If you’re headed to spend time with your family this Thanksgiving, you might be bracing yourself for heated political exchanges or other conflicts that can arise when you’re with your loved ones.
Laurie Kramer is a professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University in Boston. She is an expert on sibling relationships and in managing strategies for family conflict.
We spoke with Kramer about how to prepare yourself for family gatherings and how to leave them relatively unscathed.
The following transcript is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Chelsey Perkins: We’re going to be doing a lot of communicating with family this week. Why is it important for us to gather with our families on holidays?
Laurie Kramer: These are the people who are part of our lives. They're usually people we love. We may not always agree with them. But Thanksgiving and other holidays are the times in our lives where we try to come together — hopefully in person, but if not, other ways — to really reinforce some of those primary and foundational bonds that we have with our family, who we are, where we come from.
These are potentially people who can support us throughout the rest of our lives. And I think Thanksgiving in particular is a great time to express our gratitude for all of that.
CP: It wasn’t all that long ago — just a few years ago — where we really had to make a decision about whether to gather with our families during the pandemic. Has that given a different flavor to family gatherings, in your estimation, now that we sort of understand the ramifications of not gathering during that time?
LK: I think there was a sadness when we felt that we could not physically come together for various reasons, to protect some of the elderly people in our families or very young, vulnerable people.
So I think we've recognized how important it is to cement those bonds, to reinforce those bonds over time. You know, I'm hoping that more people make the effort. I've been talking to a lot of families where they really don't get together very often during the course of the year, so these holidays represent a really special and important time where they can do that.
CP: As we gather with family, sometimes there’s going to be tension points, particularly around politics. I think a lot of people get a little bit anxious about that potential to get into arguments or disagreements with their family. How can we mentally prepare ourselves for these tension points that might arise?
LK: It's important to prepare, and I think there's a few different things people can do.
First of all, you know, have a little talk with yourself about what this is likely going to be like. Think about what's happening within your family, how people are getting along, which people may have belief systems that may really differ from your own, but who also in the family may be more likely to see things the way that you do. And you may want to have a conversation with those folks ahead of time to brainstorm together about what you might do should the conversation turn in ways that might create more tension or conflict.
I think another important thing to do is to think about your own emotional regulation abilities. So how you can enter, you know, a family gathering feeling as calm and relaxed as you possibly can. Say to yourself, “Hey, you know, there may be disagreements, but I'm going to do my very best to stay open, interested, curious about other people's viewpoints.” But also realize that this is a temporary situation. “I don't have to spend, you know, all the rest of my days dealing with these contentious issues with people that I care about.”
But do some relaxation or yoga or whatever people do to really help themselves calmly enter a situation like that. Maybe establish some limits for yourself — what sorts of things you feel comfortable talking about, knowing that you may be talking with people who see things very differently. And where you want to kind of draw some boundaries, where you think that you may want to try to avoid those issues.
Or just be upfront and be prepared to say, “You know, I think if we keep talking about these issues, more of our differences are going to come into view, and that may lead us to feel really unhappy with each other.
“And really, the goal for today is to really feel good together, to really affirm how much we care about each other, how we're grateful for things in our lives and our families, and to maybe cut off those conversations.”
CP: You mentioned relaxation. My mind goes toward what perhaps is considered to be a societal relaxation technique of having a drink or two. And that's something that people will do on Thanksgiving. They'll imbibe. Can you talk about how that may play into the development of some of these conflicts that occur?
LK: Right, so there's many different ways to relax and to calm yourself. And there's many different ways that you can tell yourself, you know, “Hey, this is going to be OK, I can get through this.”
But if you are going to be using alcohol, I think it's important to realize that that does loosen people's inhibition. And it may increase the likelihood that people say things to each other that they may find hurtful or painful. And that may not be what they want to have happen.
I'm a strong proponent of having people think about what their goals are. How can they leave that family gathering and still feel good about themselves and feel good about their families? And that may lead them to make some decisions about really how much they want to drink and how much they think others should be encouraged to drink.
They don't have control necessarily over others, but to realize that that's part of the context that they're walking into — to be aware that people are going to be a little bit more free with their language and may not really be thinking about the impact of what they're saying, how that may impact other people that they truly care about.
CP: So let's say there starts to be a heated exchange in the family. You feel the need to step in and sort of be the peacemaker. What would be some good techniques to use in order to take the temperature down a notch or two?
LK: Well, I think that humor is always one strategy. If you can come up with something that is just a funny thing to talk about to change the subject. Or, you know, to kind of just be a little self-effacing. “I want to tell you how I feel, but maybe this isn't the right place or time to do this. And so maybe we can come up with a different way that we can really sit down and have a serious conversations about our different viewpoints.”
So I think humor, just being upfront with how you're feeling and being transparent about your goals. You know, “I came here today because I really want to spend time with people I love. And I know we don't always see things in the same way. And I care about what you do think, what your values, what your beliefs are, and all the things that happened in your lives that led you to having these beliefs and concerns and priorities and values in your life.
“But maybe today's not the best place or time to do that.”
CP: Are there any other tips you would offer on navigating these family situations, whether it has to do with politics or various other tensions that can arise in families?
LK: I think there's always, “pass the peas,” you know. Get back into the food. Be prepared with some questions that you may be able to raise to other family members to bring them into a conversation that is not about a contentious issue. Just casually changing the topic, changing the tone. Maybe coming prepared preemptively to have a list of five things that you could bring up for conversation that would be more likely to bring people together than apart.
But I think if there's no way to avoid those difficult conversations, [just] be really upfront with the fact that you care, you're curious, you are open and interested in hearing more about their viewpoints. You can't promise that you'd always agree, but you want to know, and you're interested.
And I think that often disarms people. If they don't feel like you're there to have a conflict with them, they may open up and be a little bit less defensive, or even offensive, and share a little bit more about their viewpoints in ways that you can then respond with interest and curiosity, not rejection, not opposition.
CP: So this might be a personal question. Luckily, my family is pretty good about not bringing up these types of topics in these family settings. But I can imagine a situation where, my uncle, perhaps, might bring up something that is a conspiracy theory or just factually incorrect.
And as a journalist, I sometimes struggle with when and how and at what point do I step in and say, “That’s just not true.” How do you recommend approaching that situation, when you know for a fact that something is wrong?
LK: It sounds like you know that if you just say, “That's not true,” that might not lead to the kind of response that you're hoping to get, even though you may be right. And then they could just say that that's not true.
Instead, you know, step back a minute and just to follow your curiosity. “So tell me, how did you find that out? What led you to know that that is the case? How did you come to believe that? Tell me the story behind it.” And as they give more of the details about how they learned that, you may be able to find some entry points for helping to show that there's other evidence that they may want to look at, too, to help them.
Reinforcing the fact that, “Hey, I'm so glad you have an open mind about this, but there's this other article you may want to read that's just about that topic, and it might let you see a different perspective on this very same issue.”
So instead of calling somebody out — “That's not true, that's a conspiracy” — using curiosity and openness and providing additional information that they could look at, where hopefully they'll come to a different understanding, or at least acknowledge that there's different ways to look at the same problem.
CP: So maybe using your journalistic skills that you use every day in work to approach the conversation.
LK: Yeah. Why not? It's sort of like giving the message that, “I accept you, I care about you, you're in my family, you're important, and I want to help you think about why you're believing like you're believing, helping you examine where those ideas come from, and I promise to do the same.”
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