Why the Holidays Are Hard When You’re Healing From Family Trauma

FAMILY DYNAMICS & BOUNDARIES • April 13, 2026

LAST UPDATED: APRIL 2026

Last reviewed: June 2026 by Annie Wright, LMFT

Yasmin stands in the kitchen of her childhood home, the sharp morning light filtering through the lace curtains and casting fractured patterns on the linoleum floor. The scent of cinnamon and nutmeg curls through the air, mingling with the faint, familiar aroma of her mother’s perfume. A scent that once felt like safety but now unsettles her in subtle, unshakable ways. She arrived late last night, the flight from Seattle still lingering in the ache of her joints and the blur of her mind. Two years into therapy, she knows the scripts by heart. Her patterns, her mother’s patterns. The invisible choreography that has played out every holiday since she was a child.

Her mother stands at the counter, methodically rolling dough for the pumpkin pie, humming softly beneath her breath. Then, without looking up, she says something about Yasmin’s hair. A comment so mild, so familiar, it could be mistaken for affection, but it carries the weight of years. The same phrase she’s heard since she was fourteen, each iteration chipping away at her self-worth, buried beneath the layers of politeness. Yasmin’s mouth opens, then closes. She hears herself say nothing. Her face smooths, a practiced mask settling over the turmoil beneath. She pivots the conversation with a grace honed by necessity, deflecting and redirecting until the moment passes.

Excusing herself, she slips into the bathroom and closes the door behind her, the click of the latch a fragile barrier between past and present. She perches on the edge of the tub, fingers tracing the cold, cracked tile. At thirty-eight, she feels eight. Small, exposed, and painfully tethered to the echoes of a childhood that never quite let her go. The walls seem to close in, the holiday’s festive veneer cracking to reveal the raw, unhealed wounds beneath.

In short: Holiday family contact reactivates trauma not because you’ve regressed but because your nervous system is responding to the same contextual cues that conditioned it in the first place.

Why the Holidays Specifically Activate Trauma

In my clinical experience, the holiday season often serves as a powerful catalyst for the reactivation of trauma, particularly when it involves returning to the family of origin. This phenomenon is rooted in the complex interplay between the nervous system’s response to environmental cues and the psychological dynamics embedded in family relationships. Understanding why the holidays can evoke such intense trauma responses requires a nuanced exploration of how the original trauma environment is re-encountered, often unconsciously, during these gatherings. The family of origin, with its unique constellation of relational patterns, emotional triggers, and unhealed wounds, functions as a kind of “trauma landscape” that can reawaken early survival strategies and emotional pain that individuals have worked hard to manage or suppress.

Before delving into this dynamic, it’s important to clarify a key concept that often surfaces in the clinical work with clients during these periods: regression.

The holiday season frequently involves physical and emotional proximity to family members who were present during formative and often traumatic experiences. Selma Fraiberg’s seminal work, Ghosts in the Nursery (Fraiberg, Adelson, & Shapiro, 1975), provides a foundational lens through which to view this phenomenon. Fraiberg described how unresolved trauma and unprocessed emotional pain from one generation can haunt the next, often manifesting in the ways parents relate to their children. The “ghosts” are the unspoken, unacknowledged fears, anxieties, and relational patterns that linger invisibly but palpably in family interactions. During the holidays, the physical return to the family of origin can reawaken these ghosts. Both in the parents and the children who are now adults carrying their own histories of trauma and resilience.

Returning to the family home during the holidays isn’t simply a change of physical location but a re-immersion into the original trauma context. The relational environment that shaped early survival strategies and emotional responses. The sights, sounds, smells, conversational patterns, and unspoken rules of the family setting serve as potent sensory triggers. These triggers are often deeply embedded in implicit memory, bypassing conscious awareness and directly activating the limbic system, the brain’s emotional center. For example, a certain tone of voice, a specific pattern of criticism, or the family’s way of managing conflict may unconsciously signal danger, evoking the physiological and emotional responses associated with past trauma. If you’re curious how this lands in the body, somatic tools for processing body-held trauma can be a useful starting point.

