Why Family Systems Regress During the Holidays (Even After Years of Healing)
So, you’ve done the work. You’re in therapy. You read the books. You’ve got boundaries strong enough to hold Santa's weight in cookies. You feel like a grown, self-actualized adult for approximately eleven months of the year... until December hits.
Then you cross the threshold of your childhood home, or you log onto the family Zoom call, and within twenty minutes you are thirteen years old again. You’re fighting with your sibling over the last dinner roll. You’re silently fuming while a parent monologues about your life choices. The sophisticated, emotionally-regulated person you built is nowhere to be found. It feels like all your growth just vanished into the same void where single socks go.
What the hell just happened?
Welcome to the family system time machine. Strap in. It’s going to be a bumpy, nostalgic, and deeply frustrating ride.
Your Family is a Stage Play (And You Know All Your Lines)
Think of your family as a deeply committed, decades-long improv troupe. Everyone was cast in a role a long, long time ago. You’ve got the Hero. The Scapegoat. The Peacekeeper. The Lost Child. The Jester. The script was written by your collective history, and the holidays are the annual reunion show.
The problem is, you’ve been rehearsing for a different play all year. You’ve been living your life, with your chosen roles. But when you step back onto that old, familiar stage, the pressure to pick up your original part is immense. The family system, in its desperate quest for "normal" and "tradition," needs you to play your part to keep the whole shaky production from collapsing. This is role regression.
It’s not that you’re weak. It’s that the gravitational pull of the system is stronger than Pluto’s.
Your mom uses that tone.
Your dad tells that story (for the 28th time).
Your sibling pushes that button.
And your nervous system, recognizing the entire old cast and set design, thinks,
"Oh, we’re doing this play! I know my lines!"
Cue the dramatic sigh, the defensive comeback, the silent withdrawal. You’re not failing. You’re having a biologically and psychologically coherent costume malfunction.
Why Your Growth Doesn’t Actually Disappear (It Just Takes a Coffee Break)
This feeling that your healing has evaporated is the biggest, cruelest trick of the holidaze. It’s like a faulty string of Christmas lights. You worked so hard to wire everything perfectly, and then with one flick of the switch, nothing works and you’re left in the dark, questioning all your life choices.
But here’s the truth. Your growth isn’t gone. It’s just being temporarily overridden by a much older, much more well-rehearsed software program.
Think of your neural pathways like sledding tracks in the snow.
The tracks you made in childhood are deep, icy, and well-traveled. This year, you’ve been painstakingly carving out new, healthier paths on a different hill. The family holiday is a blizzard that covers up your new paths and makes those old, deep ruts the most obvious way to go. Sliding down the old, familiar hill of conflict or people-pleasing doesn’t mean the new hill doesn’t exist. It just means the weather conditions are terrible for navigating it.
Reducing the "I’m a Failure" Shame Spiral
Let’s be clear. Regressing into an old role is not a moral failing. It’s a systemic reaction.
You are not back to square one. You are a self-aware person momentarily stuck in an old pattern, which is a universe away from being an unaware person living that pattern 24/7. The very fact that you notice you’re playing the Scapegoat again is proof that you're healing. The old you didn’t even know it was a role. They just thought it was their whole identity.
So be gentle with yourself. If you find yourself snapping, sulking, or performing a version of yourself you thought you’d retired, don’t add a layer of shame on top. Just notice it. Maybe even give it a little internal nod.
"Ah, there’s my old Peacekeeper persona, trying to manage everyone’s emotions again. Interesting. We don’t do that job anymore."
How to Survive the Family Reunion Show
Remember You’re a Guest Star, Not a Permanent Cast Member. You are visiting this play. You do not have to sign a long-term contract. Your ticket out is already in your pocket.
Change One Line. You don’t have to rewrite the entire script. Just change one of your classic lines. If your part is to argue politics until you’re blue in the face, your new line is, "You know, I see that differently, but tell me more about your garden this year." Deflect. Redirect. It throws the whole scene off in the best way.
Take a Backstage Break. Your nervous system needs intermission. Excuse yourself to "check on something," take a walk, hide in the bathroom and breathe, go scream in your car. It’s a chance to remember who you are outside of this production.
Observe the Play. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is step out of your role and become the audience. Watch the dynamics with curiosity. "Wow, look how they need someone to be the problem. Look how that person triangulates." It turns a triggering experience into the fascinating fieldwork.
You are not the same person you were at 15. You are an adult visitor to a museum of old relationships. The exhibits might be familiar, but you are not required to live inside them.
Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the show.
Your Next Step (If You Want One)
If navigating this annual family production leaves you feeling exhausted and defeated every January, you don’t have to keep running the same lines. Therapy is a space to understand your role in the system so thoroughly that you can finally choose whether to step back on that stage, and exactly how you’ll perform if you do.
We can work on building a you that’s so solid, the family system’s gravity feels more like a mild suggestion than a law of physics.
If you’re ready to write your own script, let’s talk. I offer free 20-minute consultations to explore how we can make next year’s holidays feel less like a regression and more like a revolution.
Click here to schedule your consult. You deserve to be the director of your own holiday season.