How to Cope with Holiday Stress: 11 Expert Strategies for Mental Health, Boundaries, and Self-Care

This article summarizes a conversation from the Giving Voice to Depression podcast, hosted by Terry McGuire, featuring clinical psychologist Dr. Anita Sanz. Each week, the podcast highlights real lived experiences with depression or insights from mental health experts, offering supportive, stigma-reducing conversations. In this episode, Terry and Dr. Sanz explore why the holiday season can be uniquely stressful—and how anyone, whether living with depression or simply navigating the pressures of the season, can protect their well-being.

Holiday stress is common. For many people, this time of year brings high expectations, family pressures, grief, financial strain, and a complete disruption of routines. Dr. Sanz explains why these challenges so often collide at once, and she shares proven tools she teaches her own clients to help them move through the season with more clarity, intention, and compassion.

Below are 11 insights and strategies from their conversation—practical, validating, and deeply human reminders that no one is alone in feeling overwhelmed this time of year.

1. Why Holidays Drain Your Energy

As Dr. Anita Sanz explained:

There is obviously an increase in the expectations that you have of yourself and the energy demands surrounding the holidays.

This intensification of expectations affects everyone—but for people living with depression or chronic fatigue, it can feel especially overwhelming. They may already be “just keeping their head above water,” leaving little reserve for additional pressure.

As Dr. Sanz added:

If you are already operating at sort of a deficit level or just keeping your head above water with fatigue and with depression as you enter that season, it is even more challenging.

Naming this reality reduces self-blame. The holidays don’t require perfection—they require honesty about your bandwidth.

2. Family Dynamics That Trigger Stress

Family gatherings are often painted as warm, joyful occasions. But for many, they bring reminders of loss, conflict, estrangement, or unresolved tension.

As Dr. Sanz explained:

The holidays are sort of synonymous in many cultures with family: family traditions, family involvement, and family get-togethers. So if there's a loss of family, estrangement, dysfunction, stressful interactions… thinking about the holidays means having to think about those situations too.

Even choosing not to engage with difficult family situations can lead to guilt, judgment, or pressure from others. These emotional complexities make holiday planning especially challenging.

3. Financial Pressure During Holidays

Financial expectations add another layer of strain. Between travel, gifts, events, and social plans, people often feel stretched thin.

As Dr. Sanz noted:

People really struggle feeling like I don't have enough, I can't give enough, I can't do enough.

For those living with depression, the emotional toll of financial pressure can be magnified—especially when guilt or comparison enters the picture.

Remember: Your worth is not measured in holiday spending.

4. How Disrupted Routines Impact Mood

Holiday schedules disrupt routines that support mental health:

• Sleep
• Nutrition
• Work rhythms
• School calendars
• Exercise
• Daily habits

As Dr. Sanz explained:

Everything gets disrupted. School, work schedules, sleep schedules, your normal habits of self-care and nutrition all take a hit.

For anyone—especially someone living with depression—this disruption can destabilize emotional well-being. Planning ahead or creating gentle structure can make the season feel more manageable.

5. Simplify Expectations and Plans

Before offering concrete strategies, Dr. Sanz emphasizes a foundational principle: simplifying.

As she explained:

Your goal… is to simplify as much as you possibly can. Pare down your expectations of yourself and of other people so that they as close as possible match reality.

This might mean:

• Scaling back decorating
• Fewer elaborate meals
• Limiting travel
• Choosing fewer events
• Selecting one or two meaningful traditions

Simplifying is not failure—it’s self-preservation.

6. Co-Create Your Holiday Experience

Perhaps one of the most empowering insights in the episode comes when Dr. Sanz reminds listeners that they have agency:

You are the co-creator of your holiday experience. You have the right and the responsibility for doing what is meaningful to you and healthy for you and saying no to anything that you really don't want to do or is unhealthy for you.

Co-creation means making choices based on your needs—not expectation, obligation, or guilt.

Even within “command performance” situations (obligatory gatherings), you can:

• Protect your limits
• Choose compromises that protect your energy
• Advocate for your well-being

This shift helps restore a sense of control during an emotionally loaded season.

7. Finding Meaning When Alone

Many people spend holidays alone. This can bring grief, loneliness, or pressure to recreate family traditions.

As Dr. Sanz encouraged:

What we have to kind of do is help you find the meaning in the holiday for yourself… what do you want to celebrate?

She suggests asking yourself:

“It isn’t the holidays without…”

This helps clarify what truly matters. It might be:

• A recipe
• A ritual
• A spiritual tradition
• A personal activity
• A favorite movie or walk

As she added:

That can give you a little bit of a kind of a blueprint for what do you want to have be a part of your holidays if you're going to be celebrating alone.

If loneliness is due to grief, Dr. Sanz uses a metaphor of gentleness and patience:

As she explained tenderly:

You don't kick the turtle… we’re vulnerable and fragile in some ways, and we need to pull away. If you want a turtle to come out of the shell, you don’t kick it.

Grief requires compassion—not force.

8. Use the Holiday Bingo Strategy

One of Dr. Sanz’s most creative and effective tools is the Holiday Bingo Card—a lighthearted strategy that uses humor to defuse anxiety.

As she described:

You come up with a bingo card… and write in stressful things that you're anticipating that you'll experience or mean or offensive things that you expect your uncle to say.

Terry added her own examples:

They’d have to include politics… “When are you getting married?”… “Have you put on weight?”… or a complaint about your cooking.

The goal?

As Dr. Sanz noted:

You're kind of almost hoping that you're gonna have enough of those things happen… instead of dreading that it's gonna happen.

Humor shifts emotional energy—it transforms dread into something lighter, more manageable, and even empowering.

9. Set Boundaries That Protect You

Boundaries safeguard emotional well-being. Dr. Sanz encourages setting limits around:

• Conversation topics
• Time spent at gatherings
• Where you stay during travel
• How long you engage
• When you leave

As she advised:

Set some firm limits on things that you know will make it easier for you… the amount of time you’re going to spend with people… where you're going to stay.

Boundaries create breathing room and help maintain emotional balance.

10. Plan a Post-Holiday Buffer Day

The “buffer day” is a simple but powerful tool. Dr. Sanz recommends giving yourself a day after family gatherings or travel to recover, decompress, and reset.

As she explained:

When you get back you give yourself your own vacation day to sort of recover… and do some things that maybe you want to do for the holiday.

This day is not indulgent—it’s essential. Emotional stress, overstimulation, travel, and routine disruption all drain energy.

As she added:

All of this takes energy: the planning, organizing, preparing, traveling, socializing… remembering to take care of yourself is really, really important.

A buffer day refuels your mind and body.

11. Look for Moments of Joy

The episode ends on a hopeful, grounded note.

As Dr. Sanz shared:

We’ll all get through it. And we might even enjoy some of it.

Even in a difficult season, small joys matter. Moments of connection, humor, clarity, quiet, or self-care can offer meaning—even amidst stress or depression.

Terry affirmed the value of this shift, acknowledging the importance of reclaiming bits of control and caring for oneself at the “back end” of the holiday experience.

No one needs to navigate the season alone.