How to Overcome Holiday Regression
The great spiritual teacher Ram Dass said “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” There is nothing like being with your family to trudge up simmering resentments, grudges and unresolved issues that can lead to what therapists are now calling “holiday regression.” It’s the syndrome of feeling like you’ve fallen right back into your old familiar patterns and roles in your family, despite the fact that you’ve completely changed and outgrown those roles years ago. Or at least you thought you did.
The hard won clarity you have about who you have become, your value, and your boundaries, can quickly evaporate once you step back into a world that has no real recognition of who you are now. Despite your attempts to catch everyone up to speed, your family can’t always relate to the adult version of you. In some traumatic and abusive situations, cut-off is necessary, but many of us with difficult family systems either unconsciously regress, avoid, or attempt to take the high road and tolerate the discomfort…and then feel angry for abandoning ourselves in the process, and walk away with an emotional hangover.
There are scads of helpful tips to survive the holidays. They’re all useful superficially: have an exit strategy; define your boundaries; lower your expectations; don’t drink too much, or in some cases, don’t drink at all; practice compassion and mindfulness, forgive your relatives for their political views; forgive yourself. But these are only band-aids for a larger un-named issue for those of us struggling to re-negotiate our relationship to family.
Grieving the loss of the symbolic family you had or the aspirational family you wish you had— can bring your relationship to your family into clear focus.
Family is the container for our growth as children. It is our tribe, our protection. It provides the structure through which we build our identity, through which we evolve and mature into adults. But there comes a point when it ceases to have the same influence to shape us and we take on the mantle of our own growth and development as adults. In our drive to become autonomous and individuate—-we may not even be aware that disappointment, frustrated expectations, unspoken grief and loss can still linger in the shadows, even if we’ve worked through many of our family-related issues. If you find yourself prone to erupt in regressive conflict and emotional reactivity during the holidays, it could be sign that you cannot reconcile the fantasy of your aspirational family or the nostalgia for your past with your current life and adult identity.
And by aspirational, I mean what we imagine a happy, high functioning, inclusive family should look like. Our culture heavily adds to the pressure —in terms of the cultural overlay of having happy holidays, which doesn’t help. The disparity between aspirational family and what many of us experience may fuel additional feelings of inadequacy, shame and guilt.
What attachment therapists recognize is that as adults, we also need to be validated, witnessed and accepted for who we are. And for an infinite number of reasons, our families of origin are the last places where we can look to be truly met or seen in all of our complexity. We may find that witnessing in intimate relationship, in our professional or social circles with people who are more easily aligned with who we are now.
Letting go of the idea that your family is a place where you can be fully seen, your adult values reflected, or an anchor for your adult becoming is the key to true acceptance, compassion and forgiveness.
It doesn't mean you shouldn’t engage or participate in the holidays, it just means your expectations can be informed by your awareness that it is your responsibility to carry yourself in that context. It doesn’t mean you won’t have mixed feelings or ambivalence or limited patience for family, but you can bring a different kind of energy and intention to the holidays. You can show up with your higher, adult Self, and not the regressive self that is primed to get triggered or take offense.
If you have healthy, functioning family relationships, this concept may not apply. But if there is illness, mental illness, trauma, addiction or abuse in your family, naming and releasing this buried grief around the expectation can be liberating. You can be free to be present with what is.
This internal position allows you to be intentional and compassionate, both around your sensitivities, but also your desire to affirm the bond you do have with your family and the desire to create positive memories going forward.