If You’re Dreading Family Holiday Conversations, This Tool Will Help
This simple visualization tool taught by therapists can help any social experience you encounter (psst: it’s not alcohol).
There’s nothing like the Holiday season! It’s the time of year to indulge in what makes us feel cozy and warm. That can be anything and everything from beautiful lights and decorations, to candles, and spending time with loved ones.
Sometimes though, that last one can give some of us anxiety. We don’t get to choose our families and though we might love them, it can be difficult spending the holiday with them.
My therapist taught me something that can help all of your relationships with your loved ones, good or bad. It’s strengthened my bond with those I love the most in this world, and it’s helped secure my inner peace.
It’s the social bullseye.
The social bullseye is a tool to help you understand your own connection with your family, friends, and everyone else in your social circles. Family, for example, might not exist in your bullseye.
It’s easy to feel the guilt of, “well they’re my family, so they need to be in the inner rings.” No, that is not how this works. This is meant FOR YOU, not how others might feel about their relationship with you.
The rules of the actual bullseye help you to see who belongs where, and how to navigate situations and conversations with each of them depending on where they exist on your board:
The Bullseye Center
These are relationships that have mutual respect and trust. Those in your bullseye deeply understand you and do not try to change you. You can share anything with them, and you receive no judgment or criticism, and they can do the same with you.
There is no malice. Advice from those you put in your bullseye is welcomed and even encouraged. There might only be one person in your bullseye, and that is completely okay! It’s YOUR bullseye, you get to CHOOSE.
The Inner Rings
Surrounding the bullseye on the inner rings are your relationships that you may hold near and dear, but might not want to share everything with like you do in your bullseye.
You do love spending time with these people, but your relationships with them are not the deep, intense connections you might have with those in your bullseye.
You also might not want to share everything with them in great detail like you would with those in your bullseye. The relationships here aren’t as mutually understood like those in your bullseye, but they’re good and healthy relationships. That’s okay! These people still fill your cup, and you enjoy your time together.
The Outer Rings
This area of the board is meant for those who you don’t really feel comfortable opening up to. These people might be colleagues you don’t know well and you want to maintain a professional relationship with them, but not disclose any details. That’s fine!
For those in your family and friends though, you may have received too much-unsolicited advice from these people in the past.
You might often feel anxiety spending time with them. You might not want them to know a lot about what you have been up to, because they might gossip about you behind your back to others. You might feel shame, regret, and anxiety about these people from conversations with them in the past where you later learned that you shared too much information with them.
To make the situation better with these people, do not enter into arguments with these people anymore, as those have only left you feeling depleted and empty. Preserve your inner peace with small details about your life, without going into great detail. Be picky about what you tell them.
If they continue to give unsolicited advice, just let them speak. Let them say what they need to say, especially if they are a narcissist. You don’t have to indulge them or respond at all, though. A simple, “that’s good to know, thanks!” is sufficient. Be choosy about the conversations you partake in here. That’s acceptable, and what these rings are meant for.
You’ll notice that doing this will help alleviate your own anxiety and stress, which is of the utmost importance.
Those Not On The Board
You don’t feel safe conversing with these people, whatsoever. You do not receive mutual respect from them in any capacity, so you have learned it’s best not to share anything with them.
Maybe in the past, you would have argued with these people until you were blue in the face. Now, you understand that to preserve your own inner peace, it’s best to let them exist and do their thing, without you giving them anything. You do not open up to them at all anymore, and maybe only engage in the necessary small talk.
Colleagues might exist off the board here too, without malice. The space for those on your board is the relationships you choose to keep for whatever reason, those off of your board are the ones you don’t want to encourage, or are completely done with.
Now that you understand the rules of the board, decide who belongs where! You do not need to disclose any information about who exists where on your board, it’s YOUR BOARD. Keep it yours, not anyone else’s.
You might experience an improvement in the conversation with some of those people after you’ve decided they might belong on your outer rings. Understand that just because there might be a slight improvement, it doesn’t mean they get to move closer to your bullseye.
Hopefully having this visual will help you this holiday season, and for any social experience, you have going forward. If you find this helpful, please let me know what you think in the comments!
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