Keeping away from New Year’s depression

Americans see it everywhere at the end of the year. Reruns of 2008 in the media review the tragedies, the sorrows and the heartaches, as if they need a reminder of how negative it was.

On top of that, unrealistic New Year’s resolutions are made and doomed to fail at the get-go. Although many people look forward to the coming year, there are those who relish last year’s mistakes, becoming stuck in thoughts of “failures” they had.

Perhaps they didn’t think they took off as many pounds as they hoped for, or maybe they didn’t reach a certain goal they’d set for themselves with high expectation. The year-end blues seem to make a situation worse if a person is already feeling mildly or moderately depressed.

“A lot of time when people are depressed they’ll feel a lowered sense of self worth,” says Marie Logan, a licensed clinical professional counselor at the Eastern Montana Community Mental Health Center in Sidney. That lowered self worth stems from rumination, where a person will repeatedly dwell on problems or negative feelings without taking action to override them.

These thinking patterns, which cause people to see worst case scenarios, can lead to feeling worse, and eventually to depression. That is why it is important to take action. “The longer you allow yourself to stay in that negative thinking mode, the harder it is to pull yourself out of it [and] the worse you feel,” said Logan.

For those who are suffering from negative thought patterns, Logan suggests evaluating those thoughts. “They need to ask themselves if [their self-criticism is] true or false. That is the crux of negative thinking,”she said. For example, a person’s goal could have been to lose 20 pounds, but they lost 12 pounds instead. Rumination makes it seem like a failure when in fact it was an accomplishment. Logan suggests putting this through the true or false test. Losing 12 pounds is a failure. True or false? False.

Logan says to replace the negative thought that isn’t true with thoughts that are true. “I’m disappointed because I didn’t lose 20 pounds,” said Logan. “True or false? True. That had been my goal, but I did lose 12 pounds which was over half way to that mark.”

By looking at the positives, they can get out of the rut.

Now, not everyone feels rumination, and rumination isn’t depression. It’s important to note that people who experience rumination aren’t necessarily clinically depressed. They can still feel disappointment in how their year went. Sometimes rumination comes indirectly from what’s going on in the world.

“You look at the unrest and you look at the economic situation of the United States...A lot of the things that you see on the news are not things that make a person feel real good about the status of the world,” said Logan.

Although clinical depression is much more serious and should be dealt with a clinician or therapist, there are some additional steps people with New Year’s blues can take to feeling better about the new year.

Get healthy sleep, exercise, eat correctly, stay away from alcohol and overindulging in caffeine.

Examine expectations for this year (are they reasonable?) and break the year’s goals into steps.

“If things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to, how can you work on setting small goals to start moving in the direction you want to go?” said Logan.

By making these changes for the year they can create a positive new outlook for the year, avoiding potentially becoming clinically depressed.