The calendar flips to October, and suddenly everyone's talking about gratitude journals and family traditions. Meanwhile, you're staring at your inbox wondering how you'll survive the next ninety days without completely losing it.
Let's be honest about something most wellness content won't touch: the holidays can be absolutely brutal and create, or intensify, holiday mental health issues, especially if you're already running on fumes trying to keep your professional life together.
And if you've been white-knuckling your way through work—missing deadlines despite working late, forgetting important meetings, constantly feeling like you're operating at 60% capacity—the added pressure of holiday obligations might be the thing that finally makes you ask what's actually going on.
The Hidden Weight of Seasonal Expectations
There's this assumption baked into American culture that everyone transforms into a Norman Rockwell painting between Thanksgiving and New Year's. You're supposed to host dinners, attend parties, buy thoughtful gifts, maintain your workout routine, excel at work, and somehow also find time for "self-care" (whatever that means when you have seventeen browser tabs open and three coffee cups on your desk).
Research from the American Psychological Association consistently shows that stress levels spike during the holiday season, with 38% of people reporting increased stress during this time. But here's what the surveys don't quite capture: for high-functioning professionals dealing with undiagnosed or poorly managed attention issues, the holidays don't just add stress—they expose every coping mechanism you've been using to keep things together.
The structured routine that usually helps you function? Gone. Your carefully managed calendar? Suddenly filled with "optional" events that aren't actually optional. That quiet morning time you use to organize your thoughts? Replaced by family obligations starting at breakfast.
When Faith Meets the Frenzy
For those of us who strive to live a life guided by our faith, the holidays should theoretically offer something meaningful. A chance to reconnect with deeper values. Time for reflection and gratitude. The problem is that modern holiday celebrations have become so aggressively commercialized and overscheduled that the contemplative aspects get buried under Pinterest-worthy expectations and social media comparisons.
A study published in the Journal of Religion and Health found that while religious participation generally correlates with better mental health outcomes, the relationship becomes more complex during high-stress periods when religious obligations add to existing pressures rather than providing relief.
Translation: going to extra services and hosting church events might not be the restorative experience everyone promises it will be.
There's also this particular kind of guilt that emerges when you're struggling mentally during what's "supposed" to be a season of joy and thanksgiving. If your faith tradition emphasizes gratitude and community, feeling isolated or overwhelmed can come with an extra layer of self-judgment. You know you're blessed. You have a good career, financial stability, people who care about you. So why does everything feel so impossibly hard right now?
The ADHD Factor Nobody Talks About
Here's something that doesn't get discussed enough in conversations about holiday mental health issues: executive dysfunction doesn't take a holiday break.
Adult ADHD often goes unrecognized in high-achieving professionals because you've developed elaborate workarounds. You work longer hours to compensate for inefficiency. You rely heavily on assistants and technology. You've chosen careers where hyperfocus on interesting problems can mask struggles with routine tasks. But the holidays dismantle all of those compensatory strategies at once.
Suddenly you need to:
- Track multiple shopping lists and gift ideas
- Remember various family members' dietary restrictions and preferences
- Navigate complex social dynamics across different friend groups and family systems
- Manage travel logistics and accommodation details
- Maintain your professional responsibilities while everyone else seems to be coasting
And all of this requires exactly the kind of sustained organizational capacity and task-switching flexibility that ADHD makes difficult.
A longitudinal study in the Journal of Attention Disorders found that adults with ADHD report significantly higher stress levels during periods requiring increased multitasking and social coordination—which perfectly describes late November through early January. The researchers noted that many high-functioning adults don't recognize their difficulties as ADHD-related because they've internalized the struggles as personal failings rather than neurological differences.
This matters because effective treatment exists. Stimulant medications, when appropriately prescribed and monitored, show effect sizes around 0.8 for adult ADHD symptoms—that's considered large in psychiatric research. Cognitive behavioral therapy adapted for adult ADHD demonstrates meaningful improvements in organizational skills and emotional regulation. But you can't access treatment for a condition you don't know you have.
