WATCH: How to cool down this year’s family gathering (and when to hold the heat)

Plus your very own Meaning-Makers Emergency Kit

T-minus 4 days to Thanksgiving. Even if you don’t celebrate, your palms might already be starting to sweat because of the season many of us are walking into. This late-November-to-January stretch is the Olympic season of group life: extended family reunions, Hanukkah dinners, Secret Santa nights, office holiday parties for a team that hasn’t been physically together in months, New Year’s vision-board circles, and the long stretch of meals with people we adore… and the people who raise our blood pressure (and yes, sometimes those are the same people (👀).

So in this week’s GROUP HELP Session, we focused on a skill that is not just useful, but required for a connected life: to know how to hold healthy heat and when and how to cool it down.

To watch the full replay, scroll down to the video and click the play arrow on the video.

I think of “heat” as relevance. Heat is energy. And there are many forms of heat. Conflict is just one form. It’s totally understandable to want to do everything in your power to keep the vibe cool and breezy at your shindig. However, when we avoid heat entirely, our gatherings can become vague, low-energy, and stiff. Part of the group life toolkit is temperature control, and to know how to expand our own range of options of the different types of warmth we bring to the table.

5 ways to cool down this year’s family gathering and when to hold heat

1. Examine your own relationship to heat (and practice “non-anxious presence”)

As a baby facilitator, I was taught that a group can only go as deep as you can hold. So as you’re preparing to be with others who might rile you up, start by becoming aware of your own conflict style and relationship to heat. Are you conflict averse? Do you get a wild pleasure out of poking the bear? What happens in your own body when somebody says something no one wants to hear? And start practicing what the great teacher of family systems, Jack Shitama, calls “non-anxious presence.” (I highly recommend his brilliant, funny If You Met My Family You’d Understand as a starting place.

2. Don’t wait to cool the room off in the moment. Instead, design the fridge ahead of time

My mentor, Randa Slim, would always tell us facilitators as we prepared for a high-risk dialogue: 90% of the success of what happens in the room takes place before anyone walks in the door. Find the right structure for your group. When we design the right experience that gives everyone something to do, it’s harder for the provocateur (or what Amanda Ripley calls the “conflict-entrepreneur”) or the slightly over-served cousin to fill the void. Get unexpected people to lead unexpected activities they want to do: Ask the too-cool-for-school cousin with the impeccable music taste to DJ. Or, ask (as GROUP LIFER Mirit did) a physics-major nephew to teach the whole family how to play Dungeons & Dragons. There are many ways to inject good energy into a gathering well before the top comes off.