Surviving Thanksgiving

And we are spiraling into the holidays now, the free fall, the free fall, yeah, the way I like to think of it, We're done with Halloween, the the sort of fantastic appreciation culmination of the years wonderful events wrought in horror, right, But now we leave, we leave those imagined horrors behind and we get into the true horrors of the holidays.

I know. And now I'm just imagining, like a hitchcocky in vertigo thing, all of us falling into this spiral of Thanksgiving and then the winter holidays and then winter really setting into our bones. It's it can be a very difficult time, I find, you know, especially the sort of modern pop culture version of the holidays that we have here in the West, with with with Thanksgiving and

UH and the and Christmas. And when I have you as well, because you you constantly bombarded with these idealized images of what it should be of this uh, you know, this, this Norman Rockwell family setting around Thanksgiving dinner, these you know, old timey Christmas images of people, you know, gathered around the fireplace on Christmas Eve, all that kind of stuff. So you're having to deal with these these visions that

don't really match up with reality all that much. And then you're also dealing with all the the added complexities of your life, the social dynamics of your family, and uh it can. And meanwhile, the world is growing darker, the world is growing colder, and uh and and I think, you know, tapping into some of those primordial fears. Will will the sun come back? Will warm times and and harvest return to us? Or is this the eternal night?

Will that Thanksgiving turkey ever be done? That? And I was thinking about this, that the family dynamics on a typical Thanksgiving American Thanksgiving celebration, because again, you you brought up Rockwell and there's this idea of the gathering and everybody gathering at the table and breaking bread. And then

I thought, what does that really look like? And this is definitely a generalization what I'm about to say, but I thought, you know, what's pretty typical is that you have a mom or some other matriarchal member of the family slaving away in the kitchen, you know, elbows up to like turkey guts and stuffing and a little bitter

about it. Right. And then in the other room, you might have a dad or a patriarchal figure sitting, you know, in the chair with the football game on, and all the other kids or you know, other family members gathered around all watching football in silence. And that's you know, that's kind of a sort of a typical thing. Again, this is the generalization, and not every family is like that, but it doesn't it doesn't ring like this warm family gathering.

It feels more like this sort of forced Okay, we're all going to sit together and observe a holiday. And that is when you get to have those family dynamics sort of hanging above the Thanksgiving table like a thick fog, because you know, within that you have all of the roles of the past that we've played, You've have certain aggressions in the family being played out sometimes and and it can be a really stressful holiday for people in that way. Yeah, I mean, I mean, if nothing else,

and we're all completely changing over time. So you have these families getting back together now you know, everyone not everyone is u is at the same place they used to be in there, and and also you find yourself

falling back into former modes of behavior and being. I've talked with friends about this before, talking about like how long is a is an optimal visit, especially around siblings, because it seems like day one and day two are great because you're still your your outside, you're grown up self. But if you're around your siblings too much, then you start falling into old sibling modes, which can be a little stressful. I agree. And um, someone told me this

the other day. They thought they said, if you think that you have achieved in, just get around your family for a weekend and see if you really achieved in. Because, as you say, even though you have your grown up self and you have face challenges on your own and you've grown, it's really easy to fall into these family roles, especially if there's a dysfunctional element to the family. Indeed, an't and I think there's there's often a bit of dysfunction at least in any kind of family, and it's

kind of inevitable. It's it's there are a number of moving parts and as this machine has to turn on over the years, over decades, Uh, they're they're gonna get some some kinks in the machinery. And uh, and that's just part of living, Yeah, because you have to think about a family as a sort of a living, breathing thing that's ebbing and flowing and changing. The dynamics are changing based on life events and challenges in that family. And this is from Lisa Miles writing for psych Central.

