NJ psychologist reveals tricks to staying calm with toxic relatives during the holidays

🎄 Holiday family visits can reactivate childhood stress patterns, triggering old emotional “programs” that still shape adult behavior.

🎄A Lakewood psychologist has tips on how to stay calm around family during the holidays.

🎄 She says families coping with grief should make space for sadness and honor loved ones during holiday gatherings.

LAKEWOOD — Visiting your family for the holidays can bring on stress or anxiety.

Even though you’re an adult, do you suddenly feel 12 years old again when you’re around your relatives, enduring all the negative comments, constant criticism, and backhanded compliments?

“You gained weight.” “You’re too pretty to be single.” “You shouldn’t let your child have whatever they want.”

Why holiday family visits trigger old emotional patterns

The truth is that the holidays don’t create stress. They reveal it, and when you go back home, your brain automatically reverts to when you were a child, said Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, a licensed clinical child psychologist in Lakewood.

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If you experienced trauma in your childhood, you try to break those patterns in adulthood, but when you’re back with your family, your brain runs that old program, which Koslowitz calls a “trauma app.”

This is the software your brain has installed when you were stressed as a kid. Now that you’re an adult and around your family again, the brain triggers that childhood stress, and runs the program again.

Koslowitz said it’s important to take pauses every 90 seconds to remind yourself that you are an adult, things are different now, and instead of trying to figure out how you’re going to deal with everybody all day long, just take it in 90-second bursts.

Techniques to stay calm during holiday gatherings

Another way to stay calm around your family during the holidays is to follow Koslowitz’s “over, under, around, and through” technique.

Over – When you go over, you ask them how to deal with someone else who might say something tactless. You basically recruit them onto your team. “For example, someone else mentions my daughter’s weight, what should we do? So, they’re suddenly on your team helping you,” Koslowitz said.

Under – “When you go under, you sort of focus on the love that’s underneath it. Like you love me so much, and I love you too. It’s so great to see you and remember how much we love each other,” Koslowitz said.

Around – You talk about something else. So, when the comment is made, change the subject, talk about how delicious the food is, or anything for that matter, to create a distraction.

Through – “You could go through and sort of set the boundary and say straight out we’re not going to be discussing this, and I need you to respect the boundary,” Koslowitz said. This tactic doesn’t work as well as the others because she said that when someone is used to being critical or treating someone else badly, it’s difficult to change them.

But, all in all, these techniques can really help diffuse a situation, she said.

How to break harmful emotional cycles

“When you find yourself snapping or acting younger than your current age on the holidays, it’s not because you’re regressing, it’s not because your therapy progress is undone, it’s not because you’re dramatic or you let yourself get baited, it's because your neurology set you up that way,” Koslowitz said.

The holidays don’t trigger us. They reveal triggers. So, you have to reveal it to heal it, she added.

It’s not a moral failing. It’s information about how your brain responds under stress. Thank your brain for the information and say you’ll deal with it later. It’s not a regression. It’s a program that’s activated in your brain. That’s good because you know how the program activates and you now know what to do about it, Koslowitz explained.

To break the cycle of harmful triggers, Koslowitz said you have to be forceful about it.

So, for example, if you watch Netflix every night before bed, knowing full well that looking at the screen is going to keep you up all hours of the night, don’t just tell yourself that you’re not going to watch TV in bed at night.

Be forceful. Remove the remote control or your phone. Put them somewhere so you can’t access them.

If you’re determined to exercise after work, but then you come up with some excuse not to go, be forceful about it. Wear your workout clothes under your professional clothes so that after work, you know you’re going to the gym, Koslowitz said.

“With any behavior you want to change, we have to make it more effortful for our brain to do the old behavior than to do the new behavior,” she said.

Helping kids cope with grief during the holidays

Helping kids deal with loss around the holidays is also very challenging. Whether it’s the loss of a parent, a grandparent, a friend, or even a pet, the holidays can bring sadness, rather than joy.

That’s because people do not die in the past, Koslowitz said. They die in the future and they keep on dying.

“Holidays are markers of time. It’s Christmas, and Grandma is still not here. It’s like she died all over again,” Koslowitz said.

Even though they may have died years ago, and you may not miss or think about them every single day, the holidays bring on sadness because they are reminders that our loved ones are still not here, she explained.

“We need to make space for that. Make a moment to honor that person. Say something. Our kids don’t need us to manage their emotions. Our kids need us to help them make space for their emotions,” Koslowitz said.

Then, have a conversation with your kids about how to honor that loved one’s legacy. For example, if grandma were a kind woman, then be kind to a classmate. Pay it forward in their honor.

Kids may just feel better.

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