Ian McDermott
Here we are, more than at the top of the hour.
Emily Bouchard
I think it will be great. Yeah, it's a great way to kick it off, right? Because you already brought in the idea of some anxiety about the holiday. We are going to be talking about how to manage whatever emotional reaction you might be having about the holiday, whether it's anxiety anxiety, dread, fear, worry, apprehension, even overjoyed, excitement, whatever it might be, so that you can really connect with family in meaningful ways and have that happy holiday experience. Given that we've had some significant events happen in the country recently that have been hard for people in different ways, even if it's been an outcome that they wanted because of the traumatic experience that a lot of people had in the election cycle. And then how the results played out. We know that half the country, a little bit less than half, is not happy with the results because they wanted a different candidate. So we aren't going to be diving into politics per se. We are completely, what is it, bipartisan. We are creating bridges across the divide, and that's what we really want to focus on today. But we do know that that's a catalyzing event that we wanted to create a space to be able to talk about what do you do in the space of some really conflicting emotions that might be in the space in a family situation, because that's our specialty.
Emily Bouchard
Those of you who don't know us, you can look us up on LinkedIn and see what our backgrounds are. But I'll just say really quickly that each of us is completely committed. I don't even know how our collective experience. I have 20 years. Kirby, I'm thinking you were born into it. I'm not going to ask you how many years, but we have a lot of experience working with families dealing with highly complex issues, educational needs, and conflict resolution in different ways around how do we make decisions together as a family, how do we have things go really well and stay harmonious over multiple generations. That's the main force about why we're here and what we care about. We are coming at this professionally and personally. We're going to be sharing some personal stories as well as some professional insights. I'll just introduce myself really quickly, and then Kirby and Ian can introduce themselves, and then we'll get started.
Emily Bouchard
I'm Emily Bouchard, I've been working in this space since 2004 with families with significant assets and enterprises and looking at how do we get along really well as a family, given all the different roles that we're in... so a family dynamics specialist, and I have a master's in social work and a degree in child development, and I have a specialty in step families. And Kirby, as the host of this, thank you so much for hosting us at Tamarind. Share a little bit about yourself.
Kirby Rosplock
Sure. So, Kirby Rosplock. I have a background in business psychology, actually a PhD in organizational systems, and an emphasis in marriage and family therapy within that business psychology, and have always been fascinated by change management and how it applies to enterprises families. So I've been doing a lot more work with affluent families and family offices for the last 25 years, and then was born into a complicated, wealthy, enterprises family. So that was the... on the Sunday because I got to witness firsthand what it's like to be in that very crazy dynamic of living it and seeing it happen at your own table, your own Thanksgiving table every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, every holiday, every day. And also knowing what you can fix in your own family, what you can't fix, and then also learning from a lot of families and other wonderful professionals like Ian and Emily and and so many other great thinkers out there. So it's a privilege to be in this field. It takes a lot of time and patience, but there's just so much that can be done to make things a little bit better. So really excited to be here today.
Emily Bouchard
Ian, you're next.
Ian McDermott
I'm Ian McDermott, and as you might tell, it's a slightly different background. I'll put it this way. I'm born in London, but I live in Connecticut. And when I started working with families, and indeed, when I said, my hair was a different color, but that's not go there. But in the intervening years, I'm still a registered psychotherapist in the UK, but I've actually spent a lot of time coaching families. I've been in the field of coaching. And my primary concern is to make sure that people actually have how-tos that deliver practical step-by-step guidance into what can you actually do rather than waxing lyrical about common ground and harmony. There have to be some steps that people know how to do and are ready to do, which means they have to want to do it. So there's a mindset and the heart set. And I find that when you put those two together, skills and mindset, heart set, you get some real results and people surprise themselves on what they can do. It's inspiring.Very. Thank you, Ian. I will say, coming off of that, that we have a tip sheet handout that we are going to offer to you all at the very end, mailing it out to anybody who registered in the group. To give you some practical reminders of things we might talk about today and other approaches that you might find useful when being with family or anybody that you find there's some contention or there's some difficult things to navigate related to different views, opinions, beliefs. With that, I would love to just share a little bit about why we're here and what we're talking about and dive into it a bit. I started to feel the collective anxiety as we were leading up to the election. I started to wonder about how my clients were feeling, how my colleagues' clients were feeling about it. I got a distress call from a client who was very concerned, no matter which way the election went, how it was going to be going to be going to Thanksgiving, and if she would be going to her parents' Thanksgiving, because of how much over the course of the year, they had become more divided because her parents always had Fox News on when she would be visiting, and she doesn't ascribe to that way of thinking about politics.
