How to Survive Thanksgiving When You’re Healing From Emotional Outsourcing

It’s that time of year again. American Thanksgiving is next week, and if you’re already feeling that familiar dread in your body, you’re not alone.

Every year around this time, I hear the same thing: “I’ve worked so hard on my healing and I feel so good at home. But five minutes into a family gathering, I’m 13 again and everything’s a disaster.”

And honestly? That makes perfect sense.

Why Family Gatherings Trigger Your Nervous System

When your family system has a long history of emotional outsourcing – when love was something you earned by being easy, agreeable, useful, or invisible—the holidays aren’t neutral.

Whether it’s Thanksgiving or the winter holidays, they can be a full body flashback.

Those smells. The voices. The tempo of your house. Your body knows exactly what those cues mean before your brain can say “I’m safe now.” You’re already back in your old assignment, your old childhood survival role: the helper, the fixer, the diplomat, the one who keeps things running smoothly so no one explodes.

The Three Moments That Hijack You Every Holiday

Let me walk you through a few real Thanksgiving moments that tend to light up an emotional outsourcing nervous system – and talk about how you can move through them with more self-possession and compassion for the body you actually live in.

No platitudes. No “just breathe and let it go.” We’re talking about what’s actually happening in your biology, your psychology, and what helps in real time.

Moment 1: The Kitchen (Unpaid Labor)

You walk in, coat barely off, and someone says, “Oh hey, I’m so glad you’re here. Can you mash these potatoes, make the gravy, oh, and set the table while you’re up?”

Before you know it, your nervous system has clocked in for unpaid labor. Because once upon a time, being needed was how you knew you belonged. You didn’t learn to say no. You learned to be indispensable.

What to do instead:

If you notice that familiar rush of energy, that compulsion to jump in, try pausing mid-reach for the spoon.

Stop. Orient. Feel your feet. Notice the texture of the floor. Let your breath fall all the way down into your belly and soften your exhale.

Then ask yourself quietly: What do I actually want to do right now?

Maybe you genuinely want to help because it feels good to be part of the action. Great. Do it.

Or maybe you’d rather go say hi to your cousin, have a moment of connection that isn’t about productivity. Or maybe you just got off a train and you need to pee and wash your hands.

The core message here that we forget when we get home is that you’re actually an adult. And you actually get to choose.

That’s not being difficult or contrary. It’s you teaching your body what choice feels like in an environment where you’re not used to having it.

Moment 2: The Table (Boundary Violations)

You finally sit down. Things are rolling along just fine, this is actually pretty pleasant, until someone (and let’s be real, it’s usually the same someone every year) makes a comment about your body, your job, your relationship, your politics. Something they have absolutely no business commenting on.

Your heart rate spikes. Your jaw tightens. Before you know it, your nervous system’s halfway through an old pattern: the polite laugh, the phone response, the quick change of subject to keep the peace.

What to do instead:

Take a moment and orient your nervous system.

Look around. Take in three things in the environment. Plant your feet under the table and press your toes down. Slow your chewing. Drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. Release your pelvic floor if you can feel into that.

These little physical actions, together with orienting, tell your nervous system: I’m okay. We’re okay.

You might choose to say something. But you let your body lead.

So instead of the old fawn or swipe, it can be a simple: “That’s not something I want to discuss.”

That can be more than enough. You don’t owe anyone an essay on your boundaries. You’re not trying to teach anyone a lesson. You’re showing your body what self-respect looks like.

Moment 3: The Sink (The Good Girl Routine)

Later in the evening, you end up at the sink, sleeves rolled up, doing that good girl routine—washing dishes while other people are lounging on the couch.

You can feel that old irritation and resentment rise. How dare they relax when I’m over here scrubbing gravy off plates?

But for so many of us, under that irritation is actually guilt. Because somewhere deep inside, our body still believes that rest is dangerous. That pausing makes you lazy, and lazy makes you unlovable.

Here’s the truth: Lazy doesn’t exist.

It’s a Puritanical fantasy made up to keep people working themselves to the bone. What’s real is exhaustion. What’s real is depletion.

When you feel that spike of guilt about wanting to stop, stop mid-action. Turn off the faucet. Let your hands drip. Breathe through your nose and find one muscle you can soften—maybe your shoulders, your belly, your arms.

Then whisper to yourself: Rest repairs.

You can do one sink load of dishes without taking on the whole kitchen. You don’t have to go back into that role. Balance is the medicine.

You’re not proving anything by being the last one standing. You’re allowed to leave a few plates in the sink. No one loses out when you pause. You just get to stop running for a second. You just get to be a human with limits.

The Quieter Kind of Emotional Outsourcing

Then there’s the mask of “everything’s fine.”

Someone asks how work is or how you’re really doing, and out comes the rehearsed answer: “Oh, good. Busy. You know.”

