7 Healthy Habits to Hold Onto During the Holidays

The holiday season is often portrayed as a time of joy, connection, and celebration. But for young adults balancing independence, family dynamics, mental health, and the pressures of a packed calendar, this time of year can also bring heightened stress. 

Routines get disrupted. Sleep becomes irregular. Academic or job-related workloads often spike before year-end deadlines. Challenging emotions or memories can crop up.

One of the most protective things young people can do during this season is to hold onto healthy habits. Having supportive and familiar practices to turn to during this time of change and transition helps maintain emotional regulation and overall well-being.

What You’ll Learn

• How can habits support mental health?
• Why do habits often fall by the wayside during the holidays?
• What are some healthy habits young adults can cultivate?
• How do you make habits stick?

How Healthy Habits Support Mental Health During the Holidays

When you have a set routine, you don’t have to think about what happens next. That reduces the cognitive load of making decisions and choices. The brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for planning, motivation, and executive functioning, can rest. This frees up a lot of mental energy for more complex tasks and decreases overwhelm.

Habits also offer grounding and pockets of predictability. While routines are healthy to maintain any time of year, having a built-in structure during naturally hectic times, like the holidays, is especially helpful. Routines can: 

• Improve emotional regulation: Consistency helps stabilize circadian rhythms, which in turn lowers cortisol levels and improves mood and sleep quality.
• Reduce anxiety: Predictable routines provide a sense of control, especially during stressful or chaotic seasons.
• Strengthen resilience: Research on habit formation and well-being suggest that small, repeated behaviors buffer stress and increase resilience.
• Support treatment outcomes: For individuals in therapy, maintaining routine behaviors between sessions reinforces therapeutic changes and helps sustain progress.

Why We Tend to Let Go of Healthy Routines During the Holiday Season

The winter holidays often involve a lot of disruptions to everyday life. Here are some of the reasons why we let go of healthy routines during the holiday season:

Schedules become irregular

Between travel, changes in social settings, more time with family than usual, and time off from school or work, daily rhythms change dramatically. Sleep schedules and mealtimes get thrown off. Time spent outside or exercising gets more erratic. Both therapists and clients may have to cancel therapy appointments. 

Anxiety or depression may spike

The holidays can stir up anxiety, loneliness, grief, or trauma. Individuals who already cope with underlying mental health challenges like Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), an anxiety disorder, or depression might notice intensified symptoms. And those symptoms can decrease motivation to stick with the usual routine.

Emotional expectations intensify

Holidays often amplify family tensions, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and old patterns or family dynamics.The desire to show up in particular ways, be helpful, and meet others’ expectations can end up overriding self-care. 

Motivation naturally dips

For those of us in colder climes, shorter daylight hours, dreary weather, and freezing temperatures often impair energy levels. Increased levels of fatigue, irritability, and lack of motivation make routine behaviors feel more effortful.

All-or-nothing thinking takes over

If you just started building a routine and it’s not cemented yet, missing a yoga class or journaling session can make you feel like you’ve failed and lead to giving up altogether. 

Given all of this, it’s no surprise that habits slip. But a habit doesn’t have to be perfect to be helpful. Even partial consistency can steady the nervous system and prevent overwhelm. You can return to building habits gradually, with lots of self-compassion.

7 Healthy Holiday Habits That Support Young Adult Mental Health

Focusing on habits helps provide grounding, emotional steadiness, and a sense of continuity during a naturally disruptive season. Routines can be adjusted to fit shifting needs or schedules, and they’re designed to be supportive rather than strict. 

The more you allow for flexibility and let go of perfectionism, the more sustainable these practices become. Here are seven healthy holiday habits to keep in mind this winter.

1. Protect Your Sleep Routine

If you keep only one habit this season, let it be sleep. Sleep is one of the strongest predictors of mental health in both adolescents and adults. A study in the journal Sleep Medicine found that young adults who slept less than 8 hours a night had a higher risk of mental health disorders than those who slept between 8 and 9 hours.

Irregular schedules elevate anxiety, disrupt mood, and make emotional regulation more difficult. Protecting sleep helps maintain stability during the holidays, even when other routines shift. 

