I threw a potato. Mum brandished a knife … would whole-family therapy save our Christmas?
Eight years ago, after yet another disastrous festive get-together, my mother decided we needed professional help. Which is how a new festive tradition began
TL;DR
- The family engages in an annual pre-Christmas therapy session to address potential conflicts.
- The sessions have evolved from assigning roles to participants dramatizing personal struggles for sympathy.
- The narrator feels Christmas is a litmus test for their life's happiness and struggles to let go of control.
- Parents have recently become disengaged from the therapy, preferring napping and phone use.
- A new rule for this Christmas is to turn off phones and count to 10 before shouting.
- The mother has suggested the narrator and sister attend therapy on their own next year.