4 Tips for Handling Frustrating Family Dynamics During the Holidays

You love your family and understand how important your connections with them are. However, family wouldn't be family if we didn't get annoyed with them occasionally. The holidays are joyous, filled with get-togethers, great food, and memory-making moments. Even though family time can feel enjoyable, it's also not uncommon to feel feelings of frustration, impatience or disappointment.

Feeling big and uncomfortable feelings towards family members, unfortunately, can be quite common, no matter the time of year. Between conflicts in personalities, arguments, and tensions from past hurt, family time can be triggering for many people. While this post is about navigating these dynamics during the holidays, you can use these tips all year round.

4 Tips for Handling Frustrating Family Dynamics During the Holidays

1. Leave a Negative Mindset at the Door

Our mindset and how we approach situations can dictate how we feel about them and handle them. If you find yourself dreading a family gathering because you are consumed with negative scenarios playing out in your mind’s eye, there's a good chance you'll feel even more annoyed and on edge, when you do spend time with them.

By leaving a negative attitude and worries at the door, it can often feel helpful in freeing yourself from negative thoughts and help you to feel more at ease in uncomfortable family gatherings. If you are feeling more comfortable, there is a greater chance of you being able to feel more neutral and able to influence a peaceful gathering. Catastrophizing or “fortune-telling” negative scenarios or assuming someone will feel upset with you will only cause you to feel anxious before, during, and especially after. Your feelings are valid and it is important to use them as signs or guideposts to what might be leaving you feeling uneasy or concerned. Your thought patterns may or may not be helpful as many of these scenarios may not actually play out as they have in your mind. Examine the evidence or likelihood of these scenarios occurring and try your best to focus on the positive traits of your family members instead of only on the negatives. If you are calm before a gathering, it will be easier to respond and handle difficult situations in a way that is aligned to your values and your highest and best self. Respectfully setting and maintaining boundaries may be necessary. Refocusing your thoughts to what you can control (i.e. your boundaries) can feel helpful, especially if your emotional safety is in question.

2. Be Realistic About Your Expectations

We all have ideas about how the holidays are going to go. After all, we are constantly bombarded with images and videos on social media of positive and fun holiday gatherings. We often expect that for ourselves. However, these expectations can sometimes be unrealistic and cause us to feel disappointed when things don't go as planned.

Unfortunately, you can't expect people to change during the holidays, especially when they have exhibited these same patterns in the past. If you know that there's a good chance that someone will be rude or disrespectful, it may not be realistic to expect them to be any different. We are not in control of how another person behaves. Understanding that most people are doing the best that they can with what they know can often feel helpful in nurturing acceptance for people. In some situations, setting and maintaining healthy boundaries may be necessary to keep you feeling emotionally safe. It can feel helpful to reflect/consider that if someone is typically upset with you for respectfully setting and maintaining healthy boundaries, it may be because they benefit from you not having that boundary there in the first place. If they think you are rejecting them, when you are just choosing your health, wellness and safety, they could possibly be personalizing something that isn’t actually personal. It is always ideal for them to be able to distinguish between an actual rejection and something that activates their rejection sensitivity or attachment wounds they might carry, but this is their work to do. Your work is to adjust your expectations, and your proximity, accordingly.

3. Avoid Emotionally Unsafe Conversations

Inevitably, talks of politics will likely come up during gatherings. It's a hot topic, especially during the times we are living in now. However, politics can often cause tension and arguments during a gathering. Everyone has differing viewpoints about the climate of the current world and our country, and these opinions will come up. Having comfortable conversations about uncomfortable topics can be a very enriching experience for growth and intellectual stimulation, but this requires a solid foundation of emotional safety and respect to be in place.

If you can, try not to engage in these conversations if you know a relative's way of communicating is disrespectful or feels emotionally unsafe (i.e. name calling, shaming, hostile mockery, etc). If possible, try to ground yourself with your breathing techniques to self-regulate and see if you can respond with curiosity. If this is not possible, remove yourself from the conversation by talking to someone else, changing the subject, or removing yourself from the room (i.e. a bathroom break can feel helpful!).

You also have the right to respectfully set and maintain healthy boundaries. If done so in a clear and respectful way, your relatives’ feelings and reactions to your healthy boundaries are up to them to manage and regulate.

4. Accept What You Can't Control

We can control many things in life, but there are just as many that we can't. You can't control your relative, who gets too loud and opinionated at the dinner table, or that intrusive relative who wants to point out everything about you that they disapprove of.

As challenging as some relatives might be, it's best to accept that you can't control what they say or do. What you can control is how you respond and react to them, in a way that is in alignment to your values and your highest and best self. There is nothing wrong with walking away from a relative who is disrespecting you. While they may be family, it is never okay to be on the receiving end of any emotional abuse. Respectfully setting clear boundaries is very much in your control to help you feel safe.

If you are interested in learning how anxiety therapy can help you deal with frustrating family members, reach out We can help you navigate holiday parties, family get-togethers, and beyond with anxiety therapy.