Ah, the holidays. A season of great joy…and many times, a season of endless frustration with our families. Family gatherings can be a great chance to create new memories, with fun and laughter. For some, however, they can also open up old wounds, and even create new wounds. It can be difficult to know how best to approach family gatherings during the holidays. Do I go? Do I stay home and avoid the potential conflict? If I go and there is conflict, how do I stay true to myself, but also not rock the boat? Or maybe, do I want to do things differently this year and begin to rock the boat, begin to change the dynamics in my family that I am just sick of? It often feels like choosing between two bad options: attending the family gathering and pretending to be someone you’re not, or skipping out altogether and possibly missing out on the good times. The first gives you a chance to participate in the joy of company and of the season, but forces you to be inauthentic and incongruent with your inner self. The second allows you to stay true to yourself, but also leads you to being alone and fosters greater isolation and disconnection.
But what if I asked you to consider a third option? What if, this holiday season, you didn’t need to make an action plan on doing things differently with your family? What if the third option I suggested to you was, simply, to observe? A third option is to pretend to be a third-party detective—a curious, perceptive outsider—while you are at your family gatherings, and simply, notice how everyone is interacting. How do your parents talk to each other and to you? How do they react when things become stressful? What relational patterns do you notice coming up? How do you notice you are different when you’re with them? Do you become more anxious and fixated on being a pleaser? Do you become more reserved and numb? What role do you find yourself stepping into? Some of my favorite questions also revolve around age. How old do you feel inside when you are at home for the holidays? For example, if you are a 32-year-old woman, do you still feel like an adult at home, or do you begin to feel invisible and timid, like an 8-year- old little girl? Notice how others relate to you, how you relate to others, and how you relate to yourself in the presence of your family.
This simple act of noticing is often the first step to breaking free from the entanglement of our families of origin. Once we identify the roles that we step into in the presence of our families, we can make sense of why these roles were necessary in order to help us survive, to succeed, or to feel safe and loved. Then, we can decide if these roles are as honoring to us today as they were when we were younger. Often, we realize that they hurt us more now than they help us. We can bless those parts of us that took on roles to protect us in the past, while looking forward to a future with our family in which we can choose a different role to take on—one that is more honoring to our true selves. Changing our roles in our families can often be the catalyst for upending the entire family dynamic. Because of this, it can lead to more conflict initially. However, in taking the courage to create new patterns in your family by stepping out of old ones, you are inviting everyone in your family to greater freedom and depth in relationships than your family system has ever known.
Families are hard. As the old saying goes, you can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them. They are great sources of joy and security, and they can also be sources of frustration and harm. You can change the dynamic by simply starting to notice how you show up in your family. We at Thrive Counseling Kirkland would love to come alongside you as you begin to observe your family dynamics, and we want to help you break free of places you may feel bound by in your family and pursue greater freedom and depth in these relationships.