Family Stress at Christmas: Why Old Patterns Come Back

Christmas can bring up stress in ways that feel confusing and unexpected.

Even when life feels stable, family time can activate old patterns, roles, and emotional responses that belong to much earlier chapters of our lives.

In this Christmas episode, somatic psychotherapist Shelley Treacher explores why family stress often intensifies at Christmas, how the nervous system remembers familiar environments, and why slowing down can feel surprisingly difficult at this time of year.

The episode includes a short public-domain fable, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, as a gentle reflection on safety, stimulation, and why calm matters. Shelley also shares personal reflections on learning to slow down, noticing urgency in the body, and how regulation often begins in very small steps.

This episode is for anyone who feels more reactive, tired, or unsettled around family at Christmas, and wants a compassionate, body-based understanding of what’s happening beneath the surface.

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Transcript

 This is a Christmas reflection on family dynamics, old patterns,  and what it really means to slow down.

Hi, and welcome to the Stress and Anxiety Recovery Podcast. I'm your host, Shelly Traecher, a somatic psychotherapist based in Bristol. 

If you are new here, this is a place where we reflect on emotional wellbeing, relationship, and the nervous system.  if you are a returning listener, I'm really glad that you are back.

 Every year about this time, I sit down and write something for Christmas and every year I think, haven't I said this all before? Slow down, look after yourself, let yourself rest.  It's starting to feel like the groundhog Day of emotional wellbeing, but maybe that's okay.

Important truths come back again and again and again. A bit like familiar Christmas songs like Slade, for example, that Merry Christmas comes back to haunt me every single year, just when I think it's left. In fact, I once heard it while I was in a tent at a festival in June. It was the real naughty holder.

I didn't know what was going on as he screamed at the top of his lungs “It’s Christmas!”.  my nervous system was in complete disarray.  And now I'm wondering if I've told you this story as well before moving on. In therapy, I see this all the time. We repeat patterns over and over again. Therapy or progression or growth isn't really about doing it in a straight upward line.

It's more like a wobbly walk up a hill, walk backwards a few steps, take a break, have a snack, walk up the hard bit again, and then, you know, have another rest.  It's more like a wobbly line,  and Christmas has a way of bringing it all up again. Has a way of bringing out the child in us. There's the old expectations and role that we used to play and all the family dynamics.

 You can be a fully grown adult with a mortgage, plenty of supplements, and a therapist, and still act like a child around your family.  

For some, this is about being the responsible one,  the one who takes care of everybody in the family, the peacemaker,  and for others, it's about being overlooked or ignored, or perhaps teased a little bit too sharply.

 It might feel like your parents, your family, your guardians, are telling you that you haven't learned anything at all since you were living with them.  One of my clients said that her body feels like it collapses as soon as she enters the family home, and that's exactly what happens. Our bodies remember that familiar environment.

 We remember the roles that we felt we had to learn and play. In order to protect ourselves and to connect. Our bodies automatically slip into this shape without us even realizing it.  You are not going backwards when this happens. You are remembering the posture, the tone, the strategies, the silence that you had to adopt to keep yourself safe.

 This is why it's so hard to relax. At Christmas.  Your adult self is responding to your child self, who might be scanning the room for who's stressed, who's irritated, who needs managing.  This isn't a setback. This is familiarity.  Most of my clients believe that they have absolutely no idea how to relax.

Does this sound like you? Do you feel like you have no idea how to settle down once you're stressed?  The reason that we believe this it's not true is because we think of stress and relaxation as completely opposites that we can jump between.  We can't do that. We have to move slowly between stress and relaxation.

It happens incrementally.  You know that feeling when you are neither.  When you are stressed, not quite stressed, relaxed, not quite relaxed,  somewhere in between.  It's awkward, isn't it?  Most people miss this transition. They stop work, they shut their laptop, they change their clothes into pajamas. Well, I know I do, especially in winter, and they expect to feel relaxed straight away.

 It doesn't happen like this.  It happens gradually.  Even in relaxation and trying to relax, we have a hurry up mode inside of us.  I know this too. When I'm doing my videos or my podcasts, which has been my main project this year, I have this voice inside me that says, come on, get it finished. I've gotta get this all done before Christmas, before the end of the year.

It's torture, but I'm trying to do things differently this year.  I know that that's my inner stressed 8-year-old responding to a vague sense of duty. At the end of the year,  when I hear this rushing inside me, I say, no, stop.  Just like you would to a child who doesn't wanna go to bed, but you know that it's in their best interest to do that,  and I breathe.

 My nervous system thanks me for not treating everything like an emergency, and my videos are better for it.  I've had shoulder tension for as long as I can remember, and most of my clients have this issue too. It's a stiff area across my back that just won't seem to let go and always seems to be there.

But lately it's been getting on the way of my salsa dancing. I love to do a bit of a shoulder roll, but my shoulders have been behaving like concrete where they never used to.  So I've been curious about what's going on for my shoulders, right. And then one day I was driving and I just thought, what am I doing?

