Why the Holidays Hit Harder in Perimenopause (Even If You've Always Been Good at Christmas)
It usually starts in the Target aisle around the second week of November.
You're holding a roll of wrapping paper you're fairly sure you already bought, trying to remember whether your sister-in-law is gluten-free or just avoiding bread this year. Meanwhile, a small part of your brain runs the other list: teacher gifts, the Elf, the class party sign-up you haven't answered, your father's prescription, the flight your husband thinks is "handled." And a thought arrives that you would never say out loud:
"Why is this all of my responsibility?"
There's fatigue, rage, guilt, and sadness, all showing up during a time that you usually handle without fanfare.
Sure, the holidays are stressful, but you have conditioned yourself to do all the things.
Because it's the holidays.
Because you want to be thoughtful, and it's the right thing to do.
Because your kids are little and this is supposed to be the magic part.
Because you used to be good at this.
So why does this year feel different?
Here's the plain answer. The holidays hit harder in perimenopause because two things peak at once. Your nervous system's buffer, the one estrogen quietly helped maintain for thirty years, is thinning, just as the season hands you the largest invisible workload of the year: the remembering, planning, gift-tracking and emotional management that so often falls to mothers. Your skills are as sharp as ever. The same load is landing on a system with less give in it. Therapy gives you a place to sort what's hormones, what's load and what's old family material, and to decide what this December needs from you.
I'm writing this from inside midlife myself. I'm 48, a mom of two young kids, and in the middle of perimenopause. I remember my own awakening a few years ago.
My mother-in-law (we called her YiaYia), who was an angel on earth and a real-life Santa Claus, had recently passed away. I took up the baton of becoming "Santa" because I am a natural planner, and I wanted everyone to continue to experience the magic of the holidays without her.
In addition to raising two young kids (who were battling sicknesses), running my private practice, caring for my father-in-law, and grieving, I took on the extra responsibility of shopping for 10 new people, on top of the people in my children's orbit, like teachers.
As my husband eyed the mountain of gifts that had been carefully curated, wrapped, organized, and prepped, and that would take up ALL of the space in his car, he said, "Jesus... it's like Santa threw up here." All I could muster up was a simple, sarcastic "How about you just say thank you?" and then I loaded up the car by myself.
I want to offer a different reading of moments like that one, and like yours in the Target aisle.
Why the Same Load Costs More This Year
Most women I work with in midlife describe the same pattern. They are doing more than they did five years ago, because more responsibilities are being asked of them. And for a while, you manage. Not well, but you manage. It just costs more, and it takes longer to recover from.
That's the clue. When the same load starts costing more, something underneath it has usually changed.
Part of this is hormonal. Estrogen and progesterone have been doing quiet work on your stress system for decades. They influence serotonin and GABA, the brain chemistry that helps you stay steady. In perimenopause, estrogen swings, sometimes sharply, on its way down, and researchers think those swings can leave the stress response more reactive in some women. The result, for many women, is a nervous system with a thinner margin: quicker to tip into irritability or anxiety, slower to come back down, and more easily flooded by the ordinary noise of a full house.
Then you add the reality that, in depending on your nervous system to buffer all of life's ups and downs, you have depleted it. Poor sleep, poor eating, people-pleasing, with very little replenishment, because you have to be the strong and capable one.
Now add the season, at a time when your hormones are swinging and your nervous system is running low.
Sleep gets worse. Later nights, earlier wake-ups, sugar and alcohol at every gathering, and, for many women in perimenopause, night sweats that were already fragmenting sleep. Poor sleep lowers everyone's frustration tolerance. In perimenopause, it can feel like the floor of predictability has been ripped out from under you.
Sunlight drops. By December in New Jersey, you're getting a little over nine hours of daylight, much of it spent indoors. Less morning light means a less stable body clock, which feeds straight back into sleep and mood.
Your routine disappears. The walks, the quiet coffee, the one hour you've carved out for yourself: the holidays tend to eat exactly the small things that were keeping you regulated.
Physiology is meeting a calendar here. That's why "just be more organized this year" misses the point entirely.
