5 Mantras for the Holidays (When You Hate Your Family)
The only people who say they like their families are liars. But during the holidays, those liars excel at denying how stressful it is to spend days with family members whom you'd rather scream at than smile. But if you're not a (good) liar, then it's a constant struggle to cope with the stress from aligning schedules, having tense small talk, and tolerating drunken arguments over crappy stale pie and melted cool whip.
To be clear, we know you don't really hate your family; you probably just can't stand their personalities, or their neuroses, or their belittling of your neuroses, or their bad jokes about that one time you peed your pants before the school pageant show or whatever. So what self-help tools do we have in 2019? Mindfulness a.k.a. self-soothing pep talks until we're blue in the face. More specifically, we have mantras: "A mantra is a word or phrase that you silently repeat to yourself during meditation," says The Chopra Center. "The purpose of the mantra is to give you something to put your attention on other than your thoughts." Alternatively, we have legions of psychologists and social scientists who have observed decades' of common patterns when human beings inevitably become sick to death of their families and must suppress violent urges.
So for advice about coping with holiday stress, they all seem to agree on the following:
"I am enough"
No passive aggressive remark about your career or your education or how crappy your dessert is actually an attack on your value as a person. But that can be difficult to remember. Psychologist Mark Aoyagi points out that everything is about perspective: "There's something called the Perceptual Appraisal Process," he explains. "It says that the answer to three questions will determine how much pressure, stress or anxiety a particular situation has." He continues, "The key to all those questions is perception. There's no reality or objective rating for each of those questions. It's literally what you perceive, and so the most important part of the process is that you can control your perception."
Those three questions are:
- How important is this to me?
- How likely is it that I'm able to have the outcome that I want? How skilled am I in relation to the task in front of me?
- What control do I have?
"I am exactly where I should be right now."
Stop multi-tasking. Stop promising to pick up your aunt from the airport and watch Frozen with your niece and shovel the sidewalk for your mother and pick up beer for your dad; literally everyone can manage without you if you stopped moving for half an hour.
And besides, as most psychologists will tell you, you are not as good at multitasking as you think. Sharon Salzberg, a meditation teacher and New York Times best-selling author, agrees: "We can't prevent stress altogether, but we can keep rebounding from it," she said. "I really believe in what one of my teachers once called 'short moments, many times' where you get all caught up in something and then you take a breath. It's those intermittent moments when we come back to ourselves, and then remember what we really care about. Don't despair if you feel overwhelmed, because it's a process of continual recovery."
So stop pushing yourself to perform seven tasks at once instead of taking a breath in between each.
▲"I do not have to be perfect"
Natasha Quadlin, Ph.D and assistant professor at The Ohio State University, warns that women may feel an inordinate amount of pressure to be perfect on Thanksgiving. "It's been shown so many times that both men and women alike expect women to have the primary responsibility for cooking, and to do a good job at it," said Quadlin. "So it's not just the men who expect that of women, but women themselves also assume that that'll be a woman's role, especially on this big holiday event where it's the biggest meal event of the year."
Remind yourself that no one is solely responsible for putting together the holiday plans, and everyone should contribute equally.
▲"I can only control myself."
If those first three mantras aren't enough to quell your holiday frustration, remember that you can't be held responsible to make everyone happy. That's not healthy. In fact, it's a positive decision to create distance when you need it. Step outside, leave the room, or take a walk. Whitney Hawkins, LMFT and owner of The Collaborative Counseling Center, advises, "If there's an individual attending your holiday celebration who you'd rather avoid, you have permission to do so. Say hello, be polite, and find a seat at the other end of the table. You are not required to spend the holidays with anyone who brings you misery at all if that's your choice." Hawkins adds, "I encourage people to roll with the punches and accept the reality of the day."
▲'"It's just one day"
The good thing about the holidays is that they're only once a year. Even if the day doesn't go as planned or as ideally as you envisioned, it's not the end of your year–or your family or friendships. To keep perspective, Dr. Sherry Benton, psychology professor at University of Florida, recommends creating two extra sets of plans: pre-holiday and post-holiday. Prepare yourself for possibly unpleasant situations; don't dwell or worry excessively beforehand, but give yourself options for handling tense moments. "Think about the types of conversations that make you feel diminished, and do your best to avoid those topics," Benton says. "If they're brought up, try to minimize them and not add fuel to the fire."
And for afterwards, make a plan to decompress. Maybe you'll prefer to talk about any unresolved conflicts with an individual one-on-one; maybe you'll need to go home and binge-watch your favorite show in your pajamas. Don't sit in the conflict; it's just one day.
▲