The Heart of the Matter: Family Dynamics at Christmas Time

“My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we are living with right now.” -Byron Katie

I sure can’t think of a more potent statement for the holidays and family time.

It reminds me of a self-help meeting I was at in my twenties, when a light went on so immediately for me that I saw my whole life differently.  Your family, some wise stranger said offhandedly, can push your buttons so well because they’re the ones that programmed them.  You know these moments, right?  As if basked in breaking daylight, a new and implicit understanding soaked through me.  It was the kind of moment you can’t force, the kind that just happens.  This was my family, mine, the life I was given.  The moment throbbed in my body.  Suddenly, I got it.  By mere virtue of someone acknowledging the strain of those buttons, it freed me.  Sure my family helped create them, but those buttons…  They. Are. Mine.  No matter how I got them, I’ve got them.  I have to be responsible.

I imagine you know these moments, when information moves naturally, as if by some magic softening or opening, from your head to your heart.  These are the  moments that stay with us.   Because the thing about logic and strictly operating out of the head is that it pushes away the heart, and at the end of the day, whether opened or closed, the heart’s demands are what we are left with when the lights go out.   If you are anything like me, true contentment has never come from my head.

Which is why family dynamics, hence the holidays, can become so confusing.  The heart wants what it wants, rosy trees glowing with presents and soft-touched stockings, fresh-baked cookies and popcorn freshly strung.  The Christmas spirit is all about hope, we celebrate a season of renewal, when hearts, no matter how protected by the head, glisten with need.   The need to connect, to love, to give and receive.  To trust that inherently, life is good, we are good, our goodness is what unites us.  The need to feel the heart open and shining, like a star on the horizon announcing a longed for new day, stirs our humanity.  Of course the heart seeks to respond.

Which can be really scary if you have buttons all over and have learned to close yours!  Long-time clinical psychologist Paul Gilbert innovated Compassion-Focused Therapy.  This is so lovely to me, the idea that we can learn to undo those buttons with self-compassion and love.  It takes what the Buddhists might call metta, which is heart-power.   Which puts us back to square one…HOW!?  How do we fix what’s broken with what’s broken?  By starting there.  By loving our hurt parts, loving our pain, our shame, our frustration, our confusion.  By learning to stop in the middle of the frenzy and love the part of our selves that is all caught up.  This too, the Buddhists say, by loving this, too.

Because this is our humanness, the singular thing we actually each have in common with every other soul walking this planet.  We are fragile, imperfect, frightened, each and every one.  There is great peace in this truth, if we can learn to love and accept it.

It is the central tenet of my own daily mindfulness practice.  I can not give away what I do not have.  So we begin within, loving the parts of us that we feel most resistant to… Like anything, this takes practice, (the very word reminds us we will mess up) but its power is undeniable.  When I can meet my own self with compassion and tender love, true gentleness with my own funny, funky human parts, well then I can surely meet yours as well.  No matter the buttons down your back, no matter the buttons on mine that might just light up sometimes when you’re around.

Try it.  Let it be the gift you give yourself this season.  It keeps on giving.   Holiday grace and blessings!