Home for the holidays… a yearly ritual that brings comfort and some predictability to the chaos of the holiday season. No matter how young or old, many of us can count on spending the holidays with our families.

But while this may bring visions of carols and cocoa, reality can often be far from dreamy—as in, why is mom treating you like you’re 16 years old again?

Old family roles die hard

Even if you live thousands of miles away from mom and dad, brother and sister, when you’re home, everyone plays a role.

Think of your family like a cast of characters in a play. Each person is assigned a particular part to play, perhaps the hero, the scapegoat, or the caretaker, and each person assumes that identity and the subsequent behaviors of their assigned role—essentially forever.   

If you know your role and everyone else’s, why can the holidays get messy?

Challenges arise when the cast of characters temporarily return for another act in the play, like the holidays. Everyone assumes you’re playing the same role when actually you’ve changed and don’t want that role anymore. It leads to a host of feelings:

• Hey Mom, I am different now! You’ve grown and changed but the family still treats you like the family clown. You think, does my family really know me?
• Oops, I did it again. It’s easy to jump back into old behaviors you thought you’d abandoned. Perhaps you were cast as the caretaker but realized the role was enabling poor behavior in family members. You feel frustrated.
• Changing of the guard.  There’s a new character in the play—a partner or baby—and roles have been realigned.   You might confused and isolated. 

So, how to deal?
With the limited time frame of the holidays, it’s probably best to do nothing major. After all, family systems and roles are so entrenched, cemented over decades, that unless you are planning on making the holidays an extended therapy session, you would be wise to just bring awareness to the situation. 

By simply reminding yourself of the dynamics and the feelings they may bring, you set reasonable expectations for what things will be like. That doesn’t mean to ignore what might be uncomfortable family role dynamics, but it is likely that confrontations during the holidays will not produce change. Instead try to focus on what is within your control. At the end of the day, that’s just you!

-- by Brittany Olsen, a San Francisco-based psychotherapist. Have a question for Brittany? Post them annonymously.