How to protect your healing journey as you go home for the holidays
As the holidays come closer, you go through your mental checklist making sure gifts, transportation and dinner details are ready.
But you also, start to rehearse how you want to show up with your family.
Mentally replaying what you love about this reunion and what you are bracing for.
Which version of you will come out around your family?
Perhaps your mother brings out the appeasing part of you, the one that would rather go along than speak up.
Or your brother has the gift of eliciting the harshest comments you ever make, too much hurt gets triggered in his presence.
Maybe it’s not even about you, despite your best efforts every word you say tends to be taken the wrong way.
What if the true gift of this season was to break that pattern?
Would you want that?
Start small, choose only one pattern with one person.
After all, we get the most triggered around those who matter most to us.
Plus, we have the most coping mechanisms around those who have known us the longest.
So with our families… we are wise to go gently.
Step one: Define it
When it comes to your family, what is the tradition? What is your role?
Are you the one to be corrected, the one to be ignored, the unpaid diplomat?
Name it.
Step two: Zoom out
To begin to change the pattern we need to understand the purpose it serves.
How does your role interact with the role of that person?
It might go something like this:
Goal - I want to change my role with my mom.
My role - I am my mom’s rock, I’m always there for her.
Zoom out - Sibling A usually says something kinda rude, that usually makes mom angry but she won’t say anything. Instead she’ll later complain about it with me.
This venting will allow her to ‘move on’ and carry on with the conviviality.
But I feel tired because, really, I’m taking on the anger she has about my sibling.
I’m spending time with the mom that’s focused on them rather than the one who is focused on me.
Step 3 - Some truth digging
We take on these roles because they play to our strengths AND give us a place of belonging with our family.
So as we begin to cut away the pattern, we instinctively know that we are shifting our place of belonging.
There is a risk with that.
If we do not want to risk that, this is valid and okay.
We simply would be changing an internal pattern rather than an external one.
We consciously embrace our role in our family and practice bringing levity and appreciation for its gifts.
‘I choose to stay as the problem-solver. It is tiring but my siblings open up to me and they respect my thoughts’
‘I am okay being the outsider in my family. It saves me a lot of drama and I’m still able to spend time with them, even if it’s less than I would want’
When we take on these roles as children, they are a coping mechanism.
If we choose them as adults they become a strategy.
There’s power in that.
Step 4 - Plant new seeds
Breaking a pattern is not an exact science. After all, if a pattern has survived so long then it's bound to be resilient.
We are not trying to erase it, we are trying to confuse it.
Patterns are debilitating when they are unconscious. As we play around with them, we are bringing them into consciousness.
So even if you don’t find the ‘off’ button this season, chances are you will have made its code more ‘clunky’ and that’s what we want.
With the example from before, some seeds of confusion could be:
When my mom comes to vent I’ll:
Encourage her to talk about it with my sibling. She’ll likely refuse and still vent but I will keep repeating that instead of taking her side as I usually do.
Compliment my sibling: I will remind her of all the awesome things that are also true about my sibling, who knows where that will take the conversation?
Tell her to tell me as we go on a walk: Perhaps a different scenery will be enough to change the usual conversation.
What pattern are you taking on?
Let me know,
and if this sparked something in you, know that I often support my clients through coaching and healing sessions right when they are visiting their families.
It accelerates the healing and allows for more ease around them.
If you want to explore this, feel free to book a session or send me an email about it.
Happy holidays my friend, see you in the new year
Much love,
Andrea
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