Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching and we all hope for warm and friendly family gatherings, good cheer, good fellowship, and good food. Sadly this is not the case for many families in which dysfunction or grief can cloud the holiday and if we allow it, make it one of the most miserable days imaginable.
In my many years of working with clients, I've discovered that holiday anxiety is ubiquitous for many and can be the prelude to an absolutely disastrous holiday season. Rather than highlighting love, kindness and gratitude, the celebrations that are supposed to be joyous become polluted with tension, conflict, rivalry, resentment, and perhaps saddest of all, grief when we've lost a loved family member or friend. Sometimes happiness is contrived and insincere, leaving our relatives and ourselves with feelings of gloom, inner emptiness and a heart-wrenching desire for genuine warmth and closeness.
Coping With Estrangement
When some family members have cut ties with their relatives, the empty chair can stand out like a sore thumb. Everyone loses when a family has disintegrated to this point. The empty chair is particularly painful for parents who have been cut off by their adult children after having devoted their lives to cultivate family relationships that are loving and harmonious. Whether that chair is empty because of the parent-child relationship or estrangement between adult siblings, the pain, if allforgiveness, owed, can make a person, in the words of a client of mine, "want to go to sleep from before Thanksgiving and not to wake up until after New Years."
Honor Obligations
"Honoring obligations" means understanding that what keeps life going - what gives you a realm to live happily - involves keeping the pacts you've made with people who are important to you. Most people feel that without those ties, and the responsibilities they imply, there'd be nothing. Honoring your commitments also means honoring your responsibilities to yourself. In fact, that's the primary goal. When we acknowledge, accept and take full advantage of our interactions with the people we still do have in our lives, and especially when we take steps to bolster the loving connections we have, we help everyone involved - not least ourselves. In this context, you won't think of "honoring obligations" as an onerous chore even when you may not feel very much like doing it. However, the discipline of carrying it out pays off. You're doing what you can to keep everything that matters in place in your life. And right now, what matters most, is having as thriving a support system around you as you can.
Make The First Move
Mending the split with your family member is a gift to yourself, if you are able to create reconciliation. If you can manage it, it's much better than the illusory pleasure of being "right", a very questionable triumph that inherently breeds loss. Of course, this process may not create resolution days before the Thanksgiving holiday, but it could be a good beginning and you could possibly see some results before the Christmas holidays. Resolving discord can take time, and some connections may remain shattered despite a person's best efforts. Below are five tips to expedite the process of making the first move:
1. Make a fearless inventory of the negative traits you need to temper and control to improve your relationship with your family members.
2. Stop taking the inventory of family members' faults.
3. Declare an amnesty and see if it's accepted.
4. Do a needs inventory to find ways you can better cement relationships with family members.
5. Creatively plan shared experiences as building blocks for a newly defined relationship.
Accepting What You Can't Control
Forgiving requires perseverance and will not be instant. Unreciprocated tolerance will surely make you feel defenseless and it's painful to accept that this is out of your control. Nonetheless, even if we can't change our family member, our actions can create greater peace and serenity within ourselves. Accepting that maybe there are people and circumstances that we can't control will surely make the holiday more enjoyable for ourselves and family members whose seats are not vacant.
I always suggest to my clients that they say the Serenity Prayer from AA to help cope with the feelings of having no control over our family members. I practice what I preach in this regard and recite the prayer to myself whenever I'm faced with difficult family problems over which I have no control.
"God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Create and Enjoy a Second Chance Family
We usually think of family as a unit made up of parents and children linked to grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other blood relatives with a shared ancestry. This "family tree," of course, continually receives additions through marriage, and a well-functioning family will not only be able to adapt to these additions, but generally go out of its way to welcome them.
However, there's another definition of family, one that broadens its meaning and scope: a family can also be a group of people connected through fellowship. "Fellowship" suggests a voluntary coming-together, joining through the desire to join, choosing to ally oneself with other people with whom one feels a special connection. It is from this broader definition of family that we derive the concept of the second chance family. In a second chance family, members cultivate friendship, solidarity, and camaraderie because they want to cultivate it. It is an especially crucial and healing notion of family to victims of family rifts, for whom a second chance family can take the place of blood relationships that may, temporarily or forever, simply not be able to provide the security and love they need and deserve.
For more tips on getting through what may be a difficult holiday season for you, check out these tips for beating the holiday blues.
