Jewels Tauzin, Advanced Clinical Fellow

For those of us with people-pleasing tendencies, the holidays can often feel like a perfect storm. It can feel tempting, even necessary, to put our needs aside for the month ahead and adopt an attitude of powering through. We see this option because we’ve done it before, maybe for our whole lives. In codependency, especially as we start to heal the part of us that feels more comfortable being needed rather than being loved, we can enter a state of bargaining. It may start to feel safe to let our needs be met during the weekdays when our choices don’t affect too many people, but on the weekends, as the whims and wants of our friends and partners pile up, we slip back into an old pattern of over-committing and negotiating our boundaries to keep the peace or please others.

A similar pattern may emerge during the holiday season. During the quieter months outside of the holiday rush, we’re able to begin to understand the power and importance of placing our needs at the center of our lives. However, as the holidays roll around and the desires of others feel strong and demanding, staying in our newfound power feels too difficult– we decide to put it on the shelf for now and pick it back up when we’re able to resume life as we know it. 

While these small decisions can seem innocuous and not indicative of our larger quality of life when complied with over time, they send a message to both ourselves and the people in our lives– when respecting my own needs and time affects anyone other than myself, your needs will always come before my own. My needs will never threaten you. A metaphor I find helpful for my own life and for the lives of my clients is the teacup metaphor– the entire cup is for you, and the overflow on the saucer is how you care and show up for others. For codependents and people pleasers, this can feel like a mistake, like a backward metaphor. No, the whole cup is for others, what’s left is for me, right?

Fortunately, or unfortunately for codependents, the answer is no. True healing can’t occur unless we’re able to accept the truth that sometimes, our healing will have to mean that others will not be catered to the way they have been in the past. We are learning that every time we betray ourselves, holiday or no holiday, we reinforce the belief that we are not worthy of the love and care we extend to others. By prioritizing our own needs, we’re showing others that just as we trust ourselves, we also trust them– to handle their own needs, their plans, their emotions.

If this feels good in theory but hard to put into practice, here are some ways that my clients are practicing boundaries and self-care over the holidays. 

1. Allowing life to change as you change. As simple as this sounds, it can be difficult to conceptualize in our own lives. It makes sense that as we heal and change, so would our lives, our holidays, our routines, our prioritizes. Everything that is healthy and growing in nature changes, it makes sense that a healthy person would too.

2. Giving up control. The idea that we can control how others will react to our boundaries is a symptom of codependency– all we can do is honor and respect ourselves, it is not our business how others react to that.

3. Lastly, give yourself the space to imagine what you would really like to do this holiday season. Did you book a flight home and what you’d really like to do is to stay in the city and enjoy the holiday solo-style or with a friend? Do you want to use the time off to go on a trip you’ve been dying to go on? Do you want to enjoy time with your family? Center yourself, imagine what you want to do, and then love yourself enough to do it.

No matter what you decide to do, I hope that you remember that you are capable of creating a holiday season filled with authenticity, peace, and safety.