Think of your nervous system as the suspension on a car you've driven for thirty years. Estrogen was part of what kept the ride smooth. You hit potholes, absorbed them and kept going, and nobody in the back seat noticed. In perimenopause, the suspension wears. Then December loads that car to the roof, the way mine was loaded the year we lost YiaYia. Same roads, the same weight you've always carried, and now you feel every bump.
How Medical Care and Therapy Work Together in December
If your sleep has fallen apart or your moods swing in ways you don't recognize, it's worth a visit with your OB-GYN or a menopause-informed prescriber. Hormone therapy, sleep support or medication may be part of your care, and none of those is a shortcut or a failure. If you've already started treatment and still feel off, I wrote about that in You Started HRT. So Why Don't You Feel Better?
Medical care and therapy work on different parts of the same car. Your prescriber can help with the suspension. Therapy works on the load: the mental list, the old family roles, the grief, and the expectations you've carried for years. Each makes the other easier. Better sleep gives you more room to look at what's piled in the back seat, and a lighter load gives your body a better chance to settle. You don't need to finish one before you start the other. They can run side by side, starting before Thanksgiving.
Your medical provider treats the hormones. I work on what they stirred up.
Why the Old Family Stuff Comes Back So Loudly in December
There's another reason this season can feel so disproportionate, and it's the one I spend the most time on in my office.
The holidays are the most concentrated dose of "family of origin" most of us get all year. Same rooms, same people, same expectations, same roles, often the same seat at the same table. The nervous system is very good at remembering who it had to be in those rooms. The peacekeeper. The capable one. The one who noticed Dad's mood before he walked in.
And perimenopause, as I've written before, has a way of lowering the walls that used to keep old material from coming back. So you may find yourself at 45, a competent adult with three kids and a career, suddenly feeling fourteen in your mother's kitchen. Or snapping at your husband over the gravy with a force that surprises you both.
That flash of anger is rarely about the gravy. The rage in perimenopause is very often pointing at something true: a resentment backlog that has been quietly accruing for years while you kept everything running.
That can feel like falling apart. From where I sit as a therapist, it also looks like an opening. You walk into those rooms now with something you didn't have at 30: judgment, perspective, and a much clearer sense of which roles you chose and which ones were handed to you.
December brings the old roles back into the room, and perimenopause makes them harder to play, which gives you a real chance to put some of them down.
When You're Also Someone's Mom
All of this lands differently when you're the mom.
In 2019, the sociologist Allison Daminger published a study of what she called the cognitive dimension of household labor: the work of anticipating needs, identifying options, deciding, and monitoring whether it all happened. In her interviews with 35 couples, women did more of this thinking work overall, especially the anticipating and monitoring, and it largely went unseen because, unlike cooking or cleaning, nobody watches it happen.
The holidays are that invisible job at full scale. Think about what lives in your head between Halloween and New Year's:
The visible task | The invisible job underneath it |
Buying gifts | Knowing who needs one, what they like, what they got last year, what they already have, what fits the budget, and what the kids' teachers are expecting |
Being able to track your own children's wants and needs and communicate them to everyone who says, "What do your children want?" | |
Keeping track of sales and coupons and deals | |
Hosting | Tracking every dietary need, every family tension, who can't sit next to whom, and who will be hurt if they aren't asked |
Going to the special market that is only open at certain hours to make sure that everyone has the special meal | |
Cleaning your house and prepping the menu | |
Traditions | Remembering them, keeping them going, making time to go do them on your free weekend, and quietly carrying the resentment if people complain, or the disappointment if nobody notices or appreciates your efforts |
"Making it magical" | Managing everyone else's feelings about the season, including the feelings you aren't allowed to have yourself |
Your partner may be doing plenty. The real question is who is "holding the whole map together." And in most homes I see, it's her.
The numbers back this up. In a 2006 survey for the American Psychological Association, 44% of women reported more stress during the holidays, compared with 31% of men. Asked about Thanksgiving, women were far more likely than men to say they would do the cooking (66% vs. 35%), the food shopping (52% vs. 32%) and the dishes (70% vs. 41%). More recently, a 2023 APA poll found that 89% of U.S. adults named at least one holiday concern, like money, finding the right gifts, or missing loved ones, as a source of stress. You are in very large company.
