Episode 203: Holiday Pick: How to Reduce Pain and Conflict with Friends and Family This Holiday

Hello Kathy here and thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. One quick thing I'd love to share is about my new digital training course, the Most Powerful you, which is the companion to my book the Most Powerful seven Bravery Boosting Paths to Career Bliss. I'm so thrilled that recently a division of the largest intergovernmental agency in the world sponsored several memberships to the Most Powerful U course for members of their staff. And what a powerful move that is in terms of bringing real world effective training to both men and women to help them thrive in the workforce. Coaching so many people as I do each year, I see that leadership and career growth training programs today are so often not affected because they simply don't go deep enough to address what really holds us back from thriving. Believing in ourselves, understanding our talents and abilities, communicating effectively, asking for what we need, need and deserve, networking to build a great support community and making the impact we long to so I'd love to make an ask of you and that is to briefly take a look at what I'm teaching in the Most Powerful you course and you can find that@mostpowerful you.com and if you feel that the content about the seven damaging power gaps and how to close those for good would be helpful for you and people at your organization, I hope you'll ask your supervisors, HR leaders, and diversity and inclusion managers to sponsor memberships of this course for you and other staff so that you can all thrive at the highest level in your roles and organizations. Thank you so much and here's to you becoming the most powerful you.

When you're getting together with family, with friends, with your parents, with your siblings, don't keep using the stories from the past as an excuse to feel what you feel today.

Hello everyone, this is Kathy Caprino and welcome to my podcast, Finding Brave. I've created this show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life. To rise up, speak up and stand up for who they are and to reach their highest and biggest visions. Each week I'll be speaking with them so inspiring guests from all walks of business, leadership, entertainment, the creative arts and the entrepreneurial world. And they'll be sharing their intimate stories of finding Brave and offer their best strategies for building your most rewarding, joyful and meaningful life, business and career.

Hello everyone, Kathy Cabrino here.

Very excited to come to you today, which is Thanksgiving week here in the us And I just wanted to give you a heads up that this episode is a repeat from December of 2018. But in reviewing it, I think it still has some concepts and ideas and strategies that I hope you'll find very helpful in reducing conflict with friends and family members this holiday season and beyond. I do want to say since we.

Recorded that episode 50, I have had.

Some other conversations with people about topics that you'll also find of great help this time of year. I want to point you to episode 186 with Joseph Grenny about how to have those difficult but crucial conversations with friends and colleagues.

Basically how to talk about things in a way that don't destroy bridges, but.

Keep those bridges sound and Safe. And episode 195 with Dr. Fred Luskin about how to forgive someone when you feel you can't. Definitely ch goes out so good for.

This time of year when we're thrown.

Together with people that can be difficult for us. I hope you find this helpful and a wonderful Thanksgiving to you.