Emily Bouchard
She did not want to go into a situation where there would be volatility and argument about those sorts of things. We did a lot of work around how she could manage her internal discomfort and really further her relationship with her parents and the things that she loves about them and gave her some ideas for that. Then I reached out to Kirby and then reached out to Ian to talk about, Are you all experiencing this? Are you having it personally? Are you having it professionally? What are you thinking? Is there something we might be able to do? Both of them were huge yes, and here we are. That's why we're here to have this conversation today. I will share from a personal perspective why I'm so passionate about this, and then we'll dive into the concept of post-traumatic growth from Ian's perspective. We're also going to be addressing some things around grief and how to manage the polarity between grief and joy when we're celebrating it together. Then we're going to talk about some specific strategies you can use as well. One of the things that happened in my family on a Thanksgiving years ago was my cousin showed up, gave my dad a big hug, and he and his wife and kids had flown in out of state.
Emily Bouchard
My father, when he hugged him, he was carrying a firearm. My father, not having a lot of tools at this department, went into a reaction and had, he had a very strong feeling about guns being in his home. It wasn't something that anybody had ever talked about before. It wasn't like we all knew his ground rules about coming into his home. He told my cousin that he was not welcome there if he's carrying, and that he needed to not bring the gun into the home. I was out with some other family members, and I came home, and I was looking for my cousin, and my brother said, Oh, no, they left. They're at the airport. They're heading back home because of the gun incident. It was devastating. Our family, the whole Thanksgiving was completely impacted by this because my cousin worked for the NRA, and his goal was to protect and he had a very strong value system about that and what it meant to do that and have the gun there. And my father had a strong value system that said, No, you wont. And it was a major rift in the family that we are still experiencing reverberations from.
Emily Bouchard
And it was one of those moments where I have done so much research around, you have six seconds to be able to stop a reaction and go into a really effective response so that you have other options. And I really wish that there had been a way to intervene that moment to help stop that trajectory from happening. And this was the reason why I wanted a conversation like this to perhaps keep that happening for other clients. So with that, Ian, I would love for you to share a little bit about your thoughts about what could have happened in that instance if you'd been there, or also what could happen for a family, when you're going around that thing and what you can do about it.
Ian McDermott
Well, I think there are so many jumping off points here. You mentioned saying something about post-traumatic growth. Let's take both of these because they're potentially hybrid items. To your experience that you lived, Emily, what so strikes me about it is that this just was so reactive. It happened in a fraction of a second without anybody thinking. And there was no point at which somebody could go, I'm feeling a gun holster button, whatever. And what do I want to do with this? What am I fighting for? There's no capacity to take stock and then determine how you're going to respond. You just dab, It's bombs. Boom. And we're off to the races because then it ricochets up. And it's really important stuff. This is identity and survival. These are the kind of issues cousin is dealing with. And no, I'm not compromising there, but there's no opportunity to even talk about different ways of living. So there's something here about stimulus, response, and is there a gap between? And in this case, the answer is absolutely none at all, which means there's no thinking time. So what you really get, not even a response, it's stimulus, reaction, reaction, reaction.
Ian McDermott
And a lot of people are living that way because they don't know how to create a space. It would be, what do I want here? What might be a way forward? Let's just both... And the language, English language, is so interesting in this regard. Let's step back for a moment. I mean, that's a turn not a phrase, but it's actually a literal need to create space. Now, I think there are lots of potential dynamics that people could understand if they knew about them, be nice if they knew about them before the event as opposed to in the middle of it, because that's when they are least likely to be able to do something different. Now, you mentioned post-traumatic growth. It sounds like in this particular instance, the trauma happened for both parties and indeed for the family. And then it just reverberates over the many years since. There's no kind of... (pauses) 'And we learned, out of that came, something'. And that, in essence, is what post-traumatic growth is about. That people do have traumatic experiences, often not of their own choosing, and they may simply be on the receiving end of them. And let me let me give some examples.
Ian McDermott
I'm going to talk about post-traumatic growth. And the reason I'm going to do that is because what pretty much everybody in our field knows about post traumatic stress disorder, it's really interesting that not that many people know post traumatic growth as a recognized phenomenon with its own literature. But I don't know if you've ever had this happen. I certainly have with a particular client I recall now who just said he was telling me about some ghastly things that had happened in his life. He said, and as a result, my wife left me. The business imploded, and it was the worst time in my life. And I have to tell you, Ian, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Because he's looking back on it now and going, and that was the moment when I chose to change. I didn't like it. I didn't want it. I fought it. But in the end, I'm so grateful, as the word he ended up with, that this occurred. Now, that, that's a change in perspective. The events were the events. They're still the same events. But this is about our perception of events. And there are so many examples of people who have come through some terrible events.
Ian McDermott
We're not just saying, Oh, dear, you had a hard day at the office. Parents who've lost a child and are able to then make meaning of that loss, I know them. I know them because I'm talking to you this afternoon for the this part of the world, believe it or not, which is Sandy Hook in Connecticut. So how does a parent and how a grandparent deal with that? What are they going to do with it? You don't have the ability of loss, but you can drown in it, or there is something that comes out of it that is bigger than it can. So something like acute illness, cancer survivors, will be an obvious answer, people who come through, and then they change their life for various reasons that are to do with having had the illness. I want to remember working with somebody who is still in the throes of cancer treatment, and she said, very understandably, I just wanted it to be like it was before I got ill. Are you sure? You want to get ill again? Because that's what it would be like. So surviving, then thriving, is a well-documented field. Then there are habits.
