Having Healthy Relationships over the Holidays

Well, the Christmas holidays are here and things are getting really busy. How do you keep your relationships healthy over the holidays?

Here are a few tips:

1. Remember that you can only control yourself. You can’t control other people. So don’t try to!
2. Don’t fun faster than you have strength. Choose carefully the things you will do and the things you won’t do. Don’t try to do too much!

You can only control yourself

First, remember that you can only control yourself. You can’t control all the other people around you. So don’t try to! It will only end in frustration and manipulation and unhealthy relationships. Manipulation or coercion in any form leads to unhealthy relationships. So just focus on what you can control: you! Your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions.

Now your primitive or lower brain (the amygdala) doesn’t believe this. It still thinks it can control things outside of itself. So it might feed you thoughts like these:

“We need to get this child to change!”
“We need to get this relative to stop doing that!”
“We need to get our spouse to act a certain way or do this certain thing!”

When your lower brain feeds you these suggestions, kindly redirect it like this:

“No, brain, we cannot control all those other people. We can’t make people happy. We can only control ourselves.”

Here is another way to think about it. When your brain says: “How can I get this person to change?” try to redirect it to these thoughts:

“If this person is always going to be like this, then how do I want to react? How do I want to think and feel about this situation? How am I going to take care of myself?”

So this Christmas season, stop trying to force people to change. Stop trying to force them to be happy. Just focus on how you want to think and feel and act, because that is the only thing you can control. 

Don’t try to do too much!

The Christmas holidays are a prime time for overbooking oneself and running faster than you have strength. Let’s face it- the month of December can be exhausting! But guess what? It doesn’t have to be. Yes, you can control what you say “yes” to in your life. And you can say “no” to things and even traditions that you have done in the past.

Let’s be clear: You don’t HAVE to do anything. You don’t have to make those cookies that you make every year. You don’t have to do Christmas cards. You don’t have to buy teacher gifts. You don’t have to buy anyone gifts. Consciously decide with each thing on your calendar: Do I want to do this? Why am I doing this? Make sure you have a reason that you like for each thing you are devoting time to.

And it’s okay to disappoint some people. Even your kids! Disappointment is healthy. Your kids need to learn how to deal with disappointment.

Do things in January

January is this dreary month after Christmas where there is nothing to look forward to and nothing fun to do. So think about moving some of your to-do list to January. How about you make Christmas cookies in January? How about giving away neighborhood gifts in January instead of December? (I personally think it would be lovely if all of my neighbors would pick a different month of the year to give neighbor gifts instead of everyone giving me goodies in December.) How about decorating gingerbread houses in January?

Recently we tried this. My daughter had wanted to decorate gingerbread houses around Christmas but we didn’t get around to it. So we did it in the middle of January. We put on Christmas music and had a great time.

So just remember, you don’t have to do things the same way you have always done them. You can change it up. Do what works for you! Don’t let other people tell you what you can and can’t do, especially around the holidays.