81 How to Handle Family During the Holidays

Welcome to the Great Leader, Great Mom podcast, where we trade in mom guilt and burnout for courage, calm, and a whole lot more joy. I'm your host, Liz Jolly, engineer, turn life coach, mama three, and founder of the School of Courage. Here we talk about leading at work and at home without losing your sanity, your sense of humor, or yourself. If you're ready to drop the guilt and grow your courage, you're in the right place. Today's episode is all about a holiday classic, your family. And how we love you know that family that you love, but sometimes absolutely drives you crazy. And look, it's Thanksgiving, so I want to teach you why so much of our suffering around family comes from one single place. Us arguing with reality. So let's clean all this up so your holiday festivities feel easier, lighter, and way less dramatic than normal. Let's start with a story because one of the things I hear a lot, and I've lived versions of this myself, is this thought we all have about my parents should help out more with the kids. They should be more supportive. They should care more. And maybe this holiday you want to go do something with someone you love or you want to just go exercise and so you want some help with your kids. Let's start with one facet of frustration I hear a lot. And this is when people tell me, my parents should want to help out with the kids more. They should be more supportive. They should care more. And when we think this thought, we feel so resentful. And the clients I've seen that come to me with this, they feel so hurt and so rejected by their family Because this is what is circling around in their brain. And when your brain believes these are true, something like my parents should be more supportive. Your brain is going to go looking for all kinds of evidence and you're going to look around and be like, look, that person over there down the street, their parents babysit all the time. Or This person at work's mom begs to take the kids overnight so they can go on date night. Why don't my parents want to do this? What does this say about me, our kids, our family? And suddenly a completely natural reality that your parents don't want to watch your kids becomes a deep emotional wound that you think about way too much than you want to give credit So here's one of the funny things I like to reflect on is if you think about you don't even want to watch your kids all the time, right, Ergo, you wanna go on date night, you wanna go work out, you wanna do something So why do you believe that someone else should want to watch your kids? And I know some of you might be upset about this, but just think about it for a moment. We get so upset with our family for not wanting to watch our kids when we don't always want to watch our kids. Right? And it's this moment when we are arguing with reality and that reality is that your parents don't want to watch the kids when you want them to Your frustration, your resentment is driven by the thought that they should want to. And that leaves you absolutely disappointed. You sit there and you stew, you judge, you withdraw. You're probably like complaining about it and sort of mean with them about it. And the result you create is more disconnection across your family, especially with your parents. And you're probably resentful at your kids because Your parents don't want to watch them. And what you really want is love in your family, right? You want connection all across. And so this suffering doesn't come from their choice, right? Like your parents deciding to not want to watch the kids. It comes from your thought about it that they should. And this thought is arguing with reality. And as Byron Cady says, you could argue with reality, but you're gonna lose only 100% of the time. Arguing with reality always hurts. If your parents don't want to watch the kids, you can't change them. And if you guilted them into that, that definitely wouldn't be helpful. But right now, during the holidays, this kind of pattern shows up in other places. One of the other ways, especially during this holiday season, that you might be arguing with reality and creating a ton of resentment and suffering this time of year. You might have the thought, my dad should stop telling the same story again. My sister shouldn't parent her kids like that. She's doing it all wrong. My mom shouldn't comment on my weight or how I'm raising my kids, right? How many of your moms have endless unsolicited feedback for you about what you're doing or not doing? My family should want to help more. They should listen more. They should Ask more questions about what's going on in my life. But here's the truth. People will do what they've always done. And people who they've always been And people aren't just gonna be their same selves. So if your dad always tells the same stories over and over again, why this year are you gonna expect him to be different? You telling him probably has zero effect. It's like your mom giving you unsolicited feedback on your child raising. You're not gonna change probably because of it So just allow people to be themselves. Your family has probably shown up this way on script for decades. So why are you expecting them to magically be different right now, this year in 2025? It's probably not gonna happen. The more you can accept that, the more peace and calm you will feel this holiday season. When your brain says something like, they should or they shouldn't That is the flag waving for you that it's causing the pain. And that's what you need to look into in your brain and see what is the thought that I think that they should do and how is that arguing with reality So let's talk about the self-coaching model, the Burcastillo-inspired CTFAR model, and This is going to come in really handy this season. So let's start with the C and one of the examples we've just gone over. My parents said they don't want to watch the kids. That in itself is neutral. Honestly, it's factual. They said they don't want to watch the kids. There's nothing emotional about it But our brain now has a story and thinks, but they should want to help more. This is you creating a painful story in which you're arguing with reality. It probably makes you feel resentful. And that feeling of resentment doesn't come from the fact that they don't want to watch the kids. It comes from the fact that you have a thought that they should want to help out more. So the action you take from the feeling of resentment is you're comparing yourself to other families. You're ruminating on it all the time. Maybe