CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Listen To This Before Thanksgiving

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Have you ever found yourself dreading the holidays because of family dynamics? In this episode, Whitney discusses dysfunctional family relationships during the holidays, the expectations we carry, and how to approach these situations in healthier ways. You will learn how to accept your family, set boundaries, and actually enjoy your holiday. We recommend listening to this before Thanksgiving dinner with your family. Our New December topic at Calling Home is Holidays and Family Relationships. You can join The Family Cyclebreakers Club here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Calling Home podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. And today we're going to be having a special Thanksgiving episode. So I hope that you're listening to this before Thanksgiving on your way to Thanksgiving with your family. And we're going to go over a lot of good stuff to help you get through this holiday if you are celebrating this year. So I know this will be primarily for my American listeners. But I think a lot of you will get something out of this episode when it comes to the holidays and special events with your family. Just as a heads up for the month of December, next month, we are going to be covering holidays and family dysfunction at Calling Home. And I'm going to be offering a different theme every week for four weeks to help you navigate the holiday season with your family. We're going to be talking about estrangement and holidays in the first week. So any of you, they're dealing with being estranged this holiday season,

thinking about not seeing your family, being no contact, whatever it is, We're going to be talking about that, and we're going to have a group for that. We're also going to be talking about boundary setting over the holidays. So things around like what events you're going to go to, what family you're going to see, gift giving. I'm going to give you a lot of good scripts and help with that, and we will also have a group to help you navigate that issue. We're also going to be talking about acceptance and disappointment in week three.

So talking about accepting the state of your family as it is this holiday season, processing that disappointment. and you can come to group that week to talk about that. And then we will also be talking about in-laws and logistics and all of that good stuff in week four. The fourth week on Christmas Day, that Wednesday, we will not be having a typical Overthinkers Anonymous facilitator-led group because I will not be there. But we will be having a holiday lunch where anyone in the Family Cycle Breakers Club can come

on and meet with other people. You can share a meal, hang out, provide support or get support from other members on that day if you need it. And so the Zoom room will just be open for all of our members. So if you'd like to sign up for that, if that seems like something that would be helpful to you, visit callinghome.co. And you can join at the Family Cyclepikers Club. I will also link that in the show notes here. All right. So let's start this episode by talking about the holiday fantasy versus reality. Because I think a lot of people engage in this fantasy making about their families, but it becomes even more heightened around the holidays. And so the holidays often like amplify our desire for things to be good in our family. And there is a video going around on TikTok. I need to find it. It's this guy who's video. videos always come up for me. He has like a gruff, like powerful voice. I cannot remember his name. But he talks about how dysfunctional families love the holidays. It's like they're Super Bowl, right?

It's the one day that we're going to get together and we're going to be happy and we're going to pretend that everything is good. And it's kind of this way that we enforce this reality that we are all still a family and we're together. And so we can fight every other day of the year. But on the holidays, we're going to come together and we're going to make nice and we're going to do a good job. And this is like the manifesto in dysfunctional families. And so you may be hoping for people to become completely different people. You may be hoping for peace, better communication, people to respect your boundaries. And I am here to tell you, you need to give up the hope on all those things. You need to just forget it. Do not expect people to be better on the holidays.

to act the way they always do or expect them to be worse. Because there's one thing the holidays do to people who otherwise can't really control themselves is they typically get amplified. There are a rare exception of those who know that they have to act a certain way on the holidays or things aren't going to go the way that they want them to. But a lot of other people who struggle throughout the year, become much louder, much bigger, much more forceful around the holidays. And so I want you to go in with the preparation of that being the thing that is most likely to happen. If your family surprises you and things are not what you expected, great. But I would say let's keep preparation high, expectations low, and you will thank

yourself for that. You'll really thank yourself for that because acceptance is the way to not have like a huge emotional letdown this holiday season. When your expectations are totally different from the reality of your family, you are much more likely to end up hurt, disappointed, feeling like you did something wrong and just absolutely fatigued by the whole thing. But if you go in knowing that every year, Uncle Jim drinks too much, he says something really weird to my mom. They get in a fight. Somebody starts screaming. My cousins have to get in the middle and break them up. And I end up being like, why is my family so crazy on Thanksgiving? I want everything to be normal. Why did we even come? Then you're not living in the reality