Ian McDermott
And I just think that will be fruit for us. And very often it's to do with creating new meaning, new narrative, and purpose in our own lives, and for our clients the same. And that is what essentially post-traumatic growth is about. Is there documentation to back this up? Yes, there is, but this is not that conversation, I don't think. Is that enough to begin with?
Emily Bouchard
I just wanted to make sure we got that. You are going a little bit in and out for me, and we've actually lost your video. But I do want to ask, repeat those three things. It had to do with the growth that can happen from any event in a person's life. I want to make sure that it's... Ian gave us some very intense and difficult examples that as human beings, many of us have experienced on different levels or know of people who have. And there's also the trauma of the environmental events that are happening, the political events that are happening, the fears about war. There's a lot happening in our world right now that people may be experiencing a lot of different emotions about. And depending on how close they are to it, they may have been touched by it. And so you said that when you're touched by something that's really quite dramatic and not something you wanted at all... Oh, there you are. There's three things. You said meaning and something else in purpose. I want to make sure we caught all three of those.
Ian McDermott
I think what matters is that you can make meaning of your experience, acknowledge the experience. This is a critical piece, which is often not recognized. And one of the ways you can acknowledge it is by owning it. There is a saying that has a long history in the field of therapeutic interaction, and many people would like to claim it, but nobody knows who really generated it. And my hunch is it's a collective creation. And it's a very simple slogan which is worth remembering, I would say, for the rest of my life. Name it, claim it, tame it, aim it. Name it. Can you name what you're experiencing? Language is powerful. It It gives us an understanding of our experience. So can you name what you're going through? Because when you can name it, you claim it. You can say, this is my experience at this time. And when you do that, you own it. And when you do that, you begin to tame it. It's amazing how when you can name something, you change your internal feedback loops about, Yes, I am experiencing that. Oh, okay. And then that gives you the power, because you've tamed it, to aim it in some appropriate direction, because the energy is with you now.
Ian McDermott
It's something you can utilize. So you can play with it, name it, to tame it, and claim it, and aim it. Or you can name it, claim it, tame it, and aim it. I don't care.
Emily Bouchard
You know what I love about that is there's something you didn't say, which is what typically happens in situations like this is you can blame. And I think that when you're going to go to claim, we go to victim. If you're claiming something, then you're the victim of it. And that is a a disempowered place to live from. So this is really about your presentation. And that's such an empowering thing to think about, oh, if I own this, whatever is happening, whatever I'm upset about, whatever is happening, if I own that this is happening, then I have some agency with it, as opposed to this being to me or against me or that I need to avoid it or I need to fight it. You don't have a lot of options. But when you go to this place of claiming it as, okay, this is reality. I like... Byron Katie has that wonderful thing about loving what is. You don't have to approve of it or be thrilled with it, but there's a sense of claiming it as this is what's so right now.
Emily Bouchard
And it allows your nervous system to relax like you did (gestures). Like, Oh, okay, this is happening. That allowing that acknowledgement. And then you can tame it in terms of your own reactivity to it. I love that. And then, aiming it. I work with horses a lot. I do a lot with people and horses. And that is the model, right? Because if you go in with a lot of reactivity, the horse is going to behave a certain way. It's going to respond and react to you. But if you're super calm and within yourself are balanced and you manage your emotional reality, that horse will be tamed and aimed exactly how you want it to go. That's great, Ian. Thank you for sharing that. Then before we go on to the next topic, I did want to ask if you had anything you wanted to add to that, Kirby, if there's anything else that you That occurred to you from hearing what Ian and I were talking about.
Kirby Rosplock
Well, the only thing I was just going to add was that space that you're talking about of how there was no response time, right? That there is no space between the emotional responses between the two parties. And I think there's a lot that folks can do to reflect on what is your response time. When you you get emotionally charged and you react, just take a moment to think about how much time does it take for you to react to some stimuli, whatever it is. I know, I think about it a lot because my children are home right now for Thanksgiving. And so I have to sit there for a moment to be like, okay, I have one that just came from boarding school. So I have to think a lot like, how am I going to respond? I haven't seen her in a while. So I just bring it up because I think the holidays are a time when we are with family that we don't necessarily see all the time. So that requires us to have a different meter on our minds with how we choose to engage. And that response time is really, really important to try to elongate that response time, to take two or three more breaths just to create more space so that we don't combust as quickly and to try in whatever way we can to create more space in those moments, good and bad, just so that we allow some of that stuff to come down in the moment and not necessarily blow up.
Kirby Rosplock
Because imagine what would have happened if that other party had not responded so quickly. If that energy could have just dissipated for two or three or four or five more seconds, there's a likelihood that there could have been just... Did I not mention that in our house, we ask people to leave firearms outside the door? Oh, I didn't know that. Okay.
