This holiday season, as we face a world of uncertainty and potential chaos, anxieties can be high and defenses low around our families of origin. Although not all of us will experience high drama and chaos (The Bear Season 2, Episode 6), it is the hard-to define, low-grade tensions that are most challenging.
To carry you into the season, try these thoughts on for size:
1. Your challenges from others are your gifts. You wouldn’t be challenged if you weren’t meant to grow and learn. Face each annoying or hurtful interaction with the armor of “What am I supposed to learn here?"
2. Notice how you respond. Do you get quiet and withdraw? Do you attack back directly or indirectly? Do you pack up and leave? Are these old habits still serving you? Because you now have the power to take control of the current conditions of your life, changing how you interact with your family is a choice you make.
3. It’s never about you. No comment or attack or manipulation is about you. People act out of their own wounds. Not your wounds. Their wounds began long ago, but here you are in the firing line. It’s not your fault, and it’s not about you. If they differently, they would act differently.
See them as wounded and hurt people acting out of fear, rather than vicious monsters out to get you. If you can do this, you can begin acting from compassion and love, not fear and hurt.
4. But you are responsible too. The pain from family interactions derives from two sources: people invading territories and people letting them do it. Both parties are equally responsible for boundary violations. To understand boundary control, I like Don Miguel Ruiz’s analogy, also summarized at the bottom of this blog.*
5. Be prepared for wounds to erupt - not because people are mean, but because their anxiety is high too. Don’t get caught off-guard again. Be prepared with a healthier response - not because it will change the other person, but because it will change you. Download this card for samples to carry with you.
6. Forgive. If you are hurt and take no action, resentment will build. Resentment wounds you, not them, and keeps you attached at a damaging level. I learned the loving and liberating approach to detachment from Caroline Myss years ago, from her book Soul Contracts: Consider that, before your birth, you made soul contracts with (parents, siblings) souls to be your teachers. They assumed these roles not for their growth and self-interest, but for yours. In many cases, these are older souls whose journey toward enlightenment has made them willing to suffer pain on your behalf. They are fulfilling their soul contract to you. Your contract agreement is to heal. Here is the concept in a short video:
“ Your greatest gift is your parents dysfunction. It presents you with an opportunity for healing … for you to be aware of it, to have compassion for it, and a greater understanding because of it, and to heal from it. That is the greatest gift they have given you."
Summary of Miguel Ruiz theater concept: You create, star in, and direct your own life film, in your own theater. You choose leading roles, supporting actors and extras. As director, you decide who is in your movie; you have the authority to invite or reject any actor. If you want to be the star of someone else’s movie, but you’re not right for their plot, you must get that it’s their movie, their plot and they are directing. It’s not about you. Don’t waste time being injured that you are not right for the part. Work on your own movie.
