For the holidays, you may have planned to spend a few days with your family. Enjoying delicious home-cooked meals, browsing through old photo albums, and watching "Home Alone" together to digest the holiday feast—the plan sounds idyllic. However, don't count too much on the Christmas spirit and the carefully prepared dishes during this extended stay in your childhood home. Therapists have calculated the maximum duration for which you can tolerate these reunions.
Family reunions: more trying than relaxing
As Christmas Eve approaches, you might be heading back to your old teenage bedroom, still covered in boy band posters. In movies, this return to the family home is always wonderful and incredibly comforting. The family spends all their time building gingerbread villages, decorating the Christmas tree, all while wearing ugly, festooned sweaters. In real life, it's more like "The Grinch" than "The Enchanted Christmas."
Like every year, you fear that the reunion will turn sour or that old grudges will resurface between bites of bredele. It doesn't take an ill-timed political opinion or a slightly intrusive question about your relationship status to trigger an internal war. In reality, even when everything is going well in the family, you can still suffer a severe social hangover and get sick of your own circle. Rest assured, you're not heartless or a real-life replica of the Grinch.
Therapists, whose offices fill up every Christmas, have a more rational explanation for this emotional outpouring. “Extended family gatherings require adults to regress to their former family roles while still maintaining their current adult identities,” explains Erin Pash, a licensed marriage and family therapist, to HuffPost . It can be particularly difficult to find your place and meet these expectations. On top of that, you lose a degree of autonomy. You have to follow a set of rules: comply with family obligations, eat at specific times, and participate in prescribed activities. In short, your entire routine is disrupted, and after four days, you're already looking forward to leaving.
These signs reveal a lot about your level of saturation.
Christmas family gatherings are particularly draining. If commercials and comedies have convinced you that these are the most precious times of the year, you have every right to feel overwhelmed, overworked, irritated, and exasperated. Even if you're used to suppressing your emotions and retreating to the bathroom, that's not the best solution. Instead of faking cheerfulness, learn to recognize your limits.
Does the slightest thing irritate you? Do you imagine every possible scenario? Are you exhausted even though your only effort is to unfold the blanket on your lap? Is your anger palpable, to the point that your uncle suggests you have a drink to "relax"? It's certainly because you've reached your breaking point, that silent "I can't take it anymore."
“Pay attention to the physical signs: tension headaches, clenched jaw, disturbed sleep, digestive problems, or that feeling of needing a long bathroom break to catch your breath,” recommends Pash. “If you start dreaming about your sofa or counting down the hours until your departure, it means your nervous system is sending you an alarm signal,” the specialist continues.
What therapists recommend to protect you
When family meals become too much, all you want to do is retreat to a cabin with no Wi-Fi. Instead, you go to the kids' table, stay behind the scenes (aka the kitchen), or take a break on the doorstep. And spoiler alert: it's perfectly natural. "Allow yourself to set boundaries without feeling guilty. Needing to distance yourself from your family doesn't mean you don't love them; it simply means you're human," Pash insists.
Of course, there's no question of turning the meal into a settling of scores, of saying out loud what you're feeling inside, or of cutting the festivities short with flimsy excuses. However, you can implement diversionary tactics to prolong your enjoyment. "Create some psychological space for yourself by limiting your availability for each activity: you don't have to be present for every conversation taking place in the kitchen," advises the expert. Find your comfort zone within this discomfort.
Family gatherings, a tradition at the end of the year, can awaken your inner child. However, they are more likely to disrupt your inner harmony. To stay on track, be honest with yourself.
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