Survival Tips for Holidays with Difficult People, AKA, Home for the Holidays!
I’m hearing from many folks these days about their fears of being with families of origin over the holidays. Fears of getting into fights about political differences. Fears of being expected to conform to religious language and practices that no longer fit. Fears of being ridiculed about life choices or decisions. Fears of family members getting drunk, or abusive. Most often, the fear of loneliness, right there in the middle of the family.
So here are some survival tips. These are ways to stay present with yourself, so even if no one else sees you, you’ve still got a witness! You’ve decided, for presumably good reasons, that you want to be with your family, or your in-laws’ family, for the holidays. So you can also decide to make the visit fun, even if you have to work at it. Here are some tactics I’ve used on different occasions—may they be of use to you!
1. Remind yourself, in advance, about why you love each person who will be there. Call up that memory and dwell on it while they are holding forth on a topic you do not want to hear about it. If they seem to be waiting for your comment on their favorite Fox News show, just smile a little bit and say, “Hmmm. Sorry, I spaced out. I was just remembering when we were kids and we built that treehouse! That was so fun!”
2. For some elderly relatives, keeping them focused on favorite parts of their past can be much more fun than hearing their frustrations about the present. They may be lonely, or in chronic pain, or bitter right now, but that doesn’t mean they always were. Think about parts of their lives you are interested in, and ask them questions. Childhood may or may not be a good place to start. One question I’ve found can open doors is, Looking back, what would you say was the happiest time of your life? And then dig in there.
3. Try responding to negativity or bitterness with observations about the weather. (This tip could have saved me years of therapy. It helped me to realize that people who were complaining usually were not asking me to make their lives better—they simply wanted to complain!)
4. Program your smartphone with the names of some of your closest support network in chat or instant message, so that on a quick trip to the bathroom, you can cry out for help, share the awful thing someone just said or just say, “Remind me that I am loveable.” Technology can allow you to have in-the-moment support. I suggest 5 or 6 people at once so that at least one of them can get back to you before your hands are washed!
5. Again with a smartphone, scroll through the newsfeed on your facebook page. Remind yourself there is life outside of your family!
6. If you don’t have a smartphone, try some old fashioned ways to take friends with you. Have them write affirmations, jokes, or poems for you to open and read when needed.
7. There’s always the good-old bingo card. Just making it is a kind of inoculation! Make a bingo card with words or topics that are likely to come up and upset you. Then, when they say hard things, at least you can work your way towards a bingo! Possible squares: Grandchildren, weight loss, your haircut, better job, Obamacare, gay marriage, people who are going to hell.
8. At meals, ask to sit at the kids’ table. You’ll be lifted up as a hero and you’ll probably have more fun.
9. Remind yourself that, as annoying and frustrating these people are, they are yours, and you will miss them when they are gone!
And, Happy Holidays, to you and your kin!
Thank you, Rhoda Morgenstern!
Rhoda Morgenstern changed my life.
As a chubby, opinionated, smart and mouthy teenager in Akron Ohio in the early 1970’s, I had never seen anyone on television who remotely resembled me, anyone I might be someday, or anyone who might be my friend. Rhoda changed that.
For those who weren’t born in the1970’s, Rhoda was the best friend of Mary, the lead character in the Mary Tyler Moore show. Unlike Mary, who was willowy, strove to be perfect in all things, and was never loud, Rhoda was a mirror that reflected someone much more like me and my friends. We loved her.
Another history lesson: In the 1970’s, you either watched a TV show when it ran or you waited for reruns. Mary Tyler Moore ran on Saturday nights. While it didn’t cause any males to weep that my girlfriends and I never missed it, we did choose it consistently over movies, driving around, and the other boring activities we had previously done on Saturday nights. We would either go to one anothers’ houses to watch it or we would call each other afterwards to discuss. (#Nohashtag)
First of all, we had never experienced a show that had as one of its central plots the friendship between two single women. This just wasn’t done! Marlo Thomas had blazed her way as a single career woman, so that wasn’t new. But if she had girlfriends, I sure don’t remember them. She had Her Donald (boyfriend) before there was The Donald!
So there were Mary and Rhoda, fighting about things girls fight about, helping each other out, upstairs/downstairs neighbors in an apartment building. I knew that Mary would never have been Rhoda’s friend if they hadn’t been in such close proximity, and she would never have been my friend in high school or after. A popular girl, if a single one.
So, how did Rhoda change my life? First, by accompanying me through those last miserable, lonely years in Akron, Ohio, making me laugh and feeling like a true friend. But then, after college, a friend asked if I might want to move to Minneapolis for a while to live. I’m not saying that I literally believed Rhoda would be here—even if I were that delusional, Rhoda had spun off her own series and moved to New York—but the fact that Rhoda HAD been here made it feel more like home; less scary to move. Sure, I said. That was 1978. Though I’ve lived other places in the intervening years, Minneapolis is still my primary home.
And now, Valerie Harper, the beautiful actress who says that Rhoda was her friend, too, is dying. She’s been on the cover of People magazine and made a very moving video saying goodbye to us all. I have wept, reading the article and watching the video. (Watch the video: http://broadwayworld.com/videoplay.php?colid=474142) As she is dying, she wants to remind us ‘no one is getting off the planet alive…we’re all terminal.’ In the video, besides saying goodbye, she is wishing everyone had the quality of healthcare she has. These things tell me yet again why Rhoda such a good friend to me. The actor inside her is also a good friend.
I imagine myself, on my deathbed, thinking, “Well, Rhoda’s already gone through this gate, so I guess it’s not so scarey.” Bless you, Valerie Harper, for all of the chubby lonely girls you have befriended, and for the love which surrounds you still and which will be stay alive until the great-grandchild of the last person to watch a Mary Tyler Moore or Rhoda show rerun has died.
