No matter how well we may have weathered our basic training, nothing can fully prepare us for
front lines of family gatherings. We're in thick of it, dodging live ammunition, and fighting urge to return to our old, reliable patterns that helped us to survive while we were growing up. We may have mastered our relationship skills in one-on-one relationships. We may have improved our romantic relationships, our professional relationships and our friendships. And we may have even improved our family relationships--one family member at a time. But when we're sitting around holiday dinner table or socializing at a wedding reception with our entire family, it's an entirely different experience.For one thing, when we're with our entire family, we have to juggle a number of different relationships at same time. Our attention is divided at best, and for many of us, our awareness deserts us completely after first major skirmish. We feel like we're surrounded and have to defend ourselves from sneak attacks. We often feel that retreat is not an option. When we are cornered, we often believe that only way that we can survive is to fight our way out, new relationship skills be damned.
While most people assume that General Sherman was referring to 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 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 will not be able to transform our entire family dynamic between salad course and pumpkin pie. In fact, we may not be able to change our family dynamic at all--and it's important that we accept that we don't need to. It's not our responsibility to help our family members resolve their issues. We're only responsible for resolving our responses to their issues. Our objective is to maintain our own safety and validation accounts, focus our awareness, and survive family event reasonably unscathed.
However, maintaining our awareness while we're relating to our families takes practice! We must go easy on ourselves. We may react when we would rather respond. We may be drawn into old arguments. Whatever happens, we need to accept that it is perfect. We are doing our best, and that's all we can 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 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.
When we embrace truth that even our family members are individualized aspects of All That Is, our relationships with our families will shift dramatically. Our family members are some of most powerful teachers we will ever encounter in our lives. They also tend to be most accurate and powerful mirrors for us, which, of course, is why we often find it so difficult to love and accept our family members unconditionally. In order to love our family members, we would also need to be able to love and accept ourselves.
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. Once we restore balance in our safety account, we can return to discussion and explore it without feeling threatened--and without threatening our partner in return. 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 case.