In this way, the holidays function like a “time machine,” transporting individuals back to earlier developmental stages where trauma was first encoded. The defensive behaviors that emerge. Whether withdrawing, becoming irritable, or dissociating. Are adaptive responses that once helped the individual navigate a threatening environment. This isn’t regression in the pejorative sense but a neurobiological recalibration aimed at survival.

Moreover, the cultural narratives surrounding the holidays often emphasize togetherness, joy, and celebration, which can feel incongruent or even threatening to those whose family experiences were marked by neglect, abuse, or chronic dysfunction. This mismatch between expectation and reality adds a layer of complexity. Individuals may feel pressure to perform a role of “holiday cheer” while simultaneously grappling with intense emotional pain. This internal conflict can exacerbate feelings of isolation, shame, or helplessness, further constricting the window of tolerance.

In my work with clients, I’ve observed that the anticipation of family gatherings can sometimes evoke more distress than the event itself. This is because the nervous system begins to hypervigilantly scan for cues reminiscent of past trauma, heightening anxiety and somatic symptoms in advance. Clients often describe feeling transported back to a childlike state. Helpless, confused, or desperate for safety. Despite their adult awareness and coping skills. This is the essence of regression as a trauma response: the nervous system’s attempt to protect the individual by returning to the survival strategies that once worked.

Understanding this dynamic invites a compassionate reframing of what can feel like “relapse” or “falling apart.” Rather than viewing these responses as personal failures, it’s more accurate to see them as the nervous system’s attempt to navigate a complex, emotionally charged environment that echoes early trauma. This perspective opens the door for therapeutic interventions that focus on expanding the window of tolerance, fostering safety, and supporting clients in developing new relational experiences that can gradually overwrite the “ghosts” of the past.

The Neuroscience of Holiday Regression

In my work with clients who experience heightened emotional distress during the holiday season, I often encounter what’s clinically referred to as “holiday regression.” This phenomenon describes a reversion to earlier developmental or emotional states under the influence of environmental and relational stressors that are uniquely amplified during this time of year. Understanding the neuroscience behind holiday regression requires a deep dive into the interplay between sensory processing, implicit memory, and the autonomic nervous system’s survival responses. All of which converge to recreate, on a neurological level, the emotional landscape of past trauma.

As Bessel van der Kolk, MD, eloquently describes in his seminal work The Body Keeps the Score, the body and brain retain the sensory and emotional imprint of trauma in ways that can be reactivated by similar stimuli. When a person is exposed to a sensory trigger reminiscent of the original trauma environment, the nervous system can respond as though the threat is present in the here and now, even if the conscious mind recognizes that the current situation is safe. This response is mediated through the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, releasing stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, which prepare the body for immediate defensive action.

In the specific context of family gatherings during the holidays, these sensory triggers are compounded by relational dynamics that can further activate trauma-related survival responses. Pete Walker, MA. A therapist specializing in complex trauma and childhood emotional neglect. Elucidates this through his framework of the “Four F” responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. These are instinctual survival strategies that emerge when a person perceives threat within the family system. For example, a family member’s critical tone or dismissive behavior can activate the Fight response, characterized by anger or confrontation. Alternatively, the Flight response may be triggered, prompting withdrawal or avoidance. Freeze occurs when the person feels immobilized, often accompanied by dissociative symptoms. And if the freeze response sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. Fawn involves people-pleasing or excessive compliance to mitigate perceived threat. If patterns of fawning feel familiar, people-pleasing as a trauma response explores that dynamic in depth.

Holiday regression often surfaces when these Four F responses are triggered repetitively or intensely within the family context, especially when combined with sensory triggers that rekindle early trauma memories. The repeated activation of these survival strategies can overwhelm the individual’s capacity for self-regulation, leading to a reversion to more primitive emotional states typically associated with childhood. This regression serves, paradoxically, as both a distressing symptom and a protective mechanism. It reflects the nervous system’s attempt to manage overwhelming affect by retreating into familiar, albeit less adaptive, patterns of emotional responding.

Neuroscientifically, this interplay can be understood through the lens of neuroplasticity and the hierarchical organization of the brain. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive function, self-regulation, and reflective capacity, can become effectively “offline” under intense stress, allowing more ancient brain structures like the limbic system and brainstem to dominate. This shift explains why holiday regression can feel like losing access to adult coping skills and instead reacting with childlike defensiveness or helplessness.