She says, conflict, neglect, abuse of all sorts, shame, conditional love, faulty disciplinary styles, gender prejudice, sexuality, intolerance, denial of feelings, and family facts which is interesting, emotional disregulation, rampant anxiety, and much more are ever present in such families as

she just described pretty much everybody populating the earth, I think. So, yeah, enemy, and on top of that, you do have these you do have all these great memories as well perhaps you know you may have you have these things that are trying you all together beyond just just blood or living arrangements or shared histories. Um. But yeah, it becomes a very just complicated dynamic that does not match up with that Norman Rockwell painting that is not what he painted

and or was on the cover of a magazine. This is uh, this is real life and there's so many moving parts to it. Yeah, which leads adult children of dysfunctional families to assume one of several roles at the Thanksgiving table. Yeah, now this is this was an interesting reading about this. Uh. I think that it ranges from four to six tend to be the given roles, right and uh and you know it it it's what fighter, thief, wizard.

I'm sorry, that's now the first one will mention here the rebel and you can if you cannot identify the rebel in your own family environment or in those of friends, then you've definitely seen it in the media or you've

read it in a novel. Uh. This is the you know, generally generally the kid who's uh, who's always out there getting into trouble, getting into some sort of mischief and also often serving as a scapegoat for other members of the family unit, so that not only is there misbeha of your a self expression, they become this uh, this, this o this uh, this mechanism that other members of

the family turned to to divert attention, to divert blame, etcetera. Yeah, it's kind of the Lindsay Lohan of the family the Lilo, right, um. And that's where that's where it's problematic as a scapegoat part, because any of the core problems tend to get glossed over because everybody's looking at the kid who wants some

sort of attention, you know, even if it's negative attention. Um. And then you have something which I sometimes thinks the rebel bleeds into this, the mascot or the clown, and that's the kid who is using comedy to help alleviate tensions. And of course the problem with that is that if you're always playing the clown, then you're not really observing your own true feelings or allowing those feelings to be shown, or even really allowing those tensions to play out because

you're too busy trying to cover it up. Yeah, yeah, which is which is an interesting one to think about because I I often find myself acting like the mascot in various environments where you know, I'm going to turn to a joke or some sort of you know, whimsical

observation something of that nature. Um. And at the time it will often seem like be thing to do, you know, But I guess I'm kind of generally a conflict avoidant person, so right, and it's the easy thing to get to the problem is that when it goes on and on and on and then you get to you have these sort of recursive behavioral traits that play out later when you're really hiving to deal or grapple with some difficult topics, you know, trying to get a little down to your

real feelings. So it often comes down to am I playing the long game or the short game in terms of my Thanksgiving? Which could be difficult because when we're talking about even the title of this podcast, Surviving Thanksgiving, it brings to mind just the idea of, all, right, how can I make it through this Thanksgiving uh encounter with everyone and and have a positive story at the end of it, avoid any pitfalls, and just optimize my Thanksgiving?

And you're generally thinking about that one Thanksgiving it a time if you were planning like three Thanksgivings ahead, Um, I would love to meet you, because you found like a strange and fascinating Yeah, the rest of us might be a little bit overwhelmed by that. And we will talk about some coping um mechanisms and behaviors in a moment, But let's get through a couple more of these roles,

the rebel in the mascot. Yeah, and of course then you have the good kid or the hero, and that is the kid who's trying to fix the family, who often assumed the parental role. And at some point I think all of this, do you assume the parental role with our parents just by virtue of your parents getting

older and you're taking on more responsibility. But we're talking about kids who become the responsible ones of the family because there just isn't that support level from the parents, right, or you know, sometimes it's they have to jump in when it's just something out of the parents, uh sphere of influence, or you know, it's a difficult time, you know,

so I mean it. Yeah. One thing to keep in mind with these is that is that you know, one person is not necessarily stuck with that that role throughout their life or throughout the even even though a single Thanksgiving we candidate might change I imagine, although I will say, once family dynamics are set, we tend to fall into those roles. But you're right, sometimes sometimes kids can change those roles, and even in a meaningful and thoughtful way

as opposed to just relying on the habit of behavior. Um. Now another role is the lost or the invisible child, and we're talking about the kid who retreats to the shadows to avoid conflict and ends up having a hard time connecting on a personal level later on because he or she is again trying to get away from the situation and not confront the feelings or the people surrounding

