5 Strategies for Dealing with Family Conflict During the Holidays
The holiday season, often portrayed as a time of joy and togetherness, can paradoxically be a period rife with stress and family conflict. The convergence of differing personalities, expectations, and past grievances under one roof provides fertile ground for tensions to escalate. From the pressure of perfect holiday planning to the resurfacing of old family dynamics, these gatherings can sometimes feel like navigating a minefield of potential disputes.
However, amidst the festive chaos lies the opportunity for growth and understanding. The key lies in approaching these situations with the correct tools and strategies. This blog aims to equip you with five practical techniques to deal with family conflict during the holidays, turning potential discord into avenues for strengthening family bonds.
By setting clear boundaries, developing empathy, managing expectations, creating a conflict resolution plan, and knowing when to seek professional help, you can transform the holiday season into a more peaceful and enjoyable experience for everyone involved. These strategies are about surviving family gatherings and thriving within them, fostering an environment where every family member feels heard, respected, and valued. Let's explore these techniques in more detail, helping you navigate the complexities of family interactions during this special, yet often challenging, time of the year.
Setting Boundaries and Communicating Them Clearly
The foundation for warm family gatherings is set before the first fire is lit or dinner is served. Happy holidays begin the moment you set and communicate relationship boundaries. Healthy boundaries are your invisible limits for personal self-care and emotional well-being. Boundary setting includes deciding who you give power to as you permit yourself to live and work in a manner that best suits your wiring or needs. In one relationship, you may focus on setting a physical boundary (e.g., “Please do not touch me like that”). In another relationship, healthy boundaries may mean establishing an emotional boundary (e.g., “Do not tell jokes at my expense”). A boundary can be any clear guideline to set the limits of how you would like to be treated inside a relationship to maintain your safety and protect your self-esteem. Communicating healthy boundaries is important because it is the gift you give to the people you are in a relationship with by showing them how to respect and love you.
Sharing a boundary may feel challenging, especially if you’ve never set healthy boundaries in a relationship. Start by first recognizing you are a human being with value and worth. You deserve to be treated with respect and dignity in any relationship. Next, take a moment to consider if you already have a boundary in place in the relationship with your family. Then, ask yourself if the boundary you identified is sufficient and if the boundary aligns with the rest of your personal boundaries and core values.
For example, let’s pretend you intend to travel from New York to California to stay with your parents for Christmas, and you want to practice healthy boundaries. You know you’ll share your childhood bedroom with your little sister, who just got engaged. You can foresee how the vacation will go. Many late nights await you, with talk of flower arrangements and wedding invitations. Sharing a room during such an exciting time will make it hard to hold both a physical boundary and an emotional boundary. Plus, you anticipate a few breakfast table jabs as your family teases you for not yet finding “the one.” Before the trip, you might want to evaluate your personal boundaries. What would setting boundaries look like in this context?
As you think about what you’ll need to feel secure and process setting boundaries, you land on time alone as an essential factor. You’ll want to go for a drive and take a break from the family dynamic. So instead of letting Mom and Dad pick you up from the airport—a move that would leave you dependent on them giving you a ride all vacation long—you set a boundary that you will rent a car. Before the trip, you call Mom to communicate your boundary and thank her for generously offering to be your chauffeur. You tell her that although you know it “seems like a waste of money,” the freedom to retreat alone is an essential boundary to you.
Setting boundaries can happen in direct communication, like calling to remind your grandmother you’re vegan now and will not be eating her famous turkey. Or, setting boundaries could look like sending an email or text to alert family members that you’re not ready to talk about your recent break-up. Whatever you choose to communicate your boundary, make sure it is clear so there is no confusion when setting boundaries.
Developing and Practicing Empathy
In addition to healthy boundaries, developing and practicing empathy is another key strategy to deal with family conflict during the holidays. Empathy is the ability not only to understand but also to share in the feelings of another person. Empathy sits at the core of any healthy conflict resolution effort, empowering opposing parties to find the common ground necessary to reach a solution. You may not always be able to identify clearly when someone shows empathy, but it’s clear when someone lacks empathy. Perhaps in the past, you’ve described someone without empathy as lacking “emotional intelligence” because they are unwilling to slow down or “read the room” by noticing other people's feelings.
