Holiday Sanity-Saving

As we come into this time of holidays and family togetherness, many emotions are stirred up for us from past memories of holidays and family togetherness. Some of these may be quite positive; for example, the smells of turkey baking, making Grandma’s special apple pie in honor of her memory, or seeing children who’ve moved far away return to the fold. Of course, other memories aren’t quite so positive, as old tensions between certain relatives resurface almost instantly.

Sadly, these tensions often threaten to overwhelm our experience of the holidays and make us dread more than anticipate the homecoming. How to “inoculate” ourselves in what is already a very stressful time of the year? An important tool that can aid and guide us is that of compassion. Compassion is one of the easiest concepts to think about, and one of the hardest to embody. What would compassion look like with a difficult relative?

When so many conflicting, challenging, resentful, and generally negative feelings exist about one or more relatives, generating compassion for that person or persons can feel almost impossible. A crucial place to start in the compassion process is actually with oneself. If one doesn’t have self-compassion it becomes impossible to generate compassion for others. Disregarding your own feelings is actually a main distinction between codependency and compassion. Acknowledging that you have a right to your feelings about the person and the situation is an essential first step to being able to move forward.

Unfortunately, what happens for too many people in this situation is that they stop the process right there. Only focusing on our own feelings is a big part of our own pain and suffering. One of the most insidious hooks to anger is the nice head of self-righteous steam it can build inside of us. Weirdly, part of that self-righteous, “I deserve to feel this way, how DARE he treat me that way!” feels kind of good, almost intoxicating. Before too long, though, we have found ourselves perseverating on the person and situation, and our overall mood has gone south.

If we are able to look at anger as the toxic emotion that it is, we can begin to not let it take root inside of us and can let it go more easily. I often tell my therapy clients that the antidote to anger is compassion. Letting go of this anger is particularly hard for us men, who are so often socialized to believe that the only acceptable, “not weak” emotion we are allowed to express is anger.

So after one has practiced some compassion to themselves for the right to the feelings, the next step is to make a conscious choice to not let angry thoughts toward the other person take root. As hard as it is to “switch gears,” consciously and intentionally trying to imagine what is going on for the other person is the first step toward compassionate understanding. It may be that the relative doesn’t have good verbal tools to express herself, or that his drinking problem has such a hold on him that he can’t manage to let other people get close to him, or that she had a pretty tough upbringing and expressions of love and warmth were never much of a part of her life from an early age.

Whatever the reason the person misbehaves, it does not give them the right to mistreat you. That’s self-compassion. Compassion to the other person is to not “demonize” them or feel the need to retaliate against them. Sometimes the best approach to tolerate them during the holidays is to try to keep a respectful distance if possible, such as not sitting next to them at the meal table. Anticipate the feelings that are so common for you during interactions with that person so that they won’t “blindside” you, and try to have a plan for managing the feelings. If compassion alone isn’t working, perhaps you may need to take a break from the situation until your feelings have subsided.

Finally, if you also have a positive plan to seek out and spend time with the relative or relatives most likely to uplift you and make you feel happy, this can counter-balance the other negative energy and help you to not over-focus on the dysfunctional parts of your family.

A great meditation on compassion from the Buddhist tradition that you can begin to practice is called metta, or loving-kindness meditation. A regular practice of metta can go a long way toward helping you to soften your self toward those who stir up strong negative feelings within you. A link to a version of it can be found here: http://www.mettainstitute.org/mettameditation.html

Happy (or at least sane) Holidays!