This post is my gift to those, who tend to
suffer through the holidays. If you are from a lucky bunch, who enjoys very
much spending time with their immediate and extended families during the
holiday season, I wish you the most festive celebrations and you can stop
reading now. However, if you are a one, who was born into or adopted by a
dysfunctional family, keep reading. You may have a laugh or possibly find a
useful point or two below.
Holiday time, especially Christmas time,
is a season, when dysfunctional families blossom. They prepare for that time throughout
the whole year with passion and enjoy every moment of it with the grimaces of
suffering on the family members’ faces. Don’t ask me why. I am not a psychic.
Just sharing my observations. So, if you would like to join in with your
dysfunctional family and have fun being ridiculed, guilted, put down, and made
feel like you are the worst human being that ever walked the face of earth, it
is OK. It is a conscious choice, and I do not have any judgment there. You can
stop reading now and go do your normal routine. If, however, you are tired of
suffering and spending months putting yourself back together after holiday fun
with your family, I have some suggestions that I summarized below in the form
of steps.
Step 1. Adjust
your goals and expectations.
Somehow many of us have a goal to enjoy holiday
time with our families. Crazy, huh? Even though we have never been able to
reach this goal in the past, we keep pursuing it and hoping that this year
things will turn out differently. Others
come to their homeland with the goal of finally showing them, making them
understand, apologize, change, etc. When our goal is not being met, we tend to
criticize and blame ourselves for that.
Well, maybe it’s a time to consider a
different goal? For example, getting through the visit with the family in one
piece with minimal emotional wounding with the follow up goal of spending just
two weeks instead of four months healing from the experience. What do you think? Framework is everything J
Step 2. Give yourself compassion
After all, you did not choose what kind of
family you were born into, adopted by, or married into. You cannot control other people’s choices or
decisions. You are not responsible for the mess they create. But… you are
affected by all that shit. It is extremely painful to hear for one hundredth
time that unlike you, your brother has impeccable taste in women or is capable
of providing for his aging parents. It is difficult to not feel responsible or
guilty for your father’s asthma or drug abuse that he acquired working hard to
provide for you. So, give yourself a hug and pour some unconditional love on
yourself. You are lovable and worthy no matter what your family members say,
think, or do. Here is the tape by Kristin Neff that you can download on your
favorite digital device and listen to over and over again on your trip, before
you go to bed, first thing after waking up in the morning, when you step
outside for a breath and so forth: http://www.self-compassion.org/LKM.self-compassion.MP3. After many repetitions it may brainwash you
into believing that you are OK in spite of your mother’s or father’s insistence
to the contrary.
Step 3. Predict
From the previous years of experience with
your family, you can predict a lot of what is going to happen. You may foresee
that your uncle Henry will get drunk and start inappropriately touching you or
make sexual advances towards your girlfriend or wife. You can be pretty
confident that your grandma will ask you in front of the rest of the family,
why you still have not lost any weight or are not married or don’t have kids or
lost your job again. You may even anticipate that your mother will bluntly or
subtly let you know that you are not good enough son or daughter, because you
don’t visit enough, forgot her cat’s birthday, or obviously didn’t care about
her health enough to visit her during the hospital stay you didn’t know
anything about or because Shelly’s girl bought her a trip to Europe for
Christmas and Pete’s boy got another promotion and is now the CEO of the World’s
bank. As long as you step into the time with your family with your eyes open
and your memory intact, you can take step 4.
Step 4. Plan
and Modify your responses to the predictable assaults
Different kinds of responses to predictable
family assaults.
Preventing assaults from happening
·
Shorten your visit
·
Structure the time you spend with the family by
playing board games, watching movies, going on hikes, etc.
·
Associate with people, who are supportive of
you, and avoid those, who are hurtful
·
Be prepared to leave earlier than planned if
things start escalating
Responding to the violation of physical
boundaries, AKA unwanted touching
·
Prevent it from happening by maintaining
physical distance between you and a family member, who tends to be inappropriate
or unwelcome with touching
·
“You might not know this yet, but I have a personal
bubble (use your hand to delineate it) and it is not OK for you to go inside it”
·
“I am not in a touchy feely mood”
·
“Stop it. I don’t like being touched”
·
Gently take a person’s hand or other part of the
body that is used to violate your space and place or move it back on/towards
their body
·
Walk away
·
Say very loudly: “I am sure you meant to touch
my shoulder not my breast/ butt/ crotch/thigh. It happens”
·
“I am sure your wife/girlfriend/partner would
love a touch like that. But I am your niece/daughter/son/sister, etc.”
Responding to the unwanted questions,
jokes, comments AKA emotional fucking
·
INTERRUPT: “I am sorry. I need to go to the
bathroom”
·
DISTRACT: “Oh my God, your earrings/necklace/outfit/hair
are stunning”
·
DISARM: “I agree. I’m a total fuck-up. After all,
the apple doesn’t fall far away from the tree”
·
STOP: “No comments”
·
USE HUMOR: Make a joke
·
IGNORE: pretend you didn’t hear comment or
question
Step 6. Plan
for crisis
Depending on how dysfunctional your family
is and how volatile and hurtful things have been in the past, you may want to
have a safety/escape plan ready before you even leave your house. Make sure
that you can exit the gathering place at any moment, give yourself permission
to leave, have plan B ready with clear ideas of how to leave, where to go, and
how to take care of yourself before you can get back home.
Be on the lookout for the red flags that
signal to you it is time to leave. For example, if you know that every time
your uncle gets drunk, the physical fight between him and one or two other
family members is coming, then leave when he is on the way to getting drunk and
before he is already drunk.
Step 7. Take
good care of yourself
Focusing on yourself during a gathering of
a dysfunctional family, is not selfish. It is responsible. What do you need to
survive this stressful time with minimal harm to yourself? Answer this question
and commit to doing those needed things. I know for myself that during
stressful meetings, I need my full 8 hours or more of sleep, meditation, and at
least a brief yoga practice. I commit to doing those things for myself. In the
past, when I was capable of fitting all three things into my daily routine, I
found that jerks I was surrounded by, somehow were more pleasant and easier to
deal with. J
Step 8. Focus
on healing when you are back home
·
After you make it back home in one piece,
no matter how distraught you are,
congratulate yourself. You survived another family holiday gathering, you
tried something different, and it is a big accomplishment no matter what the
result is.
·
Do
something soothing but not destructive. Here are some ideas: wrap yourself
in a warm blanket and read your favorite book, have a cup of your favorite tea,
take a nap, go for a walk, take a bath with aroma oils, or work out.
·
Process
and debrief. Talk to a supportive friend or family member about the
gathering, write a funny story about it, make a piece of art, or just journal.
·
Take it
easy for a few days. Be gentle with yourself. Recognize that stressful and
difficult events need to be followed by restful and restorative ones.
Please,
remember that even though you are not responsible for other family members’
choices and cannot control their actions, you are in full control of yourself.
You have the right to protect yourself from being hurt. You have the
responsibility to heal yourself after being hurt. If all members of your family
did just that, you would not have a dysfunctional family to begin with J
Have some compassion for your
dysfunctional family members. After all, if it was not for you and other
targets, they will have to focus on themselves and deal with their own issues.
And you know how scary, hard, and plain painful that is. How can you expect
someone you love to go through such a torture?
I hope that this article made you smile at
times and gave you some ideas to try. I trust that you were able to distinguish
jokes and sarcasm from serious points and suggestions. J
HAPPY
HOLIDAYS TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY!
With much love
and compassion,
Irina