Because honesty often carried a cost for us growing up. So many of us learned that if you said you were tired or struggling or got vulnerable, people would get uncomfortable. And you’d end up managing their feelings about your feelings on top of your own feelings.

But listen: We’re all adults now. Listen to your intuition. Listen to your discernment. Feel into your body.

If your body says, “Actually, my cousin is somebody I maybe could try being real with,” try it.

You can build tiny bridges towards honesty. You can say something true enough that your body can handle it:

“You know, it’s been a really full year. I’m still learning how to rest. I’m really in process with it.”

That’s real, and that’s enough. You don’t have to open your whole chest to the dinner table, but you don’t have to shut yourself down either.

The work is simply to stop leaving yourself behind in the micro-moments. Every time your mouth and your body tell the same story, you build congruence. That’s nervous system fluency. That’s growth.

What Happens After You Leave

When you finally leave, maybe you feel wrung out. That doesn’t mean you failed at anything.

You can love them with your whole heart and still drive home feeling drained.

Your nervous system just spent the day doing emotional heavy lifting: tracking every tone, every pause, every subtle shift in energy, trying to keep connection while keeping you safe. That kind of work takes a toll.

Instead of judging your tiredness, honor it.

That fatigue is your body saying, “I’ve been working hard to care and to stay protected at the same time.”

Give yourself decompression time. Dim the lights. Put on soft clothes. Maybe silence, maybe a little music that lets your shoulders drop. Exhale through pursed lips and feel your body begin to unwind.

You might jot a few notes in your phone about what moments pulled you off center. Not to scold yourself, but just to witness what happened.

That simple act of noticing is how you start to build true capacity. Awareness without punishment rewires the system faster than any ritual of self-critique ever could.

The Science: Why This Works

Here’s the nerdy part—the vagus nerve isn’t just about relaxation. It’s about relationship.

It’s the body’s internal barometer of safety in connection. It’s why one whiff of your dad’s aftershave or the sound of that one family laugh can fling you into an old state.

Those cues live in what we call implicit memory—the wordless, body-based memory that stores threat and safety long before language was cognitively available.

When you practice regulating in these moments, you’re not just changing your mind. You’re updating the body’s archive. You’re teaching yourself that connection doesn’t have to mean self-abandonment. That belonging can coexist with boundaries.

And that teaching happens in the body, not once, but over and over in tiny repetitions: at the stove, at the table, at the sink, in the car.

The Political Layer We Can’t Ignore

All of this isn’t happening in a vacuum.

For so many women and femmes, Thanksgiving and the holidays aren’t rest. They’re just more unpaid labor. They’re emotional arbitration. They’re smiling through patriarchal nonsense disguised as family tradition.

When you choose to rest, to say no, to decline to over-function, you’re not being selfish. You’re disrupting centuries of conditioning. You’re disrupting a lineage of women who learned to disappear to keep everyone else comfortable, doing the dishes so the men could watch football.

That’s the politics of nervous system repair.

What to Do This Week Before Thanksgiving

Practice what I call pro-regulation.

Spend a few minutes each day orienting to safety before you even pack your bag or make your dish.

Look around your space and name five things that are neutral or pleasant. Let your eyes rest on something still: a plant, the sky, your pet’s chest rising and falling. Feel the weight of your seat. Notice the temperature of the air against your skin.

Then exhale slowly through your mouth.

This is not forcing calm. It’s widening your body’s ability to stay present in a high-stimulus environment.

Do that every day this week, and by the time you sit down at that table, your nervous system will already have one more pathway home to yourself.

If You’re Staying Home This Year

If this is a year where you’re staying home altogether, maybe that’s what safety looks like for you right now. That’s right on.

Just be mindful that solitude doesn’t quietly become isolation.

Feed your social nervous system in small ways. Call a friend. Eat something delicious. Go out in public. Put on music that feels alive in your chest. Volunteer.

Real safety isn’t the absence of people. It’s connection that doesn’t cost you yourself.

The Goal Isn’t Perfection

The goal of the holidays isn’t to become some perfect, serene, self-actualized human.

The goal is to meet your humanity with tenderness.

You will get activated. You will slip into old grooves. And that doesn’t mean you’ve gone backwards. It means your body is rehearsing, reenacting.

Every time you notice it, take a breath, and choose something one degree truer, you’re laying down a new map for what family can feel like and what your role in it can be—as someone who’s stepping into themselves ever more.

You’re allowed to belong to yourself first while also loving them.

Join Me in Anchored

If you want to keep practicing all of this, really truly practicing, come join me in Anchored. It’s where we do this work in community: nervous system repair, somatic practice, emotional re-patterning with lots of breathwork. Tender and fun.

Learn more about Anchored here.

Take care of your beautiful heart. Take care of your body.

And remember: You are the cake. Everyone else is just the icing. (Episode 166: You Are the Cake)

When one of us heals, we help heal the world.