It was such a beautiful time, and now you just want to pull the covers over your head, or worse yet, bite someone’s head off!  How do you tell if you are just tired or having post-holiday blues?  It’s normal to turn toward a more introspective place as company leaves, holiday parties die down, and visions of sugarplums are replaced by the daily commute and the realities of everyday life.  You may even find yourself overwhelmed as you are hit with the bills from your splurges.  Alternately, you may have purposefully pushed aside great difficulties in your life, or that of family members, so that you may enjoy one last holiday with them before things change.  Though you thought you fully understood this to be temporary, you may now find yourself feeling tremendous pain as the fleeting experiences pass and you face your challenges.   This obvious contrast, between joyous celebrating and the daily grind, may be amplified if you’ve just come back from a wondrous vacation.  For most people, a regular day back at the office is far from a magical day at Disney.  Even if temporary, our refocusing our sights on material things, people, and celebrations can shift our expectations.  Often, we have to intentionally readjust our expectations, and that may mean shifting our perspective back to what truly matters to us.

Consider these tips to help you:

• Return to your exercise routine as quickly as possible. Those endorphins will help your mood.
• Make sure to get adequate rest if your holiday schedule threw your sleep cycle off. Your brain’s ability to regulate mood can be affected by sleep’s restorative powers. In addition, your brain may require retraining to get back on track.
• Though your brain may still have you craving high caloric holiday foods loaded with sugars, fats, and starches, rebalancing your diet will rebalance your mood.
• Reconnect with friends. Though it may be tempting to turn inward, isolating yourself will make matters worse. Reaching out to your support network will help. You will likely find others dealing with some of the same feelings.
• Create mementos of the holidays. Go ahead and share pictures with family and friends, or capture the memories by making mugs or calendars out of photos to enjoy year round. This may make you feel more connected and productive. You  can capitalize on the post- holiday feeling by extracting the positive emotional connection and leaving the disappointment behind.
• Laugh. Laughter has been found to improve mood. Laughter may, in fact, be the best medicine. So tell jokes or watch a funny movie.

Lastly, expect some letdown.  After all, it can be a bit of a shock to the system to go from cookie decorating with the kids to facing a boring inbox of mundane “to do’s.” If you live with others, engage them in a discussion of what holiday memories they might like to incorporate somehow into the daily routine.  Who knows, after taking these steps you may find that the magic is there after all!