21 - NOT Home for the Holidays

TRANSCRIPT

 

Hello again, and welcome to the Lessons from Life podcast. I should tell you there’s only about three more weeks that it’s going to be called the Lessons from Life podcast. January 1, we are changing the name of the podcast to Like Driving in Fog: an Emotional Healing podcast. I’m Mary Young, and today we are talking about the holiday season and how absolutely wonderful that can be for people. And yes, if you weren’t sure, that was sarcasm.

We all have grown up watching the holidays be romanticized. All of the movies are about being home for the holidays; all of the songs are about being home for the holidays. Home is the best place you can be during the holidays, with your friends and family. And family is supposedly the absolute best thing in the entire world for you, and you know what?

It’s not always true. Some people have toxic families. The truth is, probably every family since Adam and Eve is a dysfunctional family. Just different families have different dysfunctions. If you are from a toxic family, or if you have family trauma in your past, then the thought of going home for the holidays is not a happy thought. And if we keep with the concept of fogginess, driving in fog, being in dense fog banks, that kind of thing, then the holidays could be the densest fog bank of all.

Because on the one hand you have societal expectations, familial expectations... hey it’s the holidays! Let’s all get together and show how much we love each other, and on the other hand you have your gut, your emotions, your memories saying no.  NO, I don’t want to. I don’t want to go. I don’t have fun; it’s not a good time.

This is your permission: DON’T GO.

If your family is toxic, if your holidays bring you more stress than joy, then let this be the year that you make a change. Let this be the year that you stand up and you say no more, and you take care of yourself. It really is okay to do that. I’m not saying it’s easy, I’m saying it’s okay.

Some families are toxic. Some family members are fine individually, but you get them in a group and the group becomes toxic. You are under no requirement to keep putting yourself in toxic situations. Or as a friend of mine said, it’s okay to tell people stop kicking me.

Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re being kicked. It just is what it is. This is the way our family has always been. This is the way our holidays have always been. I’m just saying take care of you. It’s okay to not go home for the holidays. It’s okay to keep toxic people at arm’s length. It’s okay to have boundaries.

If you do go home, then wrap yourself in boundaries. Set some lines that can’t be crossed: if this happens, I will...whatever. If this happens, I will leave. This year instead of staying in the family home, I’m going to stay in a hotel. I’m going to stay with friends. I’ve going to stay with other relatives that are not toxic. That is totally and completely 0K.

Holidays are big family times. Yeah I know, you already knew that. But it’s the big family times that can be the most triggering. If you have family trauma, it’s the big family times, where you get together with all the toxic people, not just one or two of them at a time. And if your family trauma is abuse -- physical, sexual, mental, emotional -- maybe that abuse has stopped because you’re an adult, but I will bet you that nobody in your family has ever acknowledged the fact that you were abused. Instead they act like it was no big deal, or they act like it never happened. Incest: they act like it never happened. Violence: that’s a little bit harder, but they may act like it’s no big deal, or just pretend it never happened, gloss over it. Mental abuse, emotional abuse: that’s where they look at you like you’re crazy because of the way that you took it all. I didn’t mean it that way, that’s just the way that you took it. I was just teasing. You just can’t take a joke. People, none of that is true. They were mentally or emotionally abusive, and it affected you, and it makes you not want to go home. So don’t go.

Now, let’s bring in some reality. If you don’t go home, you’re going to hear about it. He thinks he’s too good for us. She’s too busy; she just doesn’t prioritize her family. That’s just another way of trying to control, and part of being emotionally healthy is not letting other people control you.

It may be hard the first time, but it’s one of the best gifts you can give yourself. To not put yourself in a toxic situation, to not put yourself in the line of fire. Like I said, it’s not easy, especially the first time. There’s a phrase you will hear over and over and over, or read over and over and over. I’ve seen it more times than I can count in the last several years: speak your truth, even if your voice shakes. Let that be your phrase for this holiday season.

Speak your truth, even if your voice shakes.

My truth is, I don’t have a good time when I go home for Christmas, so I would rather not, and I’m not going to. I don’t have to give a reason. Just no, I can’t make it. No is a complete sentence. As soon as you start giving reasons, they start arguing against those reasons.

I can’t afford it: we’ll buy you a ticket.

I can’t afford a hotel: you can stay here.

If you’re not going, just say no I’m not coming.

No explanations are necessary. Even if they ask, just keep repeating: I’m sorry I can’t make it.

I hope that you have friends near you that support you and encourage you. Maybe you can start new holiday traditions with them. Another option is to say: you know, Christmas is such a busy time. It’s just too hard to do it Christmas, but I’ll be happy to get together with you in mid-January. Take it at a time when it is not wrapped up in the holidays and the holiday expectations, and it may not be quite as toxic.

If you are having a hard time with the holidays and you just wish there was somebody that understood, there are lots of people that understand. If you’re on Facebook, look up the page Talking Trees. It’s a page that’s owned by Dr. Rosenna Bakari. She is a child sexual abuse survivor and a psychologist. Every day there will be a post on Talking Trees that is encouraging, uplifting, insightful. Even if you are not a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, if your childhood trauma was in some other category, you can benefit by what Dr. Bakari puts on her page. And right now she’s talking about toxic families and getting through the holidays, so you could go to the Talking Trees page and find some good insight in the posts. And find people in the comments who are experiencing the same thing you are, and that way you will be reminded that you’re not alone. Holidays are hard. Don’t make them harder on yourself if you don’t have to.

Thanks for joining us today. We’ll see you next time. Until then go make it a great week.