How to Survive Mother’s Day When You Have a Toxic Family Situation
If your family situation is not the healthiest, don’t stress yourself out even more by spending hours wishing everyone will be on their best behavior over Mother’s Day weekend. Could they be? Sure. Will they be? Probably not- but that doesn't mean it needs to be a complete disaster.
Anticipating that your parents, siblings, and whoever else is involved will likely act however they normally do allows you to focus your energy on things that are actually within your control- like how you want to respond when someone says something inappropriate or hurtful.
Next, recognize you have choices
Look, your choices might all suck. But even when that’s the case, it’s important to remind yourself that you do have choices. Making active choices in our lives is what makes the difference between feeling stuck and feeling in control.
When you’re a kid growing up in a chaotic environment, you don’t have options. You’re completely dependent on the adults around you to meet all of your needs. It’s not like you can just get up one day and dramatically declare, "I'm out of here!" while you start a new life in your own apartment.
And when you’re an adult dealing with that same chaotic family dynamic, it’s easy to still feel like you don’t have any autonomy over your decisions. But, as an adult, that’s no longer true. You get to choose what you do this weekend. See your family, call them, avoid them altogether- whatever you do, make sure to remind yourself that it’s your decision to make.
And, if all of your choices suck, choose the one that sucks the least.
Remember, your only goal is to simply survive the day and minimize your stress levels
Sure, bigger picture, I think you should definitely go deeper and peel back the layers of your family dynamic. You deserve to reflect on how it’s impacted you so you can create an emotionally healthy and happy life for yourself. You deserve to process your trauma, create healthy boundaries, and grieve the childhood you did not have.
Today is NOT that day.
Do not challenge yourself to do anything other than survive this weekend. Do not try to repair relationships, be the most enlightened version of yourself, or hold yourself to unrealistically high expectations.
Simply be honest with yourself about your emotional and physical capacity and how you want to exert it. Have a plan for what you’re going to do if shit hits the fan. A plan that you actually feel good about instead of trying to figure it out in the heat of the moment. You can get back to healing tomorrow.
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Setting Boundaries with a Toxic Parent
Learn my 3-step strategy for effectively setting boundaries with a parent you suspect has borderline or narcissistic personality disorder.
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