When family violence touches the family, it touches everyone. Once you consider family members and children who are impacted by situations of domestic violence, it quickly becomes a problem that affects society as a whole.

As a clinician, I have the great honor of holding space and sitting with others as they unpack difficult emotions, the tears come and sometimes they don’t, but more often than not, those big beautiful droplets are paired with an apology.

We are navigating a public health crisis and during this time many of us have been operating at a constant and moderate or perhaps even heightened level of threat. We are on an elevator moving up to hyperarousal or perhaps arriving at a destination of irritability, fearfulness and impatience.

We all live arrested to incidents, they shackle us. Building a small prison around ourselves that keeps us from anything that suggests our worthiness. We seek out people and experiences to punish ourselves and affirm what we already know, we are unworthy and something is wrong with us.

There are many expectations around the holidays and we can overextend ourselves mentally, physically and emotionally in order to feel connected to others. Additionally, many of us have unresolved pain and grief from the past that can reach a certain pitch when we hear the choir rendition of Oh Holy Night.