If you’re like most moms, you want to decrease stress with your daughter. during the holidays.
However, with the frenetic pace of preparations – whether pinching pennies or presenting posh decors – sometimes you can find yourself dreading the holidays if your mother-daughter relationship has gone awry.
The holidays are also a time when moms would prefer to argue less with their daughter.
As a Mother Daughter Relationship Personal Trainer, I’ve spent over 20 + years, helping moms and daughters transform their relationship with each other. What I’ve found to be the most stressful for my clients is when they are on-the-outs with their daughter (or mother) and the holidays arrive.
Hindsight Of Stress Is Twenty-Twenty
My mom and I were on-the-outs during my junior year at Brown University. That particular year, I decided to spend the holidays with a college friend’s family. I simply wanted peace.
You see, for my mom, holidays were all about traditions. Things had to be a certain way. If things didn’t go the way she wanted them to go, then she’d fuss…and lay on the guilt trip real thick.
Couple all that with her critical comments and never being satisfied with anything I did (or did not do) and you get the picture. I had tons of fun.
Nnnot !!!
So, that winter of junior year, I called and gave her the news that I would not be coming home for the holidays.
Years later when I became a mom myself and looked back on that time in my life, I wished
- I could have known where to go for help
- I would have known what strategies to use to better navigate my relationship with my mom.
But hindsight of how to handle the stress is twenty-twenty. Had I known what strategies to use back then and gotten help to implement them when I was in college, then I know my mom and I would’ve
- decreased the stress and argued less during the holidays and
- transformed our relationship with each other a lot sooner.
Now, the 3-point strategy that I later developed as a licensed psychologist working with women, is what I as a Mother Daughter Relationship Personal Trainer cover in detail with my one-on-one mom clients. And it has given hundreds of mom and daughters more peace during the holidays. I’ll briefly share those strategies here with you.
The 3-Point Strategy To Decrease Stress & Argue Less During The Holidays
Strategy #1 – Identify The Focal Point Of The Tension
There is a pattern of interaction that happens between every mother and daughter. What is the pattern between the two of you?
For example: Does one of you get “bossy”/ “brusque” / “demanding” while the other one gets “submissive”/ “accommodating” / “avoidant”?
It’ll be important to identify what specifically tends to ignite those patterns.
For example: Do certain topics or comments get things tense between the two of you?
Remember, the pattern has likely always been there. It just gets magnified during the holidays.
Strategy #2 – Identify Why You’re Really Upset
During the holidays, when mothers and daughters get upset with each other, it’s usually for two reasons.
First, the mother is feeling unappreciated.
Second, the daughter is feeling unheard.
However, when the holidays are over, those feelings are usually stemming from something else.
Identifying what those real feelings are will be key to having peace during the holidays. Without identifying those feelings, then you’ll be more likely to get spun around and/or into another tiff with your daughter or mother.
Strategies #3 – Identify A New Target (Memory Goal)
As you work on (or get help working on) identifying your real feelings, there is one additional strategy to try. That strategy is to identify what new memory you would like to create with your daughter or mother.
Identifying a new memory involves looking for a new way to connect with your daughter or mother on “neutral” ground. When you do this, then you’ll give yourself a fresh new slate on which you can write a new chapter in your relationship with each other.
In Summary:
The 3-Point Strategy For Having Mother Daughter Peace During The Holidays is:
Strategy #1 – Identify The Focal Point Of The Tension
Strategy #2 – Identify Why You’re Really Upset
Strategies #3 – Identify A New Target (Memory Goal)
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©2022 Dr. Michelle Deering | All rights reserved.
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