4 Games to Put the “Fun” in Dysfunction This Holiday Season

What do you do when your mom slays you in that way that only she can and says, “Oh, I see you’ve julienned the carrots when I asked for slices.” For you, it might not be your mom. But I bet there’s someone in your family of origin who makes you feel … less than.

Here’s the truth about me: I had to look up the difference between sliced and julienned, but for one of my clients, this was the ultimate example of how, no matter what she did, her mother let her know in no uncertain terms, that she’d done it WRONG.

She was PANICKED about going “home” for the holidays because, as she put it, “My mother’s house is not HOME. It’s hell.”

Good life coach that I am, I had a conversation with her about NOT going home. At all. But, the irony is, when we explored that choice my client said to me, “But she’s my mother. I love her more than anyone else in my life!”

So what do you do when you love someone more than anyone else, yet that person also has a way of making you feel about 2 inches tall?

My short answer: you laugh.

Because, I mean, come on, you can see that that’s a pretty ridiculous way to feel about a person, and yet I bet every single one of us can name 1 or more people about whom we feel this weirdly tangled juxtaposition.

My client and I laughed about carrot cutting. We had some evil laughs about what would happen if she julienned her mother. Ooh! Feels dangerous, but those uproarious laughs gave way for my client to get in touch with her anger.

Then we laughed about platters and platters of perfect food being tossed into the air. Over and over my client laughed about the “oops” when her mother was carrying the perfect tray of veggies to the table and then…oops!

She tripped and vegetables flew everywhere: on top of guests, into wine goblets, and then my client imagined every guest getting up from the table to walk over vegetables, attempting to help, but instead just grinding every carrot and black olive into the carpet.

My client texted me the next day saying her stomach hurt from so much laughter but she had gotten a text from her mother that was magnanimous in a way my client had never heard her mother talk.

Laughter unlocks energy. Energy that is stuck in patterns of bewilderment and resentment.

 

The power of laughter

A few weeks ago, I did an episode about how to talk to someone who votes differently than you. My hope is that your key take-away from that episode was to do the Big Work of staying in your own business and to keep your own animal body soft and approachable.

Rest and digest. This is where we can connect as humans. The opposite is fight or flight. And that alarm-mode is where we inflame relationships and everyone’s feelings get hurt.

We all KNOW that it’s important to stay calm, but HOW? How do we do it?

How do you keep your animal body open and relaxed when all your brother can talk about is grams of protein vs grams of sugar? Or when your aunt keeps asking you, “So what is it you’re doing now that you’ve dropped out of law school?”

These things drive you CRAZY! And then your jaw tightens, and your stomach crunches, and you just want to explode!

Today, I’m showing you how to take matters into your own hands when it comes to the craziness by making yourself laugh. Or feel understood. Anything that keeps your animal body from spinning out—and feeling either like a deer caught in the headlights or a lion roaring—we are gonna call a win.

 

Martha Beck’s Dysfunctional Family Bingo

I got introduced to this idea of laughing about family gatherings from my teacher, Martha Beck. She has this wonderful game called Dysfunctional Family Bingo.

The premise of her game is to take some time before visiting family—this before moment is a crucial part of the game—to fill in squares on a bingo board with all the habits and patterns that drive you crazy about your family.

Your bingo board might include:

• My mother commented on the way I prep a veggie tray.
• In spite of your success running your town’s largest greenhouse, your bingo card could mention how your aunt mentioned—again!—how you dropped out of law school.
• Even though you are a best-selling author your bingo card might say, My sister commented about how I failed every spelling test in elementary school.

When all your bingo card squares are filled in, you’re ready to attend your dysfunctional family event. You’ve identified the key components that put the FUN into dysfunction.

While you are at your family event, watch for your bingo moments. When one arrives, celebrate with a sticker, a text to a friend, or a knowing glance at your partner. Compare years: was this the year you got BINGO!? Or was this the year you covered every square and got to yell, BLACKOUT!?

When you gamify the dysfunction you allow yourself to do this magical thing of WATCHING the dysfunction rather than being IN IT. When you’re in it, you’re getting bounced around by the waves of torment.

