Why Are the Holidays So Triggering? A Therapist Explains
For many people, the holiday season is not a time of rest. People are juggling end-of-year deadlines, financial pressure, social obligations, and the unspoken expectation that this should be the happiest time of the year – when, for many, the reality is often the opposite. This time of year, people are confronting the grief of who they’ve lost. If they do gather with family, tensions arise that are usually avoided during the year because they rarely see each other. For those struggling with substance use, mental health challenges, or unresolved family dynamics, the holidays carry the highest risk factors for relapse or conflict. The holidays are triggering. This is normal. There are ways to cope and prepare.
The Pressure to Feel Happy
The holidays come with a powerful collective fantasy. We absorb these idealised images from movies and marketing in our mind of the perfect, happy family in a beautiful, clean home celebrating a perfect Christmas surrounded by gifts. Everyone consciously or unconsciously feels that they want that, but it’s not realistic. The instinct to compare is human, but it’s not always helpful. The holidays carry an immense social pressure to keep up appearances or pretend that everything is perfect when it’s not. When reality doens’t match that expectation, shame often fills the gap.
We no longer live in family units year round, and then suddenly we’re expected to spend extended periods of time together in close quarters. This is not natural or easy. It’s a massive obligation with a tremendous amount of pressure to show up and be perfect. For many adult children returning home, old judgments and familiar dynamics resurface. And for those who don’t want to go home at all, that choice is often met with guilt. The emotional stakes of the holiday season are extremely high.
Why Family Gatherings Can Reactivate Old Patterns
From an attachment perspective, it makes sense that holidays are triggering. Our earliest emotional templates are formed in the home. Family is where we first learned how love works, how conflict is handled, and whether our needs were consistently met, or not. All of a sudden, it’s like we are children again. Parents may still speak to you as you’re fifteen. Siblings may unconsciously reinforce outdated roles: the responsible one, the difficult one, the peacemaker, the problem. Even subtle interactions can pull people back into emotional patterns they thought they had outgrown. This can create a sense of internal regression, which many people attempt to manage by numbing, overeating, drinking, or dissociating. For those who are in recovery from substance abuse or are navigating an eating disorder, this is the most destabilising time of the year. It’s crucial that we prepare accordingly.
Preparing for Triggers Rather Than Being Surprised by Them
To be as regulated as possible during the holidays, we need to prepare for it. The first part of this is the mindset shift. You don’t need to keep up with the fantasy. It will not be easy, and there will be triggering comments and challenging dynamics. Acknowledging this in advance is far healthier than arriving with unrealistic expectations and feeling disappointed or overwhelmed. If your destabilised, your much more likely to have unhealthy coping mechanisms.
We need to prepare our nervous system as much as possible. We need to be doing movement, breathwork, meditation, art therapy – whatever those practices are for you – invest in them leading up to going home. If you go home scattered and out of rhythm and throw your routine away, this can be extremely dysregulating. Do the normal things that you would do, have a little morning or night routine. Go for walks. Try to keep yourself as balanced as possible in your routine.
It can also be an option, depending on the family, to prepare with the parents. You could call your mom, for example, and address that it’s not helpful to hear comments about weight, or that you don’t have a partner your bringing home. It’s always worth a try to communicate beforehand. My clients are often surprised how effective this can be. The worst that could happen is that things stay the same. There’s no real risk in asking. But it’s important to not be over-psycholocial. Often, kids are in therapy and not the parents so you don’t want to pathologise or attack them. Just ask gently if they could avoid certain comments or topics.
If those topics do come up, try to change the subject and don’t be afraid to leave the room. If it’s an option, bring a friend or a partner home so that you have someone in the space that changes the dynamics. Often, having a child in the space can release a lot of tension as the family has a different and new focus.
I’d also recommend to keep it short. It doens’t need to be week at home, and you don’t have to sleep over if it’s not necessary. Don’t overdo it, and set boundaries. You are an adult now. Embrace that change.
A More Compassionate Way Through the Holidays
The holidays ask a great deal of us emotionally, often more than we realise until we are in it. If you find this time of year difficult, you are not alone. You are responding to complex emotional and relational forces that deserve understanding. Growth doesn’t mean being unaffected by our families. It means learning how to stay connected to ourselves within them.
Written by Dr Sarah Boss, Clinical Director of The Balance Rehab Clinic