Then there's mom guilt, and the good-mother script from school, family and social media: matching pajamas, an advent calendar with a new activity every single day, handmade teacher gifts. Almost no real December lives up to it.
The anthropologist Dana Raphael called the identity shift of becoming a mother matrescence. Midlife arrives as a second shift layered on the first, and December puts both of them on display at once.
Now put that load on a nervous system that has less buffer than it did at 38. That's the collision.
If This Is the First Holiday Without Your Mother (or Father)
A short section, because some of you need it more than anything above.
Grief doesn't follow the calendar the rest of the world uses. People brought food in the first few weeks. By the first holiday, most of them have assumed you're "doing better." But the first Thanksgiving, the first time someone else makes her stuffing, the first year there's no one above you in the family: those tend to land harder than the funeral did.
If you are also the one now expected to host, to keep the traditions going, to hold everyone together, you are doing grief and the mental load and perimenopause at the same time. It would be strange if that didn't feel like too much.
And I offer this permission statement if you're feeling overwhelmed:
You don't have to make it a magical holiday. You're allowed to make it a holiday where people have a place to gather and connect.
The Holiday Scramble
When December starts to feel like too much, most of us respond the way we always have. We get more organized.
A color-coded gift spreadsheet, with a tab for the teachers
Wrapping until 1 a.m. so everything is "done" before the school concert
Saying yes to every party, cookie swap and classroom volunteer slot
Telling yourself you'll rest in January
Some of these help. Most of them keep you moving so you don't have to feel how tired you are.
What this season needs first is for you to stop long enough to notice what you're carrying.
Why Sitting Still Feels So Risky
If I skip the cookie exchange, will my kids remember the year Mom dropped the ball? If I hand off the teacher gifts, what if they're wrong? If I say no to hosting, who will hold the family together? Who am I if I'm not the one making it magical?
When you've spent years on alert, wrapping presents at midnight and answering the family group chat from the pickup line, your nervous system learns that motion means safety. Stillness starts to register as danger. The moment you sit down, your body scans for what you forgot. Your body learned that pattern to protect you, and it can learn a new one.
Then the bigger fear surfaces. If I admit this way of doing the holidays doesn't fit anymore, it feels like I'd have to rebuild my whole life from scratch. The traditions, the roles, the way the whole family runs. No wonder so many of us keep scrambling instead.
You may be in the middle of a transition, and you need to stop long enough to see where you are before having to decide which way you're going.
Adapted from William Bridges' transition model: every transition has an ending, a neutral zone and a new beginning. The neutral zone is the in-between, where the old way has stopped working and the new one hasn't taken shape yet. Bridges saw it as fertile ground, a seedbed where new beginnings take root. A December spent in the neutral zone can still be a good December, and you don't have to know what next year's holidays will look like yet.
I'm not going to give you a twelve-step holiday plan. That would be one more thing on the list. Here are five small changes that can help reduce the load rather than force you to just "deal with it."
Drop one tradition on purpose (or ask someone else to take it over). Is there a tradition that is always done, but you hate it? Choose to forgo it without feeling guilty. Name it: "We're not doing the trip to NYC this year. If you want to take the kids, I'd love that for them." Pick one thing that costs you the most and that your kids would notice the least. Continue traditions that you enjoy and that light you up, like baking cookies, decorating the tree, or going to visit a soup kitchen. Most families have traditions that they want to continue, so eliminate some of the ones that are done out of obligation. (P.S. You can't eliminate ALL of your obligations, but you can have a choice over which ones deplete your reserves.)
Hand over a whole category. "Can you pick up the ham?" keeps the planning in your head. "You own teacher gifts this year, all of it, start to finish, and I won't check" moves the mental load. Expect it to be done differently, or for resistance to show up. When you are used to doing something and have a system for doing it, it's very easy to just "do it yourself," to keep others from being uncomfortable or struggling. That discomfort is the price of bringing well-being to yourself, and it's a price worth paying, especially if you want to teach your children how to set their own boundaries.
Protect one anchor. One small daily thing you will not give up in December: a ten-minute walk in morning light, the same wake-up time, a cup of tea before anyone else is up. Keep the anchor even when everything else slides. It gives your nervous system something predictable to organize around.
