Latest / AWAKEN with Dylan Ayaloo: Inner Work, Healing, Yoga & Meditation / [EP48] What to Do When Family Triggers You at Christmas

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[EP48] What to Do When Family Triggers You at Christmas · AWAKEN with Dylan Ayaloo: Inner Work, Healing, Yoga & Meditation

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  What to do when family triggers you at Christmas.
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  You can be emotionally intelligent, successful, and still get triggered by your family at Christmas.
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  And if this lands, good.
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  Because it means you're human, not failing.
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  So in this video, I want to help you understand why family triggers come up so strongly at Christmas or around this season of holiday.
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  What actually is happening inside of you when they do.
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  how to support yourself through it without shutting down, exploding, or abandoning yourself.
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  I'm going to walk you through the three most common experiences people have at this time of the year,
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  whether you're surrounded by family, feeling lonely, or carrying emotional weight into the new year.
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  I'll share practical, grounded ways you can meet each of them with awareness or more awareness,
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  stability and self-trust. This isn't about fixing your family and it's not about losing yourself.
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  I've had the privilege of working with thousands of people through our programs like Awaken,
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  Inspire, the Yoga Teacher Training, Inner Circle and people who are intelligent, successful,
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  self-aware yet still find themselves triggered around family and relationships around this time
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  of the year. Here's what I see happen again and again with high-performing people at this time
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  You're tired, but not in a way that sleep can fix.
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  Your routines are disrupted.
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  Your structure disappears and suddenly there's more space.
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  And when there's space, things surface.
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  Old emotions, old roles, old patterns you thought you were past.
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  Not because you're regressing, but because your body and nervous system finally has room to speak.
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  So it does.
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  Let me describe a few scenarios.
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  relate to any one of them most.
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  First one is you're with your family.
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  You're sitting at the Christmas table.
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  On the outside, things look fine.
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  On the inside, something tightens.
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  Someone says that thing.
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  Someone uses that tone.
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  A comment lands that hits a much older place within you.
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  And suddenly you're not the grounded, capable adults you are elsewhere.
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  You notice yourself shrinking, managing, staying quiet to keep the peace, performing maturity instead of feeling free.
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  And then alcohol enters the space and boundaries get sloppy.
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  People say things they wouldn't usually say and you feel yourself bracing.
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  You become more alert and tense and holding yourself together.
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  And underneath all of this, there's often grief.
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  grief for the relationships you wish you had, the emotional safety that never quite existed,
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  the version of connection you hoped would arrive by now. And then comes the most painful layer,
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  the self-judgment. Why does this still affect me? I've done so much work on myself.
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  What's wrong with me?
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  Nothing is wrong with you.
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  As Carl Jung said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you
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  will call it fate.
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  Family doesn't create the reactions.
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  It reveals what hasn't yet been integrated or could have some healing in.
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  The second one is you're alone or you feel lonely.
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  Maybe this isn't about Christmas.
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  Maybe it's quieter.
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  And even if you are strong, independent and capable,
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  loneliness has a way of showing up more clearly at this time of the year.
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  You notice reflections creeping in, life choices, relationships, paths not taken.
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  You're quietly questioning, is this really how my life is or is going to be
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  or is going to continue to be?
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  Did I choose myself enough?
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  And because you're functional, you don't fall apart.
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  just carry it internally, or you just push it down or swallow it or whatever your usual strategy is.
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  That doesn't make you weak. It means you're paying attention, but maybe too much attention
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  that you're hypervigilant and tense in your body and your nervous system.
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  The third one is, any one of these might not relate, but maybe a combination.
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  There's a pressure you can feel, which is, I don't want to bring this into the new year,
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  no one ever taught you or you never learned how to complete a year emotionally. So you plan, you
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  distract, you think ahead. I call this moving the furniture around the living room, metaphorically,
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  and doing the things outside and ignoring what's actually stirring or speaking within. Meanwhile,
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  your body and your nervous system is overstimulated, under-supported, and reactive.
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  This isn't a mindset issue. It is a regulation issue. So let me be clear. This is not about
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  fixing Christmas. It's not about cutting people off. It's not about pretending you're fine.
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  It's about supporting yourself and allowing yourself to be supported through a season that
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  reliably brings out, brings all things up every year. Being triggered doesn't mean you're failing
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  your grow, it means that there are parts of you asking to be met, not managed. They're asking to
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  be seen, to be heard, to be felt, to be loved, for you to release and for you to come back
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  to your wholeness. And when your family triggers you, the work is not asking, why am I like this?