of your family. And you're going to be disappointed and you're going to be hurt and you're not going to be prepared. Instead, if we say, okay, I know that Uncle Jim is going to drink too much, he's going to say something rude to my mom, my cousins are going to have to get in the middle, there's going to be yelling at the house. If I know this to be true, and it's happened in the last five years, what do I want to do differently? Do I want to leave before Uncle Jim has had his fifth glass of wine. Do I want to sit very far away from him? Do I want to not go? You know, what do I want to do differently? Do I want to only come for appetizers and say we have to leave? Do I want to give myself an out at some point in the day? But really thinking about like,

if this happens, how will I act? Not how will I make sure this doesn't happen? Because because you're not going to be able to tell Uncle Jim, you can't drink, don't say that, you know, blah, blah, blah. You could un-invite him if it's your house. Maybe that's an option. But if you're going to your mom's house and she wants to invite Uncle Jim, really the only thing you can do is control yourself, right? And so thinking about what does that look like?

If the only person I can control is me and who I'm coming with, my children, my spouse, whatever, how am I going to handle this? And I think that you will do a lot better by setting yourself up that way. And if it turns out by some stroke of luck that Uncle Jim doesn't drink this year and he doesn't say something rude to your mom, then okay. You got to stay and things were better. And that would be great. The biggest piece about what I just went through with like, you know, the silly uncle example is that you have to remember that now you are an adult. You are not behold. hold into your family at the holidays in the same way that you were when you were a child.

If you are an adult, you have agency, you have power, and you have options. And so some of those options are deciding when you arrive at the party, when you leave, where you sit, who you talk to, what kinds of things you talk about, what you wear, what you eat, what time you leave, what behavior you're willing to tolerate, and what you're not. These are all things that you get to decide as an adult. And when you can have that empowerment of like, I do have options, I do have power over this situation. It will make it a lot easier for you to step into that power.

Just because it's the holidays doesn't mean I have to do what every single person wants me to do and be at their mercy. They will be okay. They will survive. A little disappointment will not kill me. Now let's talk a little bit more about managing expectations throughout the holiday season. So there's a lot of pressure to be perfect over the holidays, right? And I think that this is, of course, you know, something that has increased since the advent

of social media. I find myself falling into this and like, oh my gosh, more Christmas decorations. They're buying this. You see those like gift halls that kids are doing. It's like, oh my gosh, this is wild. I can't even imagine if this existed when I was a time. teenager or a kid, how much comparison I would have felt and like how bad I would have felt if I didn't have the strategies to deal with that. So I have to remind myself all the time. If you guys

follow influencers who are sharing like their Christmas decor and what they're doing and all the stuff they're setting up, I want you to remember that all this stuff they're doing is getting paid for by you buying it off of their links and you watching their stuff. So they're not really like always buying all that stuff and doing all that stuff. It's their job. It's what they are doing to make money. They have to put on this facade and do all this stuff in their house because people are voyeuristically viewing it and they're making money off of the affiliate links and advertising for products from businesses and you watching their videos and sharing them. that a lot of the time you are competing with someone who is at work doing this stuff.

They're not just a regular person who also has another job and is doing these things. So don't set yourself up for failure, comparing yourself to someone who literally spent their 12-hour workday decorating their house for Christmas because they make money off of that and they're getting paid to do it. That's different than you, the nurse, who went to work for 12 hours and is trying to then go out and buy all this stuff and make your house look like that influencer. we are not playing the same game here. And I'm telling you, I have to have this pep talk with myself all the time because it's so easy to get caught up in it and be like, but it's so pretty,

it's so nice. I want mine to look that way when we're not in the same race at all. And you don't have to buy into all of it. Decorating my house for the holidays is something that makes me happy. It brings my kids a lot of joy. I like doing it. But I have to really keep that in check with like it not then becoming this mandatory obligation that makes me feel less than if I don't live up to a certain standard because that's not fun. That's not enjoyable at all. Okay, so now I want to touch on recognizing dysfunction and setting boundaries around the holidays. So you need to really get clear on like what are the unique pain points for my family this holiday season. And I want to go through a couple of things that might be difficult for you in your family. So thinking about,