you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it You replay a conversation in your head, maybe with your parents when they said no, and trying to think, what was that great rebuttal I should have had instead? Or how should I have convinced them? Maybe you withdraw from them, like you are like, I'm not gonna call my mob or you complain to all kinds of people, including your our partner or your spouse. You build a case against your parents and you look at others and you want to go to your parents and say, you're doing it all wrong. Did you notice that Sally down the street? Their grandparents love watching the kids, right? You're trying to like shame them into it. You feel victimized. Like the world is against you. And you continue suffering, the result you get from all of this is you create more evidence that your parents don't care, even though what's really happening to you is you're arguing with reality They should be different. You should be different. You should know that they're going to be who they are and accept them as they are, not as some version of them that you think they should be. Because really there's no other choice. You can't change people. And so the more you can lay this down, this will create the peace and connection that you're really after. Let's tell the truth here. Your parents in this scenario, they want to live their best life. And that includes not watching your children. They don't want to spend every Friday night babysitting. They don't want to change their lifestyle They don't want to spend their retirement doing your child care. And maybe some of them do, but when you're in the situation where you don't have that, don't get stuck in this arguing with reality suffering. And it doesn't make them wrong or terrible human beings. I promise it makes them who they are And you need to love them as they are. That is unconditional love. And you need to drop your expectation of them. The more you can stop resisting what is, the more you can stop trying to change people who don't want to change, you can stop outsourcing your emotional comfort. To people who have never offered it consistently, that's where you reclaim your power. And once we accept this reality, we can ask ourselves, okay So my parents don't want to watch the kids. So now what? Or it could be my dad's gonna tell the stories at dinner. So now what? How do you want to show up in this moment? In the case of the your parents not wanting to watch the kids, what other solutions do you have for child care? Maybe there's somebody you can like take turns. Maybe there's a high schooler on your street that'll come watch kids for money. What else can you do? Who else can you ask? Once you accept reality, then your brain goes into problem solving mode. I promise. How can you make this holiday season easier for yourself without demanding that other adults change who they are? Acceptance is not resignation. It is clarity. There's no other choice, right? People are gonna be people. This holiday season, let's try this grounding question. What is really true? When you look at your brain and you get upset about all the things that should be happening or aren't happening Then ask yourself what is true? Not what you wish were true, not what you hope is true, not what you think should be true, but what's actually true So here's some examples. If the reality is your parents don't want to watch the kids, that's reality. What if your sister is absolutely gonna make a snide comment at the dinner table? Expect it If your mom is gonna tell you that you're doing something wrong, know that that's normal. That's her unscript. If Uncle Rick is gonna bring up politics and just throw a grenade there virtually, you know, like in the conversation Expect it. Be like, there he goes. If the reality is that your dad's gonna retell his college stories for like the 47th time, just smile and be like, I love dad. I just know he's gonna do these things This is where your peace comes in. You are facing what actually is reality. You're gonna stop arguing with life. You're gonna stop Shoulding all over yourself, right? When you're like, they should do this, they should do that. Stop being shocked by what is predictable. When you stop resisting, you gain your emotional space. The space for compassion, the space for neutrality, the space for love and connection and peace. And that's what we want this holiday season. Here's another fun thing you can do. Choose an emotion ahead of time. If you're going to Thanksgiving dinner and you know it's going to be intense, why don't you decide before you go? Who do you want to be at that dinner table? How do you want to show up? What do you want to feel in the moment? Do you want to feel grounded or amusement or do you want to bring the fun? Because you can bring the fun, I promise. You can go in and decide, I'm gonna feel fun no matter what. I'm gonna bring the fun. When I walk in that front door, every response I'm gonna have is with a smile and with love because I create the fun. How would you interact with people if you're there to bring the fun? How would you think about yourself differently instead of being the victim in the moment or getting upset? Visualize yourself being that woman or man at the dinner table and everybody is just being their normal selves, like you're writing the script of all of it. You can do this. The more you visualize this, it can come true. And you can sit there and be like, yeah, it's like me watching a show that I wrote going into Thanksgiving dinner. So here's some final thoughts. This holiday season you don't need your family to change or to behave or to follow your manual. They don't need to help you. They don't need to understand you. They don't need to treat you differently. They don't need to be more supportive or less critical. They don't need to develop magically some emotional maturity or emotional intelligence. They get to be who they are. And you get to be who you choose to be to create that feeling you really want. This is the real emotional freedom. And the calm and the peace and the most amazing holiday that you have probably ever had. You can create it. So that's what I have for you today. If you want to help navigating your family with more courage, calm, and clarity Then come and join the School of Courage membership where we go deeper into all these tools and you get weekly coaching calls, you get a supportive community. of women who get it. Head to join doth schoolofcourage. com and there's a link below in the show notes and come join us Happy holidays to all of you. I wish you an amazing next couple weeks. Talk to you guys later.