How to Counteract and Deal with Holiday Blues

The Holiday Season is upon us. Can you tell? It seems Christmas was
upon us before Thanksgiving arrived this year. While this may be great
for retailers, however as a healthcare clinic we at HealthWalk started
seeing the onset of holiday blues in our clients in October.

According
to the American Psychological Association, about 19 million adults
suffer from depressive symptoms. For some, all of the pressures of
shopping, coordinating social functions and negotiating family issues
bring anxiety while others start reminiscing about past holidays and
become overwhelmed. The list of things that cause us to become anxious,
depressed or down are many. It doesn’t have to be that way.

People
often recall the highlights of a Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas or a
New Year event from the past and hold on to what they remember as an
ideal holiday from years gone by, but today the facts have changed; we
are older, the kids are older, many of the family have moved to distant
places and this economy may bring financial limitations to many, making
it impossible to reproduce the holiday in our dreams. The result is
often family tension and holiday depression stemming from unrealistic
expectations.

So just what is going on? The behavior on the
outside is tandem to what is going on the inside. As we start to slip
into a depressive state of mind, we start processing from a different
part of our brain. We slip into a state called Fight or Flight. The
governing area of the brain for this state is completely on the
opposite side of the brain from where we think and process our best
thoughts and decisions. As a matter of fact, most of the thoughts
processed from this Fight or Flight area are thoughts of escape. We
escape from the moment by recalling the past which causes us to miss
all the new, happy memories being created in front of our own eyes.

One
process that I do with people who are caught in this state and come to
seek support from MindSoul Brain Technology at HealthWalk is that I
touch their forehead and ask them to focus on my touch. When they do,
it moves their thoughts from