In clinical practice, I emphasize the need for clients to develop awareness of their sensory triggers and the physiological signatures of their Four F responses. By cultivating this somatic literacy. Recognizing what their bodies are signaling before emotional overwhelm takes hold. Clients can begin to interrupt the automatic trajectory toward regression. Somatic exercises for trauma and grounding practices can enhance the capacity to remain present even when sensory cues activate implicit trauma memories. Understanding the neuroscience of holiday regression also invites a compassionate stance toward oneself and one’s family members. Recognizing that these responses aren’t failures of character but deeply ingrained survival mechanisms shaped by past experiences.

How This Shows Up in Driven Women

In my work with clients, I’ve come to recognize that the way trauma and loss manifest in driven women is often subtle yet deeply entrenched, especially around times that emphasize connection and belonging, such as the holidays. These periods can act as powerful triggers, reawakening grief and old relational patterns that might have been carefully managed or suppressed throughout the year. To understand this fully, it’s essential to consider the profound layers of loss that underlie what I call “holiday activation”. A term I use to describe the heightened emotional and behavioral responses that many women experience during family gatherings and festive seasons. This activation isn’t just about the surface-level stress of holiday preparation or social obligations; it’s fundamentally about mourning the family they never truly had.

Take Yasmin, for example. Yasmin is a successful attorney in her late thirties, known among colleagues for her relentless work ethic and impeccable organization. On the surface, her life seems enviably complete. She’s built a thriving career, maintains a busy social calendar, and is deeply committed to causes she cares about. Yet every holiday season, Yasmin finds herself engulfed in a wave of anxiety and sadness that feels disproportionate to the external circumstances. What begins as mild anticipation gradually morphs into a heavy sense of dread. She described to me how, as the calendar flipped to December, she’d start to feel a tightening in her chest, an almost physical ache that made it difficult to sleep or focus on anything but the upcoming family events.

In unpacking Yasmin’s experience, it became clear that her holiday activation was deeply tied to unresolved grief. A grief for the family she never had, the secure base that was missing in her childhood. Yasmin’s parents were emotionally unavailable and often critical, their interactions marked by distance rather than warmth. The holiday gatherings of her youth were less about celebration and more about enduring a series of unspoken tensions and disappointments. This legacy of loss meant that even as an adult, Yasmin’s internal world remained keyed to the patterns of her past. The holidays acted as a temporal gateway that instantly reactivated old roles: the caretaker, the pleaser, the invisible child striving desperately to avoid conflict and gain approval. If the caretaker role resonates, relational trauma often seeds these patterns long before we’re aware of them.

What I see in Yasmin’s story is a vivid example of what Judith Herman, MD. Psychiatrist and author of Trauma and Recovery. Articulates so clearly: the critical importance of safety in healing from relational wounds. Herman emphasizes that the first stage of recovery involves establishing safety, both externally and internally, before one can begin to process traumatic memories or build new relational patterns. For many driven women like Yasmin, the holiday season disrupts this hard-won sense of safety. Despite years of personal growth and therapeutic work, the familiar family context resurrects the old terrain where safety was never guaranteed. In these moments, the protective structures they’ve built can feel fragile, causing a cascade of affective and behavioral responses that are rooted in survival rather than choice.

The resurfacing of old roles during these times is deeply meaningful, not accidental. The “caretaker” role often emerged as an adaptive strategy that was originally employed to manage parental disconnection or volatility. By assuming responsibility for others’ emotional states, driven women like Yasmin could momentarily stave off the chaos or rejection that threatened their sense of self. Yet in adulthood, this role becomes a double-edged sword. While it offers a familiar way to navigate family dynamics, it also perpetuates exhaustion, resentment, and a sense of invisibility. Similarly, the “pleaser” role serves to minimize conflict and gain fleeting acceptance, but at the cost of authentic self-expression and personal boundaries. For women navigating this, ending people-pleasing is often one of the most meaningful pieces of healing work.

