#391 Holiday Boundaries for Breast Cancer Survivors - The Science of Emotional Power

Subscribe on iTunes
Watch the full episode on YouTube

Lately holiday gatherings that can feel like emotional minefields have been weighing heavy with a lot of my clients. Listen, I get it - there's Aunt Martha asking why you're not wearing a wig, your well-meaning mom hovering over every bite you take, and maybe those relatives who just can't stop giving their "expert" medical advice.

We need to talk about this!

Not just the surface stuff, but really dive into what's happening in our brains during these moments and why we react the way we do.

In this episode, I'm sharing everything I've learned about taking back your power during these moments - from the incredible research of Dr. Tara Swart about how we're influenced by the five people closest to us (hello, holiday family tree!), to the practical tools I've developed through my own cancer journey.

We're going to talk about real situations, real emotions, and real solutions that work, even when you're feeling overwhelmed.

You've got more power than you realize, and I'm going to show you exactly how to tap into it, especially during those challenging family moments. Remember, you get to choose how you want to show up, no matter what anyone else brings to the table.

So grab your favorite cozy drink, find a quiet spot, and let's dig into this together. Trust me, by the end of this episode, you'll have a whole new perspective on those holiday gatherings - and more importantly, on your own power to handle them.

 

What You'll Learn

  • How your brain's amygdala influences emotional reactions during family gatherings
  • The science behind why certain family members trigger stress responses
  • Understanding and applying Dr. Tara Swart's People Tree concept
  • Practical techniques for maintaining emotional boundaries during holidays
  • How to integrate Laura Lummer's "Regroup" principle into family situations
  • Science-based strategies for managing holiday stress as a cancer survivor

 

Key Topics Covered

🧠 The Neuroscience of Family Triggers

  • Understanding the amygdala's role in emotional reactions
  • Why we react before thinking (the 1/50th second response)
  • How past experiences shape current reactions

🌳 Your Holiday People Tree

  • Identifying your everyday vs. holiday influencers
  • Creating conscious choices about social influences

Resources Mentioned


Quotes from the Episode

"Your amygdala works fast, but your prefrontal cortex can work smarter."

"Recovery isn't just about physical healing - it's about reclaiming your emotional power."

 

Related Episodes

 

Connect With Laura

Instagram: @thebreastcancerrecoverycoach

Facebook Group: The Breast Cancer Recovery Group

Website: The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach

 

Download my Free Resources

 

Keywords

#BreastCancerSurvivor #HolidayStress #CancerRecovery #EmotionalHealth #FamilyDynamics #Boundaries #Healing #Neuroscience #PeopleTree #SurvivorStrength #CancerSupport #HolidayCoping #EmotionalWellness #CancerCare #SurvivorWellness

Note: This episode is part of our ongoing series supporting breast cancer survivors through all stages of recovery. While we discuss medical concepts, this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not replace professional medical advice.

 



Read the full transcript:

 

 

0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach, I'm your host, Laura lomer. I'm a certified life coach and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills on the insides and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis if you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started.

