*Year-End Special* HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR BRAIN IN THE END OF THE YEAR
- Marcela Emilia Silva do Valle Pereira Ma Emilia
- Dec 25, 2025
- 4 min read
🧠✨ The neuroscience behind exhaustion — and how to truly recharge
Every December carries the same emotional flavour: the need to unload, with the body and brain begging for relief.
We are exhausted, crossed by memories, pressured by deadlines and—patience evaporating—at the same time with an almost childlike desire for comfort.
It feels as if something inside us changes pace — and it really does.
This mix of tiredness, sensitivity and desire for connection is not weakness. It is the brain delivering everything it knows about cycles, emotions, memory and belonging.
The end of the year is, biologically, a silent tsunami.
🧩 Why does the end of the year make us so exhausted?
It’s not just “accumulated tiredness”. It’s a neurological combo bombarding several brain networks at the same time.
🔥 Working memory overflows (the brain’s RAM)
December places more items on the “cognitive counter” than it was designed to handle: decisions, lists, evaluations, commitments, shopping, organisation, expectations.
This overload makes the prefrontal cortex operate at its limit, “overheated”, and the consequence appears as forgetfulness, irritation, mental fatigue and that feeling of not being able to prioritise anything anymore.
🌀 Decision fatigue sets in.
Constantly choosing — clothes, gifts, schedules, tasks, meals, routes — wears the brain down.
Every microdecision consumes neural energy + glucose + dopamine.
That’s why, in December, many people say: “I can’t decide anything anymore.”
This is neuroscience, not drama.
🧘♀️ The DMN (Default Mode Network) fires up.
The end of the year triggers nostalgia, self-evaluation and life review.
The DMN (aaaaahhhh the DMN) — that BEAUTIFUL network that connects past, present and future — works twice as hard, evoking memories, reconstructing narratives and projecting next steps, consuming an absurd amount of energy (yet almost no calories).
This is cognitively costly. And emotionally as well.
That’s why you feel “more emotional”, “more reflective”, “more sensitive”.
😮💨 The amygdala becomes more sensitive.
Longing, irritation, gratitude, melancholy, hope: everything gets more intense.
The amygdala amplifies emotions and makes you reactive — whether to affection or to tears.
It’s the amygdala working overtime again (and again, consuming almost no calories).
🌟 Cortisol rises and stays up.
It’s not quite toxic stress.
But it is mild chronic stress — enough to fragment sleep, reduce energy, impair focus and generate mood fluctuations.
In other words: it is perfectly natural to feel drained. Your brain is doing an emotional + cognitive annual clean-up.
💗 Why is family comfort so regulating?
Because it communicates directly with the biological systems that keep you alive and emotionally stable.
When you are with people who represent emotional safety, three systems activate immediately:
Oxytocin 🤝
The hormone of trust and attachment.
It reduces amygdala reactivity, slows the body down and creates a deep sense of “I can breathe here.”
Simple hugs, homemade food, familiar faces or a casual conversation can emotionally dismantle even the strongest person — in a good way.
It is literal affective regulation.
Dopamine 🫂
Anticipating gatherings, preparing rituals, sharing meals or simply arriving home and smelling something familiar — all of this activates the nucleus accumbens.
The brain interprets this experience as social reward — meaning, it gives you a sense of pleasure.
Parasympathetic System 🫶
With emotional safety, the body shifts gears. Breathing deepens, cortisol drops, heart rate stabilises.
It is physiological relaxation.
It’s the famous “my body stood down”.
It’s not magic. It’s physiological co-regulation — one organism adjusting the other.
🔥 The truth is simple: it’s not you. It’s your brain.
You are:
closing cycles,
processing accumulated emotions,
reorganising your internal story,
revisiting emotional bonds,
planning the future,
cognitively saturated,
dealing with expectations,
balancing tiredness and the need for belonging.
All of this simultaneously.
In your most vulnerable state — more human than ever.
And all of this demands real neural energy.
🌿 How to take care of your brain at the end of the year — for real
Here are simple, neuroscience-backed practices that work precisely because they engage the overloaded systems:
1 — Micro restorative pauses 🌿😌
Pauses of 30 to 90 seconds activate the parasympathetic system faster than long breaks.
Closing your eyes, stretching your neck, taking a deep breath.
It seems small — but it changes your internal state.
It resets the parasympathetic nervous system.
2 — Reduce the number of decisions ⚖️📝
Choose in advance (and if possible, only once): clothing, meals, schedule, task order.
The fewer new decisions you need to make, the better your prefrontal cortex performs.
Reducing options = reducing mental exhaustion.
3 — Cognitive silence 🤫🧘
Ten minutes without stimulation — no music, no phone, no information.
It is space for the DMN to process everything that accumulated.
It promotes calm and clarity.
4 — Intentional human connection 🤗❤️
A long hug, a simple conversation, a small ritual.
The brain interprets affective connection as biological safety and reorganises the emotional system.
5 — Gratitude ritual 🙏✨
Gratitude is the most powerful psychological hack we have.
It activates dopamine, emotional regulation and meaning networks.
Ask yourself: “What made sense this year?” or “Who helped me become who I am now?”
🎄 Conclusion
The end of the year doesn’t make you tired because “you can’t cope”.
It demands more from you because the brain is doing the deep work of integration, evaluation, reorganisation and emotional closure.
And that’s why:
✨ Connection heals.
✨ Emotional safety regulates.
✨ Silence organises.
✨ Rest is biology, not luxury.
This Christmas, allow yourself to:
• switch off,
• rest,
• feel,
• reconnect,
• receive support,
• care for yourself as an organism — not a machine.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. Happy Healthy Brain! 🎄
🧠❤️May your brain find calm, comfort and clarity to begin the next cycle.
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