Welcome to finding brave Kathy Caprio here and I am coming to you right before the Christmas holiday. And wow, if you're as busy as I am, you're tired and you, I hope you'll forgive my voice a little croaky because I am in the throes of singing. This is the season to sing and as you know, I sing on the side and oh my goodness, we had rehearsal this morning and we're singing tomorrow and it is so fun and it is such a blessing and I love it so much. There's something about coming together with people, some of whom you may know, some of whom don't, you don't know. You don't sing together regularly but you come and you work hard. You know, music is a language really that you're focused on producing together in the most beautiful way. And oh, I just love it. And you know a lot of how it works, when it works well I think feeds into what we're going to be discussing today which is how to reduce pain and conflict with family and friends this holiday. Woo hoo. This is actually I'm going to, I'm looking at my watch. I want to make sure I keep this to no more than 30 minutes, maybe 20. But truly it could be, could be a year long. It is a year long program for a lot of people, I think, or a webinar or a week training. So my point here is to give you five practical, doable strategies to find ways to lovingly, compassionately, in a joyful, graceful, grateful way, be with your family and your friends and your colleagues this holiday and make it as stress and conflict free as possible. Okay? And where do I get these tips? Primarily they come from my years as a therapist and my training as a therapist and as a coach. And in some ways I've been a mediator, not officially, but in a lot of other ways in my work life, in corporate life. And also it comes from my own life. Lessons I've learned. By no means am I a saint or an angel, but I've learned a heck of a lot about what I need to do to make sure that the time I have with my family and friends is as loving as it can be and pain free as it can humanly be. So let's jump in. What are these five strategy, solutions and tips? All right, the first I want to tell you I had a real awakening of this a few weeks ago in my own life. But the first is let go of the stories you keep telling yourself from the past with this person. Let go of the stories that you are keeping alive and fresh when they happened years and years ago. So let me talk a little about this. Research is showing that we actually aren't remembering what's happened accurately. We are overlaying emotion every time we retell a story in our mind and every time we retell it to someone else. So we're actually not seeing it the way it happened, which is so absurd when you think about how often we repeat a story as justification for why you should be upset at this person. Well, they did this and you know, I hate him for it or they betrayed me and I can't get over it. All right, so I want to give you a little personal anecdote, but I won't get, you know, won't make it too long winded, but long. And the short of it is when I was 16, here's the story that just I was reliving and reliving and reliving and I finally decided to let it go. I was 16, I broke my leg, the tibia bone, vaulting in gym. It was a bad break. I had to wear a full leg cast. And I know this sounds like what does this have to do with family? And but I'm going to tell you the story. The doctor was an ass, frankly, and he said, don't come back to me that this itches, casts itch. And this was a long time ago. I'm 58, so you know, long time. He said, you know, just bear with it and don't take a hanger and try to scratch under the cast. Well, about four days into it, I couldn't bear it. Something felt very, very Wrong in my leg, under the cast. And I told my dad, who was a scientist and kind of a stoic guy, but he believed me. And I remembered feeling so vindicated. And he took me back to the doctor and the doctor, you know, you remember these silly things till the day you die. But he looked at me like, oh, here she goes, what a whiner. And my dad knew I was stoic. I could take a lot of pain. He said, she says it's bad, it's bad. So he cut open the cast, a window in the cast. I had what he saw there. He went, oh, I had had a massive allergic reaction to the cast and there were black pussy welts. Oh, it was gross. And he had to cut off the cast. And boy, was he quiet when he was doing that because he was thinking I was a big 16 year old, whining little girl. Ooh, so mad. And so I couldn't wear a cast. I had to have a flexible kind of whatever you call it. I went home and I was laying on my bed and my leg looked horrible. It had atrophied and it was skinny and black and always hideous. And I started to cry. And this individual, another individual in my family I'm not going to name, actually got mad at me for being upset and said, screamed at me, what are you crying about? And that sounds like, like the smallest thing, like, why would I remember that? But what I remembered, like a thundering realization was that, aha, I can't really be myself with this person. I can't show fear, I can't cry, I can't be vulnerable because it upsets this person too much. And it changed me. It changed me, truthfully, it changed my whole life, that realization that I wasn't going to get what I needed. So why I bring it up is I saw this individual recently and I want to tell you that something happened. I'm not going to bore you with it, but that story came back to me. And this is now how many years, 42 years later? Really? You're really going to be thinking about the story about the cast in your leg. And that event was so traumatic and so emotionally laden that it was as if it happened yesterday. And how many of you are listening, nodding your head that there's been something with a friend, a sibling, a parent, an aunt, a teacher, a lover, that it happened 40 years ago, but you feel like it was yesterday and you get as emotionally triggered when you think about it as if it were yesterday. Well, what I'm going to say to you is After a bit of a discussion with another family member who said, you can tell that story really as much as you want, but I don't think you realize how many times you've talked about that. And it saddens me that you feel that so actively still. And you know how sometimes you, you'll hear something and it won't get through. You'll be like, uh huh. But this time it got through like a piercing arrow. And I was ready to change and I was ready to let this story go and to realize it may not even have happened exactly as I have so etched in my brain and my heart and my soul. And on top of that, this person has changed dramatically. Am I going to still hold this person to that betrayal? Am I still going to do that? So what I want you to think about is when you're getting together with family, with friends, with your parents, with your siblings, don't keep using the stories from the past as an excuse to feel what you feel today. Let it go. Let go of that story. Especially if the person has changed. Especially if you're operating in a whole different arena now, but you're still acting as if you're 16. Someone shared with me a quote and I'm sorry, I don't know the person's name who said it, but they said the past is in your head, the future is in your hands. So think about the stories. Here's the tip. Think about the stories you tell about these people, about how they hurt you, betrayed you, let you down, offended you, pissed you off from the past and.

Let go of the story.

Okay? And I promise you, and here's another piece of that. When you're about to tell the story, and here I am telling the story and I said I wasn't going to, but I'm turning my mess into a message. When you're about to tell the story to yourself or someone else, don't. Don't do it. Say something else, okay?

