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While winter holidays are filled with seasonal yummies, lights, tinsel, gifts and family time, for many folks with a mental illness, the holidays suck. And it doesn’t matter if you are a Christian, Jew, Catholic or any of the other religions that make up our society. The holidays may suck.

Many depressives find the holidays to be a little too nostalgic and rather melancholy, or lonely and isolating.

For a few holiday seasons I found myself in depressive episodes. The nostalgia and the memories of being in a family with a Southern Baptist stepmother and a Jewish father (we three kids were Jewish) – who later split –hurt. The memories of my mom’s Christmas tree with all its twinkly lights, a Star of David on top, and eight nights of Hanukkah presents beneath the boughs of the tree remind me of a happy period in my life. I would lie under the tree and squint my eyes at the lights in the tree and when everything blurred, combined with the seasonal smell of cinnamon, took me to my own fun fantasy land.

In a sad holiday season, my depression gets worse if I lie beneath the limbs and squint my eyes …I want to go back to that special place under that tree that I knew as a kid – when my family was all together and seemed happy. The older I got and when depression hit at holiday times, I didn’t want to participate in the festivities. I spent a lot of time at the holidays crying.

The year 1999 was a manic holiday time. It was then during my divorce that I hit my real first manic episode. I’d totaled my car; I had just left my husband, moved out on my own (my first place ALL by myself) and filed for divorce.

Such events, frankly, would trip nearly anyone into a spiral of some sort.  My spiral was the fast-talking, overly self-assured, spending-too-much-money and drinking too much, manic Marcy. I lost over 20 pounds that holiday season. I thought I looked great. I weighed in at a whopping 98 pounds. My family tried to intervene but it was a long mania that nearly destroyed my life and my family relationships.

As Jews, my siblings and I still choose to spend Christmas with my stepmom even after she divorced my father. She was the mom who raised us, and she’s always family.  It was a time of togetherness I still love to this day. But each year was hard – family members no longer in the picture, family changes, and new additions – and for me, a husband subtraction.

Mania around holiday time for me became a pattern. My sister is the one who noticed my cycle seasons. From October until February was what she dubbed “Marcy hurricane season.” It was when I was a whirlwind of mania. Then things settled down from March through September – sometimes a midsummer depression would pop up.

Those with bipolar disorder should really keep a log of cycle seasons, cycle triggers and the length of time between cycles (there are rapid cyclers, etc.) and be aware of hard days that may approach.

For me it’s been easy to track triggers and keep an eye on myself during certain seasons of the year so I can manage myself instead of just giving in to a negative expected outcome.

Holidays have their ups and downs but regardless of environmental factors such as people, situations, and negative influences (drugs and alcohol), awareness can be a major player in keeping at equilibrium during the holidays.

Marcy is happily married to Craig, and she owns and publishes a newspaper in the Atlanta area.  She and her husband live just north of Atlanta with their newborn baby girl and their American Staffordshire terrier named Seven. Marcy has been a professional journalist in print, television and radio since 1999.

To read more blogs by Marcy, go here.

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