like, is it logistics that's hard? Is it people's expectations? Is it the, is it something like the travel, how much money you need to spend on gifts, the expectations around gift giving, attendance, how people get dressed, what time you're going to be there? Or is it also about, like, will they behave? Will I be anxious at the table? Is so-and-so going to say this weird thing at a left field? Like, there are different types of anxieties that can come up around these holidays. When we're thinking about Thanksgiving, I think that it's really more about like, what's the day going to be like? How's everyone going to act? If this is a group of people that doesn't typically spend time together all in one room, how is it going to be to have everybody there?

Is there one particular person that you're worried about, who has done things in years past? What types of conversations do you need to have as a family and expectations that need to be set? And this might include having conversations with your partner about what you are anxious about and what you need support with or signs that you might be showing when you're getting overwhelmed or overstimulated. Thinking about if you need to have conversations with your own children, what are some difficult moments that might come up that you need to prepare them for? or things that they can talk to you about if they come up. What are your plans for entry and exit of the event? How long are you going to stay? Is there going to be a point at which you need to leave if someone starts doing X behavior?

I think it's really, really wonderful to have these conversations with your support team. So that could be yourself, a friend, another family member, your partner, your children. Obviously make that developmentally appropriate, but making sure that everyone's on the same page and knows that they are supported if this is a high-tension environment that has the potential for dysfunction. And I want to acknowledge this, that these family events, they're supposed to be fun for you. They're not supposed to be, like, so terrible that you feel like you're going to die or explode before you go.

And that's a sign that, like, something needs to change. If you're feeling this awful about the event, this much dread, this much anxiety, then I would say, like, you are out of crossroads where this might not be the year to go. This might be the year to only go for five minutes and see how much you can tolerate. But I feel like I have to say this every year that, like, you're allowed to enjoy the holidays. It's not your job just to only appease, like, the one person that is the head of your family and make everything okay for them so that they don't lose their minds. you are also allowed to enjoy yourself and to safeguard your peace over this time of the year.

So these are some things that I want you to consider if you're feeling like, is this more trouble than it's worth? Like, if you're spending more time managing family drama than enjoying the event, that's probably a sign. That's unsustainable. If you feel like the leading up to the event is so anxiety-provoking that it doesn't even feel like when you go that it's worth it, that's a sign that this might be unsustainable. If you leave these events feeling completely drained, unfulfilled, like your boundaries have been violated, like you were attacked or criticized or abused, that's unsustainable. That's something to think about. So now let's talk a little bit about rethinking family traditions. I think that sometimes we imagine that traditions like Thanksgiving, where you eat Thanksgiving dinner, are always positive. And when we think of the word tradition, I think of like one of those like Target holiday commercials

where people are sitting around the table laughing. And that is not always the case. So I want to give you a little bit of a breakdown about what would be considered like a negative family. tradition. Okay? So things like forced affection, rigid gender roles, diet culture, rules about bodies, keeping abusive individuals in your life because they're family. These are all examples of things that can become traditions in families, but that aren't actually good. So a tradition is really just something that has meaning in your family and gets repeated on a consistent schedule. And for some of you, that is the yearly Thanksgiving blowout. And you get to decide, is this a tradition that I would like to participate in and that I would like to keep? If you would like to reshape the traditions

in your family, here are some things that you can do to kind of start thinking about that. And I know we're pretty close to Thanksgiving. So maybe you use this more for Christmas or Hanukkah or the new year or whatever else you have coming up in your life that's a tradition in your family. But maybe some of you can do this by Thanksgiving. You can list. You can list all of your current family traditions. And I want you to highlight those that bring negative memories and circle the positive ones. So highlight the negatives, circle the positives. Reflect on whether any of the traditions that you marked can be adapted for a better experience. What would you need to do to make some of these a better experience? Do some of them need

to just be thrown out entirely? And then you can. can involve other family members in this part, if that's appropriate. I also want you to consider your current season of life and how these traditions can align with it. So if you historically have gotten on a four-hour flight every Thanksgiving to go see someone that lives in, I don't know, Arizona, and now you have three little kids and you can't afford plane tickets and you can't get them all on the flight and it's very stressful, you might stop going to Arizona this year. And It doesn't mean that you don't love the people in Arizona and they might be disappointed with you, but you have to consider the stage of life that you're in.