Decide your exit before you arrive. For family gatherings that tend to go badly, decide in advance how long you're staying and what your signal is to leave. Plan the break: a walk with the dog, a trip to the store. A nervous system that knows there's a way out relaxes more than one that feels trapped.
Go easier on the sugar than the season suggests. This one is about how sugar and alcohol affect the way we function. Alcohol fragments sleep, and many women in perimenopause notice that evening sugar and alcohol line up with night sweats and a racing mind, so the treat that feels like relief at 8 p.m. can become the 3 a.m. wake-up, or the grogginess and/or headache the next day. If you're noticing that pattern, it's worth raising with your medical provider.
A caveat: all of these suggestions are good if you have the mindset to apply them. And these changes may create a ripple effect in your relationship dynamics if you ask others to step up, or if you begin to say no to long-held traditions. If you're a people-pleaser, or you've tied your worth to doing these things, it can be hard to let them go. That's where doing work with a therapist can help you begin to reframe your beliefs and identity. If you want to read more on why stopping feels so hard, start with The Case for Rest.
Here's a reframe: the goal is to get to January with moments where you've rested and gotten to enjoy the holiday season for yourself.
How Therapy Can Help
A lot of the women I see come in because they've noticed they're running on fumes, the old coping isn't working, and they'd rather not spend another holiday season just getting through. Nothing has to be "wrong" first.
One of the first things I ask is, "How are things going, really?" Most women have an answer they give everyone else at holiday parties. In my office there's room for the other one.
We start with your body. Sleep, night sweats, energy, and whatever your medical provider is already doing. A nervous system that has been on alert since the second week of November needs some steadiness before anything else.
We untangle what's there. Hormones, the holiday load and old family material can feel like one knot. It comes apart one thread at a time.
We grieve what needs grieving. The parent who used to make the stuffing. The holidays you had as a kid, or the ones you wish you'd had. The version of motherhood you pictured for this season.
We reach what insight can't. You may understand exactly why your mother's kitchen turns you back into a fourteen-year-old and still feel it happen every year. EMDR and body-based work go to where those old experiences are stored, so what you understand has a chance to become something you feel.
We sort what changes now from what can wait. Here, you have a place to say out loud the resentments, fears, and upsets that often aren't acceptable or validated by the people in your life. Having a place to name what is going on, without feeling like you have to act on it yet, gives you room to reframe and see what is possible. Maybe one tradition goes this year. Maybe the bigger conversations wait until January.
Why I offer longer sessions
A 50-minute hour often ends right when you get somewhere. For women in the middle of a season like this, I often suggest starting with a Midlife Transition Session: two uninterrupted hours, $495. It's enough time to untangle what's physiology, what's load, and what's old family material, and to leave with something concrete for the weeks ahead. Here's what happens in a two-hour session.
If you want a container for the whole season and the transition underneath it, The Midlife Transition Series is four two-hour sessions over 8 weeks for $1,850, moving through four steps: Name It, Grieve It, Untangle It, Build It. For women ready to do deeper trauma work, I also offer EMDR Intensives.
I see clients in person in Bordentown City, a short drive from Hamilton, Robbinsville, Chesterfield, and Princeton, and online anywhere in New Jersey.
A Ten-Minute Experiment: Get the Holiday List Out of Your Head
Set a timer for ten minutes and put your phone in another room.
Write down every holiday job living in your head right now, big and small: the teacher gifts, the Elf, the menu, the flight, the thank-you notes.
Put a star next to the ones that light you up.
Circle the ones you do mostly out of obligation.
Pick one circled item and ask yourself: who would notice if this didn't happen this year?
Notice what your body does when you answer. Your chest, your jaw, your shoulders.
Then put the paper away. No action items for seven days. Let the list live somewhere other than your head for a while.
Is This You? Four Direct Questions
Did the dread start in October, and has it hung on ever since?
Do you cry in the car after drop-off, or feel like you can't cry at all?
Are you snapping at your kids over small things, then lying awake hating yourself for it?
Are old memories or family dynamics showing up in a way they haven't in years?
If even one of these landed, that's information, and a possible sign that you could benefit from therapy. Nothing is wrong with you. If you feel like you're performing your whole life and you're tired of being the strong one, you don't have to wait until January to set some of it down.
