Strategies for Surviving Holiday Dinners, Family Events, and Other War Zones

While most people assume that General Sherman was referring to the Civil War when he stated, “War is hell,” in fact, he was referring to a particularly memorable Thanksgiving dinner with his family. This also explains why he could send his troops into battle without a second thought, but that the very mention of cranberry sauce would reduce him to tears.

Bearing this in mind, here are some essential tips for surviving your next family gathering.

TIP #1: Go Easy On Yourself!

The first, and most important survival tip is to remember that navigating and surviving family gatherings takes exceptional skill and often quite a bit of practice. We must go easy on ourselves. We are doing our best, and that’s all we an ever ask of ourselves. And remember that our awareness that we’re acting out an old pattern is, in itself, a change in that pattern! As we develop our awareness, we will spend less time caught in our old patterns. Over time, our awareness will help us to make lasting and permanent changes in those patterns.

Tip #2: Go Easy On Your Family

This piece of advice is equally as important as going easy on ourselves, but it’s often a bit more challenging to follow. Essentially, we must be willing to forgive our relatives for everything. We must be able to accept that they only ever did the best they could at any given time. We need to begin to recognize and relate to our families as people instead of as family members. We need to begin to know them for who they are, and not simply for who they are to us.

Even so, we can love our family members unconditionally and still only choose to sit down to eat with them once a year.

Tip #3: Use The Bathroom As A Sanctuary When Needed

In our other relationships, we can usually recognize when we feel unsafe and move to a safe space so we can disengage our egos. When we feel unsafe in our family relationships, however, many of us feel that we’re obligated to stay and fight. This is simply not the case.

When we are aware that we feel triggered by a family member, we can simply choose to excuse ourselves and visit the bathroom. The bathroom is the one place that we can be assured of our privacy, and we can stay there as long as we need to. We can use the bathroom as a sanctuary where we can regain our composure and gather our strength so that we feel safe enough to return to the battle. If any of our family members are indelicate enough to comment on how much time we seem to be spending in the bathroom, we can always plead an upset stomach or a weak bladder.

Tip #4: Lose The Battle To Win The War

We have to be very clear about our objectives in terms of our family relationships. If our ultimate goal is to improve our family relationships, we have to be willing to stay focused on the big picture. The most difficult lesson for most of us to accept is that in order to win the war, we have to be willing to lose the battle.

When one of our family members makes a comment designed to make us feel less valid, we do not need to defend ourselves. We can recognize that this person is asking to be validated, and we can validate them. Sometimes, this means letting them think that we are less successful, accomplished, and generally wonderful than we truly are.

We must be willing to lose every single family argument we encounter. Letting our family members win the argument allows them to feel safe and validated. As long as we remember that we create our own safety and validation, and we do not need to compete with our family members, we can lose the argument because it will help us to win the war. We must let our family members believe that they are right about whatever the issue is, no matter how blatantly wrong they actually are.

We know the truth. That will have to be enough for us.