that situation. The name on this one was a little mis misleading, I felt, because, um, the lost child, it does bring to mind like almost ghostfully entity in the corner of the things, But it also involves just generally externalizing over internalizing. So it could also be the family member who you know who visits for Thanksgiving buddies all but has to leave to go running and is doing their yoga and has also maybe brought their laptop with

him to do a little work on the side. Is just you know, busy, busy, busy, whatever you can do to to remain engaged in the external world as opposed to the internal world of reflection and remembering and and and actually thinking about what's going on with your Thanksgiving holiday. Yeah, I think that as the kid or the the adult who used to be that kid who looks at maybe the rats nest of the family dynamics that says, f that I'm going over here to the corner to do

the following thing. Now, A couple of other roles that come up are the caretaker that's the person who may assume the emotional well being for the entire family, or the mastermind. I thought this was interesting. This is the kid who might pounce on other family members shortcomings to get what he or she wants, and oftentimes parents will just appease the child because they're kind of a pain

in the butt. Wow. So this really we've really set everyone up for a for a frightening Thanksgiving because they hear we've talked about the complexities of the social dynamics and then these roles, which you know, for the most part, I'm not sure anyone would want to take on the mantle of any of these roles because they all have have at least a little negativity to them and certainly play a role in in in what could overall be seen as a as a dysfunctional dynamic. And I think

the key here is the awareness of the role. Do you play that role? How? How do you play that role? Um? How do you subconsciously do it? Is there a way to be with your family and not fall into one of these roles which usually is not helping the situation, you know. Um, So that's why we bring up because we thought, you know, what is it? What is it that we're all bringing with us too Thanksgiving? Besides our side dishes? And that is one of them the roles

that we play. Now, alcohol and aggression sometimes can play a role here at the table. There's a two thousand attendants study carried out by researchers at the Swedish Institute for Social Research and the Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research, and they looked at a loss of control

and violence UH in conjunction with alcohol use. And this was based on surveys from nearly three thousand adolescents and young adults in Norway and among individuals who reported a high inclination to suppress feelings of anger, a ten percent increase in drinking to the point of intoxication was associated with a five increase in violence. So the idea here is that those who held in their anger were more likely to get drunk, and that that drunkenness was linked

to an increase of the likelihood of getting into a brawl. Yeah. I mean think of it this way that in order to keep the locks on the anger, it takes a certain amount of mental energy. And then when you when you drink a little bit too much, you are at the more you drink can Thinking of that way, you're you're softening those holds on the lock and there's a monster behind those doors potentially, And do you really want that monster to burst free at Thanksgiving dinner? Yeah, because

we've talked about this before. Alcohol and loss of control in your prefrontal cortex, you know, the executive judgment they're sort of saying, you know, and I think I'm gonna take a nap here. Yeah. Now. Another study that looked into alcohol and aggression was two thousand eleven study and this was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. I looked at four adults uh average age of twenty three, who were social drinkers. Um. They all completed the Consideration

of Future Consequences scale. So definitely one thing to keep in mind here is it's it's sort of thinking like, am I thinking about just the Thanksgiving? Or am I thinking beyond this Thanksgiving? Am I thinking even two or three thanksgivings had us long term exactly, uh, and kind of setting himself up for disappointment because we've touched before on how we're notoriously bad at long term m planning and an appreciation of long term risks, etcetera. So they

all took this U this. They all completed the scale, and they indicated how much they agreed with statements like I only act to satisfy immediate concerns, figuring the future will take care of itself. And uh. Then they engaged in a fake shot game. Uh. Basically they were they were told that they were, you know, pressing this button and somebody else is pressing the button and the loser is getting an electric shock. Um, which again is playing into some you know, past experiments of sort of just

how much of a jerk can you be? How can you be? How aggressive you can be towards another person even if you can't see them. So uh, they found they said the less people thought about the future, the more likely they were to retaliate, but especially when they were drunk. People who were present, focused and drunk shocked their opponents longer and harder than anyone else in the study. They said, alcohol didn't have much effect on the aggressiveness