And that's where traditions can be dynamic and they can change and they can evolve over time based on where the family is at. And I think a lot of people who end up putting up the biggest fight, it's because they don't allow themselves to be fluid in these traditions and to grieve the fact that not all stages of life are the same and can allow for the same time. types of tradition and things need to evolve as the family develops and changes. And this is where I would say, you know, experiment with your traditions. It is okay to try something new. Maybe you say this year we're going to travel and then you do it and you're like, I didn't really like that as much as staying home. So maybe next year we'll stay home.

And if we like that better, we'll keep doing that for the next year until we decide we want to do something different. But having less rigidity, more flexibility, less black and white thinking, And an attitude that we are the family, we get to create what is meaningful to us, can be very, very powerful. All right, so I just wanna recap some of the stuff that I went over in this episode,

in case any of you are listening to this right before going to Thanksgiving, that you need to manage your expectations and be realistic. Tell yourself that this day will be, the day that it will be, and you are equipped to handle whatever gets thrown at you. you are able to handle it.

You have the skills, you have the resources, and you have prepared for this. You've listened to this episode because you want to have the skills, the tools, and the resources, and the confidence to handle this holiday with ease. I want you to remind yourself, I am an adult. I have agency, I have power,

and I have the ability to set limits around my time, my space, my body, my mind, et cetera. I am allowed to decide how this day goes. The other reminder is that you're allowed to have fun today. You're allowed to enjoy yourself. You are allowed to be at peace. You are allowed to decide what that looks like for you. You also are able to tolerate disappointment. Others' disappointment in me will not kill me. It may hurt. It may feel uncomfortable, but the more I learn to tolerate it, the better I will feel. So you're allowed to say no when someone offers you a drink. And if they say, come on, you should, it's Thanksgiving.

I don't want to drink. They're allowed to be disappointed. That's their business. But you can sit with their disappointment and you don't have to take it on. You don't have to carry it with you for the rest of the day. That's on them to carry. You can be polite and have limits. at the same time. And remember, be kind to yourself. Try not to beat yourself up for anything that goes wrong this week or over the next month because this stuff is tough. It's been a long year. A lot of you have been through a lot. I know I evacuated for two hurricanes, have an election, all of this in a matter of like three weeks. And I think it sent my brain into another orbit. So I understand that, like, we've all been going through different things.

Grief, having kids, loss, job changes, job losses, family issues, politics, estrangement. All of this stuff is so, so hard and so heavy. And I am just grateful that at calling home, we have been able to provide you all with a space where you can come and feel less weird and less other for what you're dealing with. Because the one thing I hear from everyone that joins our community is like, wow, it is so powerful to know that I'm not the only one. So if you're listening to this episode and feeling like, gosh, I have to listen to this episode on the way to Thanksgiving, like other people don't have to do this kind of prep,

thousands of people are listening to this episode with you right now. And thousands of people are feeling like I have to accept what is, I have to set boundaries, this isn't perfect, this isn't really what I want, but I'm doing it and I'm making it work for me. And for some of you, that might mean you're listening to this episode because you're tapping out this year and you're not spending time with your family and you're choosing to be alone. And for some of you, it might mean I'm trying something new. I'm setting boundaries. I'm doing a different thing and I'm going to try to make this work for me and then reevaluate. All I hope is that we have been a important and

valuable resource to you this holiday season. And I hope to see some of you in December inside of the Family Cycle Breakers Club, where we will continue to talk about all of the different things that come up around the holidays and the new year for so many adults in families in this community. So thank you again so much. And I will see all of you next week. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and a wonderful week. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create

any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Colling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below. I'm Oh, Oh, Oh Oh Oh