Hey, it's Zoe. Welcome to Motherkind. We are proudly sponsored by Stocker and welcome to this

special series of Monday moments where I am sharing tools and ideas to not only help us stay sane,

but also get way more joy and fun from this

Christmas period. And today's episode is all about family dynamics. Is there anything harder

about Christmas than managing tricky family dynamics, different expectations, and let's be honest, judgment. Well, listen on because I've

got you covered. Here it is. I am so passionate and excited to talk to you about this because I think Christmas can be such a

challenging time for so many of us because of the tricky family dynamics that might be around

us. It's a time when we might spend extended periods with people that we just don't see that

often. And there's also a really famous

phrase that you've probably heard, which is that your family know how to push your buttons because

they put them there. And I think that is such an important thing to remember as we go into these

celebrations and events with extended family is that if you find it

triggering and hard, then that's probably why. You know, if you're a regular listener to the

podcast, we talk a lot about some of those deepest wounds, some of the things we find most

painful, we find most challenging. They tend to be set up in our really early

years. They tend to be set up in part, not always, but in part by our caregivers and the people

around us. So of course, when we interact with them, when we get together with them, particularly

around Christmas, when expectations tend to be higher.

It's not surprising that we get triggered. And the other thing I think is really important to mention about this up front is that so often when we get to hang out with our family, we can

regress. I wonder if you've experienced this. It's actually so common that psychologists study it, that we can regress. I wonder if you've experienced this. It's actually so common that psychologists

study it that we can regress back to our teenage selves or we can regress back into patterns

that we thought were long gone people pleasing as an example of that for me. You know,

...