Pre-New Year Anxiety: Why We Spiral Before January || H&K with Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT
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What triggers pre‑New Year anxiety and how does the brain interpret it?
Hi, I'm Monica Packer from About Progress, and this is A Hug and a Kick, a series where I share a short excerpt from my extensive podcast archives, one carefully selected to give you the validation and or motivation you need for the weekend.
let's talk about how anxiety for the new year can change our behaviors moving into the new year. And I was curious from your expertise, what you see that actually looking like. So this is more so people can pay attention and be able to recognize, Oh, I'm falling into that trap or, Oh, I'm feeling this way, even though I didn't realize I was
right. So in general, when a human brain interprets danger or concern or a lack of safety, we call that anxiety, right? Your brain is interpreted there to be a perceived danger. And what our brain does is it sends out some hormones to your body to prepare you for this perceived danger. And I
say
perceived, meaning it doesn't have to be dangerous. Your brain just has to perceive it that way. So the new year could be a perceived danger in our mind if there's a lot of anxiety or fear or pressure or expectations associated to that.
How does avoidance show up as a safety behavior during holiday stress?
When that happens, we prepare for either fight, flight, freeze or fawn, right? These are behaviors we engage in to reduce or remove the anxiety that we have. Now, what does that look like? In general, we will often engage in what we call safety behaviors. There's no judgment for you doing these. Everybody does them and we can do them in different degrees. So one is just straight up avoidance, right? Yeah. It's too overwhelming. My brain has set off an alarm.
Why do perfectionism and people‑pleasing increase anxiety around the new year?
I'm just going to shut it down.
I'm not
doing it. Not only am I going to think about it, don't want to consider it. And that to some degree can be helpful, but usually too much avoidance means you're ending up falling behind on things. It's impacting on your functioning. Another safety behavior that we may do is the opposite end, which is to be in perfectionism, right? Or people pleasing, right? And we're doing that to control the environment so that we don't have to experience our own anxiety. This
happens in the holidays.
It doesn't work.
What is reassurance‑seeking and how does over‑researching fuel anxiety?
And it's exhausting that the people who go into people pleasing or perfectionism often are exhausted and beat themselves up because you can't really maintain perfectionism and people pleasing. It's actually not that well controlled, even though it feels like you're in control. Yeah. You're actually out of control often when
you're doing those
behaviors. And that can actually increase the amount of anxiety that you experience. Another one is we do a form of people pleasing, which is called reassurance seeking, which is where we consult with a lot of people or we consult with Google on whether we should or shouldn't do a certain thing. And that can be in the form of over-researching. A lot of people do a ton of like, You know, how many people spend, how have I heard, who have anxiety, who would say like, oh, well, I, you know, I feel, I feel pressure to lose weight for the new year. So I'm going to set that goal.
How does rumination create a false sense of control and how can you catch it?
It's not even in line with their values. But then they spend 12 or 14 hours researching whether
they should get an
elliptical or a bike, right? Yes. Like, or, you know, or
should,
you know, what, should I take a French class or a Spanish class or so forth? Like it could be simple like that, or it could be like, oh, should I leave my job? And they spend a lot of time. And then the other big one is, is hard to catch, but it's probably the most problematic, which is just simple rumination.
Yeah.
Sometimes when we are anxious, because we don't feel like we have control and there's so much uncertainty, we just get stuck in a cycle of rumination. And in the moment that we're ruminating, you might say, why would we put ourselves through that?
What practical steps can listeners take to break the anxiety cycle before January?
But the thing is, when you're ruminating, it gives you a false sense of control. And so we feel like we're solving the problem, but we're actually not, right? We're actually creating so much more and generating so much suffering. And so there are things to look out for and be aware of as you move through the holidays and into the new year.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What triggers pre‑New Year anxiety and how does the brain interpret it?
0:00–1:26
2
How does avoidance show up as a safety behavior during holiday stress?
1:26–2:01
3
Why do perfectionism and people‑pleasing increase anxiety around the new year?
2:01–2:37
4
What is reassurance‑seeking and how does over‑researching fuel anxiety?
2:37–3:35
5
How does rumination create a false sense of control and how can you catch it?
3:35–4:20
6
What practical steps can listeners take to break the anxiety cycle before January?
4:20–5:26