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How To Survive Holidays With Your Family

CATEGORY: SELF-LOVE

how to survive ChristmasI keep analyzing whether I should publish this article or not for a week now but as I want to be honest and reflect what is happening in my life on the blog, I feel like I should share it with you. Since I came back to Geneva, I keep asking myself one thing and one thing only: How to survive holiday with my family next time?

Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents. I talk to them every other day and we seem to be undestanding each other quite well as long as we are not in the same house for longer than 3 days. One of my colleagues laughed when I told her what argument I had with my parents when I was in Prague and told me that “Fish and visitors stink after three days.”

I did not see my parents properly for one and half year and still, we managed to get into an argument. We ended up not talking to each other for half of the time that we were in Prague. It was easy because Alex and I stayed in a hotel and not at their house but it was a shame because we don’t see each other often. Only once a year. Luckily, my close friends have the same problem with their parents.

How come that our parents always know how to push our buttons the best? Ram Dass knew what he was talking about when he said: If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.” how to survive christmasWhat did I learn from this experience? I have to accept that my parents will always see me as their child and treat me that way. Also, that our family dynamic will never change and I should give up trying to change the narrative.

They believe that as a woman I should do certain things and Alex should have other roles. Even our close family relatives can’t understand that I don’t cook, iron and clean the house- as a good wife, I should manage all that while I work full-time. I refuse to do it because it is plain stupid and we are not living in 1950s. My mom can annoy me when she says that Chloe-Sofia will be pretty after me and smart after my husband, ignoring that we both have university degree and successful career.

Unlike Alex, I am a sucker for self-help books. I got this book and can’t wait till it arrives so that I can start using the tools described within. The only thing that I regret is that I had not read it before I saw my parents.

There is always a positive thing that we can learn from bad experience and in my case it is to watch my reactions and start putting space between my thoughts and actions. I don’t want to behave like my parents but it is hard because we absorb unconsciously behavioral patterns, fears and believes of our parents since our birth.

In order not to act like them, I have to be aware of the way I behave and react and talk openly with Alex about my fears and blocks. We uncovered one mental block last weekend. And as painful as it was for me to talk about it, I think it was important. Now he knows that he does not have to take personally when I don’t want to talk about certain topics or when I react in a certain way. Sometimes I feel that it is not fair because he has it all sorted out while I still keep dealing with my s***.

Do you ever feel the same? how to survive Christmas