Being Thankful that You Have a Government Mandated Reason to Avoid Your Dysfunctional Family

 

          

 

It is Thanksgiving Day of what has been something of a surreal world filled with drudgery and suffering that has probably not been shared by more people at the same time in this world than any time in human history.   

Yes, there have been world wars but never have so many people across all seven continents have had to take isolation and quarantine precautions due to the pandemic of Covid-19.  According to the World Health Organization, there have been 57.8 million cases of Covid-19 and 1.3 million deaths from it since they started keeping score. (https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiological-update---24-november-2020)

We have been strongly encouraged by government officials to practice “social distancing,” which means we are to stay about six feet apart from each other.   The “steps” taken by government officials also has meant shutting down sectors of the economy, which has meant economic hardship for many people who have not worked in “essential” jobs. 

So, many people have been isolated, not being able to go anywhere and stuck in their thoughts about how they are going to make it. Children have been kept home from school and not being allowed to go out and play with friends.  

This blog is more slanted to the United States and North America, but our societal traditions and calendars have been disrupted.  Where I live in Louisville, Kentucky, the Kentucky Derby is normally a rite of the Month of May where the best thoroughbred horses race, and Covid forced that race to run the first week of September on Labor Day.  The National Hockey League played for the Stanley Cup in September.   As I write, the Macys Thanksgiving Parade is going on right now and it just does not seem the same without crowds of people (they hinted that they taped portions earlier in the week in the name of Covid precautions).   Many of our lives go with the rhythm of the calendar and the seasons that Covid has made us feel out of sorts as a society.

That brings us to the holiday season which is supposed to start today.   I debated whether or not to write this year for the few people who have read this including my aunt by marriage. I thought as I was loading the turkey breast into the smoker . . . absolutely, I should write.  This could be the year people read this stuff.

So, it’s Thanksgiving, It’s Covid.  What can you say about a day like this: Why not be thankful you don’t have to see the dysfunctional family today, and put up with their political speeches and awkward questions you don’t want to answer, and unsolicited suggestions?   

I was thinking about that as I was recalling a phone conversation with a family member a few months ago and the family member (probably after a few glasses of wine) was repetitively telling me that my choice for president was a piece of $%*!.  Mind you, I will probably call the family member today and hopefully, the conversation will be polite and end with “We love you.” However, there are people out there who have such a deep-seated painful family history that there is no desire to talk let alone see them on Zoom.

Covid gives people a government-mandated excuse not to see those people, have a controlled conversation and then hang up and go back to binge-watching Netflix, some other streaming video or You Tube.     Maybe that is something to be thankful for?  

Anyway, if this is the first time you have seen this blog, and you are looking for coping or survivng the holidays, feel free to scoll back.  I have written 105 previous posts about many different topics.

I plan to explore grief and loss and loneliness in the next few weeks on this blog.  I would like to encourage you to help me make this viral.  This is not a monetized blog (or at least I don’t think it is) and I am interested in helping as many people as possible in getting through the holidays.

And you thought your family was dysfunctional?

I have written about family dysfunction before in this blog, and you are invited to go back and read previous entries.  I think that we do grieve that some of our families are so screwed up. 

We hear other people talk about how great their family gatherings are.  We hear that they gather together at Christmas. We feel envious that our holiday is not going to be that great.

I have thought that some people I know sugar-coat how great their Christmas is, and maybe they do.  Some of the people we know are pretentious and good liars.   However, they are reporting that they are having a good Christmas, and for those of us, whose Christmas is going to be lonely or marginal, we are still going to have our sad feelings.

To me when faith is removed from Christmas, it becomes incredibly empty and meaningless.  If gathering with a bunch of irritable and dysfunctional people is the end-all of Christmas, then we should probably cancel it . . . but that is not going to happen because of how many national economies depend on retail sales of gifts.

Family Dysfunction in the "Holy Family"

The idea here in this entry is not entirely my own, but it has made me feel at least a sense of meaning and connection with my faith today in addition a new appreciation for Matthew 1 in the New Testament of the Bible.

Now, I have tried to keep things secular in this blog because I wanted to help the broadest possible audience, but I am hoping to give you a new appreciation for the essence of the Christmas story.

Anyway, Matthew 1 1-16 is genealogical listing of Jesus’ family tree all the way back to Adam.  I did not do so great in Robert Stein’s Gospels class at Bethel Seminary, but I at least learned that the audience of this book is a Jewish one with lots of references to Old Testament prophecy arguing that Jesus fulfilled them.  