Because I was driving like this. I was gripping the steering wheel as if that would make the car go faster. I'm like, oh yeah. That's where the shoulder tension is, and I realized that I do a lot of things this way,  hurrying through things with a real sense of urgency because we're afraid of upsetting someone or something's gonna go wrong somewhere.

 My mother used to say that she used to clean her face like she was scrubbing the doorstep, and she's right, isn't she? We do wash our faces like there's no tomorrow and brush our teeth. I mean, look at the way that you brush your teeth if you wanna see if you've got any tension. She was right. We hurry and rush through everything.

 We don't give ourselves an easy time.  Sometimes the things that make you feel better, the things that help you to relax can be really surprising. I read a wonderful story on social media about a woman whose workplace gave her money for wellbeing every month, and this particular month she went to the local zoo.

 She spent 120 pounds on goat pellet. Isn't that wonderful? She said that it was the best money that she had ever spent. This makes so much sense because often the things that help us to relax are simple, sensory, grounding, and maybe a little bit quirky.  They help us to relax a little bit at a time, and that's all the body needs.

 Winding down isn't dramatic, and it doesn't have to be perfect. It's about small somatic nudges like turning the lights down, allowing your shoulders or your jaw just to soften. Taking a break just to pause and breathe.  These are little signals that tell your body it's okay to take a break.  

You are not bad at relaxing.  You just need to learn a different pathway to it. Let yourself relax 5% at a time.  And if I've said this all before, maybe that's just how healing works. Gentle repetition, and maybe just, maybe I'll say it all again next year, but slower.

  As usual, I'm gonna read you a Christmas story here. 

 it is a simple story and it's often told to children, but like so many stories that survive over time, it carries something important for us too. 

You don't need to analyze it. Just listen and notice what happens in your body as you hear it.

This is a short fable attributed to ESOP and written over 2000 years ago.

 The town mouse, and the country mouse.

 A country mouse invited a town mouse, an intimate friend to pay him a visit and partake of the country fair

as they were on the bare plow lands, eating wheat stocks and roots pulled up from the hedgerow, the town mouse said to his friend.

 You live here. The life of the ants while in my house is the horn of plenty. I am surrounded by every luxury, and if you'll come with me as I wish you would, you shall have an ample share of my dain.

 The country mouse was easily persuaded and returned to town with his friend.

 On his arrival, the town mouse placed before him bred barley beans, dried figs, honey, raisins, and last of all, brought out a tiny piece of cheese from a basket.

 The country Mouse. Being much delighted at the sight of such good cheer, expressed his satisfaction in warm terms  and lamented his own hard fate

 just as they were beginning to eat, someone opened the door and they both ran off squeaking as fast as they could to a hole so narrow. That two could only find room in it by squeezing.

 They had scarcely begun their rep past again when someone else entered to take something out of the cupboard, where upon the two mice more frightened than before, ran away and hid themselves.

 At last, the country mouse almost famished, said to his friend,  although you have prepared for me, so dainty a feast, I feel I must leave you to enjoy it by yourself.

 It is surrounded by too many dangers to please me.

I prefer bear plows and roots from the hedge where I can live in safety and without fear.

 Stress rarely arrives all at once. It moves through our systems, through families, through relationships, through our bodies.

 And when no one is allowed to slow down to feel or to name what's really happening, even something small can become overwhelming.

This isn't about blame. It's about noticing how pressure travels. And how regulation begins when someone pauses long enough to stop passing it on.

If Christmas stirs old patterns for you, nothing's gone wrong. Your nervous system is responding to familiarity.

Sometimes, the most radical thing that you can do is to slow things down just a little

and let the stress end with you.

  As usual, I'm gonna read you a Christmas story here. 

And on a much smaller, very real note. My exciting news this Christmas is that a very sweet and beautiful foster cat has just arrived.  It is been two years since my lovely cat Mia passed, and I'd completely forgotten how excellent cats are at slowing you down.   I'd also forgotten that they wake you up at 5:00 AM by pushing any available object off any surface repeatedly with eye contact. The strange thing is that this little girl feels like my two old cats rolled into one.

 It's kind of like having all three of them here at once, which is exquisite. I have to say.  

She doesn't rush. She doesn't multitask. She requires calm reassurance.  She expects affection, play, and long uninterrupted periods of doing absolutely nothing. In fact, I wrote most of this podcast with her sitting on my chest between me and the laptop, which definitely slowed me down.

Being with her has been a reminder that regulation doesn't come from doing more. It comes from staying still long enough for the body to realize it's safe,  which feels like a very good thing to remember at Christmas. 

Thank you for joining me today.

If this episode touched something for you, you are very welcome to subscribe for more reflections like this.  And if Christmas brings up old family dynamics, stress, or a sense of urgency in your body,  you might find my other episodes supportive too.

 Be kind to yourself over this season. A lot more comes up in us than we realize.

 This has been The Stress and Anxiety Recovery Podcast with Shelly Recher.  Happy Christmas.