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5 Signs You Shouldn’t Go Home for Thanksgiving
But if you choose to go, here’s some advice from Dr. Nicole LePera, The Holistic Psych, on how to stay safe and healthy.
I’ve built my own Thanksgiving tradition.
I wake up around 6 or 7 AM and dunk myself in a frozen river until I can’t feel my fingers or toes. It may sound like torture but it’s far less painful than going home.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. I think many people get caught up in the romance of going home for the holidays — the familiar smells, mom’s apple pie, sitting around in pajamas, clutching coffee cups with both hands.
But when they arrive, they’re smacked in the face by the reality of it — messy family dynamics, unhealed emotional wounds, unconscious behavior patterns, and a shattered nervous system.
Let me tell you a super-secret, adulting life-hack: you don’t have to go home for Thanksgiving.
Here are a few signs that you shouldn’t.
1. When You Think About Going Home, You Resent It
Don’t think, just answer: do you want to go home for Thanksgiving?
What does your gut say? What does that little voice in your head say before you start to rationalize it away? When you think about going home, do you resent it?
If the answer is “I want to go home,” great. You can stop reading now. But if the answer is “Ugh,” you might have to dig into that resentment.
I say it all the time, resentment is cancer. If you resent something, you shouldn’t do it, doesn’t matter what it is. Nothing good comes out of it. Your resentment will leak out in other ways — passive-aggression, regular aggression, self-destruction…
If you do resent going home but you’re gonna do it anyway, ask yourself why and then read #2.👇
