Completely Fed Up with the Winter Holidays

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Hello, I just reintroduced myself in the Getting to Know You folder. I'm a 54 yr old married woman with 2 sons- ages 21 and 13. I come from a profoundly dysfunctional narcissistic and/or borderline family. I was rejected and ostracized both at home and at school. I was very fortunate, and worked very hard get a college degree and a good paying job in computers, so I was able to move out of my parents' home. However, after that, I was almost completely cut off by everyone in my family, because my borderline/narcissistic mother convince everyone I had abused and hurt her very badly, when it was actually the other way around, and none of them (except one of my 3 sisters) would speak to me or have anything to do with me at all for over a year. None of them have ever shown true remorse for this, and they all act like nothing ever happened.

Most of the time, I manage to keep myself contented and peaceful. I do this by having a strong spiritual life, and by maintaing a simple and quiet life to the extent that I can with a high strung husband and 21 year old, and a 13 year old teen boy. During most of the year I have limited contact (my choice) with the family of origin, which consists of a mother and 3 sisters. Two of these sisters live out of town.

However, during the holidays, I just get completely overwhelmed and frustrated, no matter how many things I try to cut back, cut out, and simplify. The two out of town sisters, who are both narcissistic to a certain degree, and neurotypical, both came to town this year, but they are not staying with me. I go from almost not hearing from them at all, to receiving daily texts and phone calls with demands to engage in their chaotic, noisy, crowded get togethers where I end up sitting in the background feeling ignored and assaulted by all the overstimulation. Neither I, nor my husband or boys, have any desire whatsoever to do attend these functions. I did spend Xmas eve at my in town sisters house, doing the tradition North American Christmas of food and opening gifts. It wasn't too bad, although it felt hollow and empty as usual. There is quite a lot of superficial hype and mania, but it is underlaid with a very hollow and empty void of no true love or true peace, and no true emotional connections with each other. I am one of those emotional and empathic people, so I'm very sensitive to the emotional climate around me, and have a strong intuition.

Couple that with the fact that I'm off work for 2 weeks since I work at a school, and my older son is in town, so my routine is completely out of whack, and I find this very upsetting. I now have even more mountains of laundry, dirty dishes laying around, and housework in general with the extra person in my home, our older son. He is also very high strung, (non autistic). On Christmas Day, he dislocated his shoulder, and we spend half the day at the urgent care center getting it reset and x-rayed. I text my sisters to mention this, and the 2 narc ones end up ignoring my texts, giving us no support at all. Thankfully, at least my one sister, who also has a bit of HFA, was supportive. Then, once everything gets resolved, I finally hear from the narc sisters, saying they are glad it's all OK. I'm thinking, yeah, whatever, phony fair weather friends you are. They are no help to me at all. My older sister is hyper religious, and tells us, indirectly through our other sister, how she and her whole family praying aloud for us at length. Yet, she can't even take the time or trouble to show my son or I any emotional support. Seems hypocritical to me.

Then, today, I ask some woman at church to pray for my son's shoulder, because it has been dislocating repeatedly. She says the WRONG thing to him. She tells him he should work out and build up his upper body muscles, and that he would look better if he did. My son happens to be very tall and thin, and her remark bruises his ego, and really sets him off, and he takes it out on me by kicking me in the shins and sort of shoving me when he walks past me. I very firmly told him that was completely unacceptable. We did make up.

In the meantime, everyplace I go is crowded and chaotic, and they play the SAME 12 XMAS songs at all the restaurants and public places!

I've repeatedly tried to explain to all my sistersand mom about my autism, and how I cannot stand noisy crowded social functions, but they just don't get it at all. Everything is on their terms, so how I cope with that is I just decline the invitations. Then they send me texts and show pics on Facebook of these group photos at their parties and social functions of them all with big but articial grins on their faces in their fancy clothes, holding fancy drinks, surrounded with fancy Xmas decorations. I just can't relate to any of this, at all, and find it rather irritating to have it all rubbed in my face how socially awkward I am.

I am seriously trying to talk my husband into he and I and our two boys going to the beach in the southern USA next year for Christmas, but he is very hesitant about it. I'm wondering if I need to just go away somewhere all by myself next year, but am afraid it would upset my 2 boys and ruin their Christmas.

So it gets completely overwhelming to me, dealing with a) loss of my normal routine, b) selfish people demanding stuff from me inappropriately, and not supporting or understanding me, and c) sensory overload and overstimulation, and d) extra physical work on me keeping up with the house. I forgot to mention that my husband also gets very hyper and anxious at this time of year as well, and never expected our boys to help around the house, so they have historically gotten away with not doing much to help with the work.

How do you all cope the holiday madness at this time of year? Does anyone else have similar struggles?

Put your foot down, tell them all to go F themselves, and have the holiday you want next year, even if that means buying a ticket and going somewhere alone that you always wanted to go.

Seriously, families are some fcked up sh!t.

There comes a time when you have to say "enough."

If they don't like it, bad enough to cause terrible things to happen, you never needed that person in your life in the first place.

You only have ONE life, and sometimes you have to stop worrying who you're hurting by trying to find some peace in your own.

Yeah, I'm seriously thinking of doing just this, with or without husband and sons. I want to get away from the whole Xmas charade altogether. How wonderful to spend it in a warm, sunny, beach somewhere far away.

You don't have to spend time with your family. You don't have to attend any of their functions. You don't even have to respond to their texts at all. They cut off all communication for over a year. See if you can cut off all communication with them for even longer.

That sounds really stressful. Wish I had some helpful advice, but I'm struggling with holiday social expectations as well! It's a hard time of year, and I could relate to a lot of your feelings. It's difficult to find a balance between my own need for sanity, vs. trying to please other people - and I feel like I've failed at both of those things this year! But at least the holidays are nearly over... Hang in there - hopefully things will be less stressful once you're back to your normal routine!