Ep. 111 3 Midlife Coping Skills for Family Stress & Anxiety During the Holidays

Do family gatherings sometimes leave you feeling hurt or upset? Wondering how to keep the holidays joyful while handling tricky dynamics?

The holiday season often brings people together, but it can also resurface old family dynamics and lead to hurtful interactions. 

In this episode, you’ll discover: 

1.     The key difference between hurtful and toxic behavior and why it matters.

1. Learn three essential coping skills to handle hurtful comments and actions without escalating conflict.
2. Understand how intergenerational dynamics can influence family interactions and how to approach them with empathy.

Tune in now to master simple strategies for responding to hurtful moments and ensure your holiday gatherings stay merry and bright!

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About the Host: 

MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, is a seasoned clinician, educator, and host of the podcast Creating Midlife Calm, recognized by Maria Shriver as a “Listen of the Week.” Over the past 40 years, MJ has led more than 50,000 therapy sessions and developed the Inner Challenge mental wellness program and the Inner Challenge Master Class, practical tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and resilience taught for more than 30 years in junior high schools and at the University of Notre Dame for freshman football players. Through her podcast, teaching, and coaching, MJ helps people build calmer lives, stronger relationships, and healthier communities.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support. 

Transcript

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In this episode, you'll learn three strategies to prevent and respond to hurtful behavior at family gatherings your holiday stays merry and bright. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. Today we are not going to be focusing on gift giving or gratitude, but something that you may also experience at this time of the year The challenge of tricky family dynamics. In this episode, you'll discover the key difference between hurtful and toxic behavior and why it matters. You'll also discover three strategies to help you handle hurtful comments and actions without escalating the conflict. Lastly, you'll understand how intergenerational dynamics can influence family interactions and how to approach them with empathy. Today I'm going to be sharing with you how to manage family interactions that can feel hurtful or difficult. On Thursday, I'm going to help you create a holiday plan to handle a person or a family system that might be toxic. I think it's really important that we start. with understanding what's the difference between hurtful and toxic behavior. We hear the word toxic all the time today. This distinction is important because it helps you respond effectively, not only as an act of self care, but also to preserve family harmony. Hurtful behavior is typically unintentional or occasional. It might come from poor judgment or emotional reactions or just some differences that family members have with one another, but it can usually be resolved through communication and understanding. Toxic behavior, on the other hand, is deliberate, persistent, and manipulative. It's often used to control or harm others, creating unhealthy patterns in relationships. Think of it this way. Hurtful behavior is unintentional and occasional and toxic behavior is really a pattern. It's persistent, deliberate, and harmful. What makes toxic behavior really tricky is often the person or the family system engaging in it really doesn't admit or even consciously know that they're doing it. So that's what can make toxic behavior be so maddening because on some level, you know that this is really wrong and bad, but the people or the persons using this behavior are convinced that it's no big deal and you should move on. So on today's episode I'm going to help you with hurtful behavior and on Thursday I'm going to talk about toxic behavior because actually the coping skills you need for each of them are quite different. When you're at a family gathering and someone hurts you, it's often like they punched you in the gut. It's not expected and you're caught off guard. When this happens, you can have some pretty common reactions. For example, you might just freeze and say nothing. You might fight back and shoot a zinger that later you regret once you get home. You might just say, forget it and leave. That's called fleeing. Or you might appease to them. We call that fawning. Yes, you've heard these before. When the brain feels threatened, we freeze, we fight, we flight, or we fawn. Reacting in the moment, normal, understandable, is often not helpful. It often leads to regret, miscommunication, or more tension. You've probably had this experience where something happened between two family members at a holiday and then there's tension, the uninvited guest. It's really important to remember when families involved, decades of old dynamics can resurface in an instant, making it really hard to respond thoughtfully. So often my clients will say to me, I would never do this with my friends. That's so true because in families are decades and decades of unspoken dynamics. One of the favorite lines in family therapy training is what is hysterical is often historical. And what we mean by that is when you or someone in your family has a reaction to an event that is really larger