If you've been telling yourself for years that you just need better time management skills or more discipline, it might be worth getting evaluated. Our practice offers adult ADHD assessments for professionals who are starting to suspect their struggles go beyond typical stress or personality quirks.
Sometimes clarity about what you're dealing with is the first step toward actually managing it.
The Theology of Enough
There's a parable that resonates during this particular season, though it's not one that typically shows up in holiday sermons. It's the story of Martha and Mary from Luke's gospel.
Martha is running around handling all the hospitality logistics—the first-century equivalent of making sure there's enough seating and the dietary restrictions are covered. Mary sits down to engage with what's actually meaningful. Martha gets frustrated. And the response she receives is essentially: you're anxious about too many things.
That tension—between what we think we're supposed to be doing and what actually matters—intensifies dramatically during the holidays. You're anxious about many things. The question is whether those things warrant the anxiety you're directing toward them.
This isn't about positive thinking or gratitude practices, which can feel dismissive when you're genuinely struggling. It's about permission to assess what's real versus what's performance. Do you actually care whether your holiday cards go out before December 15th? Or have you been operating on autopilot based on expectations you never consciously agreed to?
Christian faith—particularly in its more contemplative expressions—has always made space for the idea that doing less can mean being more. That productivity isn't the ultimate measure of worth. That rest isn't something you earn through sufficient output. But somehow these concepts evaporate the moment holiday planning begins, replaced by an anxious compulsion to do everything and be everything for everyone.
The Professional Paradox
If you've built a career on being reliable, competent, and detail-oriented, acknowledging that you're struggling can feel like admitting failure. There's a specific kind of cognitive dissonance that happens when you're successful by external measures but internally you feel like you're barely keeping your head above water.
Research on high-functioning anxiety—published in the Journal of Affective Disorders—describes this exact phenomenon. People who meet all their obligations, maintain professional success, and appear capable while simultaneously experiencing significant internal distress and relying on unsustainable coping mechanisms. The study found that many of these individuals avoid seeking mental health support because their external functioning doesn't match their internal experience, leading them to dismiss their own struggles as illegitimate.
But here's the thing about unsustainable coping mechanisms: they eventually stop working. And the holidays, with their disruption of normal routines and addition of complex social demands, often represent that breaking point.
You might notice you're drinking more than usual. Or that you're getting irrationally angry about minor inconveniences. Perhaps you're withdrawing from people you actually care about because you just can't deal with one more conversation. Maybe you're lying awake at 3 AM mentally rehearsing everything you need to remember for tomorrow, even though you know you should be sleeping.
These aren't moral failures. They're signs that your current approach isn't working for the demands you're facing.
Practical Steps That Actually Help
The typical advice about holiday mental health issues tends toward the useless. "Practice self-care!" "Set boundaries!" "Remember what really matters!" As if the problem were simply forgetting to be reasonable rather than operating within systems and relationships that make reasonableness difficult.
So let's try something more concrete:
Audit your actual obligations versus assumed obligations. Write down everything you think you need to do for the holidays. Then go through the list and mark which ones have actual consequences if you don't do them versus which ones you're doing out of habit or social pressure. You might be surprised how many fall into the latter category.
Stop negotiating with yourself about basic needs. Sleep, food, movement, medication if you take it—these aren't things you get to trade away for productivity. When you start telling yourself you'll catch up on sleep after this busy period, you're already in trouble.
Build in recovery time. If you have a demanding social event on Saturday, protect Sunday. Don't schedule back-to-back obligations and then wonder why you're exhausted and irritable.
Get evaluated if something deeper is going on. If you've been struggling with focus, organization, and emotional regulation long before the holidays came around, that's information worth exploring. A proper assessment can clarify whether you're dealing with ADHD, anxiety, depression, or some combination—and treatment looks different depending on what's actually happening.