of people who were future focused. So basically, the take take home here is that drinking enough alcohol to become intoxicated increases aggression significantly in people who lack one particular personality trade. Uh. In other words, it plays, it becomes a It hasn't a myopic effect on people. It narrows

your attention to what's important to you right now. So if you're not someone who deals with a long term in general, and it's just always living for the present, which we've talked about as a marker of addictive personalities anyway, um, then you're gonna fall prey to this and probably be a bit more um aggressive. Yeah, I mean, one way to think of it. One possibility is if you if your Thanksgiving holiday it tends to involve some sort of

um navigating of political waters. So you have so you have an uncle who is just you know, he's he's going to mention, uh, you know, the the most recent election and the and the and the current political climate.

You're gonna bring something up that could potentially push your buttons. Well, based on the findings in this study, you know, if it could potentially be a very bad idea to to have had alcohol, because then you're going to you're gonna be even more likely to take that bait and fall for that bait and then get into an argument that you don't really want to begin with. You know what's the point of the argument. Yeah, I'm gonna win your uncle over. No, you're just gonna's just gonna make it

uncomfortable for everybody. I have a family member, a male who's older, who turns into an culture for a couple of drinks and it's just not pleasant, which brings up this idea of the spiral of silence. Because we talked about this before, is that a lot of times, if someone is very boisterous and their voicing their opinion and they seem to be the majority of the group, those with minority opinions will recede to the shadows because they don't want to be ostracized. And we have a whole

episode on that. So I was thinking about that in terms of Thanksgiving and this idea of suppressing your anger and having alcohol and maybe not feeling as though you have a voice in the matter, and it sort of compounds the entire situation. All Right, Well, we're gonna have an uncomfortable silence, and then we're gonna have a break.

And when we come back, we are going to roll out some some suggestions, some ways to to deal with with whatever kind of challenges your holiday encounters may provide you. All Right, we're back. So as you're listening to this, perhaps you're even in the car and you're you're driving to your your Thanksgiving encounter or some other holiday encounter,

some of the kind of family get together. Um, you may be wondering, what we've talked about, all of these these dangers and pitfalls, But what what can I do? Aside from maybe you know, reevaluate my consumption of alcohol at this year's festivities. You can do something that is so elegantly simple and yet so hard to pull off. Go to go to Disneyland instead. That is sort of simple in concept, right, but there are some moving parts

that stay the course. Okay, I'm thinking more of gratitude. Ah, well, it's Thanksgiving, right, that's the supposedly the whole point. Be thankful for what you have and what you know. Be thankful for the people in your life, even if the annoys. Sometimes even if you don't NECESSI the eyed eye to everything, focus on what you should be grateful for. Be thankful for the bounty on the table, and so on and so forth. So yeah, it turns out that this is

actually sort of the panacea. This is this is the shot in the arm that we all need to get through Thanksgiving. And gratitude is important. We've heard a lot about it, I think, I feel like in popular culture over the last five years or so. And it's a part of positive psychology, and John Tierney, writing for The

New York Times, describes it this way. He says, cultivating an attitude of gratitude has been linked to better health, sound or sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long term satisfaction with life, and kinder behavior towards others, including romantic partners.

It's all it's all win win stuff, right. Yeah. Now, that one caveat there, though, is don't confuse gratitude with indebtedness, Like, don't don't take gratitude gratitude and then twist it into some sort of a tool or weapon to use against others. You have to, you have to to draw the line somewhat well. To me, that falls in the category of integrity, right.

You don't do something to be recognized for you do something, if you're doing an act of integrity, it's something that's the right thing to do, right, and maybe someone doesn't even know that it happened. And so gratitude is the same in that respect, where you're just trying to be a good, kind person and the appreciative for the things in front of you, the things that you can count

as really enriching your life. So the question is like, to what degree does this actually impact your experience around something like a holiday like Thanksgiving? So indeed, okay, this cultivated attitude of gratitude, how's it going to help when when when the the the uncle starts starts into a political tirade. But here's a little story about how if you don't cultivate it, you're gonna be in big trouble.