To support healthier sleep during the holidays:

• Aim for relatively consistent wake-up and sleep times.
• Create a calming bedtime routine (reading, dim lights, calming music).
• Avoid screens in bed when possible.
• If you’re traveling, try to maintain some familiar bedtime routines.

2. Stay engaged in therapy

Therapy can be an anchor during the holidays, especially for someone who’s navigating ongoing mental health challenges.

If you’re in therapy:

• Try to keep appointments even if the timing feels inconvenient.
• If your therapist is away, ask about shorter check-ins, virtual/phone sessions, or coping strategies and implementation plans for the break.
• If you’re not currently in therapy but feel more stressed than usual, this may be a good time to seek short-term support.

3. Move your body (in whatever way feels good)

Movement is a natural nervous system regulator. Moderate exercise, like 20 to 30 minutes of walking, dancing, or yoga, improves emotion regulation, helps manage stress hormones and mood, boosts mind-body awareness, and supports sleep. If you have time for more movement, that’s great, but it doesn’t have to be any specific length of time to “count.” Try movement like:

• Short walks with family or friends
• Stretching or gentle yoga
• Dancing to a few songs
• A quick set of bodyweight exercises like squats or push-ups
• Hiking, sledding, or other outdoor play

4. Make time for creative expression

Creative practices are powerful and often overlooked mental health tools. Expressive outlets such as writing, journaling, painting, knitting, photography, or music offer a way to process complex feelings and a grounding connection to self. 

5. Keep up with hobbies 

Hobbies are usually the first routines to disappear during busy seasons, but they go a long way in reducing holiday stress. Keeping up with hobbies, even in small ways, helps remind people who they are outside of stress, productivity, or family roles. 

6. Maintain social boundaries

During the holidays, it’s easy to either overextend socially or withdraw completely (or both at different times). Setting gentle boundaries can buffer emotional exhaustion.

Some boundary-based habits to consider:

• Saying “I need a little break” and stepping outside for fresh air
• Leaving an event earlier than planned
• Scheduling downtime between gatherings
• Having one person you can text for support 

7. Stay connected to supportive people

Whether you’re spending the holidays with family or not, connection matters. Maintaining consistent contact with friends and loved ones can be a lifeline. It can also be tricky during the holidays, when people are traveling and may not be as available as usual. 

However, even small touchpoints, like a short FaceTime call with a friend or a text exchange with someone who understands your feelings, can reduce loneliness and isolation.

Tips for Maintaining Healthy Routines During the Holiday Season

Maintaining habits doesn’t require perfection. Flexibility is often the key to consistency. Here are some strategies that keep routines manageable.

• Lower the bar: Instead of “I need to go to the gym for an hour,” try: “I’ll move my body for 15 minutes.” Instead of “I’ll journal a full page,” try: “I’ll write one paragraph.” Doing one small thing to maintain a habit is much better than doing nothing at all.
• Pair habits with existing routines: Attach a habit to something that’s already happening. Try journaling while your coffee brews, stretching before brushing your teeth, or reading for 10 minutes before bed.
• Anticipate disruptions: If you know travel or gatherings are coming up, adjust your expectations for yourself and others ahead of time. Planning for imperfection reduces guilt and frustration and makes self-compassion more accessible.
• Build in rest: Fatigue is one of the biggest reasons habits fall away. It’s normal to feel more tired during the holiday season, and it’s always okay to rest. Make sure to get downtime throughout the day.  
• Communicate your needs: If family dynamics make it hard to maintain routines, let trusted people know what you’re trying to stay consistent about, so they know ahead of time what to expect. People are often more supportive than we think they’ll be.
• Create micro-routines: If your full routines aren’t doable, shrink them down. Meditate for three minutes, take a 10-minute power nap, read one paragraph of a book, or go for a walk around the block. 

Holiday Mental Health Support for Young Adults

If you or a loved one is experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety, withdrawal, overwhelm, or other mental health challenges that interfere with everyday routine and functioning, it’s time to consider professional support. 

Our nationwide treatment programs for young adults offer whole-person, comprehensive care tailored to each person’s needs, story, and goals. Individual and group therapy helps people build coping skills, connect more deeply with themselves and others, and learn how to move through seasonal changes and family-related issues with more ease. 

Whether you’re navigating holiday stress or struggling with stress beyond the holidays, we’re here to help. Get started today.