Holiday Tips for Incest Survivors

Going home for the holidays, especially for Thanksgiving and Christmas are common family traditions for most families. However, sexual abuse survivors, especially incest victims oftentimes have a lot of problems when it comes to attending family functions.

I remember so well how much harder it was to "go through the motions" of holidays with my own family once I had begun my healing process. As abusive memories from the past began to surface, I reached a point where I could no longer pretend "all is well" and chose not to spend my holidays with the family. So with that thought in mind, I would like to devote this article to some helpful tips for other survivors to use during the stressful up-coming holidays.

Where You are in Your Healing Process
Where you are in the process is a very important consideration. Once you have come out of the strong denial that is found in incestual homes, you will find it becomes more and more difficult to "pretend" nothing happened. It usually is better to either cut short the family visit or sometimes it is best just not to attend family gatherings at all.

Family Dynamics
Family dynamics come into play at all times, but even more-so during the holidays. Most homes where incest is found will also have one parent who is very much in control of everything and everyone. Sometimes that is the abuser and sometimes it is the marriage partner of the abuser. When the abuse victim comes out of denial in order to heal, it will throw the "balance of denial" out of kilter. When just one person accepts the truth of the abuse, the rest of the family dynamics are thrown off. This can cause a lot of upheaval within the family. Knowing this will help survivors make better choices about how much time they can devote to family holiday gatherings. This is a time when a survivor can find his/her strength to make decisions about what is best for them and not what is best for the rest of the family. Most survivors have been taught to take care of others at their own expense. This is the time to take care of yourself and not worry about what others might think or say. Your own self-care and well-being is the thing that needs to be uppermost in your mind now.

What Do You Want?
Holidays have a way of tugging at our heart strings. We all want the Norman Rockwell Christmas or Thanksgiving. We want our family gatherings to be a safe, secure and pleasant place. There is nothing wrong with wanting these things, but wanting a highly dysfunctional family to be these things will pull us right back into denial about our family. So we do need to ask ourselves, "What do I want?" Most of us want peace. Yet most of us know that we will not have peace within our home of origin with abusive family members. It is important not to run back into denial in order to please others and go through the motions of having a happy holiday.

What worked best for me was to skip the family gatherings. By choosing who we will spend our time with and how we will celebrate the holidays, we allow ourselves to make better choices and to gain strength instead of yielding our strength to the abusive family.

It Isn't Easy
Making the choice to stay away from family gatherings is not an easy thing to do. If you feel strong enough emotionally to attend a family dinner and then excuse yourself immediately afterwards because you have plans, that might be a good choice for you. If, on the other hand, you feel like you will suffocate if you have to sit across the dinner table from your abuser and pretend the abuse never happened, it is far better to not attend the family dinner. Make some real plans for yourself. Get together with friends, a church family, or other family members instead. Do not spend the holidays alone. That will only lead you into depression. Just choose for yourself who you will be with during the holidays and stay in reality.

The Choice is Yours
As you continue to make progress in your own recovery process, you will gain so much mental and emotional strength that you might want to visit with your family during the holidays. Of course, by the time you have completed your journey and confronted family members about the abuse, they might not want you to visit again. It happens. Just know it ahead of time and be as prepared as possible. Again, you can choose who you will spend time with and who you choose to accept into your life. Forgiving abusers does not mean you must spend time with them. That is entirely up to you as a survivor. Just don't be alone during the holidays. Whether you go to someone's home or choose to invite friends into your home, you can make it as wonderful a holiday as you choose. You have the power to choose. That is the strength of surviving.