Difficult family members can have a negative impact on your mental health and general sense of well-being, whether they are your in-laws, siblings, or other extended blood relations.
It’s common to experience difficulties with and even occasional annoyances with family. To safeguard your mental health and wellbeing, you should set healthy boundaries if you are close to a challenging family member. During the festive season, most of us will be spending more time with our relatives, even the ones that rub us the wrong way. Establishing these boundaries is always much easier said than done. This article will outline some boundaries to help you survive the festive season and maybe you can carry these into the new year.
Prioritize your needs
Thinking about and prioritizing your personal needs is the first step in creating appropriate limits. To determine the boundaries you need to set, consider what you need from others and from yourself. Setting personal boundaries with challenging family members can be done by considering your needs first and prioritizing them over others’ needs and goals.
People who cope with challenging family members frequently discover that they are prioritizing the demands of their family over their own. You must attend to your needs before those of others, whether you need to eat, sleep, or simply have some alone time. Keep in mind that before you can take care of others, you must first take care of yourself.
Value Your Time, and Request the Same from Others
Time is one thing that we all wish we had more of. When dealing with family members that expect to monopolize your time, it can be difficult to set boundaries. You should establish your boundaries and expectations as soon as you sense that your family members don’t value your time as highly as they do their own.
Clearly expressing your requirements and the seriousness of your decisions to family members is one method to reduce conflicts and foster communication. Setting clear boundaries on your time helps you develop understanding with family members, whether you have a prior engagement during a family gathering or can only attend an event until a particular time.
Be Direct and Kind in Your Approach
A compassionate yet direct approach is the first step in learning how to set limits with challenging family members. When possible, it’s critical to voice your concerns, viewpoint, and desire to establish healthy limits in a forthright manner. When establishing boundaries with family members and articulating expectations for how you expect people to treat you, put your attention on being understanding and compassionate while remaining firm in your decisions.
Consider practicing what you want to say if you’re apprehensive or unsure about being direct. Before speaking to a family member face-to-face, practice your lines of dialogue in the mirror or with a close friend. When you approach a family member in a straightforward manner, you might be shocked by their understanding.
Talk It Out
Talking about your problems and expressing your wishes are great initial steps in establishing healthy boundaries, assuming your circumstances permit it. Create a window of time to sit down and speak freely. Even though they may not be aware of the consequences, challenging family members can have a different perspective on their acts and behaviors. It can be quite beneficial to your relationship generally if you take an afternoon to sit down and talk with that individual about your feelings.
You might need to think about taking more extreme means to enforce your limits with this individual if, after calmly and clearly outlining your position on their behavior, they continue to act in the same way.
Practice saying “no”
When you’re setting boundaries and expectations for others, the word “no” may be liberating and empowering. Saying no will spare you a lot of misery in life, especially when interacting with challenging family members.
Saying no can be very difficult at first if you are a natural people-pleaser with a giving, generous, and kind-hearted personality. Although it takes practice to say no to family members, it becomes easier with time. This is a terrific method to start establishing healthy boundaries, even though you’ll probably catch challenging family members off guard when you first start saying no to demands.
Learn to walk away
Learning to leave when you’re uncomfortable is among the finest methods to establish good boundaries.
Setting appropriate boundaries with yourself and challenging family members will be easier if you know when to leave. You can save your mental and emotional energy by setting boundaries and avoiding fights with challenging family members. Understanding your limitations is the first step in setting boundaries; walking away indicates that you have had enough of a particular behavior or action.
If your family ever behaves in a way that makes you angry enough to lose your cool and snap at them, walking away is especially useful. The best form of self-care may be to leave the situation if you see that you are starting to feel anxious or irritated.
We hope these tips help you navigate the festive season with much ease and allow you to fully immerse yourself in the holiday spirit.
Also see: Tips to maintain a healthy relationship in the 21st century