In clinical practice, I often observe that driven women who’ve experienced early relational trauma carry these roles not just as behavioral patterns but as deeply ingrained identity scripts. These scripts are activated when the neurobiological system detects familiar cues of threat or instability. Cues that are abundant in the emotionally charged, expectation-laden environment of holiday gatherings. For Yasmin, this meant that her heart rate would spike unexpectedly during seemingly mundane family interactions, her voice would soften or become clipped when she felt unseen, and her mind would race with self-critical thoughts that echoed the voices of her parents from decades past.

Understanding this dynamic is crucial because it reframes what might otherwise be dismissed as mere holiday stress or perfectionism. Instead, it highlights the profound interplay between past trauma, present relational contexts, and the ongoing process of healing. When I work with driven women like Yasmin, I emphasize that these old roles and the grief beneath them aren’t signs of weakness or failure but markers of survival and resilience. The very fact that these women have achieved so much professionally and personally. Often in the face of deep emotional wounds. Speaks to their strength and capacity for growth.

Ultimately, the grief for the family they never had is a profound and ongoing process that doesn’t simply disappear with time or achievement. For driven women, whose lives are often characterized by forward momentum and achievement, the holidays can serve as a poignant reminder that healing isn’t a linear path but one that involves circling back to old wounds with renewed presence and compassion. Yasmin’s journey illustrates this beautifully: by leaning into her grief and allowing herself to feel the loss rather than pushing it away, she began to cultivate a sense of internal safety that gradually lessened the power of old roles. This, in turn, opened the door to new ways of relating. To herself, to her family, and to the holiday season itself.

Both/And: You’ve Done Years of Healing Work AND Your Family System Can Pull You Back in Minutes

In my work with clients, I often witness a paradox that’s both painful and profoundly human: no matter how many years you’ve invested in healing, no matter how many boundaries you’ve carefully constructed and maintained, the gravitational pull of your family system can still pull you back in an instant. This tug isn’t a sign of failure or weakness; it’s the echo of deep relational patterns and histories that have literally shaped your nervous system and your sense of self from early childhood. The paradox is that you can be someone who is fiercely self-aware, who’s done the reading, engaged in therapy, and cultivated healthy limits. And yet, when you step into the old familial arena, the familiar patterns can sweep over you like an undertow.

Take Kavita’s story, for instance. Kavita is a 36-year-old management consultant who’s spent the better part of the last decade carefully managing the complex relationship she has with her mother. She has a therapist, she’s done the reading, she’s developed boundaries that serve her well in her everyday life. On paper, she’s the embodiment of progress. Yet there she sits at her parents’ dinner table on Christmas Day, a place she’s returned to for years, knowing full well the patterns that tend to unfold. The air is warm with holiday cheer, but also charged with the familiar undercurrents of family expectations and old emotional scripts.

Her mother makes a comment. Mild, familiar, the kind of remark that’s echoed through Kavita’s Christmas dinners since she was twelve years old. It’s not overtly cruel or aggressive, but it carries a subtle sting, a microaggression that only someone who knows the family dance can recognize. Kavita hears herself say nothing out loud. She feels her face smooth out, the practiced grace of her response masking the ripple of discomfort beneath. She redirects the conversation with the ease of someone who’s rehearsed this moment countless times. But inside, something shifts.

Excusing herself to use the restroom, Kavita sits on the edge of the bathtub, the cold porcelain grounding her as she pulls out her phone. Her fingers hover over the keyboard, and then she types a message to her therapist: “She did the thing again. I didn’t say anything. I’m fine.” That last phrase is a familiar refrain. A protective shield she uses to convince herself and others that she’s okay, that she’s in control. But the truth is, she’s not fine. The familiar pattern has triggered a cascade of feelings: frustration, sadness, disappointment, and a quiet ache of loneliness. She’s done so much work to create distance and protect herself, yet the emotional imprint of those early years still rings loud in this moment.

This vignette captures the essence of the both/and experience inherent in family healing: the coexistence of progress and vulnerability, strength and sensitivity, insight and automatic reactivity. In my clinical experience, clients like Kavita embody the truth that healing isn’t a linear trajectory where one day you simply “arrive” and are immune to old wounds. Instead, healing is an ongoing practice of maintaining awareness and compassion for yourself as you navigate the terrain of your relational histories. It’s possible to hold the pride of your growth alongside the humility of recognizing your triggers and the impact of deeply ingrained family dynamics.

