The Key to Surviving Thanksgiving
There’s a time and a place… But the Thanksgiving table may not be one of them. In this blog post, I'm sharing tips for doing more than just surviving the day with family.
Thanksgiving can be an exciting holiday for many people. For others, it has stress and anxiety stuffed and mashed around it. Family dynamics can be complicated!
I’m hoping the following tips can help you go from dreading the day to actually enjoying it. Especially once that tryptophan kicks in and you can sleep well knowing you managed yourself the best you could.
Below are some ideas that perhaps you haven’t thought about and I encourage you to give them some consideration before stuffing your face with goodness. At the end of each tip, you’ll find an experiment to try. It'll make life more interesting, after all!
Don’t worry, one of the tips I am offering is to not talk politics at the table. That’s so obvious I don’t even need to put it down. If your politics are opposite, nothing is going to be solved at the Thanksgiving table and if your politics are the same you’re preaching to the choir. Let’s move on.
Deflect.
Tired of all those questions about sensitive topics? If people are talking instead of eating, get behind the wheel and steer the conversation.
Get people talking about themselves and their own stories.
For example, if someone says, “Do you have a boyfriend yet?” You can respond either, “Nope! Prince Charming hasn’t arrived yet.” or “I’m loving my singleness right now.” or “I haven’t graced that perfect person with my presence yet.” and then "Tell me how you and _________ met.” Boom, diverted.
“When are you two getting married already?” You can respond "You’ll have to dance elsewhere, for now, tell me about your and _________’s wedding day!”
“How’s the job search going?” You can respond, “Are you hiring?!” Or “Still looking for my perfect fit.” and then “What was your first (or favorite) job?”
“When will I get a grandchild” you can respond, “When I’ve gotten all my traveling in! How many years were you and _________ married before you had children”, or “What did you and ______ do after marriage and before children?”
(Of course, this is an assumption that it went in that order, it may not have and then the last part you could say, “Did you and _______ travel with young children”? )
Do you get the drift? If you don’t want to talk about yourself, add some lightness and then let them talk about themselves (which they probably prefer, quite frankly.) If you’re experimenting with tricky questions stay present so you can think carefully about your response.
Let stuff go.
People are going to do and say things that are irritating and triggering. That’s what families do!
If this happens to you frequently, prepare for it. Make a game in your head about it. For example, how many times before we start dinner will so and so say something outlandish? Come up with a number and during the actual event, keep track in your head. This will help you focus on something other than the comments being made.
Or, once you are triggered, feel the emotion of the trigger wash over you and breathe it out without externally reacting. Be your own science experiment and see if you can breathe your way to a calmer physiology. Focusing on what you have control over (yourself) will help you release some emotional distress.
Quick tips to let stuff go: keep busy, play with the kids, go for a walk, or find the animals.
Today is not the day to call people out on the error of their ways. It’s best to let things go, not only for the overall family dynamic but more importantly for you. It’s a skill to be confident enough to be able to rise above the conscious or unconscious bid for negative engagement. Your experiment? Increase awareness around your own physiology, inhale, exhale, and let it go.
Visualize before you go.
When we lay neural pathways in our brains of how we want the event to go, it increases the likelihood the event will go the way we want.
So how do you want Thanksgiving to go? Write the story out in your head or on a piece of paper. The visualization may even include someone triggering you and you smiling, breathing, and keeping busy.
Another question to help guide you through this visualization exercise is how would my best self operate during this? Have a clear idea of how or who you want to be, think about it, imagine it, and play the story out in your head. Your experiment? Focusing on yourself and knowing the wants of your day and noticing how this helps guide your brain in reality.
Focus on the positives.
Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? We tend to focus on the 20% that’s challenging, or negative, and push the 80% that isn’t so bad to the background. There’s a biological reason for this. We are programmed to look for the difficulty in our environment to survive. It’s called a negativity bias. But we can push past this biological drive with our conscious thinking. Decide to wrap your head around the positives and the upsides in people. This is a difficult but useful experiment.
Yeah, grandma can say outlandish things about my style, but she’s always complimentary of my work success and I love that she’s interested in me in that way. Or wow, so and so is a real bastard but they sure do know how to cook. I wonder where he learned? Your experiment? Find the good, it’s there somewhere.
Separate yourself from other people's battles.
If it doesn’t have to do with you stay out of it! We often think we need to defend our spouse or whomever, and while there may be a time and a place for that, Thanksgiving is not it!
Each person has a separate relationship from everyone else. We think we are helping by getting involved, but often we are helping the problem stay stuck when we put our noses in it. People need to learn to manage and resolve their conflicts with the people they’re in a relationship with. It causes a lot of stress within us to try and control something we have no control over, and the actions and thinking of two people outside of yourself are top of the list.
For example, if one of your adult children tends to bully or speak negatively to the other, on autopilot we hear it and react. By drawing ourselves into that dynamic, we have taken away the control of the other person to take a stand for themselves. By taking a side, we have minimized the position of both people. They are no longer working it out themselves, they have turned it on you. We develop self-esteem and trust in ourselves when we are allowed to deal with things directly. I’ve had a lot of feedback from adult children whose parents got involved in sibling conflict, that say it made the situation worse. Your experiment? Staying neutral when the tension in other people triggers you.
Should your spouse protect you if your in-laws say something that gets your feathers up in a bunch? It’s still best for you to manage yourself in your relationships. Can he/she stand by your side as you calmly stay in a tough situation? Absolutely.
Drink and be merry unless drinking makes you the opposite.
Again, there are plenty of times to get schnockered but if drinking makes you emotional, Thanksgiving may not be the day to imbibe.
We have two parts to our brain the thinking system, and the emotional system. Alcohol tends to cut off access to navigate between these two systems and we get stuck in the emotional part of the brain. You’re never doing your best thinking when you’re intoxicated. At the moment it may give you some courage but the shame spiral that many feel afterward probably isn’t worth it. Your experiment? Decide how many drinks, if any, you are going to have and observe what makes this easy or difficult. Collect the data about how you may be using alcohol.
I hope you all find the joy and gratitude that is within you and can decide to let that emanate past the green beans and around the rolls. I wish you well in your family projects and data collecting!
Feel free to DM me a particular dilemma and I’ll offer you a few suggestions on how to be creative in your responses!
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