The genealogy speaks to a Jewish audience since that was important to them.

Within Jesus’ genealogy, there are indications that his family had black sheep and imperfection.  There are three women named, and two of them were of ill-reputation: Rahab and Bathsheba.  Rahab was a prostitute in Jericho.  Bathsheba was the woman King David had an affair with. David then had Bathsheba’s husband killed.  Ruth actually was reputed to be a good person (who actually has book in the Old Testament named after her), but she was a foreigner and the Jewish people at that time were big into ethnic purity.

Furthermore, when you look at how Jesus was conceived and born in Matthew 1:18-25, it was not ideal and Joseph wanted to divorce Mary.   He at least listened to the angel of the Lord in the dream and in faith took Mary as his wife and followed through.

As children we did not think about the adult undertones of the Christmas story.  It was all about Away in a Manger and Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Silent Night.   Then it is about Santa Claus and presents and a break from school.  As adults we grow cynical and empty.

The Meaning for Us

That brings us back to today.  There are nine more shopping days until Christmas.  There is a sense of drivenness that stuff that must get done.  Being driven is not always bad, but it can become empty after awhile.

We are being driven to a time when all the stores are supposed to be closed on December 24 and many of us are going to be stuck alone or with some people who are not going to be pleasant to be with.  Or we are going to lament being alone because the people we would otherwise be with are just plain miserable and lead to headaches (we made the better choice to be alone than to be stuck with those miserable souls). 

The story of Jesus coming to earth is wrapped in family dysfunction and fallible humanity.  It is not really the elegant story that is portrayed in a service of lessons and carols or in the Advent wreath.  It is a real gritty story that touches us where we live. 

We live in a world of pain and heartache.  We have many feelings that we must stuff and move ahead because reality dictates that feelings do not pay the bills.  We suffer through the ongoing anger and hurt from things that should have been different.   We open up the grief again and again that people have failed us and that we failed others and ourselves.

We grieve that we have immature relatives that will throw tantrums at the slightest trigger.   It is down right impossible to identify these triggers because for an immature person anything can be a trigger.   Many of us have tried to walk on eggshells around these relatives to try and not make them angry only to feel like failures.   If these immature family members were strangers, we would have avoided them a long time ago because they give us no other motivation to bond with them.

According to the Bible Jesus came to earth in a dysfunctional life situation and died for our sins.  The prophet Isaiah foretold his emotional, physical, and mental lot . . .

Who has believed our message

    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

   He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

    and like a root out of dry ground.

   He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

   He was despised and rejected by mankind,

    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

   Like one from whom people hide their faces

   he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

(Isaiah 53: 1-3 New International Version)

We need meaning.  Meaning helps us cope.  Meaning helps us get though.  Families are supposed to give us meaning through togetherness and acceptance, but when that doesn’t happen due to the dysfunction, the original message of Christmas can give us that meaning.  The savior who came knows what it is like to suffer like we suffer.

Should this make your holiday all better?   No.  But I hope that it will make your holiday more meaningful to look underneath the Christmas songs you have probably heard for the 200^th time and the 100^th Christmas cookie or piece of candy you have eaten. 

Reflecting or Nursing Grudges?

Dwelling on the negative can be what makes Christmas a terrible time.   It can masquerade as "reflection" at Christmas, but it may also be nursing a grudge and self-torture.

We are encouraged to be reflecting this time of year.  Sometimes the reflecting can be on the meaningful and fulfilling, but sadly it can be on the negative and painful.

The Negative Mental Filter

Many people have a "negative mental filter." When you have a negative mental filter brewing between your ears you are not just reflecting on a problem . . . you are dwelling on it.  Many anxious and worrying types are always dwelling on some problem.   Many angry people dwell on past hurts.

When someone has a negative filter, their persepctive gets skewed.  The negative issue, topic, or object makes everything else seem small.  The negative mental filter makes us disqualify the good things. 

The classic example of a negative mental filter is the vain 14 year-old who finds a zit or pimple on his or her nose in the morning.  They dwell and focus on the zit until it feels like the size of a basketball that will break their neck because it begins to feel so big.  They get false validation when an antagonistic peer makes fun of the zit and the 14-year-old will find other negative mental filters to dwell on.

Bringing it to Now

Now that it is getting less than 48 hours before Christmas, there is an opportunity to develop a negative mental filter. Some of us are thinking about the family members we are going to see. Reflecting about them will likely remind us of the past. If we dwell further we start to keep score about what they did and what they did not do. We will think about our previous opinions and hurts.