When we engage with family members, especially those with whom we share a long and complicated history, we’re not just interacting with individuals; we’re stepping into a system that has known us in a very particular way since childhood. This system operates like an emotional ecosystem with its own rules and roles. Often unspoken but deeply felt. Even after years of therapy and self-work, these roles and rules can pull us back into familiar patterns because, on some level, our nervous systems are wired to seek safety in familiarity. No matter how painful it might be. The work of reparenting yourself is one of the most powerful antidotes to this pull.

The challenge, then, isn’t to expect that years of healing will create an impermeable shield, but rather to cultivate resilience and self-compassion for the moments when the old patterns emerge. It’s to recognize that feeling pulled back doesn’t erase the progress made; it simply reveals the depth and complexity of the healing journey. Kavita’s moment in the bathroom is a testament to this truth. Her ability to sit with discomfort, to reach out for support, and to acknowledge her feelings without judgment is itself a profound act of healing.

If you’re ready to explore what healing can look like for you, schedule a complimentary consultation to connect with our team.

Moreover, this paradox invites us to shift the narrative around family healing. Instead of framing moments of reactivity or silence as failures or setbacks, we can view them as invitations to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our relational histories. Each interaction, each trigger, each emotional response is data. Information that can guide us in refining our boundaries, strengthening our self-awareness, and practicing greater self-kindness. In my work with clients, I encourage a stance of curiosity and gentle inquiry when these moments arise. What’s the old story that this comment or interaction is activating? What unmet need or wound lies beneath the surface? How can you tend to yourself with compassion in this moment?

Ultimately, the both/and of healing with family is a lived experience of holding two truths simultaneously: you’ve done years of courageous and transformative work, and yet your family system can still pull you back in minutes. Embracing this paradox allows you to honor your journey with honesty and grace, to celebrate your growth while acknowledging the ongoing nature of healing, and to move forward with resilience and compassion for yourself and the complex, imperfect bonds that shape your life.

The Systemic Lens: The Holiday Industrial Complex and the Wound of Belonging

In my work with clients, particularly women navigating the complex and often invisible terrain of family trauma, the November through January period emerges as a uniquely charged and fraught season. This time of year, saturated with cultural narratives and images of warmth, safety, and idealized family belonging, operates almost like a collective magnifying glass, intensifying both the longing for connection and the pain of its absence. To understand the depth of this wound, it’s essential to zoom out from the individual and look through a systemic lens at what I call the “holiday industrial complex”. The powerful cultural machinery that shapes and often distorts our expectations around family, love, and belonging during this season.

The holiday industrial complex isn’t simply about commerce or consumerism, though those elements are undeniably present. It encompasses the entire ecosystem of media, advertising, social norms, and cultural rituals that collectively elevate a singular, often unrealistic vision of what family and togetherness should look like. Television specials, movies, advertisements, and social media campaigns flood our consciousness with images of perfectly decorated homes, joyous reunions, and seamless, loving relationships. These portrayals are so ubiquitous and repetitive that they come to feel like an unspoken mandate: belonging is supposed to be easy, spontaneous, and deeply fulfilling. The implication is that if your family gatherings are anything less than harmonious, something is wrong. Not with the system, but with you.

For women who are healing from family trauma, this cultural narrative creates a specific and compounding wound. Family trauma, by its nature, fractures the foundational sense of safety and belonging that these holiday images so vividly promise. Women who’ve endured neglect, emotional abuse, enmeshment, or abandonment within their families often carry a profound internal dissonance during the holiday season. They long for the warm embrace of the idealized family, yet simultaneously brace for the pain, the triggers, and the unmet expectations that have historically defined these relationships. This creates a kind of double bind: the desire for connection coexists with the fear of retraumatization. The dark night of the soul that many women experience around the holidays is real. And it’s not a personal failing.

In my clinical experience, this compound shame manifests as a quiet but powerful internal critic. Women often tell me they feel “less than” or “broken” for not being able to embody the cheerful, festive spirit that surrounds them. They may isolate themselves from family gatherings or engage in people-pleasing behaviors that further erode their authentic sense of self. The irony is that the cultural narrative, which ostensibly celebrates connection and belonging, actually perpetuates disconnection by invalidating the messy, nuanced realities of family trauma survivors.

