How I survived the holidays

So I'm sure we all know that the holidays are generally a rough time for anyone who battles anxiety and depression.  I personally have issues with my birthdays too, but that is for another reason.  I find that sometimes facing the whole family is just a tough situation because they tend to ask a lot of questions which I never really want to answer, although I know with my family it is coming from a place of love and not judgement.

This holiday season was especially hard for me for some reason and I actually did not do any major family functions at all.  This, of course, upset my parents and on top of just feeling depressed, I actually had a head cold on top of it so I felt extra bad.

So, how I survived this time;
Basically I spent most of my time on my couch watching TV and being alone.  While I do not feel this was the most effective way to accomplish this, my social anxiety was pretty intense and any kind of really crowded place put me in panic mode, so I just avoided them as much as I could.  I did everything I could to surround myself with positive people and a overall feeling of being in control and safe.  I really hated not being with my family on Christmas, but I just did not feel I could have made the trip and been there all day.

So my questions for you all out there:

• How do you deal with this sort of thing?  
• Anything which you know which definitely does not work for you?  
• Is your anxiety and/or depression during the holidays caused more from the dread of facing the family, or from a feeling of being alone?  

I thought this could be a good start to a group discussion about this issue because, as I said in the introduction, we are not alone with this battle and together we can help each other.

I am doing some research for my next blog post which will be a discussion on medications used, how they work, and asking for you all's input again....