THERAPIST THURSDAY: Will Family DRIVE YOU CRAZY Over the Holiday?

Ahhhh… the holidays! Alas they are upon us! Soon our homes will be full of the wonderful sights, sounds, and smells of the holiday season. Along with all of these sensory delights usually comes family that we may not see very often; people that, sometimes by design, are not a part of our daily lives. And while it can be lovely to visit with them, it can also drive us CRAZY! In your family, this may be your judgmental mother-in-law, your bossy aunt, or your alcoholic cousin. Whatever the case may be, having a few strategies under your belt when that doorbell rings and your house gets taken over by relatives can make all the difference! Here are some tips to get you through the season with as little battle wounds as possible:

Have realistic expectations

If your mother-in-law is ALWAYS critical, don’t expect it to be any different this year. Hoping that she will praise your potatoes instead of calling them lumpy is just setting yourself up for failure. Go into the situation expecting her to criticize your potatoes. Make a bet with your husband or sister about how many times this will happen. And then secretly count the number of times and see who wins. If your cousin is always drunk within an hour of arrival, expect this to happen. Realize that you can’t change it and fretting about it is just a waste of your mental and emotional energy. If your aunt is likely to boss you around as she’s done the last five holidays, expect that she will do this. If she always tells you how to fold the napkins and re-folds them if you’ve already done it, this year leave the napkins for her to do. And again, little friendly secret games of trying to predict who will do what and how many times can make the situation much less frustrating and can even provide a little comic relief!

Don’t take it personally when people are just being WHO THEY ARE

The thing is, your aunt is not just bossy to you. She’s bossy to everyone. It’s likely that her co-workers complain about the same thing behind her back. Her husband is probably sick of being told what to do all of their relationship. Because… she doesn’t just reserve this behavior for you, it is actually part of her personality. But when she tells you how to fold those napkins, it can, of course, feel personal. Keep in mind, however, that she is bossy to everyone because it isn’t about you (or your napkins); it’s about her! She drives everyone crazy with her bossiness. This is her being HER.

Set the environment up for success

After working on the first two tips, which are about adjusting your mind set, it comes time to now adjust the environment to create the best outcome. So, what does this mean exactly? Well, if mom (I’ll use dear ‘ol mom as an example now so I’m not just picking on mother-in-law) is always critical of your potatoes, maybe this year you ask her to bring the potatoes. You can say something like, “since your potatoes are always so delicious and mine tend to be lumpy, I was hoping maybe this year you would make them for me.” If you know your cousin will be intoxicated and become overly affectionate with everyone, maybe you ask him to complete a task for you that he can handle in his intoxicated state and that keeps him busy and unable to annoy people. Maybe you leave some folding chairs to be cleaned off OUTSIDE and then set up. If your bossy aunt is coming, give her some jobs that are “so important you wanted to leave them for her to do, since she has such great attention to detail.”

Keep interactions appropriate for the type of person they are

This is another ACTION tip. No one wants to hang out for long with drunk cousin John. So, set up some games people can play so the conversation doesn’t get too deep and cousin John doesn’t get all sappy. If mom is critical, don’t open yourself up to the criticism by showing her the new dress you bought and asking her opinion of it. If aunt is bossy, don’t share too much about what you have going on in your life, allowing her to tell you how you should be handling it. When you interact with people, you want to keep in mind who they are and how close you really are to them (and WHY there is distance in the first place). And then keep your interactions appropriate to that level of closeness. If you don’t see these people very often (by design), there are lots of superficial topics you can keep the conversations to, rather that be the kids’ sports, plans for the holidays, or that new recipe you found on Pinterest. If you would rate your closeness a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, then the topics you discuss with that person should be a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 of vulnerability and intimacy.

Set appropriate boundaries

This is part of the tip above, but sometimes it must go further than the suggestions above. If you have a person in your life that is just toxic. That, no matter how much you adjust your mindset and your environment, the person causes nothing but distress and unhappiness; it may be time to set some firmer boundaries. If the person is truly toxic, this may include excluding them from the holiday celebration all together. If the person does better in a one-on-one situation, maybe it means you have a separate time to celebrate with them and don’t include them in the big family function. If the person can only be appropriate in small doses, maybe you meet for brunch and keep it under two hours. Once we accept people’s limitations, it makes it much easier to determine where those boundaries need to be. You can limit the amount of time you spend with them, you can limit the amount of people the time is spent with, you can limit who specifically it is spent with, you can limit where you spend time with them, or if need be, you can exclude them from your celebrations completely. Once we truly understand others and their limitations, it makes it clearer what is necessary and appropriate to do about it.

It is my hope that this information will allow you to reduce the holiday stress often caused by family and allow you to gain whatever positives there are from those relationships. When you do this, you are empowering yourself and you are designing your holidays and, by extension, your life.

For tips on how to reduce holiday stress by being LESS BUSY this holiday season, read last week’s article here and the article on SPENDING TOO MUCH here.

Rochelle Whitson is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in Temecula, CA. She can be reached by email at meetme4therapy@gmail.com.