For Better or Worse: Personal Growth During the Holiday Season
As we continue to get closer to the holiday season, there grows a certain joy and warmth in the air as we know that we will soon be surrounded by friends, family, and other loved ones. Eager to create new memories and taking comfort in reminiscing over past ones, the holiday season often provides the perfect reprieve from the stressors of work and daily life. However, with as much joy and happiness that the holiday season is able to bring, it also can be a time where feelings of anger, shame, and sadness resurface as we are faced with the tension of unresolved family issues and changes to previously established social norms and dynamics.
Understanding What is Happening & Why
According to Hilary Jacobs Hendel, LCSW, experiencing these types of feelings & emotions around family are not unusual. These interactions have the profound ability to “send us back in time to how we felt as children” and it is hard to resist being pulled back in when so much of our mind and body remember our “childhood wounds”.
Being away from home with hectic schedules filled with schoolwork, team practices, and training schedules, along with the excitement of games/meets and media events, it’s easy to put the past on the back burner as you become accustomed to your new routine away from home. Regardless of if it’s your freshman year or your senior/graduate year, university provides the unique opportunity for you to redefine and re-establish what “normal” is and how that looks in your life. But when returning home, people may often again find themselves up against the same expectations and harsh realities of the life they have been away from. From sibling rivalries and parental strife to political differences and financial hardships, the holidays can act more as a trigger for old emotions rather than a glimmer of peace. Being expected to push down your feelings and fall in line with the status quo of your family in order to maintain peace during the holiday. This process, while understandable, breeds stress and anxiety among other feelings, but is there a way to avoid it?
Staying Cool, Calm, & Collected: The Courage to Cope
Despite the negative feelings & emotions that can arise from being in spaces like this, the experience can represent a time for personal growth and acceptance as you continue to learn how to navigate through difficult interactions where you feel like you are no longer in control. Sometimes we may not know what that first step towards change and healthy coping looks like, especially around family but there a numerous way to start.
Understanding What is in Our Control
Sometimes it is very easy to see where our control starts and stops, but for the grey area in the middle, our judgement is often clouded where we feel either consumed with responsibility or a sense of helplessness to change/maintain it. The cost – our own energy. During these moments it is helpful to remember what you do have agency over and attempt to refocus on what is not only in our control, but on what can give us happiness.
Acceptance
Acceptance can be difficult as we still may hold on to hope about changes, we wish to see from our loved ones. Yet, acknowledging what is true of our surroundings and relationships provide us with the first step into understanding and validating our emotions and feelings.
Exploring Boundaries
Boundaries are not easy to form nor place since we often do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings or offend them, but during this time it may be easier to start to give thought to them. In particular, what they may look like, why they are needed, how they can exist in your own unique family.
Incorporating Mindfulness Activities
Activities such as journaling, meditation, deep breathing, and much more can be useful tools in response to high stress situations.
Giving Yourself Permission to say NO