0:33
Hello, friends. Welcome to episode 391

0:36
I'm your host, Laura Lumm, the breast cancer recovery coach. And are you ready to talk about holiday family gatherings? We're gonna jump into some really important work here today. You know, over the last couple of weeks, I've had a lot of coaching calls with my clients that center around nervousness or apprehension or even even more negative feelings than that when it comes to who we need to see around the holidays, and I think it's a great time to explore what is really kind of transformative wisdom, and how neuroscience actually the way that our brain works, and actionable strategies that you can use how they can support You during what can be really challenging times for some of us. So there is a piece of wisdom that's often talked about in self help and self improvement and personal growth books, and it says if you're still bothered by other people's behavior, you're the one that hasn't grown now, that's a tough piece of advice to accept. I know it's tough for me, because there are a lot of times when other people's behaviors irritate me and when they do have to say, Okay, what's what's going on here? Why am I allowing this? Why am I choosing this? So let's dig into that. Let's dig into what actually is happening in your brain, first of all, during challenging moments, even around your family, inside your brain, there's a small but powerful structure called the amygdala. And the amygdala is kind of like a smoke detector for us, right? It starts detecting that something is going off before the alarm starts to gets triggered, and so when you hear your mom or your aunt or your grandma or your cousin make that passive aggressive comment that you were already anticipating hearing before you even walked in, your amygdala processes this information in 1/50 of a second, super fast, literally, before your conscious mind knows what's happening, and then it immediately activates your stress response system. So a lot of times, you don't even know what you thought. You just feel the reaction right? You feel the physical effects, the tension, the heart racing, the anger, whatever it is. And this occurs, really, before you even had time to choose how to respond. This is very important, because we are thinking ahead about how we've responded in the past, and when we get what we call triggered, that's how fast a trigger can happen. And so we're oftentimes not consciously choosing how we're going to show up after that. So the super fast, lightning fast reaction, 1/50 of a second, it was really helpful for our ancestors, right? When they faced physical threats, and they weren't sitting around sharing a turkey dinner, but they were actually trying to save their lives. And yet our amygdala doesn't really distinguish between these different kinds of threats, right, the threat of something that's threatening your life, like our ancestors dealt with, or the physical or emotional threat of criticism of your perceived life threatening situations, right, how your body responds to it when your mother in law, right, makes comments about the way you raise your kids, or what you dress, or the way you cut your hair, or whatever, right, our brain is still seeing that as a threat. So here's a really interesting thing. I just finished reading this book called the source, and it's by Tara Swartz, dr, Tara Swartz, and she has this fascinating concept in the book, and I love it. I'm going to share with you. She says that we are highly impacted by the five people we spend the most time with. And I was thinking about this, and it's like, okay, this is interesting, because we have our regular life. It's most of the year and the five people we spend the most time around with, but then during the holidays, that little tree can shift a little bit, maybe not even of our choosing, right, just because of the the social occasions that we're going to go into. And so we see more people or different people. But what she talks about is how our mindset is impacted by the mind. Said, of those five people that we are around the most, and so think about when we shift to that holiday tree. So she refers to it as the people tree. So you've got your regular people tree, but then maybe you've got your holiday people tree. And you don't see these people as often, but they have the ability to trigger your thoughts, trigger the emotional, old emotional patterns that were established when you're around them, and then that activates your threat response, and it causes you to feel stressed, or, you know, respond with some emotional intensity. So in the book, The Source, Dr Swartz suggest doing your people treat like actually writing out the five people you spend the most time with, and then writing five words by each of those people's names, and then looking at those 25 words and asking yourself, how does that impact my mindset? And do I like that, or do I not like that? So let's switch and think about that when you're anticipating going to Christmas eve dinner or Christmas dinner, who are the five people that first come to your mind that you're going to be spending time with? And what are five words you would put around each of those people? They could be positive words. They could be negative words. It could be a combination. But it's an interesting exercise to look at what are the first five words that come to your mind when you think of Uncle Joe, right? And when we write them down without judgment, without thinking just what's the first things that come to your mind? Then you can see these words, and you probably will even notice a physical response as you look at these words, especially if you look at that people tree of the five people that you choose to spend the most time with most of the time in your life, and then those five people who you're kind of dreading you're going