Holiday Anxiety With Family: 5 Ways to Stay Your Grown-Up Self
It happens to all of us. You’re a grown up in your own life but when you visit your family, suddenly you’re 16 and fighting with your sister over who gets the China with the little pink roses. Why do we regress so easily? Anticipating that regression causes a lot of holiday anxiety with family, often weeks before the visit even starts.
Why it happens
Your family is where your roles were first assigned. The peacemaker, the rebel, the baby, the one who was always right. Put the same people in the same house with the same smells and sounds and your nervous system doesn’t need much convincing to slip back into the old script. It’s not immaturity. It’s pattern memory.
I’m from a large family, so there are layers of triggers and cues from childhood waiting to get kicked up. It doesn’t always happen, but if there is a stressor it can set the old patterns in motion fast. One year, no one rented a car, each of us thinking “oh, if I need to go anywhere, I’ll take Dad’s.” Having to share one car brought out the teenager in all of us. Even if we didn’t need to go anywhere we still wanted those keys! One brother got up early and took the car for the day to another city. The car became the focus of everything instead of our parents’ anniversary.
That’s what regression costs. The moment you were there to celebrate gets swallowed by an argument about nothing.
Five ways to ease holiday anxiety with family and stay your grown-up self
1. Regulate your nervous system.Take yourself out of the room. Walk around the block, run some stairs, splash water on your face. Going to the bathroom is a perfectly good excuse for a few minutes alone to breathe and stop the flooding. You can’t think like an adult when your body is reacting like a 16 year old.
2. Stay in your adult self.When you notice you’re feeling like a kid, remind yourself how good you are with people who aren’t pushing your buttons. Then take that energy back into the room and treat these people the way you would a friend or colleague. Pretend for a moment they’re not your relatives. This shift in energy from you often changes their energy toward you.
3. Take a counter-action.If someone is really bugging you, go toward them instead of away. Listen to what they’re saying. When someone is loud or keeps repeating the same point, it’s often because they feel like they aren’t being heard. Listening can help them settle and feel less activated, and it’s very hard to keep fighting with someone who is listening to you.
4. Boundaries!When you were a kid you weren’t always given a choice about boundaries, and they were often violated. You’re an adult now and you know yourself better. Respect your own limits around how much you’re willing to give emotionally, and how much of your time and energy. You get to leave the room, end the conversation, or stay at a hotel.
5. Keep up your routines.If you’re a runner, get your run in. If it’s yoga, get your down dogs in. If you meditate, carve out the time. Your routines are what keep you steady, and they’re the first thing to go when you’re visiting family. Protecting them isn’t selfish, it’s how you show up as the version of yourself you actually want to be in that house.
When the dread starts early
Some holiday anxiety with family isn’t about the visit itself. It starts weeks before, with a knot in your stomach and a rehearsal of every argument that might happen. If the old patterns hit hard every year, or if you spend more time dreading the holidays than enjoying them, that’s worth paying attention to. It’s something therapy can help with, whether that means understanding where the patterns come from or practicing new ways of responding before you walk through the door.
Written by Tracy Sondern, LMFT - In person therapy Los Feliz, Los Angeles, and online throughout California.
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