Dreading your Kindred? Seven Tips for Holiday Gatherings in Times of Global Unrest
A Truly Dreadful Mealtime. Photo of two White men fighting over a waffle. Photo credit: ©Bart Cayusa on Flickr
It’s that time of year again— the Holidays—that season from November through early February, when there are at least 14 different holidays celebrated by different groups. What do they have in common, other than themes of light in the darkness? That feeling of dread, caused by gathering in close quarters with dear ones and extended family, who do not always agree on charged issues.
This year, we have the additional weight of the violence in Israel tipping the scale toward reflexive pronouncements and reactive comments. So I’ve revamped my holiday conversation guide to take into account the presence of the personal, vicarious, collective, and ancestral trauma that is lurking at our sideboards.
What to Pack or Have on Hand: A Quick-Start List
If you’re expecting a really dreadful gathering, paste this list of techniques somewhere you can quickly glance at it for a reminder. You’ve got this!
Breath Awareness
Deep Listening
Dialogue, not Debate
Compass Navigation
Calling In or On
Noticing Defensiveness, Without Judgment
Laughter, Smiles & Connecting Where you Can
Why We Dread Those Dreadful Gatherings
The gatherings I’m thinking of are the ones that devolve into lobbing information back and forth, with all parties entrenched in their respective arguments and unwilling to truly listen. Defensiveness shows up all around. Some people get loud, others get very quiet, or even slip out of the room. I’m often left wondering how much of the argument was performative and how much was sincere.
Deep Structure
If these characteristics are what appears at the tip of the iceberg, we know that they are undergirded by submerged structures, mindsets, and ultimately a source or consciousness. In this case, the dreadful scene above is supported by a loose debate structure that is itself adversarial.
Iceberg Diagram, (CC) BY-NC-SA license: Otto Scharmer, www.u-school.org/credits
After all, a debate has an us and a them, eventually a winner and a loser. I for one was socialized that when a debate or argument starts, I should try to win it. And in times like the present with a backdrop of war, the debate itself can begin to seem like a “war of words.” This is all made worse by a lack of transparent rules of engagement. Unlike your high school debate team, you and your relatives have to make up the rules as you go along. No one is sure what the boundaries are. Yet the conversational ideal of “holiday dinner” argues against formal rules. Isn’t it all supposed to be spontaneous?
Mindsets/Paradigms of Thought
Meanwhile, Polyvagal theory tells us that our bodies are always scanning for signals of danger. Our out-of-bounds word war radiates signals of danger that resonate with any trauma in our bodies. It doesn’t matter to our bodies whether the trauma was large or small, personal or collective, recent or generations ago, nearby or half a world away, direct or via epigenetics or the internet. If we’ve been exposed to violence, extreme scarcity, or the severing of relationships, those experiences ring like tuning forks when we sense anything similar. This results in protective mindsets of Judgment, Cynicism and Fear that close us down to anything new. Each is related to the physiological trauma defenses of fight, flight, fawn and freeze. Judgment tells us the other person is wrong and leads us into a fight; Cynicism numbs us out and tells us “It’ll never change,” prompting us to fawn or appease by changing the subject or cracking a joke; Fear leads us to flee from the energy of the argument by slipping out of the room, or to freeze, retreating into ourselves. Meanwhile, another defense that collective trauma expert Thomas Hübl calls “over-mentalization” keeps us from noticing the body signals of any of this by prioritizing what’s in our heads over those potentially disturbing physical sensations.
“There he goes again. . .”
Cynicism numbs us out and tells us “It’ll never change.”
Source/Consciousness
All these thought paradigms are in turn rooted in an Us-Against-Them consciousness, one that tells us that we need to dominate them, or overthrow them or purify ourselves of them or isolate ourselves from them in order to be safe and secure. These and other master narratives that frame our thinking are explored in this season of the Learning How to See podcast. What each of these narratives have in common is the othering and dehumanizing of them, denying our interrelatedness.
What If We Started from Kinship?