If you don’t feel that you naturally possess empathy skills, that’s okay. Become an empathy student now. As young children, many of us did not have access to one of the many social-emotional learning programs that teach students empathy. However, researchers have shown that it is possible to cultivate skills over time that can help you develop empathy.
Some of the ways you can cultivate empathy are as follows:
Commit to active listening. During a conflict, become an empathy expert by hearing and reflecting what the other person is saying. In our premarital counseling program at Healthy Minds NYC, we call this empathy skill learning to “postpone your agenda.” Focus your energy on trying to hear clearly what the other party is saying. Remain open and receptive like a student. This can be hard to do as our impulse is to defend ourselves when we feel attacked. Remember, you’ll have time to address your needs and thoughts later. Note the content they share and the emotion they attach to the situation.
Practice perspective-taking. Try to place yourself in their shoes once you’ve listened to the other person’s side of the conflict. Increase empathy by imagining how you might feel if you had the same thoughts or needs your family member shared. Taking on another person’s perspective can trigger compassion in us to generate the cognitive empathy required to move toward the other person with love and camaraderie.
A simple way to practice these empathy skills this holiday season would be to get curious like a child. When a conflict arises, such as a debate over when to open gifts or who gets to host next year’s holiday dinner, slow down and practice empathy by exploring what’s happening beneath the surface of the conflict. Ask yourself if you fully understand what the other person is expressing, and ask for clarity if you’re confused. Open-ended questions are a great way to demonstrate empathy as you learn to show interest in the other person’s perspective and find new connection points between their core longings and your own.
Another way to increase your empathy is by channeling your inner child. It’s common for a child to ask “why” and “what if” repeatedly. A child rarely takes information at face value. A child wants to understand the meaning behind what’s happening. Likewise, you can build empathy skills by challenging your assumptions within your family the way a child might. Don’t assume you know other people’s motivations when conflicts arise. Remain open to alternative intentions and use empathy by relieving yourself of the burden of a negative assumption.
Managing Expectations Realistically
Once you’ve mastered your empathy skills, shift your attention to your expectations for this holiday season. An expectation is simply an assumption or belief about the future that may or may not be accurate. We feel satisfied when we have realistic expectations that align with what’s likely to occur. When we have unrealistic expectations, we end up disappointed, angry, and sometimes in conflict with others.
For example, if you expect everyone in your family to stay up with you to watch the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve and everyone else shares this goal, your expectation will likely be met. Your realistic expectations will leave you feeling satisfied. However, suppose your family members’ motto is more “early bird gets the worm” than “burn the midnight oil,” and everyone plans to be asleep by 10 p.m. so they can wake up to watch the Rose Parade. In that case, your unrealistic expectations might lead to frustration.
The trick is to align your expectations with reality. As you wade into the holidays, consider whether or not you are managing expectations realistically—for yourself and your family. Expectation management can be complex as our hopes and desires can get away from us, particularly at times as magical and fraught with possibility as the holidays. Here are some tips for managing one’s own expectations and dealing with family members' expectations.
First, take ownership over appropriately setting expectations for yourself. Realistic expectations occur when we interrogate our own beliefs. Unearth the hopes and desires you have for this holiday season. You can do this by creating a short list of five to ten expectations you have for the next six weeks. Then, become an expert at managing expectations by asking yourself if your beliefs align with reality. You can also ask your family members if your hopes will likely be met.
Next, set clear expectations for what others can expect of you. There go those relationship boundary-setting skills again. Are you willing to help out with running holiday errands but unwilling to make a side dish for Thanksgiving? Do you intend to shop all the Black Friday sales with your siblings, or are you sleeping in after the big meal to save energy for an afternoon hang with high school friends? Whatever your intentions are, communicate them so others can have realistic expectations of your participation in the family events this season.
