Nothing like the holiday season to get everyone into extra stress mode, especially this year. The parties, might look a little different, if they even happen. The shopping lists might look like Amazon all the way. The carb overload might be a little extra this time around because we are trying not to feel the stress of it all.
Add onto all of that, sometimes, the time spent with our family, especially that extra close time right now, can bring its own kind of stressful feeling.
Whatever your situation looks like for this year, I want to share with you the skills that you need to really love being with your family members this season.
Get Curious
If you are getting together with other family members this year or you are getting together via Zoom chats, any family situation can have you feeling judged. And you may even feel justified in feeling hurt.
Practice curiosity.
When you approach a situation with curiosity, you are naturally going to take a step away from all the drama and look at the circumstance with a rational eye.
For example, if you do find yourself in a family gathering and then your son is running around and ends up bumping into a grownup. They might look at you in a way that you interpret as being accusing.
So before you get offended and spin in your own mind about what could be happening or what she means by that look, get curious.
Why does that family member of yours have a hard time around kids? Maybe they miss the time when it was them running around. Maybe they didn’t sleep well the night before. Maybe they are stressed about traveling. The possibilities are endless.
What if you are on a Zoom chat with your family members and they make a remark like “I sure wish you could have driven over here to see us.”
Instead of interpreting that as them not understanding or not respecting your family rules, you can get curious. Maybe they are really lonely. Maybe they haven’t seen anyone for a long time. Maybe they just want to see their grandkids and miss them a lot. The possibilities are endless.
When you start getting curious about the other person, we stop making it mean anything about us and open up to a possibility of understanding that family member. Seeing their side of the story. It really is a game changer when you stop taking things personally.
Disentangle your emotions
“I just want to have a nice holiday season and everyone to enjoy themselves.”
That sounds like such a nice thought but it is very sneaky and can cause many problems instead.
The truth is, we really cannot control the way anyone experiences the holidays. It is really easy to have our own emotions get tangled up with our loved ones. Its natural for us to even mirror negative emotions to people that we are really close to. That sets the way for disappointment and resentment. As mothers, we are very easily prone to believing that in order to be happy, we need to somehow make sure that everyone else is happy.
I remember a while ago when I was a new mom and everyone wanted to see my new baby, I felt like I had to be everything for everyone. I worked so hard to please my husband side of the family and I worked so hard to fill every need but it still wasn’t enough. I was done. I thought that I was somehow not a good person for not being able to do it all. On top of that I wasn’t able to do it effortlessly.
Now I understand that my emotions were all tangled up with everyone elses emotions. If everyone else was not happy, I made it mean that I was a failure. That was a huge problem.
So now I have learned to disentangle my own emotions. My kids and in-laws can experience Christmas however they want. I have the choice to experience it how I want. I choose to believe that I am a good mother, and end up showing up in a way that I feel great about and happy.
The 50/50
With all that said, I think that it is natural to experience some negative emotions. To be exact, 50% of the time we will have negative emotions. That is part of life. No amount of planning, manipulating, or reprimanding if going to change that.
When we learn to accept the negative and get really good at feeling the negative emotion and letting it pass through rather than resisting it, our experience becomes so much more peaceful.
I go into any gathering knowing that at some point, someones child is going to be mean to my kids and there will most likely be a meltdown. That is ok. That is what kids do.
I know that some people will talk about how they have it way harder than others. That is ok. That is what people do sometimes. I know how to deal with it and it does not involve eating extra large amounts of pie.
I try to see it a sign of connection between friends when they bicker or that my child is just tired. I try to see how peoples thoughts are effecting their lives and be empathetic towards them.
There is always a balance. If we didn’t have the hurt, we wouldn’t treasure the joy. You cannot have one without the other. So decide that you will have both and get really good at feeling the negative feeling without reacting to it.
That is what dealing with people is all about. Accepting the weird, annoying, fun, awesome experience of every individual you are seeing physically or only seeing via Zoom. All of it. You can do it and it is going to be great.
If you want to learn more about these skills, I invite you to check out the FREE training on relationships, to get you from stuck to thriving.
What’s next? Get the 5 coping skills for this holiday season and top essential oils to keep your stress levels at bay.
