From the cackling skeleton at the drugstore to the cousin who asks one question too many, the season between Halloween and New Year’s is full of surprises. You get a say in how many of them you sign up for.
Walk into a drugstore in October and there’s a fair chance something near the candy aisle will jump out at you.
For most shoppers it’s a cheap thrill. For a lot of people living with trauma, it’s the moment the body takes the wheel. The heart pounds and the shoulders climb, and coming back down can take a while after the plastic skeleton has gone quiet.
Halloween is the one holiday built around scaring people on purpose. The stretch from Thanksgiving to New Year’s scares plenty of people by accident.
Why your body jumps first
An exaggerated startle response is one of the textbook signs of post-traumatic stress. A nervous system that has learned to expect danger stays on watch, and anything sudden or loud gets treated as a threat before the thinking brain gets a vote.
Psychiatrist Frank Anderson, a trauma specialist, put it plainly in Psychiatric Times: “Being spooked or intentionally scared can be terrifying for someone with a trauma history.” He added that it “can trigger panic attacks, cause increased heart rate, and activate traumatic memories from the past.”
That jump is a physical reflex. It says nothing about how far you’ve come in your healing. Your reflexes don’t read your therapy notes.
Fun scared and bad scared
Plenty of people love being scared, and some survivors are among them. Sociologist Margee Kerr, who studies fear and has wired up haunted-house visitors to measure their heart rates and brain activity, argues that chosen fear can do people good. A controlled scare, she told the University of Pittsburgh’s Pittwire, “acts as a protective frame that might help build that sense of confidence and resilience.” The adults-only haunt she studied hands every visitor a safe word before they go in.
That safe word is the whole difference. People buying a ticket for a haunted house opt into the experience, but the motion-activated witch by the register came with nothing, and you never agreed to her.
Anderson’s advice runs along the same line: “The best way to enjoy Halloween is to be in control of the exposure to scary, deceptive, or frightening events.”
For some survivors that means a horror movie night with the remote in their own hand. For others it means staying home on Oct. 31st, and owing nobody an explanation.
A word about clowns
If clowns get under your skin, you have a lot of company. In a 2022 survey by researchers at the University of South Wales, 53.5 percent of 987 adults reported at least some fear of clowns. A follow-up study in Frontiers in Psychology asked those respondents why. The reason that scored highest was hidden emotional signals, the sense captured by survey items like “I find it difficult to read a clown’s facial expression.” The painted smile stays put no matter what the person underneath is feeling.
Anyone who grew up reading an adult’s mood to stay safe may recognize the problem. A face that won’t tell you what it’s about to do is exactly the kind of face you learned to watch. Some of us can also trace it to a paperback of Stephen King’s It, read far too young.
Halloween night, your way
“Trick-or-treating is completely optional,” the Trauma Survivors Network reminds readers in its Halloween guide. If you’d rather sit the doorbell out, it suggests keeping the porch light off, which it calls “a universal signal that you are not giving out candy.” A bowl of candy on the step with a sign lets you join in without opening the door to a parade of masks.
If you do go out, go with people who know what you need, and decide ahead of time what helps you settle. Slow breathing works for many people. So does naming, quietly, a few things you can see and hear around you, which brings the brain back to the actual room. The guide’s line on all of this is a good one to keep in your pocket: “you don’t have to face the evening alone.”
Then comes the family stretch
Halloween’s scares are at least upfront about being scares. November and December arrive wrapped in expectations of togetherness, and for people who survived abuse inside their families, the togetherness can be the hard part.
In an American Psychological Association poll, 89 percent of U.S. adults said worries like money and missing loved ones stressed them out during the holidays, and 41 percent said their stress goes up this time of year. Survivors are hardly alone in dreading the season, even if their reasons run deeper.
RAINN’s guidance for family gatherings after abuse by a relative starts from permission. You can decline: “You do not owe a response.” You can go with a time limit: “Allow yourself the space to set a time limit and leave when you are ready to go.” Or you can make other plans entirely, like a Friendsgiving with people who make you laugh.
Writer Fern Schumer Chapman, who covers family estrangement for Psychology Today, keeps the rule simple: “Attend only those holiday events where you feel wanted and welcome.” She also warns about a holiday hazard with a lovely name: “Beware of euphoric recall.” That’s the glow that settles over the good years and quietly erases the reasons you stepped back.
Two practical moves help on the day itself. Drive yourself, so leaving is your decision alone. And have an exit line ready before you need it.
And then the fireworks
New Year’s Eve brings them at midnight. The Fourth of July brings them for what feels like a week. For many veterans, and for plenty of survivors whose worst memories include a sudden bang, fireworks are the hardest sound of the year. Some veterans put up yard signs from the nonprofit Military with PTSD that read “Combat Veteran Lives Here, Please Be Courteous with Fireworks.” Jon Dykes, the veteran behind the first sign, was clear that he wasn’t trying to cancel the holiday: “Some fireworks are expected, and that’s OK.“
Knowing the schedule takes a lot of the sting out, since town displays are announced in advance. Noise-canceling headphones can cover the rest, and so can a friendly word with the neighbor who buys his fireworks by the crate.
The calendar will keep producing scares through next summer, and you can take them one at a time. If you are a STAR reading this, you don’t have to get through the season alone. TAR Anon meetings are free, anonymous, and open worldwide.
