Common Family Celebration Problems
Premise - most personal and
social "problems" are symptoms of
deeper
To illustrate this,
think of one or more unpleasant holidays and/or family gatherings. Then see
if any of these factors contributed to your discomfort:
Typical
Surface Celebration Problems
-
I felt obligated
to participate
-
The preparations were
stressful
-
I wasn't with people I
liked
-
I wasn't in a
mood to be social
-
The event's location and/or
physical setting was unpleasant
-
I was physically and/or
emotional distracted from being really present.
-
The reason for
our gathering wasn't important to me
-
I wasn't clear on
how I was "supposed to" behave or I felt uncomfortable with
what others expected of me at this event.
-
I felt judged,
rejected, and/or ignored by some
people there.
-
I wasn't free to express my
needs, feelings, and opinions to other family members
-
My
needs weren't met
at this event.
-
I felt uncomfortable with the activities
and/or conversational topics we shared.
-
I wasn't able to
arrive or leave when I wanted to.
-
The food and drink weren't enjoyable.
-
The event included
I didn't value or enjoy
-
My expenses
related to this gathering were too high
-
I was bored during this event.
-
I wasn't able
to bring the companion I wanted to be with.
-
The gathering
raised painful reminders for me
-
The people I cared about weren't
enjoying themselves
-
(add your own
factors)...
Have
you experienced some of these family-celebration problems?
Each one is a symptom of
these...
Primary Celebration
Stressors
In
multi-home divorcing families and stepfamilies, many factors can reduce
holiday and celebration enjoyment.
The more your family
adults and kids are aware of these core stressors and what to do about
them, the higher the odds you can truly enjoy gathering together.
The core stressors are mixes of...
-
adult unawareness of
in adults and
kids, what the wounds
and how to
identify and
the wounds
(Lesson 1);
and...
-
family adults' inability to
and
effectively as teammates
(Lesson 2);
and...
-
adult ignorance of healthy grieving basics + an
"anti-grief" family policy + incomplete grief in some adults
and kids, (Lesson 3); and...
-
unresolved relationship
(Lesson 4); and...
-
adults' inability to resolve...
Typical stepfamily members are also stressed by...
Each of these problems can be
avoided or reduced with adult motivation to learn and change!
Options for Better Celebrations
If your adults accept the primary problems above, you can help each
other...
-
admit and reduce major psychological
wounds. Without this, the options below probably won't work;
-
adopt a
long-range view
and seek progress, rather than
focusing on each separate event;
-
adjust
your
expectations about holidays and family gatherings to
fit your situation;
-
raise your awareness:
study, discuss, and apply
here; and...
-
use family gatherings and holidays as
helpful chances to
mourn old traditions
and losses (broken bonds) and grow new ones together;
-
clarify and assert what you each need from your family
gatherings as you stabilize your multi-home
over the years. For stepfamily members, this
includes intentionally evolving a bio-family-merger
plan to guide you all; and finally.
-
Teach your adult and kids how to manage
significant guilt; and...
-
help each other learn how to manage
values and loyalty conflicts and relationship triangles, which are
common after family reorganizations and in low-nurturance families.
Let's look at each of these
options.
1) Admit
and reduce Psychological Wounds
A high percentage of average adults in our society (like you?) aren't aware
of having inherited significant
from their ancestors. Psychological and legal divorce is a common symptom of
this. Until these wounds are admitted and reduced, they silently promote
most forms of personal and social problems, and
to vulnerable young kids (like yours).
|
The single most powerful option your adults have toward improving
family relations and celebrations - and guarding your living
and unborn kids - is studying and applying
here, or equivalent. Para-doxically, typical
(GWCs) will scorn, ignore, or procrastinate this vital task, and
endure years of stress. |
2) Adopt a Long-range
View Together
Encourage
each other to accept that that grieving lost traditions and broken
and building
new ones take many years, and that each family gathering is a valuable
step in that process. This is specially true for adults and kids
their
biofamilies to form a
after mate death or divorce.
Rather than striving for "a perfect celebration," encourage your adults to
patiently act on these improvement options over many years. A
useful motto to adopt is "Progress, not Perfection!" As you all
gradually improve your events, help each other to...
3) Adjust Your
Expectations
About Family Gatherings
Each of your adults and kids has their own attitudes, associations, and
expectations about "my family," "holidays," and "family celebrations."
These are probably based on intact-biofamily experience and idealized media images of biofamily celebrations.
