Embodied Boundaries During the Holiday Season
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Holidays can often be a tender or stressful time of year for many.
In our culture, we are spoon-fed loud messages about how things should look and feel.
One of the most painful parts of trauma + relational wounds is being told ‘we should have a different internal felt experience than the one we are currently having.’
During a time of year when we are encouraged to be ‘merry,’ it’s not surprising that we are left feeling alienated and alone with our complex holiday emotions. The loneliness of being told our internal experience is wrong can be a heartbreaking experience.
While the gaslighting messages may be persuasive, I want you to know this:
Given all of your lived context (and as humans, we all have years of context) of course you would feel this way.
Here are some ways the holidays can be hard:
Holidays may be reminders of how much our lives have changed in ways that feel painful.
Holidays may remind us of how much we wish some parts of our life would change.
Holidays may trigger scarcity-related fears.
Holidays may provoke grief waves.
Holidays can come with expectations at social and family gatherings that are hard to meet.
Holidays may leave us finding ourselves feeling alone.
The emotions we may experience when we find ourselves in these relational struggles are not inherent problems to be solved or erased but are instead a result of internalized cultural and societal norms.
They are messages communicating important information about our needs. When we acknowledge our emotions as an adaptive strategy to let us know about our needs, we may begin to reclaim our right to feel.
Emotions are messages about our needs.
When we can embody this survival strategy as human truth, we can begin to explore how and where we might create boundaries to honor our very valid needs.
As we dive or tiptoe into the holiday season, I invite and encourage each and every one of us to honor the boundaries to that serve our selves first, so that we can most fully show up for ourselves, then our loving relationships.
Thank you for sharing this space with me.
Take Good Care,
Caroline