But when you can watch for a wave to appear, you get to surf!

You can download my holiday bingo template here.

 

Borrow laughter before you visit

My husband is a great laugher. I can be all distraught about some family drama, and then I come tell David the scenario and he bursts out laughing. He has an enormous laugh.

Sometimes he’ll catch himself, “Oh, that was probably insensitive,” he’ll say. But I love hearing him laugh at the things that have me tied in knots. Why is he laughing, some secret part inside of me asks.

Remember how our brains answer the questions we give them? David’s laughter gives me secret permission to laugh at the thing that is upsetting me.

I feel you resisting me. No worries. I resisted too.

When I was growing up, my siblings and I would watch SNL down in the basement in a tiny corner where the only television lived. All four of us were crammed onto a single bed converted to be a couch while my brother laughed his head off every time the Mr. Bill sketch came on.

I was horrified!! Mr. Bill was the head bowling pin and getting hit by the bowling ball! Mr. Bill got flattened by Sluggo the giant menacing fist. This wasn’t funny! It was tragic!

But nothing made my brother laugh as hard as the Mr. Bill show.

So, I wondered…why is that funny?

Decades later, a client came into my office and told me about her mother who had this way of criticizing the way she chopped carrots. It never mattered how she chopped them: her way was wrong.

Right there in the middle of that session I got this flash of putting her mother through the vegomatic. The machine that slices, dices, and julienne fries.

I got the giggles.

My client was a bit offended. But I told her about that commercial that ran all through my childhood, “It slices! It dices! It even does julienne fries!” Then I told her about Mr. Bill.

She started laughing.

We went through all the SNL sketches we could think of. We put her mother into the Bassomatic. We laughed about the SNL Julia Child’s sketch.

At one point I got laughing so hard I literally rolled out of my chair. Which just made her laugh harder. “I’m going to pee my pants,” she said.

One of the biggest gifts I give to my clients is that I allow them to borrow my laughter. I learned it from my laughing husband. I get laughing about something in their life, and I point out all the ridiculously funny things about it.

If I can get a client laughing, and laughing HARD, all the ick melts away.

Laughter is a release. All this family dysfunction has kept you tied in knots desperately wants to be released.

You’re not gonna change your family members. My client’s mom continued to criticize her carrot chopping. But my client smirked instead of sulking.

This is when the FUN in dysfunction really wakes up!

One year, when her mother mentioned the way she laid out the veggies, my client couldn’t help it: she burst out laughing.

“What?” said her mother, “Why are you laughing?”

“Because,” said my client, “You always have something to criticize about the way I lay out the veggies, but you always give me this job. Don’t you think that’s funny?”

And, you know what? Her mother actually laughed. I believe this happened because my client’s animal body had learned to laugh about the carrots. We talked about this in episode 132, our book club about Kasia Urbaniak’s book, Unbound. Our animal body sends signals.

Because my client had laughed so many times, her laughter was genuine.

Laughter is contagious. But it needs to be that sort of laughter that is genuine. Free. Belly-felt. You can’t force that kind of laughter. That’s why it helps to practice before you visit your family.

3 years running now, however, my client texts me on Thanksgiving and reports back about how her mom and her had a chance to laugh about the vegetable tray. It’s still her job. But now she feels differently about it.

This is the magic of laughing before you go home for the holidays.

But how can you bring laughter to the family gathering? Keep reading to find out.

 

Shout Outs

This game is where you fortify your pockets, your phone, or just your brain with a number of innocuous questions to ask each time you notice the fun falling out of dysfunction.

Here are a few examples of when you might “shout out:”

• Your brother-in-law is baiting your aunt, “Aunt Jeannie, how did you vote last election on…”

This is the perfect moment to shout out, “In how many languages do you know how to say, ‘Hello?’”

• The kids are getting rowdy, and someone’s about to get a bloody nose

This is the perfect moment to shout out, “Who is your favorite super hero?”