Options:
give all your adults a copy of this article
and this one for reference and
discussion. Then help your adults and kids adopt new expectations like these:
|
Common
Biofamily Expectations |
New Expectations |
| Our
family adults and kids should all want to like and love each
other |
Our family
members should seek to respect each other even if some of us
disagree, distrust, or dislike each other |
|
We all
should want to be together as a family for holidays and
special celebrations |
We should
accept without blame that some adults and kids will not want to
attend certain family gatherings |
| We all
should be happy and upbeat at family gatherings |
It's normal and OK for
our family members to express their current feelings - including
sadness - at any celebration |
| We should
avoid bringing up stressful family issues at our celebrations and
holidays |
We should use
our celebrations as a chance to do win-win
together |
| We should
preserve and honor our family's rituals and traditions |
We should accept that
births, deaths, aging, divorces, and marriages require changing some
traditions and creating new ones |
| We should
not use celebrations to discuss or solve family relationship problems |
We should look for
chances to admit and resolve family relationship problems at our
gatherings |
| We don't
need to worry about
loyalty or
family-membership conflicts |
We need to evolve a
family strategy to resolve these normal conflicts |
| Divorce is
a shameful personal failure |
Divorce
is not shameful. It suggests mates'
un-recognized psychological
wounds and
unaware-ness |
| Divorce
breaks up a nuclear biological family |
Divorce reorganizes
a nuclear biological family into a two-home system |
| There's no
need for us to acknowledge that we are a stepfamily |
We all need to learn up to
60 new realities that
apply to our stepfamily |
Another powerful way to improve family holidays and celebrations over time is to...
4)
Raise Your Adults' Awareness
Premise: besides
psychological wounds, another major reason for all personal and family stress
(inclu-ding family-celebration strife) is ignorance
of...
| psychological wounds |
effective communication |
| losses and healthy
grieving |
healthy relationships |
| high-nurturance families |
effective parenting |
| stepfamily norms and
realities |
the [wounds + unawareness]
cycle |
Paradox - your adults won't experience the major benefits of studying these subjects until you do so.
When you do, you'll be able to teach these subjects to your kids, and protect
them from
inheriting ancestral ignorance and crippling psychological wounds.
Each
topic is covered by a self-improvement
in this nonprofit Web site.
Option - have family meetings to discuss the key articles in each Lesson
in this course.
Another way to improve your family gatherings over time is to...
5) Help Each Other Grieve and Start New Traditions
As people and families (like yours) evolve, changes and
(broken bonds)
are unavoidable. They follow births, marriages, deaths, divorces,
and other family-system changes. Our society minimizes awareness of healthy grief, which
promotes widespread
personal and family problems - e.g. some obesity and
Options -
-
have all your family adults and older kids
learn and discuss good-grief basics
then...
-
use family
meetings and celebrations to
evolve a
meaningful family-wide Good-Grief
together;
including, including how to offer each other effective grief
support.
-
Before and/or during major celebrations, invite
your family members to
identify
their main life-losses (broken bonds) - specially those from family separation and divorce or death, re/marriage, and/or cohabiting;
and...
-
be alert for
of incomplete grief - specially among your kids.
Note that typical Grown Wounded Children (GWCs) avoid "negative feelings"
like healthy sorrow by intellectualizing their losses and/or repressing
their emotions.
Another powerful option is to...
6) Clarify and Assert What You Each Need
For any holiday or special celebration, each adult and child will have a mix
of his or her own surface and primary needs. :
Options -
Invite your adults and older kids to draft their
Bill of Personal Rights. Then use your Bills to validate your celebration
and other needs. Alert everyone to their priorities: are some people's needs more
impor-tant than others? If so, expect frustrations and resentments.
Invite your adults to learn how to
to discern the
primary needs that cause most surface dis-comforts. Then invite everyone
to dig down and identify what they need relative to the next holiday or
special family occasion.
Invite your adults to review
and effective
skills. Use these skills to help each of you state
your celebration needs, including significant boundaries. For example:
"I
need you all to not joke and hassle
me about eating too much, or being so fat."
"I
need Marv to not be offended if
I say I've heard him tell his appendix saga many times before, and
I can't get interested in a replay."
"I
need you all to accept that I don't want to sing with everyone."
"I
need you to not rag or judge me
because I choose to (not) go to church."
"I
need you all to accept that I'm uncomfortable giving
or getting dutiful hugs and phony kisses."
"I
need you to accept that even if I'm
quiet, I'm glad to be here."
"I need to talk about how much I
miss __________."
"I
need to come in my car,
because I may want to leave early."
"I need you to accept that I feel best if we're
doing something, not just
sitting around going blah blah blah. Let's play cards, or
The
Ungame, or
charades for part of the
time!"
"I need your uncle to stop
calling me by your ex-wife's name."
Invite all your adults to review
these typical child family-adjustment needs,
one child at a time. Each child has a unique blend of losses
and needs, so don't assume you know what
losses may be affecting them before, at, or after your family gatherings.
Young kids probably can't articulate what they feel or need. Option: use these ideas
to help you assess what any particular child may need.
7) Teach Everyone How to Manage significant
Guilt
A common
uninvited
party guest is excessive (vs. normal)
It's
a normal response to believing "I've broken an important rule - a 'should,' 'ought to,' or
'must" like the "biofamily expectations" above. Option:
help each other (including
kids) learn how to avoid or spot and
reduce
excessive guilt with other family members.
A final option is...
8) Learn How to Manage Three
Stressors
Help
each other spot, discuss, and resolve divisive
and
conflicts,
and associated relationship
These are specially likely during
post-divorce and new-stepfamily
celebrations, and can significantly lower everyone's "cheer index."
Develop your family's unique terminology to describe and problem-solve each
of these common stressors ("Hey gang, Martha's stuck in the middle again!")
Option - use copies of this
article to inform your family members about these universal stressors.
The Web
address of this article is http://sfhelp.org/parent/divorce/holidays.htm