Have you just tried relaxing at Christmas

People love to say ‘Take time to relax over the Christmas break’. The message is well intentioned. It sounds caring. Supportive. Sensible. But it assumes something that has never been true for me. It assumes that stopping work automatically leads to rest. It assumes that time off equals recovery. It assumes that relaxation is something you can switch on once meetings end and calendars empty.

For my AuDHD brain, that assumption has always been quietly absurd.

This piece is for people whose nervous systems start bracing long before Christmas actually arrives.

The anxiety does not start when the holidays begin. It starts weeks earlier. As soon as the decorations appear in shops. As soon as the adverts start. As soon as the language shifts. It is Christmas again, and that means a whole set of expectations are being loaded onto my nervous system long before anything has actually happened.

Christmas is not one event. It is a slow escalation. More social events. More noise. More decisions. More things to remember. More unspoken rules. More pressure to participate. More pressure to enjoy it. By the time anyone tells me to relax and recharge, I am already braced. Already tired. Already behind.

What makes Christmas hard is not one specific thing. It is the way everything stacks. Christmas parties and events arrive in quick succession. There is an expectation to mask more, to be sociable, to pretend you are having fun doing things that are actively overwhelming. There are suddenly far more decisions to make. Who to buy gifts for. What to buy. Whether it is enough. Whether it is appropriate. Remembering to actually buy it. Then wrapping it. Then sending it. The same again with Christmas cards, including the paralysis of knowing what to write and the guilt if you do not send one. The anxiety that someone might get you a gift and you have misjudged the situation.

Christmas morning itself is another quiet stress point that rarely gets named. Watching other people open gifts you have bought them is not relaxing. It is a performance review running in real time. Will they like it. Did I get it right. Did I misjudge what mattered. Did I spend too much or not enough. At the same time, opening gifts from others brings its own layer of vigilance. I become acutely aware of my face, my reactions, whether I look grateful enough, whether my expression matches what is expected. I am monitoring myself constantly, checking that my responses land correctly, that I am not too flat or too intense, that I am performing appreciation in a way that feels acceptable. None of this is conscious choice. It is masking on autopilot. And it happens at the very moment when I am supposed to be relaxed, present and enjoying myself.

There is also the question of where you will spend the holidays. That anxiety is not just about a change in routine, but about how you will get there, what the travel will involve, and how much control you will lose along the way. Shopping becomes unbearable. Shops are busy. Transport is busy. Noise is everywhere. Work ramps up toward an artificial end of year deadline, which disrupts routine just when routine is most needed. Where I live in Scotland, the weather often turns at the same time. Fewer long walks. More rain. Wet clothes. Cold. The specific sensory misery of being damp and overstimulated. The light draws in. There is less daylight, less vitamin D, more artificial light, and more time spent indoors under conditions my nervous system does not enjoy.

All of this builds long before Christmas Day arrives.

What it produces in me is not festive stress. It produces stress, guilt, shame, and fear of overload. Stress because the demands keep stacking. Guilt because I know I am not meeting expectations, even when I am trying. Shame because everyone else seems to cope, or at least perform coping, and I assume the problem must be me. Fear because I know what overload feels like, and I can sense it approaching weeks in advance.

My default response has always been to push through. It feels like trying to run away in a nightmare, legs heavy, knowing something is coming and being unable to escape. Gift buying is a perfect example. Other people seem to choose easily. They see something and think, this will be perfect. My mind goes blank. The fear of getting it wrong, of disappointing someone, of choosing something that does not land, shuts down access to imagination entirely. Pressure does not motivate me. It paralyses me.

So I retreat to the one place that still feels structured and familiar. Work. I focus harder. I lean into it as a way of normalising time and narrowing the world. But even that refuge disappears in December. People wind down. Offices get noisier. Social rituals take over. Scratchy Christmas jumpers. Secret Santas. Loud group conversations. After work drinks in crowded pubs with overlapping voices and nowhere to retreat.

For a long time, alcohol helped me cope. Not because I wanted chaos, but because it dulled my senses. It slowed my brain. It softened the edges of social overwhelm. Even hangovers felt peaceful because my mind finally stopped racing. I do not drink now, which means these events are experienced in sharp, painful focus. The buffer is gone. The noise is louder. The exposure is greater.

Christmas has never worked well for me. I have spent it at home. With kids. Without kids. At my parents’ house. With extended family. On holidays away. None of those versions were good, just bad in different ways. Different settings did not change the underlying load. The same conditions were present every time. Disrupted routine. Heightened social demand. Sensory overload. Emotional expectation. Loss of control over space and time.

Travel makes everything worse. If we go away, all the usual holiday overwhelm applies on top of Christmas. Packing. Transitions. Waiting. Crowds. Unfamiliar environments. And once you arrive somewhere else, the few coping strategies you usually rely on are stripped away. You do not control the space. You do not control the schedule. You do not know when you can retreat. At home, I can disappear into the kitchen and cook. I can put headphones on. I can narrow the world. In someone else’s house, that option is gone. Add children into that mix and the load increases again. Add guests and small talk and unpredictability and the nervous system never stands down.

