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This is Part Three of a three-part series. You can read Part One here.
You might have a father, mother, or siblings who do not meet you halfway and want to spend time with you on their own terms. “I’m dreading having to be in the presence of my mother-in-law,” admitted Federica in a recent conference.
Live Our Way
Placating family members may feel threatening to the person you have become. This threat to your personal identity will likely induce anxiety within you.
Further, you may be feeling anxiety about anticipated family conflict. History may have demonstrated to you that no holiday season is complete without “The Family Blow Up,” which you would like to avoid at all costs, yet know is somewhat inevitable.
“I have to see my parents,” shared Candace, “and there are a lot of issues to resolve. Not to mention I’ll be bringing my boyfriend, whom they have expressly informed me is not the right person for me.”
You can reduce your anxiety through acceptance—embracing that when people care about each other and spend a lot of time together, differences easily become amplified. The alternative (no closeness, no tension)—as I write in my book Love and Suffering: Break the Emotional Chains That Prevent You From Experiencing Love—avoids the suffering but also the love that close relationships bring.
Bringing It All Together: What These Emotions Have in Common
What do stress, loneliness, nostalgia, and anxiety have in common? All these emotions are about comparison: to desired goals; to other people and their social relationships; to your past social relationships; to your normal, routine, non-holiday life. The best way I know of to defuse the charge of these emotions and not allow them to control you or ruin your holiday season is to identify them.
In ancient mythology, do you know what the first thing an exorcist would ask a person to do who was “possessed” by a demon? To name the demon. By giving it a name, they reduced its power over them.
Our worst adversaries in life are often the ones we can’t identify. We can diminish the power of any of our challenging emotions over us by better understanding what causes them. Giving the emotions you are experiencing names (called “affect labeling”) diversifies your thoughts into the multiple emotional layers you have experienced in association with what is occurring in your life.
Why does this work? Even intense emotions become more manageable once you are able to identify them. In a suite of three studies at the University of Kentucky, people experiencing anger were less likely to act aggressively if they could identify the emotion they were feeling. In another study led by George Mason University psychologist Todd Kashdan, people were less likely to drink excessively after experiencing strong negative emotions if they could describe those emotions.
Taking the courageous inner step of identifying your emotions, research by Stanford University psychologist Katharina Kircanski and colleagues has discovered, reduces the power these emotions have over you. This process of allowing yourself to experience a complex mixture of emotions has also been found to produce more mental flexibility and intelligence.
Have a Dinner Party With Your Emotions
A wonderful strategy I first read about in Susan Piver’s book, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart—you guessed it, after a devastating breakup in my life—is to invite your challenging emotions over for dinner.
As you set the table for this feast, you will realize that you cannot invite over a dinner guest you can’t name. The first step, then, is to say to yourself a few times each day, “I feel….” and see what comes out of your mouth next. Write down these emotions.
Once you have identified how you have been feeling, literally imagine that these emotions are guests at your dinner table. Ask each guest, such as loneliness, anxiety, envy, or depression, “So, why have you shown up this evening?” and “What are you here to teach me?” Then ask yourself, “What deeper values are emerging within me from the presence of this emotion?”
Meet your emotions where they are, and use this incisive wisdom to clarify your vision for how you will spend the holidays. Along the way, give yourself permission to enjoy them.
