Overcoming anxiety for the holidays

"Holiday anxiety is similar to holiday depression," says Cal Adler, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati and co-director of the Mood Disorders Center at the UC Neuroscience Institute, one of four institutes of the UC College of Medicine and UC Health. "There's an expectation that you're going to have a great time and that you're going to conform to these idealized holiday patterns. Like any stressful event, this brings out our frailties, our vulnerabilities, those spots in our personalities where we sometimes need to be shored up."

Adler and his colleague Scott Ries, LISW, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at UC and a member of the Mood Disorders Center team, offer a variety of coping techniques for those whose anxiety shows up like an unwelcomed guest during the holiday season.

All forms of anxiety, Ries explains, boil down to one emotion: fear. "Anxiety is a physiological response that is evolutionarily designed to keep us safe," he says. "When the brain is like that, it's doing you a favor. It's trying to help you survive. The brain receives the same signal if a bear is after you or if you're in a meeting with your boss."

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