And to top it all off, it’s now officially holiday season.
Admittedly, for some, this can be “the most wonderful time of the year.” (And if that’s the case for you – awesome! Enjoy every minute of it.)
But for many of us, not even accounting for the impact of global catastrophes, the next six weeks can be one of the most triggering, challenging, emotional, and exhausting times of the entire year. Especially – let me repeat, especially! – if we plan on spending any portion of it with our families.
Because, let’s face it, not all of us grew up with or married into sane, healthy, functional, supportive families.
The holidays are a time of the year when, if we spend it with our families, many of us might experience ancient frustrations, young feelings, a slip backwards into unhealthy communication patterns and coping habits, and just generally wonder where that otherwise functional, healthy adult version of us has disappeared to.
Writer Elizabeth Gilbert summed it up neatly when she said:
“I had a great teacher in India who said to me, ‘If you think you’re spiritual and evolved and enlightened, go home for Christmas and see how it goes.”
Yep.
If spending the holidays with family feels hard for you, you’re not alone. If it feels like all your well-earned insights about yourself and the creative coping mechanisms you’ve developed over the last year in therapy or the School of Life dissolve in the face of your holiday family dynamics, that makes sense, and it’s okay. It’s a very hard time of the year for many of us.
And because this time of year can be hard for so many, in today’s blog post I want to help you craft and create a Build-Your-Own Holiday Coping Kit to help you prepare and plan for self-care over the holidays (or really, for any time that the events of life feel like too much).
So pour yourself a cup of tea and keep reading…
Build-Your-Own Holiday Coping Kit.
As you probably know, when tough times hit, you may get triggered, flooded, or just generally thrown off balance. When you go home for the holidays with your family, the stability, grounding, comfort, and confidence you may feel in your day-to-day may be challenged. Greatly challenged. So in order to support yourself in navigating those challenges, you can plan and prepare in advance by:
1) Acknowledge and expecting that you may get challenged;
2) Get curious about how and why you get challenged;
3) Get curious about how you usually respond to being challenged around your family;
4) Get creative and actionable about how you cope and self-soothe when you’re challenged, and
5) Put it all together so you have a list of insights and supports that you can turn to if things get tough over the holidays with your family.
