When the Holidays Don’t Feel Merry: Navigating Complex Trauma During the Season

Understanding holiday triggers and finding gentler ways to move through them

The holidays are often portrayed as joyful, cozy, and full of connection. But for many trauma survivors, this time of year brings something very different—anxiety, numbness, dread, exhaustion, or a familiar pull back into survival mode.

If the holidays don’t feel merry, nothing is wrong with you — what’s important is learning how to navigate this time with care.

Why the Holidays Can Be Triggering

There are several reasons this time of year can feel heavy or complicated — especially for those with trauma histories:

1. Family dynamics can activate old roles.
Even as adults, being around family can bring back patterns formed long before we had awareness or choice. The body remembers what it learned early: how to adapt, how to stay quiet, how to get by.

2. Expectations of “joy” can increase feelings of failure or disconnection.
Holiday messaging tends to push a single narrative: These are the happiest days of the year. For trauma survivors, this messaging can feel isolating if your experience is different.

3. Social and sensory overload.
Crowded spaces, loud noises, disrupted routine, travel, unfamiliar environments — all of this places extra load on the nervous system, especially if it is already carrying survival responses.

4. Grief and loss are amplified.
The season often shines light on what is missing — what ended, who is gone, or connections that never existed in the first place. Grief doesn’t take holidays off.

If any of this is your experience, it doesn’t mean you’re negative or ungrateful. It means your nervous system is giving you information. And information can lead to choice.

Grounding Techniques for Overwhelming Gatherings

Grounding won’t erase discomfort, but it can support your system in staying present enough to make choices. Here are a few practices you might try:

• Pick a “grounding object.”
Carry something small that brings steadiness — a stone, a bracelet, a smooth piece of fabric. Touching it can help the body reconnect to the here and now.

• Notice places of support in your body.
Your feet on the floor. Your back against a chair. Your hands in your lap. Simple awareness of support can invite the nervous system to soften.

• Take sensory breaks.
Stepping outside. Washing your hands with warm water. Sitting alone in your car for a few minutes. These interruptions can regulate overwhelm before it builds.

• Use “orientation.”
Look around the room and quietly name what you see:
“a lamp, a red cup, three windows, a picture frame.”
This helps bring the brain out of threat response and into present awareness.

You don’t have to feel calm for these practices to work. Even a small shift in stress can make space for choice.

You Have Permission to Opt Out

Sometimes the hardest question is: Do I actually want to participate in this?
If traditions or gatherings activate painful memories, overextend your capacity, or create emotional harm, you are allowed to change how you engage with them.

In trauma healing, choosing what your system can tolerate is a sign of growth.

That might look like:
• attending for one hour instead of all day
• staying connected via video call instead of in person
• setting a time limit for conversations
• declining altogether with honesty or simplicity

Your worth is not measured by participation. Healing sometimes asks for distance so repair can happen at a pace your body understands.

Creating New and Safe Rituals 

If old rituals no longer serve you, there is space to create new ones. They might be quiet. They might be small. They might look different every year. They might belong only to you and that’s okay.

Here are ideas survivors have shared:

• writing down what you’re ready to release before the new year
• preparing a meal only for yourself — something that feels nourishing
• walking in nature or choosing a day without plans
• using music as grounding — building a “steady playlist”
• lighting a candle for grief and gratitude at the same time
• sharing a moment of honesty with one safe person

Rituals don’t need to be perfect. They simply need to feel possible.

If This Season Is Hard — You’re Not Alone

Healing during the holidays often looks less like celebration and more like steadying. 

If support would help, we currently have openings for individual trauma therapy sessions, both in-office and through nature-based therapy intensives. You’re welcome to reach out — even just to ask questions.

Accepted insurance: CO state Medicaid insurance, Colorado Access, Colorado Community Health Alliance (CCHA), and Victims Compensation.
Our nonprofit arm, Wilderness Encounters, works to offer funded or sliding-scale sessions when coverage isn’t possible.

Whatever this holiday season holds for you,may there be even one moment of relief, choice, or safety. Healing does not have to wait for a perfect season. It only needs space to begin.