Emily Bouchard
Oh, that's news!
Kirby Rosplock
It could have completely been neutralized. And like one, just a few more seconds of space, and that could have been all of this mitigated. So that was a big thing I was just thinking about when you were talking about that story.
Emily Bouchard
I love that you talked about that. It's that refractory period, that time between stimulus and response and reaction. And there is actually a wonderful organization called 6 Seconds, which is completely committed to all the things we have that we have available to us within that 6 second moment between when you have the stimulus and the reaction. There is so much we can do there. And there's also the ability to repair. Oh my gosh. I just got so overreactive because it's so triggering for me. Let's just take a moment. Let's not make any decisions right now. Let's just stop. Take a moment. Let's go outside. Let's just take a walk. I love that.
Emily Bouchard
Kirby and I were talking about this at one point in terms of the power of walking together and looking in the same direction when you have opposing views because you are oriented in the same way, and you can start looking at it from a different perspective. The other side of it is that they miss the opportunity of really getting to know each other and why those two things mattered so much to each other. So much of the time, it's either agree, disagree, or it's, I don't like it, as opposed to, oh, what has you traveled with that?
Emily Bouchard
I've never met anybody that did that before, and this is a total surprise. There's so many different options that could happen there, and then solutions can show up when you're not in that super narrow place of this isn't right, I'm not happy with it, this needs to be different, as opposed to what are all of our options based on what are we here for? This is Thanksgiving and family. What do we What can we do with that?
Kirby Rosplock
There's a comment in the chat, too, of someone saying, Well, why didn't the cousin just inquire if it was appropriate to bring it to the house? I think that's a really good comment. That was asked. So thank you for... I won't call you out who said it, but that was a really good question because that is the logical thing to say, Hey, do you mind, family member, if I bring this firearms to your home, right?
Ian McDermott
That is- What do you mean? What do you mean that's the logical thing to do? No!
Emily Bouchard
Why would anybody not want to have a gun in their house, right?
Ian McDermott
I can do righteous indignation on just about almost anything.
Kirby Rosplock
I have the right to bear arms. Of course, I'm going to bring it to your house. God damn it. Oh, did I say that? No. But no, seriously, I mean, that might be their prerogative to think that that's okay. But I mean, wouldn't you think that they would think that it would be courteous to inquire like, hey, do you have a problem with this?
Ian McDermott
But that's the assumption, Kirby. You're assuming that other people may have different maps of the world, and it would be smart to have some understanding of that map of the world before you go and live in it. But that's to have a degree of, I think, anthropological sophistication that a lot of people don't have. My world is the world. I only populate it with people who have the same worldview as me.
Kirby Rosplock
The golden rule.
Emily Bouchard
The platinum rule, right? That's the difference. Golden rule, treat those how you want to be treated. Platinum rule. Platinum rule, treat others the way they want to be treated. And think about this. I did mention it, but this is a family member, and my father and all of us know that he worked for the NRA. So his worldview is very well known, and it was not at all a surprise to any of us that he would do that. And my father lives in Texas, where it's an open carry state. So it could be in that transparency of life, which is like, Well, why would I ask? Because it's a given.
Emily Bouchard
We encountered this in major ways with the COVID-19 vaccine, right? Presumptions about whether people are vaccinated or not, whether you talk about it or not, whether you wear masks or not. Huge family things happened around that in terms of how much do we presume, how much do we assume in terms of what somebody has or hasn't done, or what's okay for somebody else that might not be okay. So yes, it's a great question in terms of a reminder to get into the reality of the other people, especially who's ever home you're going to, in terms of what their requirements are.
Emily Bouchard
But at the same time, if that was a really strong requirement my father had, we've had Thanksgiving's at my house since I was born. I didn't know that rule. I did not know that he had that rule. For him to have that level of reactivity and to state it in such a way as if anybody in the world should have known that that was his rule from time and memoriam was not accurate. It was his, but it wasn't known. That's the other thing is both sides could have been proactive. That's what you said earlier, which I really liked, Kirby. You have these family members, and you're like, Oh, how do I need to relate to them? How do we be proactive with our relatives, with ourselves, knowing that there will be events or things that could happen that might be divisive or might be triggering. I think with that, I'd like to turn to another topic related to this.
Emily Bouchard
Oh, wait, we have another question. What words set the stage to create healthy family engagement and boundaries over the holidays, having to do with the subjects of politics and wartime stress, when it seems that our media and politicians have normalized arguing and aggressive behavior? Stay away from these topics. Is that realistic? Wow, what a phenomenal question. I'm so glad you asked that. I'm happy to wait, but would one of you like to start first with that because it's a very important question, and it's one that's the whole purpose of this conversation.
Ian McDermott
Do you want to start?
Kirby Rosplock
I'm happy to start if you want.
