Managing Gatherings - How to Respond

HomeBlogManaging Gatherings – How to Respond

By Tara McGee, MSW, RSW, Dip TiRP Psychotherapist, OCSWSSW, IAYT

I wrote a blog in December called “Managing Holiday Gatherings” this article was about how the holidays is seen as a “joyous time” and everyone is happy to see each other and spend time together – but we know that’s not always the case.

Every year around the holidays, some clients come to their therapy sessions with fears about how they will cope as the holidays approach. I advise to go into a stressful situation with a plan, this is a way to mitigate that stress. This article follows up on how to hold your boundaries and how to plan to respond; providing you with some tools on how to communicate and self regulate.

Plan how you want to respond. Maybe you do want to go to gatherings that have in the past been uncomfortable, but you want to be prepared. Perhaps your friend always sits you down to try to convince you of their political beliefs that are totally anathema to yours. Maybe your relative spends much of their time covertly insulting you. Perhaps your colleague is openly hateful to a particular sector of the population. It could be that your friend feels the need to control everyone and everything, including how you think. Planning ahead for these eventualities can help you to decide how you want to respond this time. 

The Importance of Cultivating the Use of Self

Maybe in the past you have become insulted by your friend’s beliefs and you end up in an argument. Perhaps you have overtly insulted your relative after tolerating their 12th implicit jab at you and then they wonder aloud to everyone why you are always so contemptuous towards them. How do you want to manage the inevitable emotional overload that these situations engender? What response would help you maintain your integrity and sense of self without purposely wounding the other? 

Virginia Satir, grandmother of family therapy, suggests that people use “congruent” communication to remain in alignment with themselves. This doesn’t mean that you have the right to insult someone else to get your point across. It means that you use the following strategy when managing stressful communications: 

  • I feel ……
  • I think you feel…..
  • The context of this conversation is…….

You have to be careful not to cheat and say for instance, “I feel that you are a liar”. That’s a cheat because you did not use a feeling word, you used a judgment of the other person. A good example of using this strategy would be: 

  • I feel hurt 
  • I think you feel rejected
  • The context of this conversation is that you want me to believe in your religion and I don’t and this feels painful for you and me. 

If you can manage to regulate yourself enough to communicate congruently, it will be regulating for you and the other person and you can leave having expressed yourself clearly without being insulting even if the other person feels insulted. 

Use the fogging method to hold your limit. Many people think that holding their limit means they have to get into an uncomfortable conflict. This is not the case. There are so many ways to hold your limit that don’t have to create more conflict. “Fogging” is one of them. 

Fogging is a technique that involves finding some nugget of truth, no matter how small, that you can agree with when someone is insulting you. This is a way for you to maintain your integrity because you are agreeing with only that which you can agree to and the other person eventually runs out of steam because they can’t get you to bite and get into the real fight they are angling for. For instance:

  • Parent: “You have never been able to manage your money”. 
  • You: “I agree, I have struggled in the past to understand the best way to allocate the funds I do have available to me”. 
  • Parent; “No, I mean, you really screwed up by going into so much debt”. 
  • You; “Yes, debt is hard to manage”. 
  • Parent; “You managed it so poorly”.
  • You; “I could have managed it better”
  • Parent; “You should really take a course on managing money”
  • You; “Courses can be very useful”.

Compare the above fogging conversation to how it can go if you don’t “fog”: 

  • Parent: You have never been able to manage your money
  • You: My money is none of your business and you don’t know what it’s like to not be paid what you are worth. 
  • Parent: Your money is my business. Remember that loan I gave you 5 years ago? I invested in you so I have a right to comment on how you handle your finances. After all, I was the one who had to clean up your mess for you when you had nothing. 
  • You: You told me that loan was a gift! You are always throwing that in my face when what really happened was that I lost my job when the business I was working for went under. That wasn’t my fault and I got a job 4 months later and have been working ever since. Why do you have to be so judgmental?
  • Parent: I never missed a payment in my life and I had hard times but I didn’t accept handouts. 
  • You: Well maybe you should have let me become homeless instead to teach me a lesson. I guess I’m not as good as you. 
  • Parent: I don’t understand why you are being so testy, I just said that I think you should really learn to manage your money. 
  • You: That is not what you said, you said…
  • Etc. etc. 

With fogging, the conversation does not become heated and it ends sooner because the person is not able to engage you on the subject they are trying to hammer you with. You are holding a limit by remaining vague and agreeing with them to the extent that you can. Eventually, they will run out of steam, whereas in the second conversation you are adding lots of fuel to the fire, so the conversation will continue until someone can’t stand it anymore. 

Being in relationships can be tricky. Some relationships are easier than others, but often we don’t get to choose who is in our immediate environment as with relatives, colleagues and people at gatherings. Remember, we don’t have to be close with every person, we don’t have to trust every person. It is important to use your discretion to determine who is really worthy of your trust and who you need to keep at more of an arm’s length, or even further away. People’s behaviour comes from deep within their being and remembering that there are so many factors that influence their behaviour might help you to maintain your compassion and integrity while still maintaining your boundaries. 

When determining how to respond in stressful social situations, I find it useful to remember the following wisdom from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: 

“By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and equanimity toward the non-virtuous, the mind attains undisturbed calmness.” (Sutra 1.33)

Remember that only you have the power to regulate yourself and make your own choices no matter what anyone else says or does. No one else “makes” you yell, be rude or insulting thus losing your integrity.  Be self responsible, hold yourself accountable, own your choices, hold your limits and practice soothing your mind, body and spirit daily. When you don’t get it “right” have compassion for yourself, apologize and take steps to make changes in your ways of relating to others. 

Good luck. Relationships can be tricky, but they can also provide opportunities to offer and receive love, support, understanding, care, joy, laughter, warmth and compassion. If those things are not present in one or more of your relationships, then try to learn about your internal world from the challenges that arise within and find someone who can help you to heal your inner wounds and discover your core, authentic self.   

From Exhaustion to Vitality: Reclaiming Meaning, Joy and Love

Warm Wishes, Tara