Many of us will see relatives or in-laws who have been hurtful or abusive in times past.  Maybe they have sleighted us and they have no clue that they have been hurtful.  Maybe they are addicted and have hurt us in their addiction by stealing from us or forgetting important matters.  Then there is the dreaded narcissist or borderline who do not care that they have been hurtful because they think they are the victim and are entitled to special treatment.  

In a bizzare sense those who worried about the end of the Mayan Calendar and the feared apocalypse of 12-21-12 may have been able to take a break from thinking about the family crazies.  However, now that the apocalypse proved to be another false alarm it is back to business as usual and that can mean dwelling on those evil family members and nursing drudges.

There is a valid struggle here. The hurts are real. Some of these family members were and still are acting lame. We think about them and we feel anger and sadness.  With family it is never just one time where there was a problem . . . it is a long string of problems that can include:

• Not getting invited to a wedding
• Someone obviously getting favoritism
• Getting divorced from our mother or father and marryng someone else and getting sucked into that family
• Favoring one set of grandchildren over another
• Unfair criticism
• Adult tantrums that disrupt weddings
• Failing to come to special occasions such as graduations or baptisms
• Humiliation at family events

We can ditch the non-family members who act lame but we cannot ditch the family members.  We are often still encouraged if not pressured to come to family events where we will be faced with these people.

The more we think about them and their behaviors and the pain we felt from their behavior, the more likely we will feel anger. The more we think about that anger we run the risk of nursing a grudge. 

The Grudge

The grudge is not just any kind of anger.  It is a type of anger where we feel self-righteous and where we feel like victims.  It is an anger that tends to motivate us to find justice in some manner. 

The grudge occupies our mind and takes prominence in our mind as a most important matter.  It makes us irritable and more easily annoyed by miniscule irritants around us.

When we are nursing a grudge, it keeps at a simmer in terms of the physical signs of anger.  We stay tense and we risk developing chronic headaches and stomach problems.  We may develop insomnia because the adrenalin produced keeps us awake like caffiene.

The Irony

The irony is that most of us who have nursed grudges feel like we cannot take our perpetrator head-on and say "I am angry" or "I am still angry with you."  We just see too big of a cost.   Instead what we do is continue to stuff it and take it out on other family members or we act in passive-aggressive ways.  Chances are in our anger expressions we become like the family member who we despise.    

It is not necessarily stupid to weigh whether or not you are going to hold your anger or make your statement of anger.  The families that we live in can be complicated.   Sometimes it sill seems to be the wiser option to hold your tongue and your anger because telling a fool you are angry with them only gets you more trouble. 

Possible Options

The best option is to get your mind off of the grudge.  That may be difficult this close to seeing them this Christmas.  However, the more thought you give something, the more important you make it.

I have written on similar issues in earlier posts and I would encourage you to look back at those if you are looking for ideas.  

Maybe reading can get your mind off of your grudge.







 

The Bizarre in our Families at Christmas

Right now in my life, I am dealing with some bizarreness.  I cannot go into details about it here, but it is reminding me of past bizarre times at Christmas, and it does make me think about how surreal and weird, our own families can be.  Coping with the bizarre can make or break a Christmas.

In my field, when people think of bizarre, they think of a psychotic person either displaying disorganized thinking or verbalizing their delusions.   Maybe someone is angry for something that you cannot put your finger on.  However,  without the clinical psychosis and neurosis, there is enough bizarreness in our families to make us feel uncomfortable and disappointed that Christmas wasn't perfect.

The Frog in the Kettle

As members of our family, we typically either become numb or used to our families.  We are like that frog in the kettle.

Frogs can tell the distinct difference between hot and cold temperatures, and so if you throw a frog into hot water, the frog will jump out immediately to escape.  But if the temperature is gradually raised from cool to boiling, the frog will be boiled to death because it does not have the ability to distinguish gradual temperature change.

In this case our families get a different look from us because they are our families.  We wonder why something is strange and we cannot put our finger on it and we blame ourselves for making our family members mad.

A Personal Experience

We typically see the weirdness or strangeness in other families or new family members.  I remember going to Christmas Dinner 17 years ago at the father of my wife's great uncle. 

The great uncle was remarried after being widowed.  His wife's family sat there playing their hand-held video games and totally ignored us as we sat there waiting for dinner.   They just stayed to themselves and made no attempt to introduce themselves or be social.   I made one attempt to introduce myself and it was like talking to a wall as they said NOTHING.