Besides being an analytical tool, the Iceberg is also a design tool. Rather than starting from what we see and analyzing our way down to the root consciousness, we can start from a consciousness we want to enact and build upward. Instead of a denial of interrelatedness, what if we started from Kinship? After all, many of our holidays include our actual kin or our chosen families. What better place to begin to practice Kinship consciousness?
Mindsets
The mindsets that arise from a Kinship consciousness have been demonstrated by Indigenous groups for millennia. These include awareness of the interdependence of humans with the natural world, and with each other, reaching seven generations forward and back. The idea of Ubuntu, common on the African continent, translates as "I am because you are."
In any of these mindsets, the idea of them is diminished as the idea of us becomes more inclusive.
More recently, these mindsets have been described as the Beloved Community by Civil Rights icon Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King; as movement from an isolated Self to an integrated MWe (Me + We) by trauma psychologist Dr. Dan Segal; and as movement from Ego-system to Ecosystem Awareness by systems change leader and MIT professor Otto Scharmer. In any of these mindsets, the idea of them is diminished as the idea of us grows more inclusive.
Structures to Bring to the Gathering
Without punitive boundaries, a Kinship base may seem vulnerable to allowing out-of-bounds behaviors to run wild. In order to rein in potential transgressions, we need to take the structures part of our iceberg seriously. This is where I can offer you some techniques to use.
Body Awareness
At the simplest this can be feeling your breath as it passes through your nostrils, or feeling your feet on the floor or legs and back supported by your chair. Then do a body scan. Attuned author Thomas Hübl recommends a “3-Synch” process of scanning your body first for sensations, second for emotions and third for thoughts that are arising. Start doing this throughout your day well before everyone gathers, so that it’s fresh in your mind once you do.
Benefits:
• Counterbalancing the over-mentalization that is so prevalent in our culture allows you to stay present instead of checking out
• Pausing to connect to your body will ground and settle you. And, as Resmaa Menakem says, “Settled bodies settle other bodies.”
• Sensing into your own body makes space for you to attune to the person you’re talking with. It allows you to get an intuitive sense of their feelings so that you can pause and inquire about them.
"Empathy is not an endorsement" — Dylan Marron TED Talk
Deep Listening
Don’t worry about what you’re going to say next, don’t marshall your arguments as the other person is speaking. Instead, listen closely. Notice their body language, facial expressions and energetic ebbs and flows. Ask clarifying questions: “What do you mean?” and “Can you tell me more about that?” Then go beyond that to seek context. Find out why they believe as they do, or why it is so important to them. Notice what emotions arise and clarify those, too: “What made that so upsetting for you?”
Benefits:
• Your common ground isn’t the sticking place, the disparate experiences are. Find out more about them.
• Listening deeply and empathetically makes the speaker feel heard and validated, even when you haven’t agreed with them. Remember, “Empathy is not an endorsement” as Dylan Marron says. Once a person feels heard, they are much more likely to listen to you.
• Hearing all the nuances humanizes the other person. This allows you to realize, in the words of Loretta Ross, “Other peoples’ interior lives are as complicated as yours.”
Dialogue, not Debate
You don’t need to win, simply to exchange ideas. Consider Brené Brown’s definition of Civil Dialogue: “Claiming and caring for my identity, needs and beliefs while not degrading yours.” If any degrading is going on, state that that’s how it feels and you won’t stick around for it — even if you’re a bystander to this conversation.
"Civil Dialogue is defined as claiming and caring for my identity, needs and beliefs while not degrading yours.” — Brené Brown
Benefits:
• You haven’t let the moment slide, and your stepping up will show others, including those in your dialogue and any onlookers, that this is possible.
• No matter how they react, you have pushed the pause button on their internal monologue. They’ll think about it later, on the way home, or in the shower, etc.
• By some estimates, people need to hear a new idea at least six times before they adopt it. Whether your conversation is time number one or number 5, you’ve continued the process.
