TL;DR –For trauma survivors, the holiday season from November through January becomes an endurance marathon—weeks of family-centric celebrations that trigger every unhealed wound, every childhood disappointment, every reminder of what "normal" families supposedly experience. The emails flooding my inbox confirm what I've witnessed in practice for years: you're white-knuckling through, counting days until January, trying to survive rather than thrive during what's marketed as "the most wonderful time of the year." This disconnect between cultural expectations of holiday joy and your internal experience of dread, grief, or numbness isn't a character flaw—it's a trauma response to a season that revolves around the very relationships that hurt you.
This piece offers 101 reasons, reframes, and quotes to help you breathe through triggering holiday moments—not toxic positivity that dismisses your pain, but genuine acknowledgment that surviving this season is an act of courage. Each quote serves as a tiny life raft when you're drowning in family dynamics, grief over missing warmth, or shame about not feeling festive. The invitation to share your own coping tools recognizes a powerful truth: those who've survived relational trauma often become each other's best teachers, creating community wisdom from individual survival strategies.
For those of us who come from relational trauma backgrounds, the holiday times can be especially triggering.
So many of us spend November 1 onwards just waiting for January to arrive, attempting to make it through and muscle through these triggering weeks and family-centric days.
Indeed, I’ve received so many letters and emails lately from those of you on my newsletter list that find this season particularly hard, asking for advice, guidance, and some sense of “it’s all going to be okay, right?”
So today’s blog post is for you if you’ve been having a hard time whatever the reason this season.
It’s an older post of mine – written in Summer 2017 – that feels still salient even today.
(Though please pardon my liberal use of the term “you guys” in this older piece; I’m trying to remove that phrase from my spoken and written vocabulary now.)
Syntax aside, my hope is that the content – 101 reasons, quotes, reframes and cognitive challenges to help you feel even just a little bit better about your situation, whatever it is – will feel helpful to you today.
I hope that one quote, one idea, one reframe I offer can help you breathe a little deeper, feel a little more psychologically cozy and settled, and find some spark of possibility, of hope, that maybe things will keep getting better if you just keep waking up and putting one foot in front of the other.
Curious if you come from a relational trauma background?
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START THE QUIZNavigating Holiday Triggers Through Trauma-Informed Support
When the holiday season feels less like celebration and more like survival, trauma-informed therapy becomes your sanctuary—a consistent, non-judgmental space where you don’t have to perform holiday cheer or explain why family gatherings feel like walking through emotional landmines.
Your therapist understands that the period from November through January can reactivate every attachment wound, every childhood disappointment, every painful reminder of what was missing, validating that the holidays can be triggering: 11 reminders, 15 scripts, and 8 supports isn’t just helpful content but essential survival guidance for trauma survivors. Together, you prepare not just practical strategies—boundary scripts, exit plans, grounding techniques—but also emotional scaffolding to hold you through the season’s unique challenges.
In session, you might rehearse responses to intrusive family questions, practice somatic tools for when Uncle Jerry starts drinking, or simply have someone witness the grief that surfaces when everyone else seems to have the warm family connections you’ll never experience. Your therapist helps you distinguish between reasonable self-protection (like staying in a hotel or limiting visit duration) and trauma-driven isolation that increases suffering, finding the middle path between complete avoidance and retraumatization.
They remind you that choosing to skip certain traditions, leave early, or create entirely new rituals isn’t failure—it’s adaptive wisdom from someone who knows their nervous system’s limits.
Most powerfully, trauma-informed therapy during the holidays helps you metabolize the complex emotions that arise—the simultaneous longing for and dread of connection, the grief over childhoods that can’t be recovered, the rage at having to navigate what others take for granted.
Your therapist holds steady presence while you feel these feelings, proving that emotional intensity doesn’t have to mean abandonment or overwhelm, gradually building your capacity to stay present even when triggered, transforming the holiday season from something to merely survive into something you can authentically navigate with increasing grace, self-compassion, and even moments of genuine peace.
Read it, and please, let me know what “reason you’re okay” resonated with you the most.
I would love it, too, if you could also share in the comments below the blog one more reason, idea, reframe, quote or tool you personally use on particularly hard days when you need and want to support yourself.
Any ideas, quotes, tools and reframes that you leave might really help one of the 30,000 blog readers we get on this site monthly.
So thank you in advance for liberally sharing so that others can benefit from your wisdom.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
