How To Make It Through The Holidays With Family

This time of year holidays with family are a hot topic in the therapy room, in conversations with friends and in my own life.  Sure many people have great relationships with their family but even those ones have tricky holiday interactions.   And if you don’t have great relationships with your family, going home can feel woefully stressful.

Want some tips to make it through?  Here are some suggestions.  If you can’t do them, don’t be hard on yourself.  Use what you can.

1. Get Calm.  

It will probably be hard to do any of these others without first getting your mind and body into a state where cortisol and our animal brain aren’t ruling.  We just don’t think all that creatively nor from our best self when we are wound up.  So practice mindful reflection.  Here is a quick how to.  Sit in a comfy chair where you will have five minutes alone.  Belly breathe so your belly balloons out.  Feel your breath as you exhale coming out your nose onto your top lip.  Rest in just being a breathing animal and nothing else that will come up in your mind gets your full attention. Your full attention is just on feeling your breathing.  This calms your body and mind.  Do it at least once for five minutes but whenever you need to.

2. Create an intention.

Now that you are calm your mind can be a little more creative.  Let’s think about intentions. Close your eyes and set your family scene in your mind. What vibe do you intend to put out to your family?  See the scene and see yourself putting out that vibe.  What behaviors go with that vibe and what behaviors don’t.  See and even feel yourself behaving in ways that match your intention.

3. Accept everything.

Oh woe is me this sounds a little flippantly new agey.  Hear me out.  The reality is when we go in to family gatherings, any group function really, and we are like Rocky Balboa ready to tussle and “be right” or feel like “poor me my family is so dysfunctional” that not accepting causes you a lot of suffering.  But hey look, this one is hard for me to do too.  You aren’t alone.  It is hard for most of us to accept anyone that doesn’t meet our needs.  What makes it hard is our deep longing to be loved.  When our family is sarcastic, critical, fake nice, uncommunicative, side takers, invasive , neglectful or emotionally void our longing for perfect love guts us.  So painful we act out to get away from this hot potato of emotion and push it away from us.    So accept the longing first and foremost with a massive amount of self compassion.  It is so painful to feel the ways a family cannot show their love because they are limited, don’t know how or are afraid to be vulnerable.  After loving on yourself the next part is to accept your family’s limitations.  This is not condoning anything.  It is just accepting reality.  Ok?  I know it is hard to accept their limitations but it is you who benefits, trust me.    And if you want a stretch goal look for and accept the good stuff in your family despite the painful stuff.  I promise, it is there.

4. De role.

Going home to family can be infuriating because we watch ourselves behave and act in ways we do not anywhere else in our adult life.  We get sucked in to being the insolent kid or the “better than everyone” or the “screw up” or whatever role we played as a kid and yet it feels icky because this role is totally not our true self.  To de role requires skills 1-3 as a prerequisite.  Once there, practice finding your inner sage or your inner Yoda. Use any image you want but the key is this presence is calm, wise, accepting and nurturing.  Practice being that sage like you were handed a character study for an acting job.  Let it wash over every cell of your body.  See if you can take this role into your holiday family plans.  When your sage self alludes you talk to it as if it is a wise consultant or a nurturing parent.  Hint: he never judges you or your family but always says caring and wise words to you.

All these tools work and have some good neuroscience behind them.  It is worth giving them some practice.  You may even want to keep them as a regular part of your life.

Happy Holidays!

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