Clear expectations are best verbalized rather than implied to avoid misunderstanding. For example, Healthy Minds NYC takes managing client expectations around mental health seriously. We offer a complimentary consultation call with our care coordinator so new clients can ask questions and understand how starting therapy for the first time works in our mental health practice. During a consultation call, we focus on setting expectations around essential aspects of treatment, such as the cost of care, the options to see a therapist in person or virtually through Telehealth, and how we work with insurance. Customer expectations matter, especially in mental health care, because they can determine a new client’s overall satisfaction and experience in therapy.
Creating a Conflict Resolution Plan
It helps to plan how you’ll resolve conflict when it arises. But first, remember that conflict in and of itself is not a negative indicator of how a relationship is going. Conflict can be a pathway to greater intimacy within a family as individuals discover more about the other members of the family unit and grow in their compassion and empathy for one another. When managed properly, conflict can lead to more connection and a stronger family bond. That is why our therapists here at Healthy Minds NYC stress the importance of conflict resolution and conflict management skills. Conflict resolution is about solving a problem. Conflict management is about navigating a moment of conflict well.
Many people utilize effective conflict resolution and conflict management skills when dealing with workplace conflict. In a professional environment, it’s as if we instinctively know to remain calm, listen well, and suspend judgment for conflict resolution. However, we lose these conflict management skills when dealing with family members. With our family, the emotional triggers are more potent, making conflict resolution tricky. For example, during family gatherings, it’s common to get triggered by family members' different lifestyle choices regarding finances, romantic relationships, politics, or religion.
To resolve conflict, here are suggested steps from our mental health team that you can take:
Establish a precise time to talk and define the problem. Ensure all parties are clear on what you’re trying to resolve so your conflict resolution has direction.
Trade off being a speaker and listener during conflict management. This is a technique commonly taught by mental health professionals. When you’re the speaker, share your perspective without blaming and name the feelings that arise for you concerning the issue. Always state the need you have during conflict resolution. As the listener, hold your judgment and do not interrupt. Ask clarifying questions when applicable and reflect what you’ve heard. When you’re done listening, affirm the speaker by expressing empathy for what they’ve shared and connecting their experience to your experience.
Take a time out when needed. During any conflict resolution, it’s easy for tensions to rise. Pay attention to the signals your body is sending. Common signs of emotional escalation during conflict resolution are increased heart rate, sweating, muscle tension, or a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. If these signs occur, take a 20-30 minute break from the conflict to calm down and then come back to discuss when you’re ready.
Lastly, end conflict resolution by sharing your non-negotiables or boundaries within the conflict and the areas where you’re willing to be flexible. A resolution usually sits at the intersection of your different needs within the conflict.
Seeking Professional Help When Needed
The holidays can be a beautiful time to reconnect with your family and improve your mental health. If this time of year feels more painful than magical, it might be time to seek professional help—your mental health matters. You don’t have to be in crisis to ask for help from a mental health professional. Mental health services are for everyone, even if you do not have a diagnosed mental illness.
Therapy can help you optimize your mental health and improve satisfaction in your familial relationships by providing a safe space to process what you’re experiencing with a trained mental health professional. When you decide to get mental health treatment, your therapist can help you determine if you have any underlying mental illness like anxiety or depression that may be impacting you. Then, your care provider can offer targeted mental health support to identify new coping strategies you can use to engage your family and help protect your well-being.
There are many ways you can access help for your mental health. Individual therapy is a great way to get one-on-one professional help for any mental health issue. Family therapy can help you and your family members explore the relational dynamics, unhealed wounds, and mental health challenges that keep you trapped in cycles of conflict. You can also get help for various mental health conditions online through reputable websites like Psychology Today or the Healthy Minds NYC blog!
This holiday season, give yourself the gift of excellent mental health. Our Care Coordinator is available to help you get started with therapy at Healthy Minds NYC. Get a free therapy consultation today by visiting https://www.healthyminds.nyc/freeconsultation.