Emily Bouchard
Kirby?
Kirby Rosplock
I think one of the things that you might want to do going into your holiday meal or your holiday gathering is to set an intention and make it known what the environment that you're trying to seed. So if you want to seed a positive, a generative, a warm, and cozy, and inviting environment, you need to seed that. And it may not be in a formal invitation. It may not be in an e-vite, right? It actually might require picking up a phone or having actually a conversation face to face and letting everybody know what you... This is really coming from a host perspective, or if you are attending, and the next part of our conversation was going to be talking a little bit about grief. And I think that's something that's near and dear to my heart, because for Thanksgiving, it's a really emotional, charged place in my family's heart because my dad's birthday was just on Monday, and he's deceased. And it was a time when my parents were married over Thanksgiving. So we always go into this holiday celebrating my dad, but missing him terribly because he's not here. And it's been six plus years, and he would have been 82 on Monday. So we always go into this holiday feeling a big gaping void that he's not present.
Kirby Rosplock
So when I think about setting the stage, I think about what is it that brings you together and sets a course of positivity and generative dialog, where you can bridge, where you know you have a unanimous alignment, that you're going to be on the same page for the most part. You have the same goals in mind. You might not see eye to eye about this candidate wanted to do it this way. This candidate had this approach. You don't have the same party affiliations, whatever, whatever. Don't go there, but stay on course with the things in your family and topics that you gravitate towards that can bring you harmony and happiness. And maybe put the boundaries around those topics and say, you know what? We can talk in other times around those really hot topics. But for the family table or for these family-intimate discussions, can we just stick to things that don't necessarily have to get agitated, explosive, or aggressive? And can we just leave the more vitriolic rhetoric to other times that aren't meant to be family time?
Kirby Rosplock
And so those are things you advocate for and you speak to your family and say, this is sacred time, you need to own it and make it sacred, because if you don't, no one will. And if you bring that toxic energy in, you are actually condoning that it's okay to make this time toxic, and it's not okay. So that would be some of my advocacy for how to set the boundary, lock it down and just spill positivity all over it.
Ian McDermott
I think I'll just add to that. One of the things that I found really useful is to suggest to people, ahead of time, they begin with themselves. Just ask yourself, what do I want out of this? Why am I even going? And if each person is clear about that, there's an opportunity to at least share that if you so choose. The reason I wanted us to get together is so that we can have one God Almighty route because I've missed it since last year, is probably not the driver. So what is it going to be? And each person being clear in their own right about What do I want? And having a version, for some people, this is too much. For other people, it's like just it lightens the whole thing up. Having a version of the nightmare version of this Thanksgiving, what would it be? And if you push it far enough, it becomes ridiculous. People posturing and making grand declaimations about denouncing others and all the rest of it. And it's just absurd. And just seeing the absurdity of it, in other words, introducing some humor into it, can be quite helpful. And then you get down to, so these people, do I think that I want to extend some goodwill towards them?
Ian McDermott
Do I value them in some way? Do I want them to know that I value them in some way? And if so, what is it I value about them? And how would I like them to know that? And that takes us to thanksgiving. I give thanks. I am thankful for. And that can take the most unexpected forms. And if you have any kids, one of the things we do every year is just... It's simple. It could be trite, but it never is. We just go around the room and everybody says something they are thankful for. And last year, John, who's one of my grandchildren just turns and says out of the blue, well, I'm thankful that Grandpa Ian keeps giving me these science books. They're great. It's like, there you go. And it's from the mouths of babes. What's important to me? I'm thankful for it. There you go. Moving on. What do we want?
Emily Bouchard
I think that that's the key, right? Is that intentionality and really striving for that. So coming to a Thanksgiving holiday, any holiday, with a clear intention about who we want to be as family and what are our core values we want to emulate? Respect, kindness. What are the things we want the kids, the grandkids to see us doing, especially with what's been happening in the media and what the news cycle has done to us. And it's like, we have that exemplified to the nth degree. What do we want to promote? And then how do we bring it back when inevitably it goes off the rails? Because if that's the MO of some people in the family to bring up the topic, even though we've agreed not to, or you have different options. Even though the immediate reactivity in us is fight or flight, we have other options. If you just use your breath to calm your nervous system down in the face of somebody disrespecting a boundary that's been agreed to. You have to remember, stating a boundary is different than having it agreed to. You actually need to have a dialog and you need to have your family members really get…
Emily Bouchard
Let's really make this a sacred space. That's a powerful thing. What does a sacred space look like? What is that going to be for us? Well, I want to make sure there's a lot of fun. Okay, what are the things that to be to fun. Well, if somebody says, Oh, what's really fun for me is listening to these two political pundits talk about whatever it is, or it's like, Oh, let's see if that's a criteria for fun for everyone because we want to have this be something for everyone. It's not like We're not going to do that because we don't want to. It's more, is that what's going to further the overall goal and intention? Then the other thing you can do is you can speak really personally, but from a place where somebody is not going to feel attacked or need to defend themselves. So if somebody comes in and they turn on the news just because that's their habit and they do it, as opposed to coming down on them hard because they're doing that, it's more like, Oh, I totally get why you would want to do that. And it makes total sense.
