When your “january” blues linger
“It’s already February. Why am I still having my January blues?”
My client, a thirty-something woman looking for support as she navigates a tricky transition in her life, looks disgusted with herself. I understand her frustration. She has had a “flat month” (her description) and is ready for some energy to return. We started the month reflecting that feelings of melancholy and nostalgia around the New Year are very common. For some it’s because the turn of the year acts as an emotional “time marker” that invites reflection on what has ended, what was lost, and what did not go as hoped. For her, it was a sense of weight and feeling like the year ahead was going to be hard work. She had started a new business the year before and it wasn’t growing as quickly as she thought it would. It didn’t help that her social media kept blathering on about New Year’s resolutions and “fresh start” narratives).
“Everyone else seems so … hopeful right now. I feel the opposite,” she grumbled.
She had already identified this as her “this is useless, why am I even bothering?” part and we knew that this part liked data in order to feel safe. We started with a reflection on what worked and what did not work from the year before, separating facts from her harsh interpretations. Then we added in a values lens in which we mapped certain domains (work, relationships, health, play, spirituality) and explored where she was in alignment and where she drifted to shift from global self-attack to specific, workable gaps.
Once this part felt safe, another, sadder part showed up. It told her she had wasted most of the last year. When I invited her to simply notice the thought and focus on the feeling in her body, she identified grief. Her mother had died two years ago, and she missed her, along with the earlier version of herself and her life that she would never get back. She suddenly recalled a particular memory of her son when he was young, playing with her mom and how happy they had all been. I invited her to describe her memory in detail, including all who were there and what felt most meaningful; she said it was the connectedness and the simple joy that a child’s imagination can evoke. She realized how important those two elements still were to her and we explored ways that she could bring more of them back into her daily life.
In my experience, the “January Blues” don’t always respect the calendar. The inner world moves at its own pace. For many, the lingering heaviness in February is a sign that our minds and bodies are still making sense of what has passed. By turning toward our feelings with curiosity and compassion, we give our psyche the chance to tell us what it needs to heal.