I and my wife's side of the "family" ate in one room and the other side of the family ate in the other room.  While there was a "honey baked ham" and some other fine food, it was kind of like eating gravel because there was no sense of love and belonging.  I do not remember us staying long because there was just nothing in common to talk about.

I made a comment to my wife about it later.  My memory is that my wife just said "well, that's just her family."  In all honesty, it was weird, and I have no grief over having not seeing them again.  

Circling Back to Your Own Family

If you have not seen your own family for a number of years and you are getting back together with them, there is a tendency for feeling awkward and bizarre.  If you are the frog, then you are jumping into a boiling hot kettle and you can discern the difference immediately. 

Depending on how much bad blood and unresolved conflict there is in the family history, there will be guardedness and cautiousness.   They just don't know you anymore.

Combine this estrangement with realizing you have self-absorbed people in your family, and you will see that a lot of their behavior will be all about them and their insecurities.  They may make accusations that seem to come out of left field. They might accuse you of thinking thoughts that you haven't thought, and then judge you for those alledged thoughts.  They will then throw a childish tantrum and then storm out of the room . . . whether or not they have had too much Gin or Whiskey. 

Some of the family member tantrums may be rooted in some event or problem that happened decades before, such as how someone behaved at a wedding or funeral.  It can be stupifying why they are dragging something up from that long ago.

Coping with it all

Coping with the weirdness of your family or maybe your new in-laws is not exactly a simple task.  It is a vague task.  It means you have managed your feelings and perhaps have a good sense of humor about the experience.

Our families can be weird

If you are returning to see your family after a long time, it will probably serve well to accept that in the least Christmas will not be perfect.  Our family members will be who they are with their quirks and stupidity. 

There are family members who get drunk and do stupid things.  Alcohol has this way of peeling away judgment as simply as peeling away a banana skin.  

Furthermore, there is a good chance your weird family members will not care what you think after being away for so long.  You are like the prophet returning to the hometown and you will not have the credibility you think you should have (trust me on this one).

Hopefully most of your family members will be well-mannered and civilized but there may be a few who live for the drama and love for things to be stirred up and shaken up.  This is surprisingly normal behavior for families.

You don't have to be right

I have finally understood the significance of Leo Buscaglia 's use of the term "You may be right."  Too many of our family members (including us) have the need to prove ourselves and will not admit that they are wrong.   They will argue their point to the death and will drag up the shameful past to punish you for challenging them and their point of view.   The more insecure the person . . . the more vicious they are, and the more disruptive they are.

There are some people in this world who would rather be right than be with family.  They have strong control needs and will actually run from family because they cannot control.  They will do some weird things in their need for control because it is all about them. 

If you have one of them in your family . . . or several of them in your family, a good deflecting move is to frequently and politely say, "You may be right."  Many times they only hear "you" and "right."   In reality you are not conceding anything because you only said they maybe right.   There is no guarantee that this will work, but it can buy some time.

Have a sense of humor

It seems to me that some of the situational comedies also called sitcoms have some of the most dysfunctional families.  The characters get into each other's business and they do some of the stupidest things.  The difference between us and them is they are in front of a studio audience or have a laugh-trac imposed over them.  Some of our families are like American Dad, Family Guy, Al and Peg Bundy, or The Nanny, or even more like Bob Hartley Ph.D's patients on The Bob Newhart Show.  Laughter can soothe some of the tragic pain.

Keep it clear that you are only responsibility for your feelings and your behavior.

This last skill is a philosophy or belief: Everyone is responsible for their own feelings.   It is a total cop out to say to someone "You make me mad."  The person who blames others for their feelings is shirking all responsibility. Chances are, they will be too "pig-headed" to hear from you that you are not responsible for their feelings. 

Beware, if you are holding to this belief, you will have to be responsible for how you react when the relative brings up something from June, 1987 that is totally ridiculous and insane.  I recommend in these cases having a rule of waiting three (3) to five (5) seconds before responding each time you talk.   Anger has this way of making us impulsive and we need to be thinking before we speak.

Closing Comments.

Well, I hope that your Christmas will not be bizarre, but if it is,it will not last forever.  If you want to read more about this, I have written on family dysfunction in earlier blog posts.  If you have the time and want to read even more, I suggest reading Kaplan's  When Holidays are Hell.  You can likely purchase a copy online at Amazon.Com or other online booksellers, or check your own public library for a copy.