Holiday blues are real and I have experienced them, thank you for some great ideas on what to do and what I could focus on rather than what the holidays used to mean, which was PARTY TIME.
To get even more in depth, I had similar experiences of holiday blues when I used to party ALL the time with the BIG intense partying being Friday & Saturday. When I first tried to stop drugs during this time, I found it to be a very depressing time to sit at home or do other activities that didn’t involve me partying on a Friday or Saturday night. I then found for myself that I had associated Fridays & Saturdays with the party scene.
I did self talk and reprogrammed myself so Fridays & Saturdays would no longer = party time. I had to first acknowledge what those days meant to me. I then looked back to my past to see what the weekend had represented before I got big into the party scene and even looked at what sober people associated weekends with to show myself that I was indeed the one who made the association and there for was able to change it to something that would empower me to do something other than want to party. Simple...yet I had to reprogram my automatic thinking pattern from years of association for my emotions to not overwhelm me and give me the blues.
I decided Friday was just another day that ended in “y” and it was only going to mean what I made it mean each and every Friday from then on forward. This opened me up to being creative and doing anything I wanted on the weekend that kept me in good health and wellbeing, without feeling the urge to go out and party because that’s what the weekend was there for!
Even though I have relapsed time and time again....I have kept this way of thinking about the weekends so they haven’t been a motivation for me to go out and party nor an invitation for the blues to keep me company for the night.