than it makes sense, there's probably an unresolved history connected to that type of interaction or event. Let me share with you an example. I've had this countless times in my office. Perhaps you've even had this, where you are the host of a family gathering and everybody brings something, but there's always one member in the family who doesn't. A number of years ago, a client of mine shared this problem and they were so sick of her sibling freeloading holiday after holiday, birthday party after birthday party, that they were very close to uninviting this freeloader of a sibling. I asked her, was this the only situation where this sibling did not pull their weight? Instantly, my client laughed and she said to me, Oh no, he's always been treated specially. He's always been favored. So when he comes to holiday events, he comes with the spirit of, thank you for serving me. I asked her, have you ever given him a direct request to bring something to a holiday party? And she said something really understandable. Of course I haven't told him to bring something to the holiday party. Can't he see that everybody else is? I'm sure he could see that everybody else is, but in her family system, perhaps like in yours, this family member has not been treated the same as everyone else. It's a person that was treated special. It was a person that wasn't held accountable. So I said to her, before you un invite your sibling. Why don't you consider inviting him to bring something, which she did. She sent a text and she said, when we all get together on Sunday, would you be able to bring three bags of chips? Notice two things in this exchange. One is, she had to give up her fantasy. That she didn't have to ask him directly for what she wanted. Remember, her and her spouse were really upset after every holiday that he was not bringing his fair share. He wasn't upset. He was going home full and happy. Secondly, a request over text directly, no snarkiness, and she set him up for success. She didn't ask him to bring a complicated appetizer. She asked, can you bring a few bags of chips. Her and her spouse bet that he would not bring them. Voila, he showed up with three bags of chips and a six pack of beer. They were shocked. Happy ending. Coping skill number one, ask instead of complain. Does it always work out No. But I would say in my office, 75 percent of the time when we ask for what we want directly, the person will tell us, no, not willing to bring the chips or the person will bring them. Tension solved. Another common hurt. during the holidays are what I call inappropriate criticisms. Every January, I have clients come in and they're really working through the hurts of when someone in the family says something about someone that they love. A really common one is when someone in the family criticizes one of their children or compares one of their children to another child in the family. You can imagine, we've all been there. The comments could be about grades, weight, hair, what they have on. Who knows? There really isn't anything like a criticism out of nowhere to make a holiday go south. A number of years ago, I had a client who was going home for Christmas. Wisely, she decided that she was going to work on this pattern that happened every Christmas. Her mother lived very close to her other grandchildren and was involved in their life on a daily basis. Her children weren't as close to her grandmother and they didn't know as much about their life. One of the things that her mother would say to her son was some comment that her son wasn't sporty. Her son wasn't athletic. One time her mother had even said to her son, I worry about your future. If you're never a captain of a sport team, how are you going to grow up and be a leader? This would often push a button in my client and she would then escalate and her and her mother would get in a back and forth fight. She said, I can't do this anymore. I want to do this differently. Again, remember these are hurtful moments. There are many good moments she had with her mother. This wasn't a toxic ongoing pattern. This was something that would happen every so often, but it did change my client's holiday spirit. So the coping skill I wanted her to learn was first to realize that she didn't have control of what came out of her mom's mouth, but she did have control of what came out of her mom. I wanted her to see this unintentional dynamic that happened. Her mom criticized her son. Criticized her mother for criticizing her son and they went back and forth, the mother defending herself, the daughter saying, then don't say it if you don't mean it and you've been there a million times. What I wanted her to see is that while she was defending her son, no one was taking care of her son. If someone criticizes your child, if someone criticizes your spouse, if someone criticizes you, your dog, the gift you gave, step into your power by defending them, not escalating with the person who criticized. For example, when her mother said something to her son about him not being sporty, the mother, who knew her son very well, could easily come back and say, Oh. He's not that interested in athletics, but he's very interested in academics and he's very interested in music. I think those two things are going to really help him in adulthood. Oh, you don't like that gift I got you. Wow. I took a lot of time. I was hoping to make you happy. I'm sorry about that. Trust that my spirit was in the right place, even though my gift giving