The holidays bring with them disruptions to your schedule and routines. It is important to protect and maintain the healthy habits that are important for your physical and mental health.
Disrupted schedules
Around the holidays, people face disruptions to their schedules, routines, and habits.
Travel can bring jet lag and exhaustion. You may be attending holiday parties, school functions, helping run the charity auction, and attending multiple family functions at different locaitons. Your workplace may have big projects that need to be finished up by the end of the year, and extra work that needs to be picked up as other staff members take off time for vacation.
During the holidays, there’s a lot of busyness and things we’re required to do for other people that we wouldn’t need to at other times of the year. In general, there’s a sense of being very busy and feeling like we’re not able to do the healthy things that are required for mental health as well as physical health.
Maintain your healthy habits
Despite the busyness of the holidays, we highly encourage you to continue to place a priority on sleep, exercise, and eating right.
It can be easy for sleep and exercise to take a backseat to the priority of things that need to get done around the holidays. It is important to continue to make time for and to maintain your healthy routines. Holidays also often mean an abundance of rich food around you that can spike blood sugar and make it more difficult to sleep and to have steady energy during the day. It is important to strike a balance, and to continue to focus on eating right.
Increased caffeine intake, whether you’re trying to check everything off your to-do list or staying up late for holiday parties, can send mood flailing around. Alcohol and marijuana may be present at holiday gatherings, and it is important to maintain good habits around these substances as well. Toasting with apple juice or sparkling apple cider can be just as celebratory as alcohol, without the hangover or the mood impacts for the next 2-3 days.
Protect your time
We would also like to encourage that, in addition to your usual to-do list around the holidays, you should create a to-not-do list.
When people are asking you to volunteer for this that at your kid’s school, or for this position in the neighborhood party, or to host a party for this event, or to buy presents for that gathering, or so many of the other things we’re asked to do — just say no, to some of them at least.
It isn’t Grinchy or Scrougey to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before taking care of others. It’s about protecting yourself and setting up boundaries to protect your mental health — your time, space, and energy — so you can have a peaceful season and survive the holidays. Simply surviving and getting through the busy winter season can be a great accomplishment.
If you’ve fallen off track, ketamine treatment can help you get back to your habits and routines and jumpstart a return to normalcy. However, the main focus should be on maintaining these as much as possible going into the holiday season.
About Us
Wells Medicine is a Houston-based practice designed to provide meaningful care for mental health. Providing targeted interventional treatments for Depression, Anxiety, OCD, PTSD and other conditions, with Ketamine Treatments, Stellate Ganglion Blocks, TMS, and Nitrous-Oxide Treatments. Focused on comprehensive care and integration with Psychiatry, Psychology, and Support Services. We are evidence-based, patient-focused and mission-driven.
The content here is for informational purposes and should not be relied upon for medical decisions. For the details of your specific medical conditions and treatments consult your doctors or other qualified healthcare professionals.
