Therapist Burnout: Navigating the Stress of the Holiday Season

The holidays are a joyous time, but they can be pretty stressful too. From gift shopping to navigating difficult family dynamics, 49% of Americans reported an increase in anxiety during the holiday season. With added stress on their plate, 38% of those surveyed said they would consider going to see a therapist for their concerns.

While it’s promising to see people are willing to reach out for mental health services, it’s also important to reflect on this from a therapist’s standpoint. Alongside the emotionally demanding nature of their work and a higher influx of clients to see in a short window, the holidays can be especially stressful for therapists. Here are five strategies for mental health professionals to navigate holiday stresses and avoid therapist burnout.

5 Ways to Prioritize Your Own Mental Health This Holiday Season

1. Establish Boundaries

Setting boundaries is a critical step for mental health providers to maintain their well-being and quality of care year-round — especially when you tack on the heightened stress and demand around the holidays. Clearly communicate your office hours and availability, so both colleagues and clients know when they can connect with you and when to wait. Make an effort to set limitations on responses to non-urgent communications outside office hours. Use that time in your personal life to recharge so you feel more present in your therapeutic sessions with clients.

2. Practice Self-Care

Engaging in self-care practices helps therapists be attuned to their own well-being amid the holiday chaos. While establishing clear boundaries to protect personal time is part of this self-care, consider ways to incorporate meditation practice into your daily routine. Just a few minutes of mindfulness techniques can help reduce your stress levels and leave you feeling more energized on the job. Between sessions, make sure you’re getting adequate breaks to recharge and enter the next visit with renewed focus and clarity. You can use this time to meditate, go for a walk, or grab coffee with a colleague.

3. Seek Peer Support

There’s value in having a network where therapists can share their experiences and feel a sense of connection with their peers. Through this collaborative exchange, therapists can share effective coping strategies to deal with the intensities of the holiday season. It’s an ideal time to establish peer support groups that meet on a regular basis to talk and build a sense of camaraderie going into the new year. While you’ll feel encouraged by a space that helps you process your own emotions and seek advice for your own mental health, you’ll continue to grow professionally as you learn from the experiences of other mental health providers.

4. Streamline Approaches

Navigating the holiday season shouldn’t impact the quality of care your patients receive; but it can mean augmenting your approach. Consider seeing if clients are flexible with altering the frequency of their sessions around the holidays, or are willing to switch from an in-person visit to a telehealth visit. Clients, who are dealing with their own hectic holiday schedule, may often appreciate the convenience these alternate routes offer. If there are fewer sessions scheduled, therapists can focus on helping their clients cope with more immediate challenges and delve into long-term mental health issues once the holidays end.

5. Delegate Responsibilities

To effectively manage their workload around the holiday season, therapists need to be able to stay focused on client care — not time-consuming, though necessary administrative tasks. Check in on administrative staff bandwidth to see where they can step in to help with non-clinical responsibilities during the holiday rush. The most effective way to streamline these processes in the long run is with a behavioral health EHR. That way, you have a built in way to automate scheduling, billing, and other key clinical operations without adding to anyone’s workload.

The emotional weight of clients’ struggles can be taxing on therapists — especially when they’re managing their own holiday-related stressors. We hope these strategies provide therapists with more of the support they need to best serve their clients while still caring for themselves too. With a little bit of self-care, connection, and proactive planning, mental health professionals will be better equipped to minimize compassion fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and other forms of therapist burnout that run rampant in the holiday season. We hope it gives you reassurance that all really can be calm and bright.