Moreover, the holiday industrial complex tends to erase or marginalize non-traditional family structures and experiences, amplifying feelings of exclusion. Women who’ve chosen to redefine family on their own terms. Whether that means setting limits, creating chosen families, or stepping away from toxic relationships. Often find themselves at odds with the dominant cultural script. For those navigating estrangement or significantly reduced contact, setting limits with parents is one of the bravest and loneliest things a person can do, and the holidays make it feel even lonelier. The idealized image of a “perfect holiday” rarely includes the complexity of estrangement, grief, or healing work that many women are engaged in.

It’s important to recognize that the cultural saturation of the holiday season isn’t inherently harmful. The desire for connection and ritual is a fundamental human need. However, when these cultural narratives become rigid templates against which women measure their worth and family experiences, they can exacerbate trauma and shame rather than alleviate it. Healing, then, involves not only individual therapeutic work but also a critical examination of the social and cultural stories we tell about family and belonging.

In my work, I encourage women to bring awareness to the holiday industrial complex and its influence on their emotional experience. This means acknowledging the cultural scripts and expectations without allowing them to define one’s self-worth or healing journey. It also means creating space for alternative narratives. Narratives that honor complexity, recognize pain, and celebrate resilience. For example, embracing the idea that belonging can be found in chosen communities, that healing is non-linear, and that family is what we create rather than what we inherit.

Ultimately, viewing the holiday season through a systemic lens invites compassion and nuance. It allows women healing from family trauma to see their experience not as a personal failure but as a response to powerful cultural forces. It opens the door to reclaiming the season on their own terms, fostering belonging that’s authentic, sustainable, and deeply healing.

Concrete, Trauma-Informed Strategies for the Holidays

The holiday season can be a complex and emotionally charged time for many people, particularly those navigating the lasting effects of relational trauma. In my work with clients who carry the weight of difficult family histories, I’ve witnessed firsthand how the anticipation and experience of holiday gatherings can trigger deep-seated wounds. These wounds might manifest as heightened anxiety, feelings of isolation, or resurfacing memories that feel overwhelming. The good news is that trauma-informed strategies can help you engage with this season more mindfully, reducing distress and empowering you to care for your emotional well-being before, during, and after family contact.

Before the holidays arrive, preparation is key. This is the time to create a personal safety plan tailored to your unique emotional landscape. Begin by setting clear intentions for the season: What would a manageable holiday look like for you? Sometimes, simply acknowledging that “this may be hard, and that’s okay” can be a powerful act of self-compassion. Consider establishing boundaries in advance with family members. Whether that means limiting the duration of visits, designating certain topics as off-limits, or deciding which events you’ll attend. Communicating these boundaries ahead of time, when possible, can reduce the pressure of on-the-spot decisions and help you feel more in control. You can also take the relational trauma quiz to better understand your specific patterns before heading into the season.

Additionally, I encourage clients to build a “support toolkit” before the holidays. This might include grounding exercises, breathing techniques, or a playlist of soothing music that you can use when feeling overwhelmed. It can also be helpful to identify a trusted friend, therapist, or support person you can check in with before and after family interactions. Having a concrete plan for self-care. Whether it’s scheduling downtime, engaging in physical activity, or journaling. Can serve as an emotional anchor during challenging moments.

During family contact, the reality of emotional triggers often comes to the forefront. It’s important to recognize that feeling vulnerable, frustrated, or even disconnected doesn’t mean you’re failing or that you’re alone in these experiences. One practical strategy is to give yourself permission to take breaks. Stepping outside for fresh air, retreating to a quiet room, or even briefly excusing yourself to use the restroom can provide crucial moments to reset. Grounding techniques. Such as noticing your senses, what you see, hear, and feel. Or practicing slow, intentional breaths, can help regulate the nervous system and reduce the intensity of emotional responses.

Another strategy is to engage in compassionate self-talk. Remind yourself that your emotional reactions are valid and that you’re doing your best in a difficult situation. If conversations become triggering, it’s okay to redirect or disengage. You might prepare a few neutral phrases in advance, such as “I’d rather not discuss that right now,” or “Let’s talk about something else.” Remember, boundaries aren’t just for before the gathering. They’re an ongoing practice that supports your well-being in real time.

