No Fighting
A psychologist has revealed three tips for avoiding family arguments this Christmas.
While adverts may show families gathered around the dinner table enjoying each others’ company, Christmas is a stressful time for many, particularly when they are forced to spend the day stuck indoors with relatives they would rather avoid.
Nicholas Joyce, a psychologist from the University of South Florida, advises people get through the big day by first managing their expectations of how it will go.
If relatives start to get under your skin, Mr Joyce recommends people either directly take control of the issue or let it go.
Finally, Mr Joyce advises people prepare themselves to likely feel irritated with their family members and plan ahead how they are going to respond.
Here, in a piece for The Conversation, Mr Joyce outlines, in detail, three coping strategies for spending Christmas Day with relatives.
Every holiday season, families and friends convene to share affection, kindness and experience.
In the ideal holiday atmosphere, one often depicted in commercials and media, such get-togethers are places of warmth, appreciation and general happiness.
If you find yourself in such a family, count yourself lucky and blessed.
If your holiday is marked with stress and difficulty, then you may be part of the rest of America, where the holiday season brings real issues to light in addition to the positive experiences of the season.
In my day-to-day work as a psychologist, specializing in mental health therapy with young adults, the holidays always bring to bear deep-seated issues.
For many, family is something they have avoided by moving away for college, and thus coming home for the holidays forces them to engage in what they do not want to do and have successfully avoided for months.
For the ill-equipped person, this sets the stage for disaster and even poor health.
Long-term stress has been linked to digestive problems, heart disease, sadness and depression. Some studies have shown that people undergoing stress have more viral infections.
Fortunately, we can prepare ourselves for these encounters, go into them with open eyes and perhaps manage them better.
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