The holidays arrive every year accompanied by twinkling lights, festive songs, and for many families, an undercurrent of tension. Celebrating with family can sometimes feel less like a haven from the everyday stress and more like tiptoeing through a booby-trapped obstacle course, where one comment can set off years’ worth of pent-up feelings.
Holidays can be filled with challenging interactions when unresolved hurt and disappointment are present in the space alongside the people who caused them. Yet there you are, seated at the family table, hopeful that you can enjoy moments of connection and celebration. In therapy, I often explore with clients the reality that families can hold both love and pain at the same time—and that managing those contradictions starts with knowing how to care for yourself in the midst of them. Below I share three key skills to help you navigate challenging holiday interactions with more presence, clarity, and compassion.
Regulated Presence: Managing Your Own Nervous System First
Communication skills are often described in terms of what to say and how. While that is important, we need to recognize that skillful interactions start with your ability to regulate your own emotions first. When your uncle makes a passive-aggressive comment about your life choices or a sibling revives a decade-old grievance over dinner, your nervous system reacts faster than your reasoning mind. Your heart rate spikes, breathing shallows, and your shoulders tense.
A regulated presence means noticing these early signs and grounding yourself before you respond.
Try this:
- Name what’s happening internally: “I’m feeling activated.” Simply naming your state begins to calm the nervous system.
- Slow your breath: A long exhale is your best friend. Inhale for a count of four, hold your breath for a count of four, and exhale for a count of six.
- Pause before speaking: A few seconds often prevents an impulsive reaction you’ll later regret. I love to share a quote by the renowned Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who eloquently captures the power of the pause: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
- If you need to, excuse yourself for a moment. Emotional flooding (also known as psychological flooding) is a state in which your nervous system becomes so overwhelmed that clear thinking and calm responses are temporarily out of reach. You might notice your heart racing, your breathing becoming shallow or rapid, your muscles tensing, your stomach tightening, or a sense of heat or flushing spreading through your body. It’s important to respond to these cues and step away if you need a break. Some ways that can help you include: taking a quick walk outside, splashing cool water on your face, engaging your senses to self-soothe.
Regulating your emotions in these ways isn’t about suppressing them. You are acknowledging your state and anchoring yourself so you can engage with intention and clarity rather than reactivity.
Holding Clear and Calm Boundaries
Many people assume boundaries are confrontational. And indeed, if they are spoken with hostility or focus on what the other person is supposed to do, they often escalate tension. Healthy boundaries, however, are framed around your own needs and choices rather than blaming or controlling others. Instead of saying, “Don’t bring up politics at the table,” you might say, “I find political discussions really stressful during family meals, so I’m going to focus on enjoying our time together and steer clear of that topic.”
During the holidays, boundaries might sound like:
- “I’m not comfortable discussing my relationship status tonight.”
- “I’m going to take a quick walk to recharge and come back.”
- “I hear your concern, but I’m making this decision for myself. Let’s move on to another topic.”
- “I appreciate your interest, but I’m not ready to talk about that yet.”
A boundary is not a debate. It’s not an invitation for negotiation. It’s simply a statement of your limit and the action you’ll take to honor it. The key is tone: calm, firm, and non-defensive. Boundaries delivered with calm intention guide interactions rather than igniting conflict. Ideally, you assert what you will and will not do in a way that honors your need to take care of yourself and conveys to the other person that you care about the relationship.
Curiosity: Listening Underneath the Literal Words
Challenging conversations often escalate because we respond only to the surface content, not the emotional subtext. A snide remark about your choices may actually reflect someone else’s insecurity. A parent pushing a hurtful opinion might be expressing fear or longing for connection, albeit clumsily.
As a therapist, I often encourage clients to adopt empathic curiosity, which shifts your stance from “How do I win this?” to “What’s actually happening here?”
You can practice curiosity by:
- Suspending your urge to prepare your response, and instead giving full attention to understanding the other person’s point of view
- Asking gentle questions: “Can you tell me more about how you came to feel that way?”
- Reflecting emotion: “It sounds like this is really important to you.”
- Using your body to stay present: Making eye contact, keeping an open posture, and taking slow breaths to ground yourself while listening.
Important: Curiosity doesn’t mean agreement, approval, or tolerating mistreatment. It simply creates space to understand the other person while maintaining your boundaries and choosing your response. Approaching interactions this way often softens tension, but you always retain the right to step back, enforce your limits, or remove yourself if the conversation becomes unsafe.
Therapy During the Holidays
In therapy, we often focus on what you can control: this includes your own boundaries, your self-care, and the way you respond. Practicing emotion regulation skills, setting boundaries, and interacting with curiosity during the holidays is a way of continuing that work outside the therapy room. You don’t have to manage everyone else’s emotions—only your own.
This said, your effort to model healthier interactions might ripple outward, helping the room settle into something calmer and more connected. And even if nothing around you changes, you’ll be showing up in a way that aligns with the work you’re doing for yourself. That, in itself, is meaningful progress.
If you would like to know how therapy can support you through challenging family dynamics, don’t hesitate to reach out for your free initial consultation at Wildflower. Our experienced therapists are here to guide you toward greater ease and clarity in your relationships.
