5 Compulsive behaviors during Holidays

The season of holidays! Everyone is usually in a good mood, spirits are high and all around us the festive cheer seems to be coming to life. It is a time to feel closer to our loved ones, relax our minds and pamper our selves. Yet at the same time, holidays can be taxing for some people and may disturb them psychologically. This may be due to various reasons: maybe you don\’t get along with your family and can\’t avoid meeting them, maybe the year ending makes you feel a sense of loss or regret over lost time, maybe some area of your life is getting negatively impacted such as professional, social, personal.
Regardless of the reason, many of us get involved in some dysfunctional behavior or the other during this time. We may obsess mentally over some thoughts, be unable to let go of some emotions. This can lead to compulsivity in mental or behavioral areas. Compulsivity is repetitively doing some action- mental or physical and finding it difficult to stop. In the beginning, a person doesn\’t realise it is hard to stop as they don\’t try to or don\’t see it as a problem. By the time they do realise it, it gets harder and harder to stop. Let us look at some compulsive mental or behavioral actions that can manifest during the holidays.

1. Compulsive Substance Use

While celebrating any occasion, for many individuals alcohol or any other substance is a big part of the festivities. Many people enjoy their wine, spiked egg nog or rum during the holidays. But it is very easy to overdo it and compulsively reach out for the substance. The person keeps trying to prolong the parties, find more excuses to drink or use, all under the excuse of celebrating holidays. While it is absolutely fine to let your hair down and indulge a bit more than usual, one should recognize when the behavior is becoming compulsive. It usually entails escaping reality and trying to keep feeling good or happy or relaxed using substances. Some people may do it to socialize better, deal with the family easily, to keep their stress under check, to be a cheerful person who is the life of the party. At the heart of it, compulsive substance taking usually is a coping tool for people, especially those for whom holidays are a tough time. For many people, drug or alcohol addiction begins in such ways, or for those who are already addicted, their addiction may become more intense during the holidays. It becomes important to identify the Compulsivity in time and seek help for it.

2. Overspending

Compulsive shopping or spending is an issue a lot of us struggle with during the holiday season. With attractive offers, sales, and persuasive advertisements, we may end up spending way more than we usually would or should. Our brain finds spending rewarding. Spending on material objects or even experiences such as vacations, adventure sports, events is extremely rewarding and gives us an intense but temporary dopamine hit. Just like any other compulsive behaviors, we keep seeking for our next dopamine hit through these experiences. Our sense of self worth as well as out sense of satisfaction slowly becomes dependent on these experiences or objects. However, the charm and pleasure of spending is quick to wear out and we get stuck in a cycle of seeking again.

3. Over thinking
Compulsive thinking is not just limited to holiday season, though it may flare up for some people during this time. This is because holidays can be a triggering time for people. They may be triggered by family members, places or events that may send them down a dark Memory Lane. They may trigger some thoughts about the past or worry about the future. Usually overthinking at holidays is about what family members or closed ones are doing or saying, unpleasant memories, self defeating thoughts about living up to one\’s potential in the year, comparison with others, missed opportunities, criticising the situation, people or the self.
This compulsive thinking habitually takes us away from the present moment. Whenever we are away from the present moment for too long, which means we are dwelling too much in our past or future, we are bound to suffer. This suffering comes in the form of anxiety, stress, sadness or feeling depressed, anger, resentment, guilt or shame.

4. Self Depreciation

A lot of us tend to take stock of the year that has past by and evaluate ourselves in terms of our personal or professional growth. This by itself is fine, but many times, the evaluation focuses on the negative. We beat ourselves up for the things we didn\’t achieve, and trivialize the things that we did. As if we have to have a report card for the whole year and it always has to be held to a very high standard. This standard could be because of our comparisons with others or with our selves or our ideal version of ourselves.
In reality, linear growth is an illusion and our ways of growing consist of lots of ups and downs. Some areas in our life may flourish while some may not and that is okay. The compulsive need to keep being critical, negating our positives, thinking self defeating thoughts, makes us feel dissatisfied with ourselves a lot. We no longer feel gratitude or content for what we already have or we are.

5. People Pleasing

All of us want to be validated by others in some or the other way. We all need sypport from others, as no man is an island. But compulsive need for validation and approval is a debilitating way to live. Our sense of self then starts to slowly depend on this validation. We may seek it more from those who are close to us and when we don\’t get it, which invariable will happen at some or the other time, we can face a lot of negative psychological consequences. Low confidence, increased social anxiety, poor self esteem, depressed mood or emotional instability, impulsive behavior in social situations, are only some of the negative effects of compulsive people pleasing. This is one compulsive behavior which is also hard to identify in oneself as it happens very unconsciously.

There are many other compulsive behaviors which can be exacerbated during the holidays. Such a time can provide a sneak peek into our suppressed emotions, our hidden mental states. When it comes to drug addiction or alcohol addiction, Compulsivity is the main problem related to the illness. But even without substances, many people do have problems with compulsivity- compulsively thinking negatively, worrying, holding onto emotions from the past, and so on. At Zorbacare Rehabilitation Center, in Pune, we work on Compulsivity in different areas of life, not just in the area of addiction. Our team of experts helps individuals to identify their compulsive patterns in their lives and to challenge and eventually break out of those patterns. Only then can a person be truly free in their actions or speech, once they are free from their conditioned compulsive patterns. Drug or alcohol addiction in India is a rising phenomena which needs more and more creative solutions and focus on different aspects of mental health. We aim to keep updating ourselves and spreading awareness about the illness and about mental health care in general.