If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) any time.
A Life With Room for What You Now Know
Back to the Target aisle, the wrapping paper you may already own, and the question you'd never say out loud.
The reality is that the holidays can be a landmine, with uncertainty around whether it will be a "good day" or a "bad one." Whether it's because your hormone levels have dropped, your co-worker said something inappropriate, or your child told you that a project is due tomorrow, you have permission to acknowledge and control what you can, and release what you can't, with self-compassion.
The pressure to get it right and make it magical adds more to our plates than our hormones and nervous systems can often tolerate. You get to carry December differently than you did at 30, and to start building a life with room for what you now know, one holiday at a time.
When you're ready, the first step is a conversation.
Not sure yet?
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I feel so overwhelmed during the holidays in perimenopause?
Because the season's heaviest workload arrives just as perimenopause is thinning your nervous system's buffer. Swinging estrogen affects the brain chemistry and stress response that help you stay steady, while holiday disruptions to sleep, light and routine remove the things that usually keep you regulated.
Is holiday stress worse for women?
Often, yes. In a 2006 survey for the American Psychological Association, 44% of women reported more holiday stress, compared with 31% of men, and women were far more likely to do the cooking, food shopping and dishes. Add sick kids, school closures and juggling work schedules, and the load often lands on mothers.
Why do I feel like a little kid around my family at the holidays?
Holidays put you back into your family of origin's rooms, roles and patterns. Family members often treat you as the child they remember and struggle to see who you are today. Your nervous system remembers who you had to be there, and perimenopause can make old responses surface more easily. It's a common and understandable reaction.
How can I reduce the holiday mental load?
Notice which activities drain your energy and which ones you resent. Then hand over whole categories of responsibility rather than single tasks, drop one tradition on purpose, keep one small daily anchor like a consistent wake time, and decide ahead of time how long you'll stay at difficult gatherings, if you go at all.
What should I ask my prescriber if the holidays make my perimenopause symptoms worse?
Bring a short list to your next appointment:
Could perimenopause be part of why my mood and sleep feel worse this season?
Are my night sweats or 3 a.m. wake-ups worth treating?
Is hormone therapy or another treatment worth discussing for me?
What changes in my mood should I watch for?
Therapy can start alongside these questions.
Is there a therapist near Bordentown or Princeton, NJ, who helps moms with holiday stress?
Yes. I see clients in person in Bordentown City, a short drive from Hamilton, Robbinsville, Chesterfield, and Princeton, and online anywhere in New Jersey. I offer two-hour Midlife Transition Sessions for $495 and The Midlife Transition Series, four two-hour sessions over 8 weeks, for $1,850.
When should I get help for holiday stress?
If the dread started early and isn't easing, if old memories are intruding, if you're consistently snapping at people you love, or if you feel numb or unable to cope, it's worth talking to a therapist. If your mood is getting worse or you're in crisis, call or text 988.
About me
I'm Edwige (Eddie) Theokas, M.Ed, LPC, a Licensed Professional Counselor in New Jersey, a Nationally Certified Counselor, an EMDRIA Certified EMDR therapist and a Sandplay Certified therapist, and I'm certified in trauma work. I run Planting Seeds Counseling in Bordentown, where I work with women in perimenopause and midlife, navigating stress, anxiety and trauma. At 48, I'm in it myself, with a seven-year-old and a three-year-old at home.
Last reviewed: October 30, 2026. This post is general information, not medical advice. Your OB-GYN or prescriber decides the medical piece, including hormone therapy and medication. I work with clients who live in New Jersey. If you're in crisis, call or text 988 or call 911.
Sources
Daminger, A. The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor. American Sociological Review, 2019.
Gordon, J. L., et al. Ovarian Hormone Fluctuation, Neurosteroids, and HPA Axis Dysregulation in Perimenopausal Depression: A Novel Heuristic Model. American Journal of Psychiatry, 2015.
American Psychological Association and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. Holiday stress survey: women and men. APA press release, 2006.
American Psychological Association and The Harris Poll. Even a joyous holiday season can cause stress for most Americans. Newswise, 2023.
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