Holiday stress touches nearly nine out of ten American adults, and mental health experts say the fix starts with lowering expectations, not raising them.
Quick Take
- Wellness.com published holiday mental health guidance centered on realistic expectations, boundaries, and stress-regulation habits
- Clinical psychologist Dr. Mallory Malkin outlines three core coping strategies for the season
- Therapists Lisa Ford and Erica Coleman discuss grief rituals, family tension, and redefining traditions
- One widely repeated claim about holiday suicide spikes does not match national mortality data
What The New Holiday Guidance Actually Recommends
A Wellness.com article titled “For Your Health: How to Stay Centered During the Holidays” lays out a plan for getting through the season without burning out. The piece, credited to a staff wellness editor, focuses on practical steps rather than vague encouragement. It joins a growing body of holiday advice content built around three themes: expect less, protect your time, and plan for grief before it shows up uninvited.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Mallory Malkin, featured in a video from mental health advocate Mike Veny, breaks the advice into three strategies. Keep expectations realistic. Set firm boundaries. Prepare in advance for grief, rather than letting it ambush you mid-celebration. Malkin frames boundaries bluntly: say yes to what matters and no to what drains you. That line captures the whole approach in eight words.
The same video cites figures from the American Psychological Association and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, reporting that 89 percent of adults feel some holiday stress and 41 percent feel more stressed than usual. A separate 2025 Lifestance Health report finds 57 percent call the holidays stressful and 69 percent feel pressure to look happier than they actually feel. The underlying survey details aren’t spelled out in the clips, but the pattern they describe matches what clinicians see every December.
Why Boundaries Lead Every List
Boundary-setting shows up in nearly every piece of holiday mental health advice for a reason: it’s the one strategy people can control. Erica Coleman, founder and clinical director of Embrace and Tranquility Behavioral Health, and therapist Lisa Ford discuss this on Laurel TV’s “Mindful Conversations” series. They point to financial strain, family political arguments, and the unpaid job of being the family peacemaker as common pressure points that boundaries can actually relieve.
Ford and Coleman also push back on the idea that holidays must look a certain way. Redefining traditions, they argue, takes pressure off people juggling blended families, tight budgets, or simple exhaustion. Their recommendations include breathing exercises and body scans, both simple enough to do in a car before walking into a family gathering. None of it requires special equipment or a therapy degree to try.
Grief, Loneliness And The Pressure To Perform Happiness
Grief doesn’t take a holiday break, and both sets of experts treat it as a core topic rather than a footnote. Coleman and Ford discuss grief rituals as a way to honor loss during a season built around togetherness. Malkin’s third strategy, proactive grief coping, echoes that same idea: plan for the hard moment instead of being surprised by it when an empty chair sits at the table.
Loneliness compounds the problem even for people surrounded by family. The Lifestance figures cited in the Veny video report that 51 percent of respondents feel lonely despite being with loved ones, a number that captures something many people sense but rarely say out loud at the dinner table. Community engagement, mentioned by Ford and Coleman, is offered as one counterweight: volunteering or small group gatherings outside the immediate family circle.
Setting The Record Straight On Holiday Suicide Risk
One claim in circulating holiday mental health content deserves a direct correction. National mortality data tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show suicide rates are actually lowest in November, December, and January, not highest. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have documented this pattern for years, noting that depression and stress do rise during the holidays even though suicide deaths, on average, do not spike alongside them.
That distinction matters because it separates ordinary holiday strain from a crisis narrative that isn’t supported by the numbers. The practical advice from Malkin, Ford, and Coleman still stands on its own merits: lower expectations, protect your boundaries, and plan ahead for grief. Those steps don’t need an exaggerated statistic to justify themselves. They work because they address real, common pressures the season brings every single year.
Sources:
wellness.com, asc.upenn.edu, nbcphiladelphia.com
