Depression During the Holidays: 3 Ways to Keep Ghosts of Christmas Past From Ruining Your Holiday by Dr. Bradley Nelson

Many people experience feelings of anxiety or depression during the holiday season, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And the effect is worse for those already battling mental-health issues. 

In Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past who takes him on a tour of the parts of Scrooge’s life that have led to him becoming the angry, miserly man he is today. All of us have troubling events in our past that color our emotional reactions in the present. Subconscious unhealed feelings, “trapped emotions,” can harm our mental, physical and emotional health, as well as our relationships.

Do you ever feel like you are struggling under the weight of something you can't quite put your finger on? Perhaps your life is not turning out how you had hoped. Perhaps your attempts to form lasting relationships never seem to work out. You may wish that certain events in your past had never occurred, but feel powerless to move beyond them.

Here are a few tips for overcoming holiday depression and anxiety and one’s own “Ghosts of Christmas Past:”

• List Your Blessings: People suffering from depression tend to focus on the negative things in their lives rather than counting their blessings. One of the most important things you can do is to make a list every day of the things in your life that are actually good.

• Move to Beat Depression and Stress: Exercise as simple as getting outside and walking is the natural, drug-free way to combat depression. Moving your body throughout the day burns away stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol that can otherwise linger in your system for up to 24 hours, damaging your immune system and organs. The secret reason exercise is so good for you is that it burns those hormones out of the blood and prolongs your existence on the planet.

• Discover and Release Emotional Baggage: People can free themselves of a major underlying cause of anxiety, depression, panic attacks, phobias and other forms of mental illness by learning to release trapped emotions. Instructions are available for free at EmotionCodeGift.com.

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