In an environment as polarized as today’s, spending the holidays around family you have political differences with can elicit emotions ranging from anxiety to dread — and exacerbate already complex family dynamics.
Elizabeth Dorrance Hall, associate professor of communication in the Michigan State University College of Communication Arts and Sciences and director of MSU’s Family and Communication Relationships Lab, studies communication processes in close relationships, with a particular focus on family.
Here, Dorrance Hall shares five ways to approach conversations with emotional health in mind.
1. Consider your goal
Political conversations with family members can be tricky at best and disastrous at worst. As we consider discussing politics with family, it may be helpful to think about your goals. Is your goal to change minds? Prove you are right? Or preserve a harmonious family environment?
If your goal is the latter, consider topic avoidance and boundary setting as acceptable options. If you do want to engage in a political discussion with family members who likely disagree with you, here are a few tips:
- Listen to understand, not to respond or judge others. Ask questions and stay curious.
- Consider multiple features of your family relationships when deciding what to say: your past experiences and conversations, the state of the relationship now, and how your conversation today may affect the future of the relationship.
- Accept the reality that you may never agree. Even though families may start off with a shared worldview, people and their beliefs change over time as they grow and experience new things. Accept that you may need to live with disagreement.
2. Be honest about the stress you’re under
Carols, lights and cheery holiday movies all proclaim feelings of joy, but the holidays can be an emotionally fraught time for a lot of people — especially coming off an election season.
During the holidays, people have a lot on their minds. This mental tax can make it hard to give your full self to any conversation or experience.
When the dinner table conversation shifts from pleasantly reminiscing about shared memories to an intense conversation about the 2024 election, you might have or make an impulsive response because of your built-up stress.
If someone pushes your buttons and you’re already maxed out on your cognitive load, you’re less able to use what we call ‘cool system emotions,’ where we think rationally and slowly and carefully about our responses. Instead, you might be quicker to respond, more reactive.
Talking with others who can relate may help relieve some pressure, freeing up space to have deeper conversations and be present with family members.
Self-disclosure is often met with self-disclosure. When building and maintaining relationships, vulnerability and trust are key: People feel safe to share how they’re really doing if you also are willing to honestly share that with them.
3. Lean into what you have in common
Discuss shared experiences as a means to overcome differences.
Something really cool about family relationships is that those relationships have existed for a long time, which can help us reconnect. Reminiscing on old times — telling stories about loved ones that make everyone smile and laugh — is one way to do this. Remembering the people you all care about and the memories you collectively share can be a great way to connect.
4. Listen and validate
Chances are, your entire family isn’t going to agree on current events or politics — and chances are, someone is going to bring one of these topics up at a holiday gathering.
In such instances, your instinct may be to passionately defend your views, which can result in what ends up being a one-sided conversation. A lot of times in those conversations, you’re listening only to make your next point instead of listening to really understand the other person.
Going back to the basics about how to be a good listener can be helpful for those kinds of conversations.
If you want to maintain healthy family relationships, it’s important to not automatically dismiss a viewpoint you disagree with.
When we are listening, an important thing to do is validate the other person’s feelings, beliefs and emotions. Even if you don’t agree, you can validate others’ views by recognizing the reasons for their beliefs, asking genuine follow-up questions, giving your undivided attention and being curious about their experiences.
The foundation for having healthy tough conversations requires trust, respect and regular communication — not just a one-off interaction each year. Talking to a relative we think negatively about because of their different beliefs or opinions once or twice a year makes it hard to build the trust and respect needed for difficult conversations.
5. Have an ally
Spending time with family over the holidays is complex. You can be happy to see them and grateful for the opportunity to be together, but still feel alone, especially if you don’t share the same values and beliefs as many of your family members.
To cope with this, identify an ally in the family: someone with whom you share similar beliefs and values and who has been through experiences similar to yours. This person can be a sister, cousin, brother-in-law, parent — anyone you feel like you can vent to or make knowing eye contact with at the dinner table.
When you feel like you’re the only one that has a certain opinion or belief or experience, you can feel very isolated even though you’re surrounded by people who supposedly support you and love you. Having one other person in your family who you can lean on — and that you talk to regularly outside of the holidays — can make holiday get-togethers less stressful and overwhelming emotionally.