And this was from the Journal of Positive Psychology. There's paper by Alan at All that was published in volume eight, issue two in two thousand and thirteen. What they did is they followed a hundred and seventy two college students for three weeks around Thanksgiving. They tracked gratitude, positive effect, and life satisfaction through these diary style entries and researchers saw a significant bump in both gratitude and positive effect on Thanksgiving. Um for that one day, people were more

thankful and felt more positive overall. But they took those results. But they did some math here, and the authors found, not surprisingly that the relationship between Thanksgiving and life satisfaction varied by participants. They also found that when daily fluctuations and gratitude were controlled for daily life satisfaction and positive effect, we're actually lower during the holiday. So what is this

telling us? This telling us? This is telling us that people who were more grateful on Thanksgiving were likely to have experienced increased well being over the holiday. Conversely, those who were less grateful felt uh a sense of less well being and a sense of meaninglessness. So again we're talking here about the negative effects of Thanksgiving being counteractive by actually being grateful and engaging in acts of gratitude. All right, that's all well and fine, because okay, you

can be grateful and thanksgiving get through. But how do you actually do that? And according to Sonya lubum Risky of the University of California, Riverside, she says, do one small and unobtrusive, thoughtful or generous thing for each member of your family on Thanksgiving, she says, say thank you for every thoughtful or kind gesture, express your admiration for someone's skills or talents wielding that kitchen knife so masterfully,

for example. And she says to truly listen even when your grandfather is boring you again with the same World War two story. And another way that this becomes really helpful gratitude is that it turns out to really shield you against any negative um overtures or any sort of criticism that might be levied at you. And and Nathan Dwall's two thousand and eleven study quote a grateful heart

is a non violent heart. Um. He had students at the University of Kentucky right essays, so no big book, right except when they turned in the essays some of the essays had like terrible scathing things said to them about their essays, like this is a pile of junk. Okay, now you mentioned before that you know this is a big trope in these sorts of studies where someone feels

like violated and they get to you exact revenge. In this instance, those students would play a game against the person who criticized them, and they were able to blast this really really loud white noise at them if they won. And it turns out, of course that the people who were criticized would blast that noise, but those who were instructed to write essays about something that they were grateful for were less likely to blast that white noise and

try to exact revenge. And again this is brought up because that puts you at an advantage in your psyche. If you feel grateful for something, you feel less um angry about stuff or or less reactive. And this is one of the lessons that comes up when you're talking about getting together with family and you settle into those well worn roles in which you know you're sibling or some other family member can say something to you and

push that button that drives you nuts. What I like about this is that it it almost sounds like a very machiavell in form of gratitude, you know, like it. It seems like a like a strategy that would be rolled out on Game of Thrones when they get together for a some sort of imaginary Thanksgiving dinner. Uh Like political movements, How can I how can I uh guard myself against the attacks of my enemies while engaging them

in this in this welking holiday, right. It may feel, as you say, very Macavellian, very sort of strategic and planned. But as we have talked about before, when you fake it, sometimes you make it. You know, if you're extending a bit of kindness, sometimes you actually are like, hey, look

at me, I'm being kind. Well, I wonder too, is it possible to overdo it to the point where then your family members like, wonder of what medication you're on or if you were perhaps dying, you know, like, it seems like you you run the risk of laying it on tooth thick. But I guess if you're calling on you can just say, hey, I'm just getting into the spirit of the holiday. Mann bust my shop. You're like, hey man, I'm just trying to change the dynamic of

this family into a more positive one. And then you become a what role the the good girl or boy, the good kid trying to pull everyone back together, or the caretaker? Yeah, the caretaker yeah um now. John Tyranny, writing for The New York Times, says you could always practice the uh it could always be worse tactic, and he says, when your relatives force you to look at photos on their phones. Be thankful they no longer have access to a slide projector when your aunt expounds on politics,

rejoice inwardly that she does not hold elected office. Instead of focusing on the dry, tasteless turkey on your plate, be grateful the six hour roasting process killed any toxic bacteria. I like that. Okay, well there you go. There's an uplifting way to look at it. Just remember that it could always be worse. It could always be infinitely worse. There may be no limit to how bad it could be. So yeah, you just have to kind of meditate on that.