Emily Bouchard
Because we did talk about this being a sacred space. Would you be willing to maybe watch that when you go back to your room tonight or maybe listen on your phone as opposed to having it on the TV? So there could be a way to redirect it and not make somebody wrong, but still to keep the space sacred and the way you want it to be. And then for practical tools, I loved how Ian highlighted that for us at the beginning, I'm all about having something available that really helps with an intentional conversation. So you could do something as simple as, What are we grateful for? Which is this super powerful thing. And then you can also ask, Tick somebody else in the space, and what do you want to acknowledge them for? And that's a really powerful thing, too. Because being able to receive an actual acknowledgement from a family member is a huge thing in a lot of families. That's a great muscle to build, both giving and receiving. And then there's wonderful card decks. Esther Perel, I just love her. She's a marital family therapist, and she created a beautiful card deck and all kinds of different questions on them you can pull out.
Emily Bouchard
Or there's a book, 10,000 questions you can ask. And you can always pass. You don't have to answer a question if you don't want to, but it's just a way to... If people are really in this cycle of we can only talk about these world things, there's so many other things to think about to get to know each other even better. And then the last thing I'll say is we did something in my family as an ongoing Thanksgiving ritual, which was between the meal and the dessert, we would take a couple of hours and people could present on something that they were really proud of or something that they were really excited about that happened in the course of the year. If you have relatives that are getting together that you don't see very often, maybe see once or twice a year, it's a wonderful thing. We had PowerPoints or we heard amazing stories. My aunt did a bunch of research about our ancestral background, and she told us these unbelievable stories that nobody knew about. Then we had a guest come. We also have singles, and we would have people come that didn't have other families to go to for Thanksgiving, and they would come and tell us stories from their lives.
Emily Bouchard
And one person had reached out to Justice Scalia because he voted against something that she really cared about. And she talked about how she had took him to lunch to find out why he was so against something that she mattered so much to her, and he agreed. And it was like, What? How did you do that? What was that like? And so you can learn so much about the people that you're with by creating a space for sharing at that level. And it creates more trust, more connection more intimacy in the family system. So I wanted to offer that as well.
Ian McDermott
Let me just add to that because I think it's so helpful what you're saying, Emily. There's this often very, I think, sloppy assumption in families, which is we know each other. What about starting from the assumption that actually, who are these strangers around the table? And what would it be like to really get to know them? Because they're living lives that much of which you probably don't know much about. And what would it be like to know them better, to understand that you don't know them, you have a version of them, which is probably out of date. Get curious, you know?
Emily Bouchard
Curiosity is huge. Yes, thank you. And I do want to spend a little bit of time on this polarity that everyone experiences to different degrees during a holiday gathering of this celebration, this joy, this thrill of being together in life, and then at the same time, possibly holding grief, sorrow, angst, dread. These things are held in these huge polarities, and they exist simultaneously. Thank you, Kirby, for sharing about your family. We'd love to hear a little bit about ways that you all manage that delicate balance between the two, because There's a huge spectrum there between total joy and elation and total grief and sorrow.
Kirby Rosplock
Well, and I think that's also really kindred to this post-election feelings and feelings that we're seeing. We have a huge segment of this population that is overjoyed. This is exactly what they wanted to happen with the election result. And we have a huge part of this population that's incredibly stunned and shocked that it didn't turn out the way they had anticipated. So coming into this holiday meal, we have family members who are overjoyed and despondent. And it's very much like the cycles of grief that family members go through when they lose a loved one, where it's like Elizabeth Kübler-Ross talks about five stages of loss, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. If any of you have done any reading on her book on death and dying, this is what you go through when you lose somebody. But think of this as whether you're in this camp or this camp, it doesn't really matter. You want to think about the other party and just appreciate that if you're the despondent one, you may not want to come to that meal. You may not want to show up at that gathering. You may be feeling like you want to hide.
Kirby Rosplock
You may want to retract and not engage. So how are you going to ground yourself? What do you need to do to be able to show up and engage however you're going to engage? And how do you need to prepare the people you're going to be with to let them know that you're not okay? And that's okay that you're not okay. But you also have to be realistic that you're not going to be Debbie Downer and ruin this environment because this is a Thanksgiving, and you have to figure out if you can be in that space and bridge that. I also think there's things, there's traditions that we hold that sometimes create reactions by those family members when that seat is empty and you've lost that loved one in the past year, that spouse, that sibling, that child. And it's really, really difficult. So think about, do you change that tradition so you don't have quite that same experience that you had the year before? Maybe you set the table differently. Maybe you go to a restaurant versus hosting at your home. Maybe you just think about having a brunch or a lunch, not your same traditional dinner.
