Why Are Holidays With Your Family So Stressful?

For most people, family gatherings during the holidays are rarely stress-free. Maybe you have that family member who ruins dinner by igniting political debates or your relatives won’t stop asking you about what you’ll do after you finish school. No matter what they say, you feel put on the spot.

Feeling stressed out by the people you love can feel isolating, but if you’re one of the people that do, you’re far from alone. There isn’t much background on this, but some people told an American bi-monthly magazine, Popular Science, that many or most people feel the same way about their families. Although some people stress about it more than others because of their personalities and/or family history, the stress itself is a normal feeling.

By definition, stress is a state of mental or emotional tension resulting from tough situations that can have psychological effects. “If you feel anxious, rushed, or pressured, your body changes, your heart rate rises and some people say they feel nauseous,” says Terri Orbuch. These feelings are usually short-lived, but over time the effects of stress can take a toll on the body, especially if an individual doesn’t know how to handle his stress well. “Many psychological theories look at the accumulation of stress. If we don’t figure out some positive coping mechanisms, we won’t be able to reduce the effects of current and future stress,” Orbuch adds.

So, why do we get stressed about seeing our family around the holidays? Expectations are one of the biggest reasons. We watch Christmas specials or remember celebrating Thanksgiving as children or play a few games but that is not reality. “We think this should be a perfect time, the food will be perfect, and our conversations will be respectful. But when our realities don’t match that, we get frustrated,” Orbuch states.

Families also bring special forms of baggage. Even for the closest families, there are problems, especially when people have a limited space during family gatherings that last for days. “Because conflict is a normal part of relationships, the closer you are and the more you self-disclose, and the more you hear things you don’t like,” Regan says. People returning to their parents’ houses for holidays may feel guilty for not being as close as they once were, or family members’ habits that may have been innocuous when you were all living under the same roof now seem intolerable. Sometimes, as we work through the discomfort of shifting familial roles, we snap back into old behavioral paradigms: “I’ve seen this myself—grown siblings start to behave as if they’re eight years old. They tap into long-buried habits and actions,” Regan adds.

There is also a strategy that most of us don’t consider: Simply opting out of the family gathering. You don’t have to feel guilty about making an excuse if it’s necessary to prevent real psychological damage—people put a lot of time and energy into saving face, and you might provide relief to both yourself and the organizers of the gathering by saying you aren’t feeling well or that you have to work.