Most people think they are enlightened until they spend the holidays with their family. In a couple of hours they start doubting whether they changed at all. For many people this period is stressful exactly because of this.

Suddenly triggers start striking from every family member. It’s like your family has a secret power to strike those exact strings within you that make you lose your calm and become another version of yourself.

And you can’t help it. Nobody can. We are all triggered by our family’s uncivilized behavior, questions with covert meaning, undermining suggestions, old ways of trying to manipulate you.

However, you should know that your family does not really intend you bad. They, if anything, truly love and care about you, and they genuinely want the best for you, well ‘the best for you’ they think it’s the best.

And on the other side of the perspective, you probably trigger most of them also. The triggering is not done with intention, as you know yourself. But because your family knows most of your flaws it’s inevitable. Here is how to endure family triggering.

3 Ways How To Endure Family Triggering During The Holidays:

1. Do not try to avoid triggers.

The first thing you should do, even before you visit your family, is to accept the fact that you are not perfect.

Accept the fact that there will most likely be triggering. Do not try to avoid it, it’s not that serious after all.

By just being ok with who you are, even if you are not perfect, even if you are still single, or at the same low paying job, being ok with this disables most of the triggers.

Accepting your own flaws will drastically reduce the intensity of the emotions the triggers evoke, and just this is a huge help.

One big secret of being triggered is that you yourself do not accept the flaws that other people highlight. If you accept yourself fully, with all your flaws, others have no power.

2. Embrace and feel the emotions that the triggers evoke.

Being triggered will evoke uncomfortable sensations within you, emotions like anger, sadness and irritation.

However, each emotion you feel is right. There are no bad emotions. Embrace whatever the triggers evoke and fully feel these emotions.

This does not mean to react to the emotions, nor to express them, but simply be with them.

Realize you are not your emotions, you are beyond them. And as you let them arise, without resisting any of them, they will quickly move through you and be released.

It can take less than a minute and you’ll feel like nothing happened. While resisting or expressing your emotions can ruin relationships, suppress anger and spread negativity.

3. Use the triggers for your own benefit.

Here is another secret, your triggers are probably the greatest gifts you can get during the holidays. They are like little pieces of gold.

Being triggered is a powerful opportunity that you can actually use for your own benefit to become even better version of yourself.

Each trigger is linked to a pocket of suppressed energy within you, to a piece of inner wound you haven’t healed yet.

Becoming aware of this connection and getting to the cause of what’s upsetting you can give you something to heal that you still haven’t healed.

Whenever you get triggered ask yourself ‘Why does this bother me?’, ‘What’s so bad about this?’, ‘What does this mean for me?’ and just follow the trail until your reach the core.

With these easy steps you will not just diffuse most of the triggers, but you will use them to become even more whole version of you.