The Real Reason Holidays Feel Heavier Than They Should (It's Not the Season)

1:34

It's not even November yet, and some of you already feel it. That low hum of dread creeping in before a single holiday plan has been made. Nothing has gone wrong yet. No one has asked you for anything yet, and still your body is bracing. If that's you, I want you to know that's not about the season. Today we're going to talk about what it is actually about. Welcome back, everyone. This is Kathleen Flanagan, and I am your host, and I want to close out our October series. We've talked about the guilt around rest, the danger of saying no, and rebuilding trust in yourself. Today, we bring all three of those threads into the season that's about to ask the most of you, and I want to insert what the holidays always meant to me. They were always meant with dread, and it was more when I was in my 20s when all of us were, you know, going off to college, we come home for the season, whatever it was, and it was never fun. I dreaded it. I just dreaded it, and I didn't understand why, but I knew that there was a lot of drama. There was a lot of conflict. I would say on a whole, none of us liked each other, but this was what my mother demanded of us, and of course, whatever she wanted, you did because she would guilt and shame you. So it was always this time of the year when I was just like, oh God, here we go again. And then somewhere along the line, several of us had a conversation, or we just had it intuitively, I don't know, but we decided we were all going to start trying to behave a little bit more around the holidays, not talk about politics, because my one sister was horrible when she got into it. She was just going to kill all of us, because we didn't believe what she believed, and we weren't going to talk about religion. We weren't going to talk about all the things you should not talk about at holidays. So we all agreed that we were going to keep it really light and dull and boring, but that was how we were going to survive it. And so we did. And then there was this Christmas. My nieces were probably about two years old, three years old somewhere in there, and I made them these really cute jumpsuits. I had was coming out of a really bad breakup, and I didn't want to and I also had a sister from Kansas. I think that's where she was living at the time, coming for the holidays. And this was going to be an all day event. This was like a seven o'clock in the morning kind of thing, so all the kids could open their presents at the same time and just really enjoy the Christmas experience. That was actually fun. That really was. I mean, watching my nieces open a present, run around, play with it for a while, then went and opened the next one. I mean, I've never seen kids do that. So it was a pure joy to watch the joy of those three little girls doing that. And then I had my nephews, but they were a little bit older than the girls. And then it was time for breakfast. And my sister who flew in from Kansas decided she was going to pick a fight with me. And I'm trying not to go down that road. I ended up going down that road because she wouldn't stop. So I picked up my stuff and I walked out the door and I wasn't coming back. And this is like, what, nine o'clock in the morning, maybe? And I was done. I couldn't take it. So my brother-in-law calls me up and begs me to come back because everybody knew I wasn't going to do it. And they knew for some reason that this man was going to be able to get me to come back. So he told me that they had a conversation with her. She wasn't going to be misbehaved anymore. They had a conversation telling her, we don't do this anymore. We don't pick fights. We don't start fights. We behave ourselves. We keep everything really light and easy. It's about the kids. It's not about us and all of our drama that we have took him an hour to get me to come back because I wasn't coming back. And I finally said, okay, because it was like he was beating me into coming back. And I did not want to deal with it. You know, you get to a point when somebody's hounding you, you get to a point where you're just like, okay, just to shut them up. So I went back. My sister hugged me and apologized. And I was okay with it. And the day proceeded. But the way the day proceeded for me is that I didn't say another word the rest of the day. I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want anything. I just did my best to behave myself. And, you know, looking back at those pictures years later, I was like, okay, you could tell where I was at that day. But that was the whole point is even though we may have worked it out in our family, but if not everyone got the memo, it didn't change it. And it didn't stop everything because none of us really wanted to deal with the holidays. I know the kids were getting older. We're still dealing with it. I know my siblings were having issues. Sometimes I mean, I finally did the first holiday thinking maybe this will help. It did in some respects because I wasn't there and I could get them to leave. And the good thing is, is none of us stayed longer than we had to. I mean, I think we were good for two, maybe three hours tops. And we were gone. I mean, that's how fast we moved through the holidays because none of us wanted to be there. But I always, always, always remember, I just never spoke. It was just easier not to talk because if I, if they started a fight and they would, I was going to finish it. And so it was just best if I behaved myself as how I looked at it just to get through the holidays. And then it would be like hurry up clean the house, smudge the house, get rid of all the energy. That's how I handled the holidays. It was that bad. But we tell ourselves it's about the season itself. Too much to do, too many people, too little time. But if you trace the dread back to its actual source, it isn't really about the calendar at all. The holidays are just the moment everyone else needs. Everyone else's needs, expectations, and emotions all land on you at once. And if you spent all year being the strong one, the one who handles it, hosts it, remembers it, moves it over, your body already knows what's coming before it even started. The dread isn't overreacting. It's your nervous system doing math ahead of time, based on real historical data about what the season has cost you before. This is exactly why the work we've done this month matters right now. If rest still feels dangerous, if no still feels like risk, if you still don't trust your own read on what you need, the holidays