to have to spend time around, right? We told ourselves, I have to do that. And it's really interesting exercise to notice how differently your brain and your amygdala responds to each of those groupings. But the really good thing about this is that even though your amygdala works really fast, your prefrontal cortex, this rational choosing part of your brain, can learn to work smarter. All right, this is where a lot of the work in my third pillar of breast cancer recovery comes in, and that pillar I call regroup. And what that means is that when we have had a traumatic life experience like a breast cancer diagnosis, we often come out of that, as I've talked about so many times on this podcast, we talk about that, we come out of it. And we look at our life and we kind of feel like maybe some things don't fit, and there's a couple of steps to come before regroup. But when we get to regroup, it's like asking ourselves, who do I want in my life? Why do I want them in life? What do I want in my life? What work do I want? What hobbies do I want, what people do I want? And we intentionally then start to design our life, to design your life, and as you do that, we work on designing your responses to life and to dealing with this whole regrouping of life. And in doing that, we start to create new neural pathways in our brain. We start to strengthen that prefrontal cortex, that rational choosing if you could be in my coaching calls my membership, you will hear this all the time. Why did you choose that thought? Right? Why did you choose that decision? Why are you choosing to tell yourself this story? Because we're always choosing. Sometimes we just don't realize it. We're not consciously choosing. We're letting our brain run away with its choices, right? So teaching your amygdala new response patterns really helps to build emotional resilience, emotional empowerment, emotional independence, and that's really powerful around the holidays, because we've got some predictable triggers we're going to be dealing with, right? And when you can predict something, when you can say, Uncle Joe always says this. My mother in law always says that, you know, that's happened in the past, we can actually prepare ourselves, not preparation there's, there's two ways to approach this, and oftentimes, prepare ourselves. Mean, oh geez, here we go. I mean, I have to deal with this. Oh, my God, they're being bring an extra bottle of wine. There better be enough vodka at that table, right? That's not the kind of preparation I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of preparation where you think this person typically does this thing right? Or even in my family, I can think about someone in my family who's very important to me, who dismisses boundaries as if there's just, they just don't exist, right? And so you can have a conversation with this person and say, I really would like it if we don't talk about this, or, you know, I really am not comfortable bringing this up when we're around other people. Doesn't matter. It'll come up anyway, right? So I have a choice knowing that this person's behavior is pretty predictable. I know what I'm about to walk into, but I also know this person is important to me, and sometimes they're not important, right? If you're going to a family gathering, you're like, This is a person I see once a year, and they're not that important to you. And so again, why do we give that much weight to them and to their words or behaviors if they're not that important, but if it is someone that's important, then we can really prepare ourselves ahead of time by questioning ourselves on how we want to show up. And I'm going to get into that with you in just a minute, because that really gives you an opportunity when you're thinking about what's coming up, rather than turning to dread, turning to curiosity and strategy, turning to understanding what's happening in your brain, which is what we just talked about, that quick reaction that can happen. And then what you can do to help yourself stay calm and prepare yourself so that you can stay in your own integrity and show up the way you want. And you know, a lot of times I even coach people and people, they invited people that are important to them, that they're going to spend more time with than usual. And even though these people are important to them, they also are triggered a lot by them. And so we've made this choice, though, to have this person our life. Now we've invited them into our life. We really want them in our life, but then we have ideas and rules about how they're supposed to behave in our life, right? So this preparation can set us up for a better experience with these people that we do want to have in our life, that maybe there are a lot of old emotions that get triggered when we're around them. So one thing really super easy, and this is, I talk about this all the time. I know a lot of people poopoo this as just too simple to be powerful, but it really is powerful and really centering yourself before you go into any situation, connecting back to yourself and taking deep breaths, practicing deep breaths, it really calms this amygdala, this reactive part of your brain. It strengthens your prefrontal cortexes control. And stopping to take deep breaths actually creates a buffer to emotional responses. So when you feel your amygdala firing, when you feel that automatic trigger, right? You say, I'm getting triggered. There's a few things that you can do to kind of interrupt the pattern that you've always followed previously, right, which may be get another glass of wine, which may be caused out Uncle Joe. I mean, I don't know what it is, but there's some things you can do. So taking some deep breaths is one of them, changing your posture or changing your location, is another one of them deciding on an escape plan ahead of