There is one coping strategy I have never really talked about, because it feels embarrassing even to admit, but it is completely real. When I am staying in other people’s houses, or when there are too many people in my own, the bathroom becomes the only safe refuge. It is the one place I can go without having to explain myself or make conversation. I can close the door. I can sit down. I can breathe. I can run cold or warm water over my wrists or neck and let the sensation pull me back into my body. Sometimes I just scroll a familiar app for a few minutes, something predictable that gives my brain a narrow channel to settle into. Over the years, more than one person has assumed I have stomach or bowel issues because of how often I disappear into the bathroom. The truth is much simpler and much harder to say out loud. I am not unwell. I am overwhelmed. The bathroom is the only socially acceptable place I can go to escape for a few minutes of calm when there is nowhere else to hide. I know now that I am far from alone in this, even if most of us never say it.

What Christmas leaves behind is not relief. By the time it is over, I am exhausted. Flat. Disconnected from myself. Relieved it is done. Often ashamed that I did not enjoy something everyone else seems to love. And even that relief is short lived, because New Year’s Eve arrives almost immediately.

Christmas ending feels like going over the biggest drop on a rollercoaster and realising there is a loop coming next. New Year’s Eve brings another demand to celebrate. To stay up late. To be sociable for hours. Often to drink. Often to perform meaning and reflection and optimism about the year ahead. There is no recovery window. No decompression space. No quiet landing between events.

It also matters to say this plainly. Christmas can be a hard time for many people, neurodivergent or not. It brings reminders of loss, of parents who are no longer here, of relationships that ended, of families that have changed shape. It can amplify loneliness for those who are on their own, and grief for those who are missing someone they love. For many people, the pressure to be cheerful sits uncomfortably alongside sadness that has nowhere to go. None of that is exclusive to ADHD or autism. But for neurodivergent people, these emotional layers arrive on top of everything else. On top of the sensory load, the disrupted routines, the social masking, the decision fatigue, and the fear of overload. Grief and loneliness do not arrive in isolation. They arrive in a nervous system that is already working hard to stay regulated. And that combination can make an already difficult season feel heavier still.

Then January finally arrives. Where many people feel depressed by the darkness and lack of social events, I feel safe. January is soothing. Nobody is doing much. People have overspent. Invitations stop. Routine returns. Silence becomes socially acceptable again. There is nothing to decline because nothing is being offered. January is the first real exhale.

Over the years, I have found small ways to cope with Christmas Day itself. I cook.Cooking gives me a contained world with rules I understand. The day before, I can lock myself away to prep vegetables and build a detailed timing plan in a spreadsheet. I make Christmas pudding and stuffing using my great granny’s recipe. On the day itself, I keep people out of the kitchen so the plan is not disturbed. I have timers set with names for each milestone. I wear headphones. I am in my own world, free from small talk and sensory overload. It is not avoidance. It is participation on terms my nervous system can handle.

There are parts of Christmas that genuinely regulate me. The traditions I have chosen, not the ones imposed. I always get a real tree. The smell of the forest in the house calms me deeply. The low light. Fairy lights. Candles. Watching the same films every year, over and over, without needing to decide anything new. Dopamine rich snacking without ceremony.

There is one thing I do for myself every Christmas. I buy myself the biggest technical Lego set I can find. I wrap it. I put it under the tree. And I give myself permission to disappear into it for two days, often twenty hours or more, headphones on, completely absorbed. Pure joy. I also love jigsaws. One thousand pieces. Two thousand pieces. Sitting side by side with my wife for hours, focused on the same thing, not talking unless we want to. That has become one of our strongest traditions together.

This is what rest actually looks like for me. Not stopping. Not unstructured time. But deep, absorbing, predictable focus. Monotropic immersion. Safe structure. No social demand. No performance. No decision making once I am inside it. Connection without overwhelm. Presence without pressure.

When people say take time to relax and recharge, this is what they miss. Rest is not universal. Time off is not automatically restorative. For brains like mine, unstructured time can be destabilising. Engagement, when it is safe and bounded, is what restores me. Structure is not the enemy of rest. It is often the condition for it.

If I was to say one thing to myself, or to someone like me, in the run up to Christmas, it would not be advice or strategy. It would be a question, one I have been sitting with since reading Awareness by Anthony de Mello.

Why are you putting this pressure on yourself? Is it for the real you, or to live up to some labels you are carrying about who you should be?

That question does not make Christmas easy. But it does soften it. And sometimes, softening is enough.

I write about these experiences because I spent years thinking I was broken, when what I actually needed was language for how my nervous system works.

I write one thoughtful piece a week for people who find themselves overwhelmed by things that everyone else seems to cope with. If this resonated, subscribing just means you’ll get the next one quietly, without pressure or expectation.

And if you read this and didn’t subscribe, that’s okay too. I’m genuinely curious what stopped you.

If you know someone who finds this season overwhelming, sharing this might help them feel understood.

de Mello, A. (2011). Awareness: Conversations with the masters. PRH Christian Publishing. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50279544-awareness?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=fzlDC1S4L4&rank=2

Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of personality and social psychology, 84(4), 822–848. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822

How to Strip the ‘Shoulds’ from Your Holidays. Additude Magazine. https://www.additudemag.com/getting-through-the-holidays-neurodivergent-families/?srsltid=AfmBOorfPR9oKqObfyvvq1izuOmeVJPSro-M3W4b_nPWET56tc97BJvD&