Welcome back! The holidays are quickly approaching and we hope you have found our last few blogs helpful in managing the stress that can arise during this time of year. Today, we are going to take a look at one of the most joyous, but most challenging aspects of the holidays; navigating family dynamics.
There is no doubt one of the most common traditions around the holiday season is to get together with family. Family is undeniably important to our mental health, but these relationships are often the most complicated ones in our lives and can cause us the most stress. As you think back to previous years, how did family contribute to your most favorite holidays and how did they contribute to your most stressful? We’re going to be taking a look today at some of the common challenges we face with our families this time of year, along with tips for navigating get togethers, coping through conflict, and how to build resiliency for ourselves.
Common Challenges
Most of us look forward to watching our favorite holiday movies where families face laughable challenges and have humorous conflict with each other before finally coming together for a magical holiday together. While these movies put an amusing spin on holiday get togethers, we tend to enjoy them because we have faced more serious challenges in our lives with our family members.
There are a few challenges that seem to arise for most people and we’d like to explore them in depth with you.
First, we’d like to look at families that have conflicting expectations. Whether you’re a newly married couple, a couple who just had their first child, or a family well-seasoned in the varying expectations of other families, expectations are highly stressful if they aren’t managed well. Many adults feel they fail when it comes to attending all the holiday parties, dinners, and festivities because they simply don’t have the time to attend everything. Even if you feel your family has a great system going, sometimes other adults in your life will want to start new traditions, which can upset your balance. The sense of pressure, the feeling of anxiety, and the idea of letting others down, can create tension, frustration, disappointment, and hurt the relationships. Keep reading further to see how we recommend you navigate through this challenge.
Next, we’d like to bring attention to another challenge; breakdown of communication. This can happen from misunderstandings, misinterpretations, or lack of effective communication strategies. Get together times can get changed around last minute, or locations can get changed, or perhaps family members are making assumptions you were entirely unaware of. All of these things can wear on your mental health and cause you to feel overwhelmed or guilty.
Lastly, we want to explore unresolved issues as our last common challenge. We hear it often from adults that want to have everyone under their roof for a get together but they recognize there are interpersonal problems that have gone unresolved between members of the family, or perhaps between themselves and family members. It’s an unfortunate truth that often times these conflicts will be brought up during the holiday season and can often be made worse without effective strategies for navigating them.
How To Skillfully Navigate Family Gatherings
We want you to have a peaceful and joyous holiday season, so let’s look at skillful tips to help you navigate through the challenges discussed above.
To address the conflicting expectations challenge, we recommend you be proactive by setting realistic expectations with your family. Setting your expectations with those you love ahead of time will help reduce negative emotions, such as disappointment or frustration, and help all of you enjoy your time together. While you’re setting those expectations with family, we also recommend you acknowledge the differences. For example, “This year we’re only able to make one of your parties, even though last year we made both of them. We want to make the time special with you so we wanted to let you know ahead of time what to expect from us this year.” Recognizing what is wanted from you and clearly stating what you can do helps the other person/people feel heard.
Next, we’d like to offer some tips for improving those communication breakdowns that are common with families. While we can’t control how or when another person chooses to communicate, we can control what we do with our communication. Using clear and honest communication helps prevent those misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and assumptions. Make sure you are clear with what you are agreeing to and ask for clarification if needed.
Practice active listening as well by not interrupting them and reflecting back what you took from the conversation.
Lastly, let’s work on how to resolve those issues that have come up prior to the holidays that may become a problem at your holiday get together. Whether the problem lies between you and another family member, or between 2 different people and you are just concerned about how it will come up during the get together, we have some suggestions that will be helpful.
It will be most helpful to establish boundaries first. Notify your guests that the get together is meant to focus on the joy of being together, not to focus on past problems. Let everyone know where your boundary is for negative conversation and what you’re willing to do if that boundary is crossed. For example, “I know you and our uncle have tension from last year, but this year we are going to keep the conversation positive and present focused. If those issues get brought up and can’t be quickly resolved, I will shut down the conversation and move it forward.”
Express your empathy for the parties involved and encourage others to express empathy too. If a conflict has previously been blown up, it’s likely because people aren’t feeling heard and validated and expressing empathy is a great way to help them feel more comfortable.
To Sum It All Up
It’s completely normal to have challenges during the holidays, even with the ones we love most. Ignoring the problems won’t make them go away though and will likely make your season more stressful than it needs to be. Tackle those pesky problems with some open communication, boundary setting, and empathy.
We know these are difficult skills to master and can be intimidating to try on your own the first
time. We are always here to help you find the best skills for your situation and to increase your confidence in using those skills. If you need some help, please reach out!
Reach out to us and let us know what you think! We would love to hear things that have helped you in the past or if there’s a certain situation you’d like us to address in a future blog.
We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and keep reading more blogs to find more helpful tips!