Gathering together with our families during the holidays is often an emotionally complicated activity. While we strive to make time and space for those who affirm us, that can also mean having to spend time with those who aren’t as supportive. As anyone who has struggled with an unsupportive family can attest, there are real psychological impacts to spending time in these circumstances. Research has consistently shown that an affirming and supportive environment (or lack thereof) is a significant influence on long term outcomes for marginalized groups such as the Black, LGBTQ+, and Autistic communities.
If you’re able to safely engage the unsupportive family in a dialogue about their unsupportive behavior, I’d encourage you to first look over our previous article, Navigating Holiday Conflicts. There, you’ll find strategies for setting boundaries with family members, engaging in health confrontation, and ways to take care of yourself while doing this. If you’ve tried those strategies without success or it isn’t safe to use them right now, read on!
So how do we keep unsupportive family members from causing us so much distress when we’re unable to avoid spending time with them? Generally, it’s suggested we make a plan ahead of time for how we can cope with these behaviors. Today we’ll be discussing some of my go to recommendations when working with clients: Limiting Exposure, Lifelines, the Grey Rock Method, and Safety Oriented Coping.
Limit Your Exposure
While time around an unsupportive person may be unavoidable, we often have enough control to limit how much time we need to spend in close proximity to them. Our ability to manage stress is like a muscle: if we use it too long and too often, it wears out. We need to take breaks from stressful situations to let it recover, or we risk it failing to work properly when it’s most needed.
Limiting time around an unsupportive person can be especially tricky at a holiday gathering, when large groups of people may be staying in a single home for days or even weeks. Here’s some common strategies to help people take breaks and get space:
- Find ways to keep busy away from the person such as helping with errands, meal preparation, going for walks, or volunteering at holiday events.
- Schedule activities away from the main group with a smaller group of supportive family members such as going to see a movie or to a holiday event outside the main gathering.
- Make plans for your own lodging that allow you to be either by yourself or with those who are supportive.
- Bring a book, handheld game, craft, or other pleasant activity to keep busy with when you need some time to be alone.
Lifelines
When we’re around someone whose behavior is unsupportive towards us, a common narrative we sometimes perceive is that we lack value and are in some way “wrong” as a person. With enough exposure to this narrative, most people start internalizing it and begin to believe it themselves. However, it is possible to set up support ahead of time to counter this narrative and get more affirming feedback from others.
Remember that old quiz show where contestants could use a “Lifeline” when they got stuck, such as “Phone A Friend”? Take some time to identify who the supportive people in your life are that you can trust to give you honest affirmation and validation when you’re struggling. These can be friends, partners, and even whole communities! Online communities, such as Discord servers, often have channels dedicated to seeking in-the-moment support for their members. There are also many talk lines specializing in specific populations or issues you can reach out to for in the moment support by phone or text. You can find a list of major US hotlines here specializing in a variety of topics here at Take This’ resource page.
For individuals you want to use as Lifelines, check in with them ahead of time to see if they’re open to you calling, texting, or direct-messaging them for support when you need it around your family. When reaching out to a Lifeline person, check in again to make sure they’re in a space to give you support in that moment. For online community spaces, make sure you’re using the proper channel or forum before reaching out. It’s important to make sure we don’t overload each other by accident!
I generally recommend that my clients make a list of at least three different people or resources they can reach out to ahead of time, in whatever combination makes sense for them. Having at least three options helps ensure that if one person is busy or that hotline has a long wait time, they can more easily turn to something or someone else instead of waiting.
The Gray Rock Method
Sometimes, we’re faced with a family member who’s lack of support crosses the line into abusive behaviors such as name calling, put downs, and humiliation. When we’re unable to safely set boundaries or avoid time with the person causing harm, some people have found success with the “Gray Rock” Method -adapting one’s interaction style to become as uninteresting as a gray rock. By not providing any sort of engagement or reaction to the abusive party, the hope is they will no longer find the interaction interesting and disengage.
Some ways to practice this method include
- Keep conversations short and sticking to brief, ideally 1-2 word answers to questions.
- Avoid sharing personal or sensitive information about your life with them.
- Ignore attempts to provoke you into an emotional reaction or argument.
It’s important to note that the Grey Rock method does not yet have significant support in research and is not a solution for addressing ongoing abuse. Instead, it is meant to help us disconnect from interactions that are harmful and avoid attempts by the abusive person to provoke us. If the person in question begins to escalate their harmful behavior in response, such as physical abuse, it’s important to set a clear boundary and exit the situation as quickly as possible. This is where I often work with clients to make a safety plan ahead of time for where they can go if they’re concerned this may occur. If you need help exiting an abusive situation, check out Take This’ list of crisis hotlines for options in your area.
Safety Oriented Coping
Even with the best strategies for managing an unsupportive family, we’re still being exposed to a stressful situation. When this happens, it’s important we engage in coping skills afterwards that help our brain make the shift from “stress” to “safety”. An important first step can be making a plan for activities we can engage in between interactions and after we’re done visiting with unsupportive family. Those activities ideally fulfill one or more the following criteria:
- Helps you feel relaxed and/or cozy. (e.g., snuggle up with your favorite blanket, taking a hot shower/bath).
- Involve physical affection (e.g., hugging a loved one, cuddling with a pet).
- Makes you laugh (e.g., watching funny videos, jokes with friends).
- Give you a sense of control (e.g., doing a craft, completing a chore)
- Involve some physical exertion (e.g., going for a brisk walk, weight training at the gym).
Activities that signal to our brains we’re safe (laughter, affection, positive physical sensations, etc.) or that we’ve “won” a fight (completing a task or exercising) can help us cycle out of a stress response and back into a relaxed state. This is especially important when the stressful event makes us feel unsafe, which unsupportive family members often do.
Conclusion
Dealing with unsupportive family members can often be an unavoidable part of our holiday celebrations. But by making a plan to use one or more of the above strategies before spending time with these individuals, we can limit their impact on our emotional wellbeing and preserve our bandwidth for the people who are supportive of us.
This article is not a substitute for medical advice or professional counseling. While we at Take This want to provide you with resources, we do not recommend or endorse any particular site, treatment, therapy, or resource. We provide these links at our sole discretion but have not necessarily vetted or reviewed any particular resource. We assume no liability for the use of the information or resources on these sites and encourage you to use your own best judgment when reviewing these resources.
If you live in the US and you’re having suicidal thoughts, reach out to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or call/text 988. If you’re outside the US, you can find local crisis lines at Suicide.org. If you’re even debating whether you should call them, you should call them. The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline handles all psychological crises, not just suicide.