After family contact, the emotional aftermath can be just as challenging as the interaction itself. Many clients describe feeling drained, sad, or unsettled once they return to the quiet of their own space. This is a critical time for gentle self-care and reflection. Allow yourself to acknowledge whatever feelings arise without judgment. Writing in a journal can be a helpful way to process your experience, noting what felt manageable and what felt difficult. If your experience with your family of origin has revealed the kind of golden child/scapegoat dynamics that run in narcissistic family systems, understanding the systemic context can be enormously relieving.

It’s also beneficial to reconnect with your support system in this phase. Sharing your experience with a trusted friend, therapist, or support group can validate your feelings and remind you that you’re not alone. Engaging in restorative activities. Whether that’s taking a warm bath, spending time in nature, or practicing meditation. Can help soothe the nervous system and promote emotional balance. If you’d like to do deeper trauma integration work, learning about somatic experiencing vs. EMDR can help you choose the approach that fits your nervous system best.

Finally, consider this a time to evaluate what worked and what didn’t, so you can adjust your approach for future gatherings. Healing from relational trauma is a gradual process, and each holiday offers an opportunity to build resilience and deepen self-awareness. It’s important to recognize that sometimes, despite your best efforts, the holidays will be difficult. Holding space for this reality with kindness toward yourself is a vital part of trauma-informed care.

The holidays may never be perfectly easy for those of us with relational trauma histories, but with intentional strategies and compassionate support, they can become more manageable and meaningful. Your emotional safety matters. You deserve to navigate this season in ways that honor your healing journey. If you’d like personalized support, you can explore therapy with Annie or the Fixing the Foundations^™ course to build the foundational skills you need.

Related Reading

Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence. From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books, 1992.

Courtois, Christine A., and Julian D. Ford. Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders (Adults): Scientific Foundations and Therapeutic Models. Guilford Press, 2013.

van der Kolk, Bessel A. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking, 2014.

Siegel, Daniel J. The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. Guilford Press, 2012.

How to Heal: Moving Through the Holidays With Family Trauma

No amount of pre-holiday preparation fully insulates you from the pull of a family system that has decades of practice getting you back into the role it assigned you. As we explored in the section on holiday regression, the neurobiological mechanisms at work. The olfactory memory, the conditioned threat responses, the sheer density of sensory and relational cues. Mean that even a decade of healing work can compress in a family kitchen in under ten minutes. Kavita, whose story we looked at earlier, arrived at her parents’ home one November with a carefully constructed plan: specific boundaries, a grounding practice, a friend she could text, a time-limited stay. And she still spent the first night cycling through the emotional states of her twelve-year-old self. Yasmin knew exactly why holidays destabilized her. The knowing didn’t make it not happen. What made it start to change was building a layered, embodied practice that she returned to before, during, and after each holiday season. A practice that honored both the difficulty of what she was navigating and her real capacity to move through it differently.

Here’s the path I walk with clients, in roughly this order:

1. Start with your body well before the holiday itself. The week before a major family gathering is not the time to try to install a new nervous system practice. The regulation toolkit you’ll need has to be built during the quiet stretches, practiced until it’s automatic enough to work under the conditions of an activated family system. This means identifying two or three somatic tools for processing body-held trauma that reliably return you to your window of tolerance. And practicing them daily in the months beforehand, not just as crisis intervention. It also means protecting your sleep and your movement routine in the weeks around the holidays with more discipline than usual, because a depleted nervous system has far less capacity to handle activation. Think of this as pre-loading your regulatory resources, so you have something to draw on when you need it most.

2. Name what’s actually happening when you regress. Holiday regression doesn’t mean your healing isn’t real. It means you’ve entered a context specifically engineered. By decades of accumulated relational patterns, by neurobiological memory systems, by the sheer density of cues. To pull you back into old states. What helps is having language for this in real time: not I’m falling apart, but my nervous system is responding to familiar cues. This is a known and expected response. I’m not twelve. I have more resources now than I did then. As Bessel van der Kolk, MD, psychiatrist and trauma researcher, author of The Body Keeps the Score, has documented, traumatic memory is encoded in subcortical systems that respond to pattern-matching rather than calendar date. Which is why the smell of a specific dish or the sound of a particular family phrase can collapse twenty years of distance in an instant. Naming the mechanism strips away some of its automatic power.

