In my five years of private practice, I’ve noticed a trend: calls decrease in November and December, but then come in droves after the New Year.
In some ways, this makes a lot of sense. Everyone’s life is busy during the holiday season, so taking on a new weekly commitment can feel challenging or overwhelming. Plus, the end of the year has an air of – understandably – endings about it… and starting therapy is the opposite, a beginning.
But the clients who do come in during the last two months of the year benefit a great deal from starting when they do. And as I’ve seen what happens in those months, I’ve come to the conclusion that November and December are actually an *amazing* time to start therapy. And here’s why:
1. The holiday season can be challenging
This is caused by family-related stress.
I said my inquiry volume dips a bit in November and December, but there’s an exception to that rule: the week after Thanksgiving. I get a TON of calls that week, and here’s what most of them sound like:
I’m calling because I just got back from Thanksgiving with my family and I realized I still have a lot of unresolved anger at my mom/ I have a lot of resentment towards my sister/ I hate that I’m the black sheep and no one in my family understands me.
Norman Rockwell paints one picture of family holidays; many people’s actual families paint another. Folks living away from home often look at their lives and think, “wow, I’ve really grown and matured as a person” – but the pull of a family dynamic is strong enough to make you feel like a teenager all over again.
That’s because you’re not living in a vacuum; rather, you’re influenced by your environment. When you’re living your adult life, you’re surrounded by the trappings of maturity – you go to your job, you get the oil changed in your car, you pay your rent, you keep your home (fairly) neat, you go out to dinner with a friend, you donate to charity. Once in awhile, you step back and you think, “I am killing this adulting thing!”
But back with your – as we call it in the therapy world – “family of origin”, you’re sucked back into all of those old roles. You’re someone’s child, someone’s sibling. Your father talks to you like you’re still a petulant teenager. Your mother comments on your weight and asks if you’re ever going to get married. Your brother or sister tries to one-up you. And for a lot of people, being in that setting really kicks up unprocessed stuff from your past.
Therapy can be a great place to process that unprocessed stuff. Your therapist can give you support and help you sort through the old roles you used to play that challenge your perception of your present self as a competent, got-your-shit-together adult.
This is caused by loneliness.
One Thanksgiving several years ago, when I was living across the country from my family, I decided not to brave the crowds and travel home. All of my friends were going home to their families, so it was just me, alone in my apartment.
My Thanksgiving dinner was a cold turkey sandwich from the grocery store. If it were just a regular Thursday, I’m sure the turkey sandwich would have been delicious… but on Thanksgiving it just felt sad.
We’re so flooded with “shoulds” about what the holidays are supposed to look like. Lavish dinners, extravagant decorations, huge gatherings filled with love and connection and POSITIVE FEELINGS ONLY, DAMMIT.
Loneliness is an epidemic, and the holidays can cause that feeling to intensify. You don’t have to be alone to feel lonely – you can be surrounded by people and still feel disconnected. This is especially true if you struggle with depression or anxiety, but it can also just be a symptom of the fact that we live in really emotionally disconnected times.
If you’re feeling lonely over the holidays, it may be a sign that you are feeling less connected than you’d like during other parts of the year. Beginning therapy while you’re in the throes of this can be a great window into something that impacts you most of the time, and you and your therapist can start to unearth ways to help you expand your sense of connectedness.
This is caused by existential reflections.
I’ve written before about death anxiety – the restlessness caused by recognizing that you have a limited amount of time, and the pressure to make the most of the time you have.
For a lot of people, this naturally intensifies around the holiday season. People take inventory of the changes they things they have accomplished, the changes they’ve made. They look at their New Year’s Resolutions and feel either accomplished or underwhelmed by their own achievements. And fears of meaninglessness, wasted time, and a wish to make an impact underlie it all. (Another relevant article: “The New Year is Inherently Anxiety-Provoking”.)
A good therapist can help you manage this anxiety with self-compassion. They can help you to find a different perspective on what it means to have a meaningful life. They can help you unearth your values, so that this time next year, you feel like you’ve gotten off the hamster wheel and have a life that you’re excited to get out of bed for.
2. You can get a head start on your New Year’s Resolutions
Starting now lets you get to “middle stage therapy” sooner.
Therapy, according to the licensure exam I took several years ago, is a three-stage process: early, middle, and late. Middle stage therapy is where a lot of the magic happens. It’s when you can dive deep, challenge preconceptions, and shift perspectives. But that can’t happen before early stage therapy.
Here’s what happens in early stage therapy: You and your therapist build a strong and trusting working relationship.
This sounds simple. It sounds incidental. But research shows that the therapeutic relationship is, far and away, the most important ingredient of effective therapy. What you’re doing when you start therapy, whether you realize it or not, is observing your therapist and asking questions like, “are you judging me?”, “can I trust you?”, and “if I’m a bit of a mess one day, will you still be there for me?” It’s fundamental and foundational, but you can’t do the scary, deeper work of therapy until you’ve built trust with your therapist.
You can absolutely do this work in January – this early stage relationship building stuff that comprises the most basic components of what works in therapy. And the relationship-building doesn’t end once you’re solidly into middle-stage therapy. (Like any relationship, the therapeutic relationship needs to be tended to regularly in order for it to continue to flourish.)
But if you start in November or December, you’ll have a head start in the New Year, and you’ll be well on your way to the “digging deep” stuff of middle-stage therapy.
Your therapist can help you develop your New Year’s Resolutions.
Have you made the same goals, year after year, only to find yourself feeling stuck? That might be because making changes is hard (and boy, is it!). It might also be, though, that the way you’re setting goals is setting you up for failure.
Therapy is known as a place where you work towards life changes… but it can also be a great place to conceptualize what those desired changes are in the first place.
Every therapist handles goal-setting differently. With some therapists, you may need to ask for support in setting your goals. When I start working with a new client, it’s baked into my “new client onboarding” process. At your second or third session, I help you conceptualize what therapy success would look like, and translate that into actionable, professionally worded goals.
My clients tell me they find this process extremely helpful. Most people who come to therapy for the first time have a nebulous sense that they want something to be different. But thanks to my decade and a half of experience practicing therapy, one of my strengths is that I am essentially a professional goal-developer. I can help you build structure around the success you’re seeking.
So if you’re a person who likes to make and strive for New Year’s Resolutions, the holiday season is the perfect time to start therapy!
3. Beat the January rush
Have you ever been to the gym in January? If you want to use a treadmill or the leg press machine or the squat rack, there’s a line out the door. That’s because, related to everything I’ve written about here so far, people strive to make major life changes in the New Year.
So just like the gym, therapy offices get a flood of calls in January. Getting in to see a therapist can be competitive, especially if you need an appointment at a high demand time, like evenings, weekends, early mornings, or lunchtime.
When I start seeing a new client, I schedule them for a regular weekly time – for example, Thursdays at 6 PM. Once you’ve booked that appointment, you’re locked in until you request a time change or you “graduate” from therapy.
If you start therapy in November or December, during the slower season, high-demand spots will be less competitive. You’ll be good to go in January – ready to build and work towards your New Year’s Goals, having successfully weathered the stress of the holiday season.