condyion. Thank you for listening.

For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.