Recovering From the Holidays With a Neurodiverse Family
(Or: Why January Feels Like a Group Project No One Agreed To)
If you’re reading this in the quiet after the holidays—surrounded by half-dead batteries, mysterious sticky spots, and the emotional hangover of togetherness—welcome. You are among your people.
The holidays are a lot for any family. But for neurodiverse families? They can feel less like “the most wonderful time of the year” and more like a month-long sensory, social, and logistical endurance test. And now that it’s over, there’s often this unspoken pressure to bounce back—to reset routines instantly, return to productivity, and pretend we didn’t just run a marathon in dress clothes.
At Break The Frame, we want to offer a radical alternative: recovery is not a failure. It’s a skill.
Why the Holidays Hit Neurodiverse Families Differently
Neurodivergent nervous systems tend to work harder during the holidays, even when things are objectively “good.” More people. More noise. More smells. More expectations. Less routine. More transitions. Less rest. And an astonishing number of opinions about how things should be done.
For autistic, ADHD, PDA, AuDHD, and otherwise neurocomplex folks—kids and adults alike—this isn’t just tiring. It’s regulating, masking, translating, tolerating, and negotiating boundaries in real time. Often while smiling politely.
By the time January arrives, many families aren’t lazy or unmotivated—they’re depleted.
Step One: Normalize the Crash
Let’s name it: the post-holiday crash is real.
You might notice:
More meltdowns or shutdowns (yours included)
Lower frustration tolerance
Executive dysfunction cranked up to “are you kidding me”
A sudden urge to cancel everything forever
A deep, spiritual longing for silence
None of this means anything is “wrong.” It means your nervous systems are asking for repair.
Step Two: Lower the Bar (Then Lower It Again)
January does not need to be a glow-up. It can be a decompression chamber.
This is not the moment for:
New systems
Big resolutions
Color-coded planners
Reinventing family life
This is the moment for:
Fewer demands
Familiar foods
Predictable rhythms
Gentle re-entry into routines
Saying “we’ll deal with that later” and meaning it
If it helps, imagine your household as a laptop that overheated in December. You don’t slam new software onto it—you let it cool.
Step Three: Repair Without Overprocessing
A lot of neurodiverse families worry they need to “process” every holiday moment in detail. Sometimes repair looks simpler than that.
Repair can sound like:
“That was a lot. We survived.”
“Next year, we’ll do less.”
“It makes sense that you were overwhelmed.”
“I was too.”
You don’t need a perfect debrief. You need enough safety to let everyone exhale.
Step Four: Rebuild Routines Gently (Not Aggressively)
Routines are regulating—but forcing them back overnight often backfires. Instead of flipping a switch, try dimmer lighting.
Pick one anchor at a time:
Bedtime first
Then meals
Then school/work rhythms
Everything else can follow when the nervous system feels steadier. Progress that looks slow from the outside is often deeply efficient internally.
Step Five: Humor Is Regulation, Too
If you’re laughing (even a little), your nervous system is doing something right.
It’s okay to joke about:
The gifts no one asked for
The plans that fell apart
The meltdown that happened over the wrong spoon
Humor isn’t minimizing—it’s metabolizing.
A Final Reframe
Recovering from the holidays with a neurodiverse family isn’t about getting back to “normal.” It’s about honoring the truth that your family already did something hard—and did it in a world not built for your nervous systems.
Rest is not indulgent. Slowness is not avoidance. And needing time to recover does not mean you failed the holidays.
It means you lived them.
And if January feels like a quiet, slightly messy, deeply necessary exhale? You’re doing it right.
If your family needs support making sense of burnout, transitions, or nervous system overload—especially after high-demand seasons—Break The Frame Psychotherapy is here. We believe healing doesn’t happen by forcing people to fit the frame. It happens when we build one that actually holds them.
Be gentle. You’re still recovering. 💛