DEALING WITH THE FAMILY

Christmas Carols such as “Joy to the World” can entice many in our gender and sexually diverse communities to want to slap the nearest person to them. There is an expectation that magically on Christmas day your family will transform into a happy unconditionally loving nirvana of acceptance and warm embraces will be punctuated by the mellifluous sound of chewing on the flesh of steaming glossy dead turkeys. The reality is that on this day families are often worse than ever and many in our communities feel abandoned, sad, lonely and fearful. The good news is that if you emotionally prepare and apply some simple tools, you can have a much better day. One of the most common mistakes is to convince yourself that you are going to have a bad Christmas no matter what. If you believe this strongly enough that is exactly what you are going to have! Challenge these thoughts and plan to do some practical things that will also enable you to enjoy the day. Make sure you look after yourself emotionally; your mental health is the number one priority, not your nutty family or anyone else. Remember it is natural on that day whatever negative emotions you tend to experience can be much worse. Also keep in mind that one of the benefits of being LGBTI is that we create our own families and we are not bound by unwrit ten laws that say we have to spend time with those biologically related who don’t respect us.