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Tip number two about how to reduce pain and conflict with family and friends this holiday. I heard from a woman yesterday and I get a lot of these emails, I get handwritten letters. I hear from a of lot, lot of people who would listen to what I just said and say to me, I cannot let go of the past.

I can't, I can't move beyond it.

If this is you, then there is a fact I'm about to state which is this unequivocally, you need outside help. As Einstein has said, I so love this quote. You cannot solve a problem on the level of consciousness that created it. You are going to need outside help. And I want to say this. I've heard from a million people. No, that's an exaggeration. No, probably a thousand in 13 years who have said, I went to a therapist and he stunk. A woman just told me yesterday she suffered from extreme narcissism. Her mother, and she's 50 and she went to a psychiatrist and he said something like, when are you going to get over it? And I want you to know that is not what I'm saying in point one. It's not get over yourself. It's look at if you're telling a story that is keeping that person and you trapped in the past as people that you are no longer. That's what I'm saying about that. Back to this point, this woman said, the psychiatrist said, just get over it. When are you gonna get over it? Well, anyone who's had any kind of pain and trauma knows you don't just get over it. You don't just wake up and say, woohoo, I'm over it. It's in there, it's in your energy system, it's trauma. So you need healing or therapy or energy healing or acupuncture or tapping. There are a thousand different ways you can heal when you can't let something go, when you can't shift your level of consciousness. So the tip here is this. There's a lot of good therapists and.

There'S a lot of bad therapists.

Just like there's good accountants, good driving instructors, good house cleaners there's some horrible therapists and psychiatrists and anything you can think of, there's horrible ones. On top of that, there's good ones that maybe you don't fit with. I mean, I fired or walked out of or said no to a lot of service providers, doctors, dentists, you know, therapists. We're not a fit. And you don't have to make a big deal about it. You can just call, you have one session, it doesn't go well, you don't feel right. You call and say, you know, I really thank you for your time. I appreciate the support you're trying to give me. I don't think we're a good fit stylistically. So thank you. I will be pursuing someone else, but thanks again.

That's it.

Big deal. But don't let, and I want to tell you, I hear this a lot, that therapy wasn't helpful. Some people almost wear it as a badge of honor that their therapist wasn't helpful. If you've gone to four therapists and they're not helpful, you're the problem. You are the problem. You don't want to change. You know, some people, and they're. Some of these people are really close. In my life, it's almost as if, if a therapist were able to help you, you think that then your problem isn't as great as you want it to be. What I mean is, let me say that another way. You're struggling. Let's say you want a divorce, you hate your husband. You go to a therapist, and the therapist is trying to support you and figuring out what part could you control, what part within you can be accountable. And you don't want that. You perhaps just want the therapist to say, your spouse stinks. Well, it's possible that that isn't what's going to be concluded by the therapist. So sometimes you don't really want to hear that you could be in more control of how you feel than you are. So you make the therapist wrong, and you go to two other therapists and none of them help. If that is you, then I'm imploring you to understand that you might be pushing away help because good help is going to make you change, going to inspire you, encourage you, support you to change. That's good help. Bad help is letting you wallow where you are. That's not helpful. So there are so many different kinds of healing and help. Please know that there's so many different styles, so many different types. Don't give up and say there isn't good, affordable, Help out there. There is. Okay. The third tip about how to reduce pain and conflict over the holidays with your family and friends is to assert your boundary and say no when you know that engaging with this person is going to be hurtful. So I'm going to give you a brief example. I just spoke to a fellow I was singing with recently who talked about a family member who has Alzheimer's. And he goes to see her, and he's saying that it turns abusive, violently abusive. I mean, horrible words, words he's never heard come out of this loved one's mouth. And he's so torn because he wants to be there for her, but she's abusive. So, you know, the former therapist in me wanted to ask, but before I could ask, he volunteered that. It's interesting. It goes pretty well the first half hour and then after that it's bad. And that's what I was going to suggest. I was going to ask, does it always look abusive and feel abusive from the minute you walk in? Because I've heard this from other people and I'm not an Alzheimer's expert at all, but I've heard that it devolves into something terrible. So I said to him, then only.

Go for a half hour.

Just go and leave. You know, I could tell he didn't want to not see this family member. That would make him feel guilty and sad. And he wants to be there for her, but he doesn't want to be abused. So assert your boundary. Assert your boundary. I need to get what I need to get, and I need to give what I want to give. And what I want to give is a half hour of my time. But I don't want to be abused.

Sometimes it's really that simple.

