Vivian Baruch

By Dr. John Gottman

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Let’s talk a little bit about setting boundaries with your family during the holiday season. You know, one thing you can expect during the holiday season is that it’ll be stressful.

And it’s stressful for a lot of people really, because New Year’s is supposed to represent a new beginning. You know, where you take a look at the past years and think about how you want to be different, how you want to change, how you want your life to change. And you make these resolutions and promises to yourself about how you want to be different.

Reasonable expectations

Also the holiday season is known for being all about good cheer and being happy and warm and friendly and giving and things like that. And you know that’s a big expectation. A lot of times with family it turns out that what you really need is reasonable expectations, not sky high expectations.

And so you need to make really smaller goals about how you’re going to relate to people during the holiday season. You could expect some irritation, you know, some negative things happening as well, when people get into contact with people they don’t see very often. So setting boundaries is an important thing.

The importance of setting boundaries

It’s something you should do with your partner, with your children. Open it up for discussion and talk about what difficult moments they’ve experienced in the past and then think about maybe how you want to limit your time or minimize negative experiences. Or what to do if you do encounter something like criticism from in-laws or siblings or really unwelcoming behavior. Then you know you’ll be prepared if those things do happen with a response that really reduces stress for yourself.

That’s really the key thing, to make the holidays a time of low stress, a time when you can really get in the a frame of mind of renewing things for the new year so you can be sure that next year is going to be a lot better than this past year.

Managing personal stress

 Let’s talk a little bit more about managing personal stress during the holidays. One thing really to be aware of is that there are going to be times when you really need to take a break. A break from social activity ,from other people and from your own worries as well. And find a time when if you’re feeling flooded with stress hormones. If you’re overwhelmed by a sense that things aren’t going well, that there’s kind of danger in the social environment, it’s a time when you really need to go off by yourself. And when you, do take a moment and breathe deeply and evenly at a rate of around 10 breaths a minute. Deep breaths. And just sort of relax and look over your body ,look into your body and see if there’s any tension, any muscles that are tense.

Muscle relaxation

If you lift up your shoulders, you can see whether you’re carrying extra lot of responsibility on your shoulders. If they’re tense, then tense them up intentionally. Hold it that way and then relax and look throughout your body at sources of tension. Increase the tension for a few moments and hold it that way, and then relax.

Do that throughout your entire body keep breathing deeply and evenly. That’s a way of dealing with flooding, which is physiological arousal. That really tells your body that things are not safe for you in this environment so taking a moment for yourself is a very important thing to do.

To learn more about setting boundaries and reducing relationship stress, call 0421 961 687 or email us to schedule an appointment. International callers should call +61 421 961 687.

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