time. And I'll tell you, there's been times when I've connected with one of my sisters, or if I'm going somewhere with friends, and I know that there's going to be a triggering situation. There's a high potential of a triggering situation that I'll say, Listen, if you see this going on, come get me right. Like, be there for me and and have an escape plan. Like, that's totally okay, right to know, like, this doesn't feel good. This doesn't feel comfortable. I've decided if this does come up, if I start feeling this way, this is what I'll do ahead of time, so that I can stay calm, so that I can maintain the feeling of peace, and so that I can enjoy my holiday, right? So it's perfectly okay to think about little strategies, like a deep breath, like moving your position, like excusing yourself, like having pre thought out escape plan, so that you can keep yourself calm and then maybe return to the conversation. And here's some fascinating information about that power to regulate ourselves. So there was research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, and their research demonstrated that emotional regulation skills can be strengthened, just like a muscle going through consistent practice. This is something I've talked with my clients about all the time, that cognitive work, working on intentionally, working on the way we think and what we want to create is like going to the gym for our brain. In a 2022 study in Psychological Science, they found that people who practice emotional self regulation, so taking that breath, changing that position, implementing that escape plan, giving yourself a moment to choose with the rational part of your brain how you're going to react. People who practice this emotional self regulation showed increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, so they were improving that executive function. And this means that we're literally rewiring our brains when we intentionally choose different responses to situations that have always triggered us in the past. So you're sitting around the holiday dinner table, Dad brings up politics. Sister joins in. Sister in law is rolling her eyes at the food you're choosing to eat because you're not eating the rolls and the mashed potatoes, you're carb restricting. And you're just feeling all the pressure, right? And so here's the really truth of that, no matter what people say, no matter what they bring up, their words and their actions have no inherent emotional meaning until we assign it to them. When we base our feelings on other people's behaviors, we're essentially just giving them the remote control to our emotional state. So it isn't the comment that hurts, it's what we think about the comment. It isn't the look that gives us anxiety. It's our interpretation of what they're thinking behind that look. It's not the criticism that actually diminishes our own self worth, unless we accept that criticism as truth to us. So a minute ago, I brought up my third pillar of breast cancer recovery, regroup, and that extends way beyond breast cancer recovery, and it's really again about intentionally designing your life. When you're regrouping, you're asking yourself, Who do you want in your inner circle? What energy can you sustainably maintain? And here's where that comes in. When it's the holidays, how long can you be around a specific person? And this is a really important thing to think about, because if you got family coming into town and cousin Sherry calls you and says, Hey, I'm coming into town. I'm gonna spend four days with you, and you're thinking, Uh, one and a half hours with this person is literally all I can take. That's an important thing to think about, because then you have to move into the next step, which is establishing and reinforcing your own healthy boundaries, right? So the important thing here is to think that if you're choosing to have someone in your life, like we often do, right? We choose to have some in our life that we have past triggering emotions with but we love them, and they're important to us, and it's important to keep them in our life. If we want to do that and invite those people in and spend our time with them, then we must do the work on ourselves. Let's go back to the opening here, that if we are still triggered by their behaviors, we haven't done the work on ourselves. We've got to decide to release the habit of mentally replaying past hurts. If you want someone in your life who you're still mad at because they pulled your hair when you were eight and now you're 60, you got to do the work, right? And you're saying to yourself, well, they're my sister, they're my mom, they're my aunt, they're my cousin. I want to see them, but I'm so mad at them, we're only hurting ourselves when we do that. So we have a couple of choices, right? We can choose who we want to be around and for how long we want to be around them. We can choose if we really want someone in our life and we see us wanting a healthy relationship with them in the future, then we've got to do the work to choose to drop the baggage and let go of the past. And if we decide this person is not someone that I want in my life and this person is not someone I will expose myself to, you get to do that without guilt and without beating yourself up and without negative emotions, because let's think back to that people tree. If you do a people tree, and this person you write, has five extremely negative words attached to it, and those words have a powerful effect on you, so powerful that you say this really violates every healthy boundary I have. Then the key here is you get to reinforce your healthy boundaries without negative emotion, right? We get to release those people, and we get to release them and say, you know, no, you're not the kind of person and energy I want in my life. But may you be happy, may you