3. Plan your logistics with the same rigor you’d bring to a difficult work project. One of the places I see driven women underestimate holiday challenge is in assuming that emotional resources alone should be sufficient. They’re not, and that’s not a personal failure. It’s an accurate read of what the family system demands. Drive separately if you can, so you control when you leave. Book accommodation nearby if staying in the family home pushes you past your capacity. Schedule in advance the calls, the runs, the check-ins with safe people that will serve as re-regulation anchors across the visit. Identify your people-pleasing flashpoints. The specific asks or comments that historically derail you. And decide in advance how you’ll respond, so you’re not improvising from inside an activated state. Logistics aren’t avoidance; they’re trauma-informed design.

4. Do the deepest grief work inside a reliable therapeutic relationship. The hardest part of the holidays for most of my clients isn’t the difficult uncle or the loaded dinner table comment. It’s the grief. The grief of seeing clearly, again, what your family system is and isn’t capable of offering. The grief of wanting something different from people who may not be able to provide it. The grief of belonging, partially, to a place that also caused harm. That grief doesn’t resolve in a single season, and it doesn’t resolve alone. Individual therapy with a trauma-informed clinician provides the container to move through that grief at whatever pace your system can tolerate. Including the permission to feel tender and angry and missing-something all at once, without having to hold it together for anyone else in the room. Kavita described this as the first time she’d ever been allowed to miss her mother and be furious with her simultaneously, without either feeling invalidated. That both/and is where real integration lives.

5. Hold the systemic lens alongside the personal one. The holidays are hard when you’re healing from family trauma, in part, because the culture makes a nearly-impossible demand: that you perform gratitude, warmth, and togetherness in a context that may be actively unsafe or chronically wounding. And that you do so with a smile, because it’s the holidays. The “holiday industrial complex,” as we explored in the systemic section, produces a particular kind of double bind for anyone whose family of origin was a source of harm rather than refuge. Holding the systemic lens means you stop asking only what is wrong with me for finding this hard? and start recognizing that the difficulty is proportionate to what you’re actually being asked to do. Relational trauma doesn’t take a seasonal vacation, and healing from it doesn’t either.

6. Rebuild your sense of belonging in chosen containers. One of the most underappreciated aspects of holiday grief for those healing from family trauma is the loneliness of not having the family experience the culture promises. Part of healing is actively, deliberately building a sense of belonging that isn’t dependent on the family system that failed to provide it. This might mean creating new traditions with chosen family, investing in community in ways that feel nourishing rather than obligatory, or simply giving yourself permission to acknowledge that your needs for belonging and warmth are real and legitimate even when the traditional container for them has been unsafe. Yasmin started having a small dinner with two close friends the weekend before Thanksgiving every year. Not as a substitute for family, but as a reminder that she was held, that she belonged somewhere, that the season didn’t have to be only a site of loss.

You’re allowed to find the holidays difficult without that meaning you haven’t healed. You’re allowed to set limits, leave early, stay elsewhere, and grieve what isn’t there. And you’re allowed to ask for support while you navigate this. If you’d like that support, you can explore individual therapy with my team, work through Fixing the Foundations as a self-paced foundation-building resource, or schedule a consultation to talk about what you’re carrying and where to begin.

References

Peer-Reviewed Research (Vancouver)

1. van der Kolk BA, Wang JB, Yehuda R, Bedrosian L, Coker AR, Harrison C, et al. Effects of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD on self-experience. PLoS One. 2024;19(1):e0295926. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0295926. PMID: 38198456.
2. Cloitre M, Stolbach BC, Herman JL, van der Kolk B, Pynoos R, Wang J, et al. A developmental approach to complex PTSD: childhood and adult cumulative trauma as predictors of symptom complexity. J Trauma Stress. 2009;22(5):399-408. doi:10.1002/jts.20444. PMID: 19795402.

Books & Cultural Sources (Chicago Author-Date)

• Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly. Penguin Audio, 2012.
• Walker, Pete. Complex PTSD. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
• Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Random House, 1969.

Medical Disclaimer