for you was a little off. You can defend yourself. That does two things. One, the person who's hurt, your child, yourself, gets taken care of. Second, the person who is criticizing. Then understands that what they did was hurtful to the other person or to you because they see you taking care of it. It's really important to be able to go into the holidays, if this is an occasional pattern that you have with your family, to rehearse a line that you would say if this particular criticism comes up. You walk in and your mother says to you, well, I see your child still hasn't lost any weight. And you can say, Oh, that's so interesting. When I look at my child, this child who's so happy and helpful and just really enjoying each day of our life. each day of her life. So You're turning the light on what you want that person to see instead of what that person is focusing on. That way a fuller picture is served at the holiday meal. Coping skill number two be prepared for those little family criticisms, not by escalating. but by turning your attention and your perspective and sharing it with the person who's being critical. Coping skill number three, understand intergenerational differences. I think this is an area that we often don't talk about in a healthy and constructive way. Often when we talk about intergenerational differences, it's with judgment and an eye roll instead of stepping back and seeing that yes, there are intergenerational differences and that's really what makes family, family. Without generations, there would be no family. Late in my mother's life, I learned that she was from the silent generation. And I thought, Oh, that's why she was so good at holding her tongue. Often When we look at hurts or judgments through the lens of intergenerational dynamics, we gain patience in seeing that each of us are raised with values that reflect our generation's values. And when we put that all under one roof at a holiday, there at times will be clashes in those values. For example, we can expect our family members in their 80s to say, Why are all those young kids on their phones? you can also expect those boomers to look at the millennials who came in with their store bought stuff and think, Why didn't they make it themselves? you can also expect millennials to say, God, I wish the boomers would just take a breath, sit down, we'll do the dishes later. Every family is messy. And I don't mean, pick up those glasses messy. I mean full of different dynamics. And it's helpful to put into the mix that some of the differences are intergenerational. Your brain focuses on differences. If you can go into the holidays leaning into what you have in common and not letting the differences push your buttons so much. It can help you be less judgy and more accepting of that older aunt who always wonders why the young'uns aren't dressed up sometimes, the best gift we can bring to a holiday is to say nothing. The last coping skill I want to share with you today is perhaps the most important, and that is to be aware of how much you drink this holiday season. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I tell you that 90 percent of the hurts and holidays do not happen in the first hour. They happen later in the day as people drink or smoke too much. Lean into the benefits of alcohol., Where you use it to relax and unwind and be in the holiday spirit. Much more than that, than the other spirit takes over. Your filters decrease and then hurt. Your uninvited guest shows up at your party. In this episode, I've defined the difference between hurtful and toxic behavior. I've encouraged you to use the coping skill of asking directly for what you need, as well as taking care of the person criticized versus going after the person zinging, flinging criticism. I've also asked you to consider the intergenerational differences that sometimes leads to judgments and hurts in family parties., As well as to manage your use of alcohol or drugs this holiday season. Your inner challenge if you anticipate these types of hurts at your family gathering is to spend 10 or 15 minutes and think this through. Write it out in your journal, talk to a friend or a spouse, But don't go into the gathering unprepared. I encourage you to not only hold the messiness of family life, but try to do a little prep work so when something happens, you can actually be connecting and smooth out the hurt versus disconnecting And let what is a hurt, but not a major catastrophe, blow up into something that taints the whole celebration. You might be thinking, Why should I put time into this? If you have children, they're watching. You are modeling for them how you're working out hurts with the family around you. And that is also teaching them to work out hurts with you, as well as in the future when you are doing holidays with them as adults. It really makes a difference. I have worked with many individuals, many couples, and many families that when they go home for the holidays, they're not walking into family systems that occasionally have hurts. They're walking into family systems that have very deeply rooted dynamics that we would call toxic. If you have a family like that, first, my sympathies, because it's really, really hard, but I want you to go into your holiday prepared with a plan. I'll be back on Thursday to share with you some easy and practical coping skills. if this is the type of family that you'll be spending the holidays with. Thanks for listening to Creating Midlife Calm.