You may be attending a holiday family gathering where you know you will be exposed to certain trauma triggers. Perhaps YOU are fine attending the family gathering, but it’s likely that others within your system are not. In particular, your trauma-holding parts or alters who are stuck in trauma time will likely be very upset at the idea of joining the family gathering. So what can you do? Here are a few quick tips:
First, warn your system in advance. Yes, this may make the system unsettled, but giving advance warning is better than your trauma-holding parts suddenly being faced by triggering family members. Also tell all your system members that you have a plan for handling the visit which you are sharing with them.
Next, remind your trauma-holding parts, who are typically young parts, that the body is an adult now and is much better able to defend itself. Invite them to look at the body in the mirror. Or show them a mental image of your adult body.
Then let the young parts distressed about visiting family know that THEY will not have to interact with family because family will not see them. When other people look at you, they see the adult body, not the young, scared parts. Help the young parts to understand that they share the adult body and no one on the outside will ever again be able to hurt their smaller bodies.
The idea that they share an adult body and that no one will see their younger body may be news to your trauma-holding parts if you haven’t already been working on this. Because of this, your young and truma-holding parts may struggle to believe it and this may not provide much reassurance to them. So we have one more step.
The last step of the plan is to make sure all the young and trauma-holding parts know they do not have to be present for the visit. Tell them that if they prefer, they can go inside to a safe place where they can avoid the visit entirely. They can leave it up to you, the adult, to handle the visit and any potential conflict or other issues that they worry about happening.
Good luck with your holiday family visits. Drop a comment if these suggestions were helpful to you!