Nurturing Reconciliation and Growth During the Holidays: Start with Yourself

November 25th, 2025

The holidays are upon us, presenting an opportunity to foster hope and cultivate personal growth as you engage with family and navigate social interactions. If you find yourself in a situation with "bad blood" and are uncertain about how to engage with estranged family members, consider some specific strategies. These tips are drawn from my experience as a seasoned psychotherapist and academic.

When considering reaching out for connection, it's crucial to begin with self-reflection. Take a moment to dive into your own needs and determine whether your expectations of others are realistic. For instance, in conversations with family members, I've often encountered statements such as, "I just want a family," "I'm all alone; all I need is family," or "I don't understand, I'm so confused." While these statements express a genuine need, they are broad and vague. Such expectations may be too challenging to meet, as they require a level of fulfillment that no individual can realistically provide. Such statements are highly emotional and painful too.

Steps for grounding yourself for positive engagement and personal growth:

• Identify Your Needs

• Take Ownership of Your Feelings

• Recognize Unconscious, Unhelpful Defenses 

Identify Your Needs

What do you need? A need is something you acknowledge to yourself, and it is often emotionally driven, reflecting a deep desire, such as: "I'm lonely when I think of my family." "I'm sad about the relationship I have with my son."

Recognizing your needs is a crucial first step in the journey towards emotional healing and growth. Let's illustrate, "I'm lonely when I think of my family." Feelings of loneliness can signal how much you want and desire a connection to others. Feelings of sadness can show how deeply you care and love, and signal that something is missing. Identifying and clarifying your specific needs is an empowering step because, if you know what you need, you don't have to worry about waiting for someone to read your mind. Determining your needs helps you become aware of your emotional states and moods.    

Take Ownership of Your Feelings

Recognizing and identifying feelings is a valuable tool that therapists often use to help individuals better understand themselves and their needs, and to improve communication, relationships, and motivation. There are many different types of therapy, though what is consistent with all forms of talk therapy is the acknowledgment of feelings and the variety of ways we can describe and express them.

Feelings are essential to identify because they influence how we navigate situations and appraise our experiences, both internally and in relation to the environment. For example, if you wake feeling sluggish and a bit melancholy, you can appraise that experience as "Yes, these feelings are familiar because it's the morning, it's winter, and my geographic location still follows daylight savings time. I've got to get out and take the dog out for a walk". Or you can wake with the seemingly similar feelings and appraise it as, "Another cloudy, cold, rainy day, no one texted or sent me a Snapchat, my family is so self-centered and selfish." Feelings such as sadness and loneliness in combination are painful and challenging to handle, especially when they are at a high intensity level.

Recognize Unconscious, Unhelpful Defenses

It's entirely understandable to feel defensive at times; psychological defenses function like a physical reflex, automatically protecting us from perceived pain from a situation. If you hear or notice yourself reacting this way, take a moment to pause and identify your feelings. As painful as these feelings may be, they can be a turning point that motivates us to change our thinking and behavior.

In my practice, a common defense mechanism that I observe is catastrophizing and displacement, in other words, blaming others and thinking the worst. When one is catastrophizing, the mind races forward; you can hear the rapid, pressured speech as they create a narrative that supports their current perspective. For example, someone might say, "I'm really sad about the relationship, it all went sour after they attended that college, or made new friends, or started dating that person, or took that job, or got that inheritance. I don't know what went wrong! After that (event) happened, everything changed. They stopped talking to me; they don't care about me. I don't know what went wrong!"

Unhelpful psychological defenses obstruct clear and effective communication; it's a trap that keeps you stuck in the current situation or even widens the gap in the relationship, akin to being caught in an ocean rip current and suddenly realizing how far you are from the shore.

One technique for slowing down defensive thinking is to pause before reacting- essentially, 'pump the brakes'. Taking a breath, exhaling, and slowing down the narrative can help one gain some control and better regulate emotions. Remind yourself that you are human and that acting defensively is normal, though it may not be a good long-term strategy in developing close, fulfilling relationships with your family.

Conversely, if you hear a family member who may be defensive, the best approach is to listen to them with some empathy or sympathy.

If you find yourself falling back into behavioral patterns and becoming defensive, gently remind yourself that human connections are complex and rich, far beyond the simplified narratives we often hear or tell ourselves. By reflecting on your needs, processing your feelings, and setting realistic expectations for others, you can feel more hopeful and less overwhelmed as you rebuild trust and connection. It's all a part of the journey, and practicing self-awareness is a positive step forward.

The steps to consider and prepare yourself before engaging: 

• Identify Your Needs

• Take Ownership of Your Feelings

• Recognize Unconscious, unhelpful Defenses 

References and recommended reading:

Burns, D. D. (2010). Feeling good together: The secret to making troubled relationships work. Random House.

Coleman, J. (2024). Therapy and the Curated Childhood: The Use and Abuse of Trauma Narratives in Parental Estrangement. The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 17(2), 287-303.

Coleman, J. (2020). Rules of estrangement : why adult children cut ties and how to heal the conflict (First edition.). Harmony Books.

Hasseldine, R. (2017). The Mother-Daughter Puzzle: A New Generational Understanding of the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Women's Bookshelf Publishing

Hasseldine, R. (2020). Uncovering the root cause of mother-daughter conflict. Counseling Today, 62(7), 46–50.

Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave : the biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Press.