Compass Navigation
Use the Compass from Glenn Singleton’s Courageous Conversations About Race to consider where everyone is coming from, yourself included. It’s no use standing in your feelings and lobbing them at someone who is squarely in the opposite corner and firing factoids back at you. Instead, try speaking to them in their own “language” by talking about your thoughts. The same applies to any two quadrants. For a deeper dive, check out this mini-tutorial.
The Compass, from Glenn Singleton’s Courageous Conversations About Race, Corwin, 2021
Benefits:
• Each of us has thoughts, actions, feelings and beliefs, but we tend to have one or two strong suits that are more comfortable for us. Using the compass helps you understand your own point of view more thoroughly.
• Your point of view is more likely to be heard by others when you say it from their home quadrant.
• Examining your responses all the way around the compass will bring you to a more centered or settled feeling. You don’t lose your strong feelings, beliefs, thoughts or plans, but they don’t have as much charge on your nervous system.
Calling In or On
Loretta J. Ross has used Call-Ins & Call-Ons with KKK members.
How tough is your gathering?
I’ve written an entire post on these ideas, so I’ll summarize here: Not everything that deserves to be said is best said in public. Calling someone out in front of the family is a recipe for defensiveness on their part, virtually guaranteeing that they won’t hear the point of what you’re saying — just the accusation. Calling In means that you arrange to speak sometime after the event, in person or by phone. At that point you can explain what was harmful about what they said, or why you disagree, etc. It’s a chance to help the person grow, and it may require multiple conversations.
Calling On can happen during the gathering. You first establish that you care for the person; mention a value they typically live into that you respect; and then point out the gap between that and what they just said or did. You then leave it up to them to do any growing on their own. Loretta J. Ross demonstrates both techniques beautifully in her TED Talk.
Benefits:
• Avoids the immediate defensiveness, grandstanding and performative allyship of a public Call Out.
• Diminishes the likelihood of family factioning by keeping it between two or a few people.
• The cooling off period before a Call In allows a more centered dialogue.
• A Call On reminds the person of their best self, which can be a strong motivator.
Notice Defensiveness — Without Judgment
You may find those physiological defenses coming up in them or yourself. Remember, that’s just the inner tuning fork resonating. It’s not on purpose, and it’s not entirely under anyone’s control. Beating yourself up for your resonance won’t help you move forward, and pointing out their defenses in a judgmental, “There you go again. . . ” way won’t help either. Simply noticing defenses in yourself is the first step to moving past them. Noticing defenses in the other person doesn’t mean you have to pick their baggage up and carry it for them, nor unpack it with them. But, understanding what they are carrying can help you to communicate in a way that won’t further derail the conversation. In fact, the arrival of their physiological defenses means they are approaching their limit, and can be a cue to take a pause and try again later—perhaps with a Call In.
Benefits:
• Taking a nonjudgmental stance with ourselves gets us out of a conflict mindset and makes it easier for us to extend non-judgment towards others.
• Noticing our responses and resonances is the first step to metabolizing and moving past them.
Glimmers of Safety
Along with scanning for signals of danger, our bodies are also constantly on the lookout for signals of safety and belonging. Because our media environment amplifies and monetizes signals of danger, we have no trouble sensing those. By comparison, the signals of safety may be mere glimmers. The good news is that we can learn to sense into them as well. Noticing these glimmers expands our zone of social engagement, meaning that we can tolerate more stress before our fight, flight, fawn or freeze reactions kick in. And this is what has always allowed kindred to weather the disagreeable times. Not by coincidence, the very things we long for when we gather can translate to glimmers of safety: sharing a meal, smiling through the eyes, speaking in a lilting voice, hugs, familiarity and tradition, and of course, laughter.
Go ahead and laugh.
It’s a Glimmer of Safety for you, and for everyone else.
So go ahead, have another helping of grandma’s traditional recipe, get a hug from that aunt that believes in you, pick up a baby and babble some lilting nonsense, and find that cousin that makes you laugh.
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