The end of the year is approaching fast. While the mood may be festive with big celebrations coming up, many people experience a looming sense of anxiety instead. With the year wrapping up, it feels normal and natural to take a look at where you've been and what you've done for the past 12 months. Some may feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, while some feel that no matter how far you've come, it will never be enough. When this happens, patterns of constant negative thinking keep holding you down and create a heavy hole in your heart.
There's a lot of emotions to process; trying to keep up with your goals for the year, hit busy deadlines, wrap up your plans and get yourself ready for the new year-yet the world keeps going, the time keeps ticking, and you can't even find a time to truly breathe. Before you know it, you hit the pan; you're exhausted, stressed, and mentally drained.
This negative feeling may be caused by a repetitive cycle of judging yourself or being too hard on yourself; you feel like you're undeserving, imperfect, or not good enough. Or perhaps, you feel like there's a certain thing you were meant to do this year, or certain goals you have not managed to achieve, or even that you've worked so hard yet achieved only very little. Maybe it's one of those reasons, maybe it's all of those reasons-one thing for sure, the end of a year has made you reflect on the inevitable forward march of time and your place in the universe where anxiety slowly creeps out as you think about the uncertainty of the future. And that is totally natural.
Moreover, here are a couple of reasons why our anxiety heightened as we face the end of a year.
You feel like you didn't accomplish anything this year
As mentioned above, there's a big chance that you're feeling sulky because of the constant disappointment within yourself for not achieving the resolutions you set at the beginning of the year. The fact is, people tend to experience feelings of regret and failure as they reflect on the past twelve months. And these feelings may strengthen as we look over everyone else' milestone and celebration on social media.
Another year, another resolutions
You haven't checked off all of your resolutions for this year, but now you're moving into a new one. While excitement clouds your body as you set an extensive resolution list, complete with the ones you haven't been able to achieve this year, there's a chance that it will quickly wear off as you begin to feel an impending burden in order to reach all those goals. When this happens, a lack of emotional engagement with your goals and a losing spark of motivation may emerge which results in feeling a sense of defeat and hopelessness.
Feeling burnout from the past year
Physically and mentally exhausted? End of year burnout is a common fatigue that manifests itself towards the end of the year as a direct result of being overworked and stressed out that can leave you feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and restless.
While it's totally normal to face end of year anxiety, you need to set up strategies that can help you deal with it to improve the welfare of your mental health and wellbeing. Here's what you can do:
Do a self-evaluation
In chasing the "big goals" you've set this year, sometimes we forget to acknowledge the little progress we have made along the way. Noting this in mind, self-evaluation is something that you can do as it helps you track your progress and what you have achieved so far. List down all of the achievements and something you've done or are proud of for the past year, no matter how big or small it is. You might be surprised that there are some things that you were able to do and finally realize that it wasn't a bad year after all.
Stop self-criticizing
Friendly reminder, it's okay to admit that things didn't go exactly as planned. Don't blame yourself over something that you can't control or wish should've control; you're only human and you can only do as much. Stop being too hard on yourself. Constant self-blame and self-destructive thoughts will only further lead you to feeling stressed-totally not helpful at all.
Pay attention to your health
Ask yourself; are you eating regularly? Did you get enough quality sleep? Feeling all sulky and low are influenced by poor mental health activity. Find a balance between doing your mundane routine and having a well-deserved rest.
All in all, don't let the slogan "new year, new you" affect you as much. Take things slow. Your "new self" is not built overnight.