Oh, I don't stay an hour.

I stay a half hour or, oh.

As that family member starts to get drunk, I'm not going to sit in the living room with him. I'm going to go in the kitchen with the other family members. Okay. I'm not gonna sit with a belligerent drunk. Why would I?

Why do I need to?

So assert your boundaries and say no to engaging in a way that's gonna hurt you or upset you. Keep your distance. Keep it contained.

Right.

Okay. It's really simple. It isn't that hard. Well, it's simple, but sometimes it is hard. I don't mean to downplay that. Number four tip is don't take the bait and go down the rabbit hole and talk about what you know, you can never agree on. And you know what I'M talking about. Typically it's politics and religion. But it can be a million things. It can be about the military. It can be about something that just came out in the news. It can be about a tweet that infuriates you. It can be about the MeToo movement. It can be about gender equality. Oh, it can be about a change that's happening in your town that you're violently against. Don't take the bait and talk about the thing that you know that you will never see eye to eye on.

Why do it?

But so many of us. Let me give an example.

I'm a liberal.

My mom, for instance, is a staunch Republican. We cannot and do not talk about politics. But it's funny, every once in a while I'll slip and ask a question that I think is safe, but if I really were to think about it, I gotta know it's not safe. Then it's almost like, you know, a thread that starts unraveling your knitting and before you know it, your beautiful hat has turned into a one long piece of parade wool. Again, that's a boundary issue there. Don't take the bait. Don't talk about politics. If you can't, okay, don't do it. And for many people, there are certain things that wear down their commitment to not talking about things that are going to be inflammatory. Booze, drugs, exhaustion, resentment. Those things wear us down. So you might come in, you know, at 2 in the afternoon, fresh from your car ride to your parents house or your friend's house, and you say to yourself, I'm not talking politics. And then two hours later, after three mimosas, there you go. You can't help yourself. So please don't take the bait. And if you need to not have that third mimosa so that you don't have a rip roaring fight, a brawl, then don't have the third mimosa. You know, I think you'll be grateful that you didn't. Number five. This is something to remember and hold close. People are more than their political or religious views. People's views and mindsets have been shaped by so many different influences, experiences, traumas, high points, low points, betrayals. We are shaped by so many things. And you know, somebody, I forget who said, be kind to everyone you meet because you don't know the hidden battle that they're facing. Oh, that brings tears to my eyes. Everybody's facing a hidden struggle. Everybody, or almost everybody. Everybody I know who's honest enough to admit. So isn't it true that, I mean, I. Look, let's go back to the choir analogy. I sing every week with a group of people from age 23, no, 22 to 81. Isn't that remarkable? And a good number of them, huge number, are not affiliated with my views, you know, in many different ways. Many different ways. But that doesn't stop us from loving seeing each other, loving singing with each other. We always have a snack and some drinks afterwards. We stand around. These people are in the fabric of my life for 13 years.

I love these people.

And they are more than their religious beliefs or their spiritual beliefs or their political beliefs. They're more than that. They're a heart, they're a soul, they're a spirit. And you can be loving and engage with people in a loving way, even if they didn't vote the way you voted. So don't put people in a rigid category and make them one dimensional. I mean, that's what bigotry is. You know, women are this. Men are strong. Women are vulnerable and weak. The liberals are this. Republicans are that. The people from the south are this. White people are that. I mean, that's just bigotry. That's just discriminatory thinking. We're more than all of this. So try to find. I guess this is how I'm gonna sum up these tips. Dig deep in your heart this holiday season and beyond, of course, and embrace the good and the kind and the loving and the compassionate in yourself and in other people. Make it a commitment to see the good that's there. Very few people are all evil, you know, Very few. Most of us have dark and light inside of us, Right? Emphasize what you have in common and what you love together and what brings you together and your shared histories and your shared commonalities and what you admire and respect and appreciate together. And if you can hold that tight, how we are similar, because we're much more similar than we're different. If you can hold that in your heart, your holiday is going to go.

Very differently and so will your whole life.

I hope that's helpful, my friends. I'd love to hear if you use these tips. And did it make a difference for you? I know all of these have made a difference in my life dramatically. And it took a lot of therapy and then becoming a therapist to get it through my thick skull. But these tips do work if you can really embrace them. I hope you have a beautiful holiday and that you find much more love and compassion and togetherness and less conflict this week, this month, and for the.

Rest of your life.

All right, my friends. I'll see you next week. Happy holidays.

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