Home for the Holidays: Coming Home to Yourself

We have numerous expressions involving home: “Home is where the heart is,” “Home sweet home,” and one that is very popular at this time of year: “Home for the holidays.” Home is a container, a place where you can be held. As Valerie Andrews writes in her new book, Our Story of Home, “Home isn’t just four walls with a kitchen and a bed. It’s a hope, a dream, an anthem. Something that lodges in the soul and stays with us despite any hardships we endure.”¹ As a universal experience, “home” can be considered an archetype.

Carl Jung conceptualized archetypes as innate “blueprints” for universal experiences, the psychic expressions of instinctual behavior that organize how we perceive the world. These autonomous instincts, patterns, or behaviors, common across all eras, peoples, and places, express themselves through recurring feelings, thoughts, emotions, images, and symbols, coexisting in the unconscious along with our complexes—clusters of emotionally charged associations, related to specific themes, that emerge from our personal and cultural experiences.²

Where the Fantasy of “Home” Meets Lived Reality

Given the archetype of “home,” most of us can relate to the feeling that leaving or losing home can set you askew, eliciting vulnerability, fear, a feeling of threat or danger, and ungroundedness both literally and figuratively. This feeling intensifies depending on your personal experiences of home. When you have psychic energy and associations around “home,” it can manifest as a kind of “home complex,” which may be triggered at this time of year, for example, because home isn’t what it used to be—a loved one died, you’re visiting in-laws, or you’re estranged from family members. Oprah recently reported on her podcast what she characterized as a growing “no contact” trend within families, citing estimates that up to one-third of people are estranged from a family member. This further underscores that going home for the holidays can be emotionally complicated and may be a significant emotional conflict for many.

We are often told that “home is where the heart is,” affirming that home isn’t limited to place and, more often, is about relationships. At this time of year, when streaming services are pumping out holiday movies about spending time with family, Christmas wishes coming true, and Hanukkah miracles, the projected image of “home” can feel discordant with many people’s lived experience.

Instead of trying to force a narrative and perform as a “happy family” over the holidays, attunement can be a powerful tool to create a home for yourself on the inside. Attunement is the act of “tuning in” and being aware of what’s occurring internally and externally. When you listen and create space for yourself to emerge, you signal to your brain and body, “It’s safe here.” And emotional safety is foundational for creating a feeling of home. Not everyone experiences physical safety and emotional well-being in their external home.³ At the same time, everyone has the option to foster an emotionally safe space for themselves on the inside if they wish. You can come home to yourself this holiday season.

How to Create an Internal Sense of Home

In my post on navigating family conflict during Thanksgiving, I mentioned attunement starts with getting curious about your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. Where are they coming from, and what are they trying to signal to you? That advice applies year-round but is especially useful in times of heightened stress. When you have that awareness, you can regulate your own emotions and emotional needs more effectively and respond accordingly. For instance, you might learn it’s better for you to spend time with a close friend over the holidays instead of with your family.

Humans are social creatures, so spending time with others, particularly friends and family, is important. Additionally, our ability to regulate our emotions is helped (or hindered) by our relationships, something known as co-regulation. This relational process encompasses the mutual adaptation between people in response to one another’s biology and behavior. Co-regulation operates at both biological (hormonal and nervous system) and behavioral (affective and cognitive) levels, and plays a critical role in the development of self-regulation.⁴

There is a literal, physical change in the body when we engage in co-regulation. Studies show that co-regulation produces oxytocin,^5-6 a bonding hormone that reduces stress.⁷ Essentially, co-regulation means “borrowing” someone else’s nervous system to calm down. We are wired for co-regulation starting from infancy and throughout childhood when we depend upon parents and caregivers. The need for co-regulation continues as adults and is important for creating emotional intimacy because it develops trust and emotional safety. When a loved one responds to you with empathy and calmness, your nervous system relaxes, and this fosters a deeper emotional bond.

Co-regulation first starts by recognizing your own emotional state, including whether you are activated, which interferes with co-regulation. It includes:

• Establishing a non-reactive, dependable presence that includes communication skills such as actively listening without interruption; noting another’s process—for example, how they are speaking—rather than reacting to what they are saying; showing sensitivity and curiosity towards their verbal and nonverbal behaviors, and being responsive rather than reactive.
• Engaging in soothing nonverbal behaviors, including eye contact, a calm tone, open body posture, gentle facial expressions, and physical touch.
• Remembering the power of rituals, which are a repeated and structured series of behaviors that can express feelings, promote connection, and establish emotional safety. They are worth a thousand words and can be especially powerful when words are lacking, feel fraught, or dangerous.
• Doing ritualistic acts that convey presence, like a morning text, forwarding a social media post with a shared meaning, and a mutual commitment to pausing and sitting together in silence if conversation gets too heated, for example, are possible rituals that support co-regulation.

Co-regulation is expressed through a calm, empathic, emotionally safe presence in your relationships, which does not necessarily mean fixing another’s feelings and emotions or resolving their issues. Acting in this way reduces emotional reactivity—the person calms down, feels safer, their parasympathetic nervous system comes online, and they can respond from a less charged place. That connection can elicit a sense of emotional safety and with it, “home.”

This holiday season, you may not be going to your literal home for the holidays, but that doesn’t mean you’re homeless. Through attunement and co-regulation, you can come home to yourself, no matter where you are and what you’re experiencing.