Kirby Rosplock
So again, think about how do you adjust, start a new tradition. That's very typical. And again, I think one of the things that's so important is to start these conversations before you're walking in the door. Don't start it when you're in the door, because then at that point, you're going to be the petri dish. The experiment is happening then. So if you can set the stage before you're there, you're much more likely to have success in that day, and you're much more likely to have prepared. It's like a farmer. You've prepared the soil, you know what your crop is going to look like when when you get there and you're harvesting it. And so I think for both parties, you want to be extraordinarily understanding that if you're elated, temper it a little bit. Dial it back and be respectful that that other party is probably morning. If you're the mourning party, understand that that person is probably really excited, and you have to acknowledge that, yeah, it's okay. But your focus is on Thanksgiving. It's not on the election anymore. We're on. We're on to the next thing, and we're on to family.
Kirby Rosplock
And that's what this is really all about, is being together as family, not on politics, not on who won the election. It's about family and Thanksgiving or holidays and what's going on together.
Ian McDermott
On that, it's actually on... I could even say not Thanksgiving, it's on giving thanks. And when you into what can you give thanks for? World's your oyster. There's so many things you could give thanks for. And it's a curious thing. I find myself on a beautiful sunny day in Connecticut, which is very variable. So I'm suddenly seeing changing light conditions and all the rest of it, and hardly studio quality. But that's in a way what's happening emotionally with people. It's fluctuating, and that's okay. It won't be one steady-state. It's the last thing it'll be. So emotions, they come and they go. Are there new moments of choice as they come and they go? Yes. Would this be another moment of choice? What should we do now? As opposed to, Oh, well, it's all ruined. That's that then, isn't it? No, it's never all over. It ain't over until it's over in every sense.
Emily Bouchard
I love that. It's really important internally to have that, too. Let's say that you are somebody that's really despondent, really heartbroken about the state of affairs in the world right now. You're with family and you find yourself laughing and enjoying yourself and elated. Sometimes there can be this strange sense of guilt or shame, or I shouldn't be feeling this way because I'm supposed to be feeling this way. I think what you just said, and I love how the sun's illustrating it for us, is allow your humanity. Allow your humanity to be part of your experience, that I love Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and studied her work, and she even said, Don't look at this as a linear step-by-step model. This is a loop-to-loop. You could go from being happy, neutral, completely forgetting about, and then you're suddenly hit by something that blindsides you and you're crying. You're like, Why am I crying? Oh, yeah. And so allowing, and I think, again, it's that's name it, claim it, tame it, aim it. Allow yourself to have whatever the feeling is and just name it and claim it like, This is what I'm feeling right now, and it's okay.
Emily Bouchard
I think that's so important. And then the other thing, just some practical tips. If you have more extreme emotions right now because of things that are going on in the world, remember that alcohol will tend to expand them, exacerbate them, make them louder. So definitely avoid more emotional volatile conversations situations when alcohol has been flowing. And you can always use that as a way to say it, easily like, Oh, I totally get why you want to talk about this right now. I've had a little too much to drink. I want this to be a great time together. Let's talk about in the morning on a walk, when we all have had some coffee. So you can defer it, if you have the presence of mind to do that. But you really do need to be able to say, Oh, wait, I've had too many glasses of wine. Or, Oh, you know what? I think you've had some more wine than you usually do. Probably not a good idea to have this conversation. Like either way. But I just wanted to highlight that because when we're festive, when we're getting together, we can be in a really good mood and, boy, can it turn on a dime if somebody has had that third glass.
Emily Bouchard
And so you really want to be paying attention to that. Maybe don't have it flow quite as freely if you're worried about some volatility. Just a recommendation. Or make sure there's lots of food with it. Then the other one is, if you are feeling like, Wow, I do need to I use some boundaries for myself. I want to be with family, but I really can't spend a lot of time there. I'm just too heartbroken. You can create boundaries and time limits for yourself. I'm going to go for dinner, and then I'm going to say good night and say, Look, I'm not eating dessert anymore, and I don't want to be around the pie, so I'm going to go to home early. I'm going to go to my hotel early or I'm going to leave. It's okay to do that, and you can have a reason to do it where nobody's offended. It's okay to take care of yourself in the midst of that. You more limited space with family if it just feels too much. Then the other is, again, I'm going to say the moving your body and also getting out in nature is really helpful for that perspective taking, which can sometimes also help.
Emily Bouchard
Being with family, to do that is really wonderful, especially when there's little ones, just walking them to the park and going and just playing and looking at the trees and sitting on a swing. Sometimes that can help with the nervous system as well when you're feeling overwhelmed emotionally. Just a lot of kindness and compassion for yourself or for the person that you're with if they're feeling that way.
Kirby Rosplock
Hey, Emily, we have a good question in the chat. The question is, some family members seem to thrive on instigating and antagonizing during these gatherings. How can we better understand their motivations for doing that? Where might that be coming from?
