Depression/Anxiety during the Holidays

It is January 11, and I am just coming down from the holidays.  I had a lot of fun seeing my family and friends, but I abandoned my anti depression/anxiety game plan.  So now that the sugar, unhealthy food, parties, presents and religious aspects of the season are over, I am depressed.

Now to be fair, I have had the January blues most of my life, even pre-depression.  But depression is beyond the blues.  I am having negative thoughts that are unrelated to reality. and I want to hide in the house.  Also, if I do go out, I want to spend money on credit and eat sugar, great ways to keep the worst of the depression at bay for a short time.  Of course, the problem with going that route is that you end up with debt and having to get off sugar.

So what should I do?  First, since I wake up in a fog each morning, I make myself sit down and put together a schedule for the day.  This is my third day of being on the schedule, and I am feeling better.  I am slowly finding my center.  The schedule goes like this: first I meditate, then do body stretches.  Next, I spend some time getting all the holiday stuff put away.  For example, I took the lights off the tree yesterday.  I do not do too much around the Christmas stuff, because it makes me feel anxious.  However, having all this Christmas stuff around also makes me feel anxious. So I am trying to find a balance.  Next, my bedroom was a mess with lots of clothes and other junk all around, so I cleaned that up yesterday.  It is hard to calm down when your immediate space is in chaos.  But it is hard to clean up the chaos when you are down.

Today is business day.  I have opened my mail and realize that I need to respond to some things, but I have not focused on it yet. My first job is to get my medications changed over to the new medicine provider.  I just found the sheet that tells me what to do.  Hopefully I will do something around this today.  As I write this, I am formally reminding myself that I need some refills on my anti-depression medications soon.  I like to wait until I am close to being out and then act in a crisis mode.  I also need to spend an hour on a painting that will be linked to this post.  Finally I need to exercise today.  I have an organized class that I am going to at 4 p.m.  As I write this, I am dreading leaving the house and going to the class.  The class is small, and I am expected.  Duty usually works as a motivator for me.  So that’s my story for now.