I just think of that the worst image, and you could possibly occupy your mind and whatever your your current situation is, it couldn't be that bad. And if you want to continue to be benignly Macavillian, you could try to actually manipulate the environment to hack into a little nostalgia of the people who are attending this Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, yes, nostalgia. We've we've discussed this before. Um, we did a whole episode on it. Nostalgia, of course, is is a very

bitter sweet element to employ. Um, you know, we've we've all engaged with it. Sometimes we seek it out over and over again because it takes us back to the past in a way that's comforting and yet also just we can't touch it, you know, it's it's gone to us. It's you know, it's it's like that moment where you're like with me, I'm like setting there, I'm watching an old film board of Canada animated short with with my son and like nothing could feel nicer, and yet it's

it's also depressing at the same time. It can be. But in studies, and we covered this in that Nostalgia episode, I believe there are instances in which people were in cold environments and then they would think about some sort of nostalgic thought and actually feel warmer. I think, be powerful. Yeah, and I think that the net benefit is positive, but it's it's it's a it's a complex cocktail to to to imbuse. So take care when you're hacking into nostalgia.

I think it's what we're saying. Yeah, now, how do you hack in nostalgia? Well, obviously, anytime you're getting together for some sort of a family event, like especially you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas and hankun all these events, there's a lot of ritual in them. There's a lot of repetition, and I've seen it. But before that, the repetition and memory are basically the same movement. One reaches backwards in

time and the other reaches into the future. Um, So there are lots of things to be a nostalgic about. We've touched on some of these before. It might be just to be as simple as that football game in the living, or maybe you're nostalgic about rooting on a certain we're watching a certain sporting event. It's it's all the food items that are that they end up getting cooked up in the kitchen. Is the smell of those food items, are those recipes, It's the decorations that are

haulled that year after year. Maybe it's a particular board game you always play there. We have these these rituals that we engage in often year after year after year,

off in generation after generation. Even Yeah, I have to say that when we have family get togethers, I put together a playlist that I know touches on everyone sort of favorite music, and um, that way, everyone is delighted at some point and again it brings up those feelings of nostalgia and Another thing that we tend to do, especially in Thanksgiving, is we make something called strawberry stickies, which in my husband's family like folklore, like that in history,

or like this vaunted like wonderful dessert. Oh well, what are they? Basically like chunks and chunks of butter that are melted with sugar, strawberry and then pie crust, all rolled together and cut up into these little strawberry stickies. But it doesn't matter what's the sort of mood anyone is in, or if someone has ill will against us. If we bring the strawberry stickies, we tap into nostalgia

and we're golden. Okay. And then also you're, I mean, by the mere act of bringing something to you're also you're sort of employing a bit of gratitude in there as well. It's a it's a complicated weapon, a multifold weapon that you're employing against your enemies each year, and yet a heartiest pure when we are making the strawberrys st only trying to please of us and we talk like that while we're making it. Okay. So, so you've talked about ways to hacking in nostalgia with music hackn

do nostalgia with food. Uh wonder there are other ways that one might might utilize a little nostalgia to their benefit. I bet you guys listening have some ideas on this. Yeah, we need your information, we need your feedback. Yes, But those machiavellian uh holiday revelers out there, I'm sure you have some tricks up your sleeve. But then we would be delighted to hear about them. All right, so let

us know. But in the meantime, if you get a chance, maybe you're you know, you're you're you're taking a breather from your holiday and you want to get on your phone or your computer or the family computer whatever you go to stuff to blow your mind dot com, because that's where you'll find all of our blog post, all of our videos, and all of our podcast episodes going way back to the very beginning. Episodes you can't even find on iTunes anymore, who will find them at the website.

And we'll make sure that there's some Thanksgiving related material right there on the front page for you past episodes that we've done on related topics as well. And if you have some thoughts you'd like to share, you can see that by sending us an email to blow the mind at house. To fork dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it, How stuff Works dot com