have peace, may you be free from suffering. We don't have to be the ones that are like you can't be here. I hate you. You're you know, and we hurt ourselves with all that negativity and emotions. So those are a couple of things to think about when we're stepping into that emotional adulthood, that emotional independence, right? Emotional independence, again, just to clarify, it means our emotions are not tied to other people's words, other people's actions, other people's behaviors. So we get to decide how we want to show up, regardless of how someone else is behaving or how they're speaking. Right? We get to decide that ahead of time. So let me give you a couple of more strategies of how you can help to support yourself in what could be challenging social situations. So we talked about the boundary blueprint, blueprint, meaning you design it ahead of time. You decide in advance what you'll engage with. You decide what you can tolerate. You decide how much time you can. Whatever that situation is, and research really shows that when we predetermine our responses, we really reduce our stress hormones, which is fascinating, right? We can also use reframing, because we have a story about people's words. So when someone says these words, when we feel like, you know, we feel that emotion just come up, we can't ask ourselves, What else might this mean? Right? How if I wasn't triggered, if I didn't have a past memory and wasn't triggered, how would I be seeing this differently? So there are studies that show that using that cognitive reframing technique can reduce emotional reactivity by up to 50% so that can be a huge relief. And then something that's really important is to really let yourself off the hook, acknowledge the emotions you experience without judging yourself. You're not a bad person, if that comes up, right? You're not crazy, you you're not weak. There's nothing wrong with you. We just acknowledge the emotion. We say, Wow, this comes up for me. You know, whenever my mom says that I feel a betrayal, it's like a knife in my heart, right? I don't like this feeling of this knife in my heart. I don't like this feeling of betrayal, because I want to have my mom in my life, so I gotta intentionally choose a different thought and release that. I have to see who this person is, and ask myself, does she have the capacity for more, right? And maybe not, because when we make those conscious choices, it really strengthens again, that neural pathway for emotional regulation we feel the uncomfortable emotion come up and we say, No, I'm not going with that thought anymore. I'm going with a different thought. You know what? My mom loves me in the best way she knows. How does that feel a little better? Yeah. Is it easy? It's work, right? And this is another reason why we have to be cautious and thoughtful about how much time we're deciding to spend with people, because if you have people in your life or around the holidays who you know trigger emotions, that's energy, and it takes a lot of energy to manage it. So you can come out of a social gathering completely exhausted. If you haven't planned for it ahead of time. Know how to support yourself, decide how you want to feel and decide how you want to show up. So this is really important. What is your intention? Why are you going right? Why are you having everybody over? What's the intention? How do you want to show up? You know, I've worked with a lot of clients who worked for months to prepare themselves to go to their children's weddings with an ex spouse that they have a very toxic relationship with. And a lot of that work was around, how do they want to show up? Right? It's their kids wedding. They don't want to show up on guard and, you know, with angry feelings. They want to show up with joy. They want to be present for their kid. And so for many months, sometimes that takes work on on deciding consciously how we want to show up. So again, this goes to our preparation for holidays. And then what outcome do you want, right? Do you want to leave there feeling exhausted, feeling stressed, feeling strained, or do you want to leave this thing, you know, what? At a really nice time, that was really great. It was great to see the people that I miss, and it was great to just let go of all of the stress I used to hold on to about the people I don't miss, right? And then what thoughts would really support that? So, you know, it's maybe a foreign concept to you, a new thing to think about, how do you strategize going into family, holidays, social experiences, but try it right if you've never tried it, and your past experiences have triggered a tremendous amount of stress for you that maybe taking back your emotional power is a good thing, and planning ahead can be very supportive of you. It's not becoming cold. It's not about becoming disconnected. It's not about, you know, the old I don't care. I don't care what anybody thinks. It's just about choosing consciously your responses and protecting your well, being intentionally, all right, as yourself, a really important question, Who do I want to be in this moment, regardless of what anyone else says or does, and then making those conscious decisions, taking back your emotional power to show up that way, and you'll be so proud of yourself, and you'll have such More amazing experiences around the holidays. All right? I hope that helps. I hope you can implement these steps and have a wonderful holiday season. We are on the brink of it. When this show comes out, it's going to be just a few days before Christmas here, so we're going to be right in the swing of everybody's different holidays. So I hope you have a wonderful, joyful. Fulfilling, calm, peaceful holiday season, and let's talk to you again next week.

Close

50% Complete

Two Step

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.