How to Avoid Angering Yourself & Arguing with Family on Thanksgiving

November 27, 2024 by Walter J. Matweychuk, Ph.D.

Thanksgiving is a holiday meant to celebrate a bountiful harvest. We customarily gather with family and sometimes friends, hoping to reconnect with loved ones and reflect with gratitude on our blessings. A joyous family feast is then to ensue. Humans are imperfect; sadly, sometimes, people drink too much, the gratitude gets lost, and arguments erupt. The old emotional wounds break open, and self-defeating emotions lead family members to turn what can be a festive occasion into another opportunity to argue and down each other. Using Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy’s core ideas and strategies, you can sidestep interpersonal conflict and make the most of the day with your beloved family and friends.

The Principle of Emotional Responsibility

Start with REBT’s foundational concept, the Principle of Emotional Responsibility. It is a simple idea. Accept the premise that no one can make you upset. Your family can say and do things you find distasteful and put you down directly or indirectly, but according to REBT philosophy, you alone have the power to upset yourself. Remember the simple framework of emotional reactions known as the REBT’s ABC framework. Your Basic Attitude lies between Adversity at A and your emotional response at C. It is not what others say or do that makes you upset. Your Basic Attitude towards what they say and do primarily causes your emotional disturbance and the subsequent self-defeating behavioral actions. Your unhealthy anger disappears, and self-control and good judgment set in when you hold healthy attitudes toward the comments you face on Thanksgiving.

REBT does not sugarcoat what family members sometimes do. People will say and do hurtful things, disrespect you, and disappoint you. If you hold the attitude, “Family members must treat me nicely,” you have an emotional Achilles heel. The facts are that fallible humans will do what they want, and no magical force of the universe on Thanksgiving or any other day of the year compels them to treat you nicely. Face the facts and adopt a healthy attitude, such as, “Even though I may treat my family members nicely, it does not follow that they absolutely have to treat me nicely as well. They just do not have to treat me nicely. Furthermore, I can tolerate their hurtful remarks and actions and it is in my best interest to keep the bigger picture in mind. I do not have to give them the anger they may hope to provoke while I enjoy the company of someone else at the gathering. Tomorrow I will be happy I conducted myself sensibly.”

Healthy Negative Emotions are Helpful

REBT’s flexible and non-extreme attitudes toward family members’ distasteful behavior will lead you to have healthy feelings of disappointment, displeasure, and annoyance. You will feel negative emotions when you do not get what you prefer, wish for, hope for, desire, and like. As long as you hold yourself accountable for your emotional responses and refuse to escalate your desire for pleasant behavior into an absolutistic demand, you will not experience unhealthy hurt and anger, lose control of your better judgment, and then say and do things you regret. Instead, you will acknowledge their misbehavior by noticing feelings of disappointment, displeasure, and annoyance. These emotions are very different from hurt and anger. The former set of healthy emotions will enable you to take the good from the family gathering and leave the bad. The healthy negative emotions will help you not to get sucked into old self-defeating family dynamics that inevitably lead to putdowns, arguments, tears, and undermine the celebration.

Alcohol Makes It Easier to Think in Self-Defeating Ways

It is much easier to hold yourself accountable for how you react to others and not escalate your desire to be treated nicely into a demand that others treat you well is easier to do when you do not consume much alcohol. Alcohol increases the probability that you will resort to rigid and extreme thinking when a family member tosses a barb at you. You are a fallible human and have two predisposed modes of thinking, one immature and self-defeating and the other mature and one self-helping. REBT emphasizes flexible and non-extreme attitudes. With or without alcohol, you will be inclined to think, “My father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle or cousin absolutely must be as I want them to be. I cannot stand them and the obnoxious behavior they display at family gatherings. They are jerks.” This attitude is not valid, nor will it help you to use good judgment when dealing with others. Please give it up for a more mature attitude that leads to accepting people unconditionally even when they treat you poorly. I am not suggesting you tolerate physical harm by anyone. I assert that whether you are emotionally hurt by anyone rests more with you and your attitudes than what others say and do.

Practice Unconditional Self-Acceptance

Accept yourself without the respect of your family. You do not need them to affirm your human value. Avoid defining your self-worth based on what significant others think of you. Stick with the facts. No one needs others to affirm their human value or achievements. Choose to accept yourself, and you will not be vulnerable to their denigrating remarks and acts of disrespect. You do not have to defend your honor, and very often, when you do not upset yourself when others encourage you by tossing a putdown your way, you increase the chances of those marks extinguishing because you demonstrate you are impervious to putdowns.

Practice Unconditional Other-Acceptance

You will notice the disrespectful behaviors others may show you, but you can choose to see them as fallible humans who are misbehaving. They are not bad people who deserve to be roasted in hell. Unfortunately, all the conditions are ideal for your family members to act as they do. It may be the case that they will act better in the future, but for now, they are as they are and, therefore, will reveal their error-making tendency in their offensive deeds. You can tolerate them as they are and never have to upset yourself about their obnoxious behavior. If political differences come up, you can agree to disagree. None of us have cornered the “truth,” remembering this will help you not anger yourself over political differences. Tolerance is a virtue and shows them that they have a right to act and think wrongly. You can do it; again, you will be glad you did so the day after Thanksgiving. You can be a role model to the next generation, witnessing one adult acting like a child and another responding in a healthy way.

Practice Unconditional Life Acceptance

It would be utopian if family and significant others treated us as we deserve. Unfortunately, we do not live in a world with saintly family members. We live in a world where humans are fallible and have great weaknesses and significant strengths. Rather than upsetting yourself about others and the world you live in, strive to change yourself and your reaction to what you dislike. REBT’s strategy is a simple and sensible idea. Misbehavior from others is part of life. People will do what they want and not what you want. Too bad. Now go and enjoy your Thanksgiving celebration despite the immature behavior you may encounter from family sitting at the table with you. Take the good and leave the bad. Allow no one to ruin your celebration. Only you can do that. Happy Thanksgiving!

Homework:

Write a few coping statements from today’s article on an index card. Refer to them before, during, and after Thanksgiving. Bring the card with these self-helping ideas to your Thanksgiving family gathering. Refer to them while in the presence of your family to remind yourself that you NEVER have to anger yourself when others treat you poorly. You can control your emotional destiny.