Emily Bouchard
Oh, my gosh. Those are great questions. I love just thinking about people's personality. I don't go too deeply into already knowing why somebody is the way they are. But I do know that there's certain personality types that thrive on trauma or digging at people, getting reactions from them. It feeds them. It gives them energy. You have lots of options with it. Your question is actually the best example that I would use, which is what Ian said earlier, be curious. You don't have to take the bait of what they're trying to bait you into, but you can be curious about what's behind it with them. If they don't want to go there and they're not self-reflective, they'll just brush it off. Or if they aren't, they might get them to pause. But if somebody says something to you or you watch them doing it with somebody else and they're just doing it to get a reaction, you can always connect with them around. I've noticed that you've been asking that, and I'm wondering, what does it mean to you? And you just like, let's flip this script on, right?
Kirby Rosplock
If they're not trying to get a reaction, just ask it right back to them. If you know that they're intentionally trying to rile it up, the greatest way to like, (gestures) do, is to flip it right back onto them and say, well, you're asking a really provocative question. I'm so curious how you came up with this and what's the motivation to be so curious? Because as soon as you do that, you change the focal point right back on them. And quite honestly, it will embarrass them in front of the rest of the family, typically, because they wanted to cause stress and anxiety in front of everybody else by putting somebody else in the family on the spot.
Emily Bouchard
When it comes back on them to answer, it can oftentimes backfire their plan. You may want to do it in a way that will have them be in that wake up call and be embarrassed. And you can also do in a gentle way that actually has you both facing the same way. I'm a student of aikido, and I really love using this analogy because when somebody is coming at you and it feels like they're just wanting a reaction, your reaction can be to want to push back or show them, or you might want to just completely get out of the way and have them... But with aikido, you want to blend. If somebody comes out to you, you blend with them and you direct them where you want it to go. So holidays, family time, getting to know these strangers that are different every time we're together, how do you direct them in the direction you want to go with what they're saying? So you can do it in a way that's not adversarial or meant to put them in their place, which you totally have that. That's completely in your rights to do that.
Emily Bouchard
It's another option, which is you can direct them towards, Well, I've noticed how passionate you are about this, and I'm really curious about what in your life have you experienced that's had you realize how important this is to you? And then you get a whole other conversation with them. And it's very disarming, but it's not in a way that creates embarrassment or shame around it.
Ian McDermott
It's useful just to remember that whoever's asking that question is agent provocateur. They're provoking a reaction. And normally, they then can just sit back and watch the fireworks. But what we're actually suggesting in a thousand different ways is let's make them the center of our attention.
Kirby Rosplock
Exactly.
Ian McDermott
I'm curious about them. And so tell us more about you. I'm really curious. That's an amazing question. It's really good for fireworks. So tell me more. What makes you think of that? And so forth. Anything that puts them in the spotlight is so different from how they normally operate. And you can do it genuinely if you're curious, as opposed to, I'm just going to pull the rug from under your feet. That's not what we're trying to do.
Emily Bouchard
And then sometimes there might be something to find them, too. That's the other thing is if it feels like it's been going on for a while and it's like, I don't want my holiday hijacked by this person, you can. You can redirect them and say, We're going to Let's switch to this topic now. You can actually create that boundary for them, too. Sorry, Kirby, what were you going to say?
Kirby Rosplock
I was just going to say, you can also pull them aside to say, This sounds like something you need to take offline with that person. If you feel like they're hijacking the whole family because they're poking somebody and maybe shaming or belittling, because that's sometimes what the instigators do, is they publicly pick on somebody in a more public forum. You can be like, Hey, I hear you that there's something going on with you and so and so, but I don't know that the whole family needs to be part of that. Maybe you need to work that out, not at a family holiday gathering. Maybe this is something you could work on over coffee or next week, but not right now. And maybe that would help you with them so we could all enjoy this Thanksgiving and not have to make that at the center because we don't really care. Respectfully, we're glad you have an issue, but we don't really care. Because I think sometimes they want to make drama, but nobody really cares about the drama.
Emily Bouchard
They just get all in it. Yeah, exactly. That's great. We've reached the top of the hour.
Ian McDermott
I know. I'm mindful we're at the top of the hour. I think it's a wonderful metaphor that the sun, the clouds, they are forever moving. And here we are.
Emily Bouchard
I know. We could obviously keep going. And I love that we wanted to end with the tips and more strategies because we have a tip sheet. We're going to be emailing you. So that was the least important part of this conversation. We did sprinkle throughout some practical approaches and strategies you can use in very real situations that people asked about. Thank you so much for attending. And if you have other questions, if this brought up anything for you, please feel free to reach out and we will be happy to... One of us can respond and support you in that way. I'm so grateful and love your feedback about whether this was useful for you or not. And thank you, Kirby, and thank you, Ian, for this wonderful conversation.
Kirby Rosplock
And thank you, Emily, for inspiring it all.
Ian McDermott
All right, so until the next time.
Kirby Rosplock
Until the next time..