will find everyone of those gaps and press directly on them. Because this season demands rest, boundaries, and self-trust all at once, often within the same afternoon. So I want to talk about a client of mine and what she did or does was she would invite people to come over for the holidays. And but it wasn't to her place. It was always going to her mother's house. So when she would invite people, like because she didn't want somebody to feel like an orphan, like they had no place to go during the holidays. So to make herself look good and the people pleasing and I'm a good person and I'm thinking about you kind of thing, she would invite people to come over for Thanksgiving. And then she would come back and preface it, like, well, I have to check with my mom first and that wouldn't be at the time she invited you, that would be later. Then she would wait a little while longer and then she's like, oh, you know, I talked to my mom and I don't think it would be a really good idea if you came. So she wouldn't, so she didn't invite because, well, she didn't talk to her mom yet. This is what she would tell the person that she talked to her mom and it wasn't a good idea. But the truth was, is that when she did talk to her mom, her mom was like, yeah, bring him over. That's not a problem. I mean, we got plenty of food, that kind of thing. And then somehow she would manage to let the person know or it would slip about what she had done. Now, she didn't realize that what she had done was that people were possibly like making plans thinking this is kind of nice. They're going to have a Thanksgiving dinner. They may not know who the person the people are, but it's better than being alone. And it was a very thoughtful gesture. And so that's what she did. Now, I can talk about this because this is what we did in our family. But getting back to her was when she came back and said, well, it wouldn't have been a good idea. And you know, I don't know how my mom would feel and she might be overstressed. And she might be this. Well, this wasn't her mother at all. This was her doing this. And so I had to talk to her about, you know, you just keep your mouth shut. If you don't want to do it, or if you're uncomfortable, stop doing it. Because this is a woman who every single one of her paradigms were going off, you know, I have to be nice. I have to be a people pleaser. I don't want this person to feel alone. I want them to like me, all this stuff. And the whole time she wants, she didn't want you there. She didn't want you there at all. But because she wanted to be this, Oh, look at me. I'm so what's such a wonderful person. That's what happened. So when I see my mother taught us to do this a long time ago, and so whenever somebody was alone for the holidays, we were always allowed to invite them. And what we found the first time we did this and this is in our twenties, and we're all sitting here going like, Oh my God, I don't want to do the holidays. We invited people. We had such a good time. We played cards. We played games. We had we just had fun. There was no drama going on because see, there was we didn't want to like embarrass or make somebody uncomfortable with our family drama. So we all behaved. And that was what was so cool. So that became a ritual for us. Every single holiday season, where we were going to invite somebody because it took the drama off of us and the holiday and the stress. And we made it about the people and the people that would come were always like, Thank you so much for coming. I was so hesitant, but I had so much fun. I felt like I belonged here. I felt welcomed. I didn't feel any ickiness. I didn't feel anything. And to us that what that did in all of our brains was like, Oh, we're doing this again. I do this to this day. I invite people that are possibly orphans. And what do I get? I mean, what we do is we have a fun holiday because see I don't do holidays with my family. This is with my friends. So my own personal family that I created is what we do the holidays with. Everybody brings something. We have a good time. We laugh. We eat good. And I always tell them, if you know anyone who's an orphan, invite them. We always have way too much food. And that's what I do today. And I still do it. And people they might be hesitant about coming over and we invite them over and they're like, Oh my god, I'm so glad I came. You're so much fun. This was so much fun. I enjoyed myself. I felt welcomed. I felt that. And that wasn't because I needed to call my nervous system anymore. This was something that I genuinely wanted to do. It wasn't about the reasons for doing it. It's not the same. I do it because it makes people feel good. I know when I'm invited for holidays, if I had no place to go, it made me feel good. And I always felt welcome. And I think that's what we should do at the holidays that we do it for the right reasons and not for our paradigms. But I only did that if I knew I could handle it. And what I discovered that when I wasn't in my family drama dealing with my family, that's what happened. So that's why I want to talk about that's why I wanted to talk about this because you want to make sure that it's happening for you the way it works for you that you are doing the things that make you feel good and make you happy. So this isn't about learning how to love the holidays more or trying to want less from the season. It's about walking in already carrying the work you've built this month. So you're starting at zero. The moment the season asks something of you. You get to decide now, while you're calm, what the season will and won't cost you. So here's what I want you to do this week. Pick one holiday expectation, one gathering, one tradition, one obligation, and make a decision about it while you're calm, instead of waiting until you're standing in the middle that already overwhelmed. Deciding ahead of time from a regulated body is one of the most productive things you can do for yourself this season. So to close out October, the dread isn't about the holiday. It's about everyone else's needs landing on you all at once. In a body that hasn't fully learned yet that it's allowed to rest, say no, and trust itself. The good news is that's exactly the work we've been doing all month. And it's exactly the work we're going to go even deeper on together. The dread isn't about the holiday. It's about everyone else's needs landing on you at once. And on Friday, I will be putting up a permission slip that can help you navigate the holiday season. You can find it on YouTube at Kathleen M. Flanagan.