Managing Family Stress During the Holidays: From a Mental Health Therapist Near You

With the holidays rapidly approaching, learning how to manage family stress during the holidays is more important than ever. Family stress may arise for a variety of reasons (explored further down on this page), but there are ways to manage the stress in a healthy(ier) manner. This blog post explores the causes of family stress, ways to manage these issues, and how mental health therapy can benefit you during this time.

Causes of Family Stress

A variety of issues may cause family stress. Some common situations that cause family stress include:

• Infertility Challenges – family members may make unintentional or intentional comments related to issues around conception during the holiday season.
• Infidelity Issues – betrayal trauma can disrupt the family unit itself and cause issues during family gatherings.
• Family trauma – old patterns of avoidance, dismissiveness, and invalidation can continue into adulthood.
• Addiction – just because it’s the holidays, doesn’t mean addiction urges and cravings cease.
• Financial hardship – the holidays may be a time when family comes together, but it takes spending to put together meals, purchase gifts, and host others in your home. If someone already has financial issues going into the holidays, these issues can be exacerbated by the holiday spend.
• Chronic health issues – a person’s health and functioning may be discussed during holiday gatherings, which can create stress for some.

This is just a short list of stressors that may occur during the holidays. The main takeaway is that the holiday season can stress family dynamics that may already be stressed or not healthy in nature.

3 Unhealthy Ways to Handle Family Stress

Here are three common, unhealthy ways to manage family stress during the holidays. The use of ‘unhealthy’ is utilized to note that these methods may work in the short-term but in the long-term can create more issues later on in life.

1. Avoidance – ignoring or not addressing family conflict in a way that attempts to repair family relationship dynamics.
2. Silent treatment – this can increase the stress within a family and while at holiday gatherings.
3. Substance use – this may offer temporary relief but does not heal the underlying issue(s).

This is just a brief mention of possible unhealthy ways people may try to cope with family stress. Keep reading to learn healthy ways to manage family stress during the holiday season.

3 Healthy Ways to Navigate Family Stress During the Holidays

1. Prepare ahead of time. This can be planning to set boundaries and not discussing certain topics, i.e., politics or the recent election during family gatherings.
2. Practice emotion regulation skills to increase your tolerance of discomfort. This will help you stay responsive versus becoming reactive.
3. Limit time at family gatherings. This can help to remove you and loved ones from certain situations that can become problematic. 

Benefits of Managing Family Stress

It is important to keep in mind the larger picture when we try to break family stress patterns. Keeping a view of the future can help motivate us to stay true to our values and not our family of origin values. We can then begin to break family patterns that become so easily passed down to younger generations. By doing this we show younger generations how to effectively manage conflict and act as a role model to those watching us.

Family therapy can be beneficial to heal stressed family dynamics. Click here to be taken to Iris Health Clinic. They provide family therapy services to help ease stressful interactions. However, sometime, individuals themselves need 1:1 therapy to help them heal and address specific mental health challenges.

How Can Mental Health Therapy Near Pleasant Prairie, WI Help?

Sometimes family stress can be too much. Further, when we grow up in these types of environments, we may repeat patterns that are detrimental to our well-being. The stress of growing up in these types of environments may also make us more susceptible to mental illness symptoms as parts of our gene code become activated from heightened stress levels in the body. Life doesn’t have to be like this.

Online Individual Therapy

Individual mental health therapy can help you in different ways. From learning emotion and nervous system regulation skills to developing assertiveness skills. Individual mental health therapy can help you cope with the symptoms of mental health while increasing your self-esteem and reducing symptom frequency and intensity.

If you’d like to start mental health therapy, you can call 720.295.6703 or submit an online form by following this link. I am currently offering in-person therapy sessions for those who live near Milwaukee, WI area and telehealth therapy services for those throughout Wisconsin and Colorado.

By: Daniel Gospodarek, LCSW