I have recently fallen into an abyss I refer to as “the space between.” The fabulous frenzy of Christmas has come and gone, and the New Year has been hijacked by the “meh” of what already feels like an endless January. This stretch of time marks the transition from the annual ending of “the holidays” and the start of the new year to waiting for spring. That transitional space looms large. It’s a space big enough to accommodate some hefty doldrums. Or…could it be a much-needed space set aside for some mental health self-care? If that’s to be the case for me, I need to try to understand my long-broken relationship with the space between. More about that later.

It’s no accident that I am writing this on January 15…

Reason #1: I gave myself the first half of January to rest, reflect, and try to figure out how to not sink too deeply into the winter blues. In my first full year of retirement last year I really struggled, and I promised myself I wouldn’t go through multiple months of that again. I’d use some strategies — daily walking, using my light box, reading fiction and some good non-fiction, writing, planning, and developing some hobbies.
Reason #2: Today is known as Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. Well, the fighter in me didn’t want to use this day as an excuse to lean even deeper into the episodes of depression that have plagued me my whole life. How did this day get such an awful moniker (even though most people living in the northern hemisphere would agree that it kind of fits)? According to Forbes Magazine, a U.K. travel company came up with the idea in 2005 as a marketing ploy to get people to book travel plans to escape the winter hell. Based on a “depression formula” they cooked up with a psychologist, they came up with the date of the 15th as opposed to any other random January day. Although the company is no longer in business, the “curse” stuck, and here I am smack dab in the middle of the month, allowing the inertia of “I’m just not feeling it” to make a beeline into a vortex of “blah.” And before you knew it, the first two weeks of a new year were gone. And what happened in those two weeks that inspired the topic of this post? I fell into “a space between.”
Reason #3: That abyss I referred to hits a watershed moment today. January 15 has become a self-imposed day of reckoning for me. Since Christmas, I have been filling this big space in unhealthy ways.

Let’s unpack …

Some of you may be familiar with in-between spaces. They are created by any kind of task, event, time, or life transition. And wouldn’t life just have to be chock full of transitions! For some people, these transitions are just common occurrences. They just happen and pass without much mental stress. Not for me. For me they are periods where I begin to feel a loss of control. I experience January as a major transition. After six plus decades of struggle, the prospect of these first two weeks of January turning into an entire winter of discontent has brought this struggle into glaring focus: I have to finally deal with the impact of my struggles with transitions. If you are, like me, a person who has struggled with transitions for your whole life, then you get it.

Personally, I am aware of at least two effects of my own struggle with transitions, and I have experienced both at various times of my life. One problematic effect of transitions for me is that at times I would just plow onto the next thing in my life, not taking time to reflect on what’s occurred, enjoy it, celebrate it, learn from it, etc. Sometimes that would happen for me when I got too deeply trapped in work mode. I would work all day then line up 20 things to do as soon as I got home from work because I did not deal well with the transition of leaving work and coming home. That was evidenced on a grand scale when I “retired” in June of 2021 and moved right into a new role in July of 2021. And yes, it took a bit of a toll. Retirement is a massive transition…and the pace of its impact can be tricky. Some of its greatest transitional impacts for me occur as the seasons change because my 40+ years in professional education (not to mention the first 16 years of schooling) centered around the seasons and how they drove life’s rhythm.

But more often, it was the second transition-related problem that I was plagued by. I would become immobilized by transition. This would manifest itself in some habits that were really bad for my mental health. Some examples:

• I would struggle with Saturdays and just waste them—sitting on the couch for long periods, watching meaningless TV, and later, with the advances of technology, endlessly, mindlessly scrolling. Before I knew it, it would be 6:00 p.m. Then I’d try to cram the weekend into Sunday. By Sunday night I would be so stressed, I’d just give up.

• I would be a mess the first day of any vacation (school or travel), unable to make a decision or commit to anything until that day was over.

• If I had a deadline of some kind or an upcoming event that I was anxious about preparing for, I’d sleep away my productivity time then panic.

• I’d engage in a stint of retail therapy characterized by impulse buying that would leave me with tons of remorse.

• But perhaps the most destructive way I would fill that anxious, uncertain “space between” was with what psychotherapist and life coach Julie M. Simon calls “transition eating.”

What is transition eating?

Julie Simon defines transition eating as a habit, rather than a pathology (comforting I guess). But the root cause of it may be much deeper than a habit to break for some of us. Transition eating is emotional eating, which is often characterized by mindless eating (sometimes not even being aware that you have overeaten), a desire to “fill up” an emptiness, or often just pure avoidance of moving on to something that is making you uncomfortable. My own root causes go back to childhood feelings of fear, uncertainty, and a need to self-soothe due to some dysfunctional family dynamics. Intellectually, I know, of course, that my transition eating (or overeating) is unhealthy and is most likely responsible for the 10-20 extra pounds I carry around at various times. There have been periods of painful awareness of this problem, along with periods of healthy recovery. But I know I will probably never “cure” it.

Fortunately, these first two weeks of January have brought me into one of those “painful awareness” periods, and Julie Simon has some excellent coaching advice that I can work on and incorporate into these times of anxiousness and avoidance that lead me to transition eating.

Here are her strategies:

1) Make a list of all the times you engage in transition eating–remember, change begins with awareness.

2) Select one transition to work on. Pick a fairly easy one to start with. Don’t try to tackle all your transition eating at once. Keep in mind that your eating serves a purpose in your life and you’ll need to build in other, more adaptive, ways of coping before you can fully release it.

3) During the selected transition, set an intention to stop using food for soothing, comfort, pleasure or distraction. Take a pause when you want to grab food, and make a conscious choice to delay gratification for at least 10 minutes. Remind yourself that you’ll be fine without the food. You’re building a new habit with new associations and over time, these new habits and associations will feel more natural. You’re beginning the process of rewiring your brain circuitry for better self-regulation. Personally I would add…“feel the dang feelings!”

4) Practice self-affirming commentary every time you succeed in not eating during a transition. For example, “I’m proud of myself for going to bed tonight without first getting a snack.” Or, “I’m pleased that I didn’t go to a drive-through after I dropped the kids at soccer practice.”

5) Plan a non-food reward for yourself once you’ve conquered an area of transition eating. You deserve it!

6) When you’ve successfully released one area of transition eating, set an intention to tackle another area. Progress to more difficult areas once you have some success under your belt.

There you go. I’ll give it the ol’ college try. I feel like I’ve already started at the macro level by setting a bit of a boundary for myself to try to not extend my holiday transitional period (and the commensurate transitional eating binges) beyond January 15. I don’t regret giving myself that grace period at the start of the year, and it is probably a ritual of gentleness I’ll continue each year (hopefully in a healthier way). Speaking of rituals, I do have a strong desire this week to focus on some winter routines as I begin anew with trying some of the coaching strategies listed to more effectively deal with transitions. I do know that routines bind me more to the present moment, which is why I need them so much.

And, maybe next year, instead of sharing factoids about Blue Monday for January 15, I’ll just wish you all a “Happy New Year for Real This Time,” and you’ll get exactly what I mean (wink).

Do you struggle with post-holiday blues, a January slump, or the winter blahs? Or are you energized by a fresh start and outdoor winter activities? Let me know in the Comments.