It’s that time of year again when everyone starts talking about surviving the holidays. You start hearing more about setting boundaries with your family or skipping the festivities all together because they are too stressful. There is so much talk about surviving the holidays that we’ve forgotten the holidays are meant to be enjoyed.
You may be feeling so anxious about the holidays that the thought of enjoying it doesn’t even seem possible, but it is and this article is going to dive into how to make this year one to remember!
Your key to surviving the holidays
Maybe the holiday season with your family has been stressful for the past several decades of your life, but every year you suffer through it. If you don’t want this year to be like all the others, the first thing you need to do is understand why you’re so anxious about the upcoming holidays in the first place.
Anxiety is a build up of unprocessed emotions. It is a signal that something that happened in the past still has a hold over you emotionally today. Surviving the holidays this year is going to require you to make peace with what happened last year.
If you don’t have hope that things can change, you’re going to rinse and repeat the same old patterns. There is a way for you feel more ease and confidence heading into the holidays this year. Let’s work on releasing any emotional baggage and setting clear intentions for the holiday we wan to have.
There is so much talk about surviving the holidays that we’ve forgotten the holidays are meant to be enjoyed!
What are you holding on to?
Was it the comment your aunt made in front of everyone at dinner that you still haven’t made peace with? Perhaps it was more the fact that you never said what you really wanted to say to defend yourself and feel like she got away with it.
Maybe it was the fact that your parents kept asking you about when you were having kids in front of your partner that made you want to melt into the floor. Rather than setting boundaries with them, you just stayed uncomfortable all night.
Write down every incident that happened that is still bothering you so you can get to resolution. The only way you are going to enjoy the holidays this year is by acknowledging what’s making you anxious. When you get specific about it, you can start doing something about it.
Surviving the holidays requires processing your emotions
Now that you know what’s secretly been bothering you, what emotion specifically was coming up for you?
Maybe you felt anger toward your family members for violating your boundaries. Or you felt shame for not living up to your parents expectations yet again. Perhaps you felt sad being an outsider in your own family.
When you can pinpoint the emotion that was showing for you, you will know what you need to tweak heading into the holidays this year. If you want to learn what each emotion has to tell you, click here.
This is the time to honour the emotions that you are holding on to. You may notice negative thoughts come up or start to feel hopeless because you don’t know how to get your family to behave any differently.
This is not about changing your family, this is about developing the life skills you need to change the dynamic between you and your family. What is in your power is what you bring to the equation. Chance can only happen if you’re brave enough to face your feelings and honour them.
If you want to survive the holidays this year and leave with positive memories, you are going to have to resolve the pain you are still carrying and set your intention for how things will be different this year.
Set clear expectations for surviving the holidays this year
You don’t control how your family will behave or what they will say, but you have a lot of say over how you respond to them. You are heading into a completely new paradigm now that you’ve processed what you were holding on.
Now you want to think about how you would have liked things to be different in terms of how you handled their behaviour.
This is not the time to think “I wish my mom wouldn’t make comments in front of my partner that make me uncomfortable”. It’s more about thinking “I wish I would speak up for myself when my mother makes comments that make me uncomfortable. I want to command respect from my parents and tell them what I expectations and intentions are for our time together”.
Define how you want to respond differently to your family this year. This is where your personal power lies.
Honestly, it’s not that you don’t love your family. You love the chaos of everyone gathered together. You love the smell of home cooking. You love everyone laughing and teasing one another. You love seeing your cousins who you rarely speak to throughout the year.
Define how you want to respond differently to your family this year. This is where your personal power lies.
But what you don’t love is how you shrink around your family and their big personalities. You don’t love how you get so angry that you shut down and isolate from everyone. These may have been your patterns with your family, but you can change these patterns today!
This year is going to be different!
You have the ability to change how you experience the holidays this year by processing the emotions of holidays past and spending the time beforehand to process, integrate and set your intentions.
By focusing on what’s within your control – how will you show up differently – you will be more than surviving the holidays this year, you might even enjoy them! Look at how much you’ve grown since last year. You are not the same person. This year is going to be different.
