Your family holiday survival guide
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
The closer we get to the holidays the more claustrophobic and stressful the idea of being around family can make us. Especially if you are anticipating comments and questions like;
When are you getting married?/Have you found a wife/husband yet? (Read: why are you not desirable to anyone?)
“We want grandchildren!” (Read: you’re falling behind!)
“Have you found a job yet?” (Read: have you found a job we approve of yet?)
“Are you still living at home?!” (Read: your generation is lazy)
“You’ve gained so much weight!” (Read:… well you get it)
“What do you mean you’re in therapy?!” (assuming you’ve even shared this)
Some of this commentary becomes especially difficult when you aren’t able to be entirely honest about some of your identities.
Are you anticipating having to manage being misgendered or deadnamed?
Does your family know about your same sex partner but refuse to acknowledge them?
Maybe you’re questioning gender or sexuality and just don’t need the extra pressure to present straight or cisgender for the sake of a grandparent or other family member.
So yeah, holidays often translate to a barrage of uncomfortable questions and assumptions that bring on unnecessary attention to parts of our lives we would rather not share with everyone over a 7 colors lunch. And as much as we might like to choose not to participate in some of these uncomfortable traditions… its likely that it feels like we don’t have a choice.
It’s likely you’ve been taught (or firmly encouraged) to grin and bear it. To appease your grandmother or your uncle by agreeing because “she’s too old” or “he won’t understand”. I certainly have.
So what do we do about it? How do we manage family time without coming out retraumatized, emotionally numb, depressed or anxious about things we didn’t even think we were worried about. How do we find ways to manage our expectations and worries leading up to it, and put ourselves in the best position to cope?
Let me tell you why it matters first. Why you deserve to spend time with people in your life without your nervous system being assaulted by unwanted and uncomfortable interactions.
It took me many years to accept that I was affected by the commentary I received from family. I thought I was too sensitive. That I was taking them too seriously. That I could simply choose not to make those things a part of my life if I didn’t want to. And while that last part is true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that all the commentary I was receiving spelled out a message. Whether or not it was intended.
I heard that I wasn’t good enough the way that I was. And the call to allow people (especially elders and men) to say what they want to me and ignore it or laugh it off, communicated that standing up for myself is disrespectful. That by not conforming I would be putting the sanctity of the family unit in danger.
I heard that I needed to sacrifice my comfort for the comfort of the community.
“So what?” You might think, community is important. And it’s just a moment of discomfort for a short time spent with family.
Don’t get me wrong I AGREE. Community IS important. But is it community if I don’t feel safe enough to share my experience and have it heard?
Is it community if I can’t change my mind or disagree without being rejected?
Is it community if I don’t feel safe enough to exist authentically as myself?
We often misunderstand a desire to exist authentically or to set boundaries as wanting to harm the collective. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Community is not conformity, that’s oppression. And oppression becomes ingrained in how we function in all parts of our lives if we don’t acknowledge it. We will oppress ourselves in our romantic lives, our friendships, our work lives and most obviously in our mental health.
So what do we do if we want to exist in community but not feel numb, or have our mental health suffer in the process?
I’m not going to encourage you to say “fuck it” to your family or go no contact. That’s a personal choice you need to make with the input of a mental health professional around your specific circumstances. Also, that would be very white, Western Psychology of me. If you are, like me, someone who comes from a traditional and collectivistic relational space, saying “fuck it” isn’t the choice you want to make. Or the choice that feels accessible right now. The “no contact” option can sometimes leave us feeling more isolated if we don’t have the right support and resources to do it.
Instead, I raise you, Conscious Self Preservation.
Self Preservation on its own, speaks to the instinctual ways that animals and humans protect ourselves from harm. Our bodies have ways of doing this for us. For example your heart racing stupid fast right before you get on a rollercoaster. More subtle ways we do this is laughing off a hurtful comment or numbing/ignoring how we feel about things. While our reasoning for doing this may makes sense (ex. we don’t want to fight, or are tired of repeating ourselves) the problem with our automated self preservation tactics, is that we teach ourselves in the process that this thing is true about our self worth even if we don’t “logically” think so.
So how do we Self Preserve Consciously?
Conscious self preservation, involves making sure we replenish the part of our nervous system that is absorbing that experience as a truth about our self worth.
In short: REPLENISH YOUR RESOURCES FOR NAVIGATING HARMFUL ENVIRONMENTS.
We have to create rituals and methods for coping with uncomfortable, unwelcome or harmful environments so that we can come out of them not feeling as vulnerable to elements of our mental health that can throw us off course.
Building your Conscious Self Preservation Toolkit
What does your emotionally regulated self look like?
How do you know when you’re at or reaching emotional dysregulation?
Identify 5 compassion statements for emotion dysregulation
Identify 5 experiences, rituals or tools help you come back to your regulated self
Interested in seeing how this works in real time? Join our last Group Support Space for the year on Monday DECEMBER 4TH at 7pm where we explore what a Self Preservation Toolkit can look like just in time for the holidays!