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  The work is asking, what part of me is being touched right now? As in which version of me
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  through time. That awareness alone creates space. As Winkter Frankl said, between stimulus and
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  response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. That space is not
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  theoretical, it's cultivated. Through our practices, you can self-guide it through yoga, through
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  meditation, through deep breathing, and then deeper in our body of work, the story work, the
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  you could say it addresses really what happens in Christmas is kind of an epitome of the you know
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  the how the story gets triggered and re-triggered right so if you look at how the story work works
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  something was said or not said enough of done or not done enough of at some point in our timeline
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  in the past because the future hasn't come yet in this physical existence so therefore it brings up
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  something in the past to be seen, to be given attention to, to be healed, right? So this is an
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  opportunity. This time of year is an opportunity when stuff comes up. As you've probably heard me
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  say before, conflict is an opportunity for a deepening of love. And when we look at it from
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  the perspective of the story work, yes, you can do all the yoga and the meditation and it does help.
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  and then you hit a certain point where you need to go deeper.
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  And what comes up is revealing what needs space
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  within the actual entangling of the story itself.
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  How it got fixed in a point in time and space
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  and how we got frozen in that time and space
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  playing out this narrative, this story
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  unconsciously until we make ourselves conscious
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  which is what this work is about.
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  practicing yoga, or at least you're practicing our type of yoga, then you're practicing conscious
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  breathing and movement. And this gives you agency in guiding yourself to create the space that I'm
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  talking about. Thich Nhat Hanh said, feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious
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  breathing is my anchor. And I'll add to that and say, on top of conscious breathing, we do the
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  conscious breathing within our movement practice, the conscious movement, which is yoga. And I'll
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  add to it meditation. These are all things that you can guide yourself through or in our work,
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  you can be guided through if you want. And the next part of it is the energetic element to the
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  meditations that we do, where you're guiding yourself through a healing every time you're
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  doing a meditation. It's where you meet the parts underneath the reactions. And second one is when
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  you feel guilty for needing space. Needing space doesn't mean you don't love people. It means you're
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  learning internal boundaries. An internal boundary is not withdrawal. It's presence without self
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  abandonment. As Epictetus said, it's not what happened to you, it's how you react to it that
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  matters. When pain or sadness shows up, pain isn't a sign you're doing something wrong. As Khalil
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  Gibran said, your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
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  Pain doesn't need to be fixed.
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  It needs to be listened to.
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  It needs to be given space, as I've said before.
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  If you've done our awaken and things like that, you'll know it's by giving space that
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  healing becomes possible.
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  It is the first step towards healing.
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  And above all, met with compassion.
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  And as the Buddha said, you yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserves your love and affection.
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  And from our meditations and teachings here, you would know love is about the only frequency that heals.
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  And really it can heal anything.
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  So it's time for you to receive it from you.
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  When you're afraid of carrying this into the new year.
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  You don't move forward by bypassing what's here.
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  As Søren Kierkegaard said, life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived
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  forwards.
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  Understanding gives you freedom, so you can step forwards without dragging the past behind
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  you.
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  And remember, the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts, as Marcus Aurelius
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  say it. How you meet this season shapes how you enter the next one. And this is where responsibility
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  comes in. It's not about self-blame. It's about leadership, leading yourself. Not I should be
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  better at this, but I choose how I meet this. Not perfectly, not ignoring what's true or stirring
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  within, but honestly. That's how cycles change. If you're not in this body of work, you're listening
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  but I don't know how. How do I do this? How do I apply this? Or I know the steps now,
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  thanks for sharing it, but I don't want to do it on my own. That's why I've created our Elevate
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  Inner Work Challenge. It's a free seven-day journey where I guide you daily through grounding
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  practices like yoga and meditation, emotional awareness, body and nervous system support,
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  and reflection and release and healing work.
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  You can simply follow along
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  and let yourself be guided and supported.
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  And I highly recommend starting now,
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  not after New Year.
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  Create the foundations first.
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  And the link will be below if this speaks to you.
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  I'll leave you with this from Rilke.
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  Try to love the questions themselves.
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  Live the questions now.
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  This season isn't a problem to solve. It's an invitation to deepen your relationship with yourself and through that with others.