Consider what your faith tradition actually teaches about worth and rest. Most religious frameworks have something to say about limits, rest, and the dangers of striving. If your spiritual practice has become another source of obligation and guilt rather than meaning and grounding, that's worth examining.
The Reality of Change
None of this magically makes the holidays easier. Your family dynamics won't suddenly become healthier. Your work demands won't disappear. The cultural pressure to perform joy and gratitude won't stop just because you've read an article about it.
But clarity helps. Understanding what you're actually dealing with—whether that's undiagnosed ADHD, an unsustainable work situation, a faith practice that's become hollow, or just the accumulated stress of trying to meet contradictory expectations—gives you something to work with.
A meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin examining interventions for holiday stress found that the most effective approaches weren't about adding more practices or trying harder. They were about accurately identifying sources of distress and making specific changes based on that understanding. Sounds obvious, but most people skip the identification step and jump straight to solutions that don't address the actual problem.
The goal isn't to have a perfect holiday season. It's to get through the next few months without completely compromising your mental health or losing sight of what actually matters to you. That's a more modest aim than what the culture promises, but it's also more achievable.
Moving to Conquer Holiday Mental Health Issues
October is actually the right time to think about this. Not because you need to start planning (please don't add that to your to-do list), but because you still have space to make different decisions before the chaos fully begins.
If you've been wondering whether your struggles with focus and organization might be more than just stress or poor time management, get evaluated now rather than waiting until you're in crisis mode.
If your faith practice has become another obligation rather than a source of meaning, talk to someone about that before you're sitting in another service feeling nothing. If your relationships are already strained, don't wait for holiday conflict to address what's not working.
The cultural narrative says the holidays are about family, gratitude, and celebration. But maybe this year they could be about something more honest: acknowledging your limits, getting help for what's not working, and making space for whatever actually matters to you rather than what you think should matter.
That's not exactly the message you'll find on Hallmark cards. But it might be closer to wisdom than another reminder to be grateful for your blessings while you're drowning in obligations.
References
American Psychological Association. (2021). Stress in America: The Impact of Discrimination. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/
Balbuena, L., Baetz, M., & Bowen, R. (2013). Religious attendance, spirituality, and major depression in Canada: A 14-year follow-up study. Journal of Religion and Health, 52(4), 1134-1143.
Barkley, R. A., & Fischer, M. (2011). Predicting impairment in major life activities and occupational functioning in hyperactive children as adults: Self-reported executive function (EF) deficits versus EF tests. Developmental Neuropsychology, 36(2), 137-161.
Kooij, J. J., Bijlenga, D., Salerno, L., Jaeschke, R., Bitter, I., Balázs, J., ... & Asherson, P. (2019). Updated European Consensus Statement on diagnosis and treatment of adult ADHD. European Psychiatry, 56(1), 14-34.
Robinson, K. J., Arathoon, P. M., & Oades, L. G. (2014). The relationship between perfectionism, stress, and holiday satisfaction among university students during the Christmas holiday period. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 32(3), 219-236.
Ruscio, A. M., Gentes, E. L., Jones, J. D., Hallion, L. S., Coleman, E. S., & Swendsen, J. (2015). Rumination predicts heightened responding to stressful life events in major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 205, 231-239.
Safren, S. A., Sprich, S., Mimiaga, M. J., Surman, C., Knouse, L., Groves, M., & Otto, M. W. (2010). Cognitive behavioral therapy vs relaxation with educational support for medication-treated adults with ADHD and persistent symptoms: A randomized controlled trial. JAMA, 304(8), 875-880.
The opinions and advice expressed in this and other content are purely for informational, entertainment, and educational purposes. The information provided is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you or someone you know is experiencing any of the physical or mental health symptoms referred to in this or any other of our content, please consult with a trained medical professional or a licensed mental health provider.