While popular culture proclaims the holiday season as a time of happiness, grief-stricken people can have an especially hard time balancing the merry with the mourning, says clinical psychologist Joshua Klapow.
Even the brightest holiday lights can't dull the grief of losing a loved one.
"If you're grieving, your natural, healthy and necessary emotional process runs contrary to what's around you," Klapow says. "And that can make your grief more noticeable to you and to others."
Klapow, an associate professor of public health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says guilt is often a common and unexpected emotion for those who have experienced loss near the holidays.