• You grandmother is winding up to list the litany of sacrifices she’s made today so that everything will be perfect for everyone else

This is the perfect moment to shout out, “Who can name a historic event that happened the year grandma was born?”

You will have a multitude of other scenarios where you realize the helpfulness of shout outs. And you can find a zillion prompts almost anywhere.

Here are a few of my favorite shout outs:

• How many dimes in $20?
• What are 3 words you’d use to describe yourself?
• If you could read the mind of one celebrity, who would it be?

You can ask people to name 3 of any given category. Here’s a couple examples:

• Name 3 candy bars that have nuts
• Name 3 cities in Europe
• Name 3 zodiac signs

For that moment at your holiday party when everyone is buried in their phone, but you want to create a family memory flavored with people who talk to each other, meet your family members where they are and play telephone scavenger hunt. See who can be the first to find:

• A selfie with the oldest person in the room (that’s already on your phone)
• Who has a phone that uses a code to open it
• Whose battery is more than 70% charged?
• Whose phone is organized with folders?
• Whose phone is set on the dimmest setting?

Another great shout out is to play “Would you rather…?”

• Would you rather watch Friends or Seinfeld?
• Would you rather eat Twizzlers or Red Vines?
• Would you rather play Twister or Clue?
• Would you rather drink sparkling or still water?
• Would you rather go to the moon or find treasure buried at sea?

The Shout Out game is intended to be used to diffuse difficult moments. You can see conflict coming, right? Doesn’t it seem kinder to head conflict off at the pass and, instead, just enjoy a day of giggles and finding out a bit more about your relatives?

You’re never gonna change your sister’s mind. So why try? Just find that place where you can overlap. Where you can share a few laughs, and where you can find out if she would rather go to the museum or to the baseball park.

Not every relationship will fill your need to be seen for who you are. Maybe it’s OK to let your extended family be those people who share your history and your annual turkey dinner.

Managing expectations is a big part of happiness. We’ve talked about this before: you will find happiness in the gap between reality and your expectations. So, if you want to be happier, lower your expectations.

But if lowering your expectations doesn’t appeal to you, try expanding your compassion with the game of capacity.

 

The Capacity Game

This game is more about finding compassion and trusting love to lead the way, and, best of all, your relatives never need to know you’re playing the game.

Challenge yourself to investigate each of your guests at the holiday dinner. For what do they have a unique capacity?

Here’s an example: My father-in-law has an enormous capacity for kitchen remodel questions. There is no question too small or too large for him. He can talk about the quality of drawer pulls as well as discuss the finer details of Corian counters vs marble or butcher block.

Whereas my grandson can talk forever about species of wildlife and their locations. Want to know where the lynx lives? He will not only know where the lynx lives, he will know what they eat, what predators they face and how they spend their typical day.

If I tried to talk to my grandson about kitchen remodels, he’d tire of the conversation quickly, right? And while my father-in-law would be gracious having a discussion about the lynx and its habitat, he wouldn’t have as much to contribute to the conversation as he would to a discussion about kitchens.

This sort of capacity: one of natural interest, doesn’t surprise us. We’re all interested in different things, and we all realize that, if we want to get along, it’s best if we can find those places of shared interest and capacity.

But what about when capacity, or the lack of it, leads to dysfunction?

Surprising as it is, some people don’t listen to podcasts like this one. Some people don’t really care about preventing family dysfunction. They just wade right in and stir the pot.

So, here’s your compassion challenge and what will really change the way you play the capacity game: Those pot stirrers? What are THEY great at?

I’m great at navigating emotional challenges and group dynamics, but I am not so great at fixing the BBQ. And that BBQ is where I want to smoke the turkey.

Without that person who has an infinite capacity to investigate my BBQ, we are going to have raw turkey this year.

Here’s an example:

How can you laugh about these regressions rather than getting frustrated? How can you remind yourself that you don’t live with the version of yourself that your partner becomes when they’re with their mother?

How can you thank your partner for being patient with you when you regress?

And how can you laugh about ALL of it?

The key to all these games is to realize and normalize that visiting family can be fraught with challenges.