Surviving Holiday Stress, Blues, and Family Gatherings

By Liz Shaw LMFT, M.Div.

There are a number of contexts and situations that can create pain, tension, or conflict in families during the holidays:

Going to relatives’ home
1. Your in-laws or mine:
Pressure by one or the other set of in-laws to come to their house every Christmas can result in marital conflict. Decide ahead of time how to share your time with relatives and then stick to it—Hold to your boundaries. Better to have in-laws resent your decision than to have your spouse feel unheard.
2. Being on their turf with their ways of doing things
Adjust to their expectations and rules as long as they don’t violate a core principle and/or isn’t emotionally damaging to you or your family. For example, if a relative is verbally or emotionally abusive, be prepared to handle this proactively.
3. Reverting to Parent-Child roles or old patterns with siblings or parents. This is more likely to happen to the person who didn’t completely “leave and cleave” or differentiate. Be aware of your tendency to fall into childhood roles. Plan ahead by asking yourself: “How will I handle this differently if it occurs?”

Relatives coming to your home
1. Playing the host can wear you out. Hosts tend to lose sight of each other as they focus on all the guests’ needs. The hosts need some time out for reconnection—a touch, a short walk, a moment of reconnection, a few minutes alone to regroup and reconnect.
2. The regular routine of the family is disrupted and can cause stress. For example, the children’s bedtime or eating schedule is disrupted or they get hyped by all the activity.

Visitation struggles in divorced and blended families
1. Interaction with ex-spouse and sharing the kids can be tense.
2. Plan ahead and agree to who will be where and when. Be firm about sticking to agreement. But all the adults involved have a responsibility to make the children’s welfare the first priority. Don’t make them pawns in your conflicts.

Loneliness for singles, divorced and widowed
1. If this is the first holiday season without a loved one, know that you can survive the day even if there are difficult moments. If the loss is very recent, give yourself permission not to do all the things you normally would do. For example, you may want to skip sending out Christmas cards or decorating to conserve your energy. Try to find a balance between alone time and being with people who understand and support you.
2. Make a specific plan for the day ahead of time. Avoid sitting alone at home and sinking into loneliness. Whatever you decide to do, don’t pressure yourself or allow yourself to be pressured to put on a performance. Be yourself. If you are all alone, consider having dinner with extended family or another single, divorced or widowed person. Invite a foreign student or military person to join you for the holiday. Go skiing for the day. Create a new tradition/activity—go to the movies. Serve at a soup kitchen.
3. Remember, anticipation of the coming holiday is often worse than the actual day.

The misbehaving relative who dampens or disrupts the festivities (e.g. the drunk, the controller, or the critic.)
1. Plan ahead as to how you will handle the person and his or her behavior. What have you done in the past? Did it work? If not, how could you handle it differently? Ask a close friend for ideas. You will feel less anxious and more confident if you have a specific plan in mind.
2. For example, if Auntie starts criticizing my children, I will ask her politely to stop. If she disregards me, I will take the kids to the park or the movies. If Uncle gets verbally abusive, we will leave early. Having a plan in mind gives you a sense of competence to handle the situation should it occur. Your self-confidence may even deter them from their typical behavior. If it doesn’t, you already know how you will handle it.

How can we prepare ourselves to survive the stresses, grief, and tension that we may encounter?

1. Practice good self-care!
We go, go, go. We try to do too much and do it perfectly including sending out Xmas cards, work and church responsibilities, shopping for gifts, buying and preparing food, cleaning the house, and spending too much. We end up with a kind of burnout. We feel worn out, irritable, or wired. Be selective about the number of activities or gatherings you attend. Get plenty of sleep, exercise, and a healthy diet.

2. Be careful of hope and expectations.
Christmas is a season of hope and expectations. We hope that our needs will get met, that this year will be different or better or perfect. Sometimes the people in charge of the festivities expect others to perform at the same level as they do, which creates fatigue or resentment or both. Perfectionists have a rough time at Christmas because they need everything to be perfect. This can make it tense for others too.

Try to keep things simple. Jesus calls us to a life of simplicity and priorities and yet the holidays seem to be the opposite of this. The simpler we keep it, the less stressed we’ll be and the more we’ll enjoy it. The Christmas I remember most fondly was when we had two servicemen share dinner with us. We gave them gifts that they didn’t expect. I don’t recall the gifts I received that year, just the joy of helping those guys feel a little less homesick.

3. Time of Remembering and Grieving
Our memories of past holidays can lead to grieving. We grieve the childhood holidays that were not happy. We grieve because someone we love is gone. We grieve because a relative misbehaves, gets drunk, explodes in anger, or gives us the silent treatment. Sometimes we wistfully say, “Can’t we get along just this once for Christmas?” The greater our hopes and expectations, the greater our disappointment or grief will be when they are not met.

We need to recognize that Christmas is a time of remembering and grieving that every family is broken in some way. We wouldn’t have needed Christ’s birth, death or resurrection if we were all whole and perfect. So sadness creeps in around the edges of our celebration as we dream of the perfect holiday family gathering. Too often people try to drown the grief with alcohol or avoid it or pretend it’s not there. Don’t defend against a certain amount of sadness. Allow yourself to acknowledge the feeling and then you can let it go and move on.

I encourage you to make time to reflect on the true meaning of the season, and to stay in the moment so you can find joy in simple tasks, in the beauty of God's creation, and in the people you encounter daily.