How to Avoid Fighting With Your Family on Your Summer Vacation

Family vacations can be…intense. Sure, you may get to explore a really neat part of the world with people you love deeply, or visit your hometown and catch up with cousins you haven’t seen since pre-pandemic times—but you might also wind up scream-crying at your brother about some decades-old issue at the hotel bar.

Travel, in and of itself, can put you on edge. You’re away from home, out of your routine, and suddenly around people you potentially haven’t lived alongside in years. Old wounds open right back up, personalities clash, and, before you know it, you’re acting like you’re 16 again, calling your mom a bitch in public. Not to mention, people can have wildly different expectations of what they want out of a vacation, Madeline Lucas, LCSW, a therapist based in New York and New Jersey, tells SELF.

You, for example, might view your week-long stay in a rental house at the Jersey Shore as a chance to relax and unwind from your high-pressure job. Your mom, on the other hand, might see the trip as an opportunity for your family to do adventurous activities together and make new memories. It can feel like (and sometimes is) a lose-lose situation. When you’re stressed out, the rational part of your brain shuts down and the emotional part takes over, Lucas says. The result: You melt down and can’t even appreciate the all-you-can-eat buffet you were so looking forward to.

If you have a trip coming up and are concerned there’s going to be an intergenerational blow-up—since, you know, that’s what happened on every other family vacay—we’re here to help. SELF asked two family therapists if it’s even possible to make it out alive when you’re, say, stuck on a 10-day cruise with six people who’ve known you since you were a baby.

Believe it or not: It is. You just need to get your head on straight and prep yourself for the worst. Here are five strategies that can help you stay sane(ish) on your family vacation this summer.

Think about what gets on your nerves ahead of time.It’s worth reflecting on your family dynamics before you go on your trip, Saba Harouni Lurie, LMFT, ATR-BC, owner and founder of Take Root Therapy in Los Angeles, tells SELF. It can be easy to forget how tumultuous the vibe gets when you’re with your parents and siblings, or to think that maybe this will be the time things are different. Remind yourself of how these interactions typically play out: Do you tend to feel jealous of your put-together older sister? Does your wacky uncle bring up political views that make your skin crawl?

Being aware of the potential conflicts that lie ahead can soften the blow when your cousin inevitably does that thing where he goes on and on about how much money he makes, for instance. You knew this was going to happen, so it won’t come as a huge shock or disappointment that he’s, yet again, being a self-absorbed idiot. Research shows that when you have low expectations of another person’s behavior, you’re more likely to give them a pass when they act in an annoying or problematic way. (And if they don’t, well, you’ll just be pleasantly surprised.)

Having this awareness about your cousin’s zero personality—and how it makes you feel diabolical—or your aunt’s unsolicited career advice, perhaps, can also be useful when managing how you react in the moment. As Lurie says: The better you understand yourself and others, the easier it is to respond more rationally and avoid losing it when you do get frazzled (but more on that below).

Have an escape plan.When you’re at a resort in the islands or camping for a family reunion, you probably don’t have access to a car or public transit—you know, the things you typically rely on to GTFO of irritating situations. You might wind up pissed off at the pool because your mom just made a snide remark about your “too-revealing” bathing suit, and because you’re locked in by palm trees and the ocean, you don’t have a way to skedaddle.

To avoid feeling stuck in a shitty situation, Lucas suggests coming prepared with an escape plan. “Figure out how you can exit the environment and get time with yourself” if you unexpectedly get triggered, he suggests. Go work out in the fitness room for a half hour, camp out at a nearby coffee shop, take yourself on a solo walk, or pretend you need to take a nap. If your relative’s not buying your excuse, say you need to grab a new room key, use the bathroom, or want to check out the temperature of the ocean.

You want to have an exit strategy in place so you don’t freak out (like you have in the past) when you butt heads with a family member. “Space can allow you to slow down and tend to your own emotions and needs,” Lurie says. When you can physically remove yourself from a stressful situation, you can reset, so to speak, and have more patience and tolerance for your relatives (and all the shitty things they do) when you rejoin them.

Plus, doing what you need to do to prevent a meltdown demonstrates that, even though you’re around your family—a group of people that notoriously get under your skin—you are still independent and capable of taking care of yourself, Lucas says. By walking away from a triggering conversation, for example, you’re showing yourself that you’re no longer that little kid who flipped out whenever your mom said something uncool. “You’re now an adult, you can do something different,” Lucas says.

Prep a personal pep talk.Before you board the train to your brother’s cabin upstate, say, write out a couple of supportive reminders you can tell yourself when you get worked up, Lucas suggests. These little messages, which you can jot down on a note in your phone for easy access, should remind you of who you are today (“I am Julia, I’m a professional writer, and I’m a rational adult who can stay calm in stressful situations”) and not who you were as a kid (a younger sister who threw a fit when she never got her way—and I mean never, people!!).

Or maybe, instead, you need statements that counteract your triggers. If you have a hunch your dad will echo a comment from the past that has scarred you (like “you’re too sensitive,” for example), tell yourself: “I can not change my dad, or what he says, and that’s okay.” Or if you have a hard time being around your family five days in a row, write out a line that says: “This is my vacation as well and it’s okay to take a moment alone,” Lucas recommends.

These supportive mini-mantras can help interrupt your typical patterns (like storming off, perhaps, or telling your dad to go to hell); they redirect your mind so you can see what’s happening from a calmer, more rational POV, Lucas explains. Self-affirmations, research shows, can also reduce stress and prevent you from getting defensive or ruminating. “So, if and when something gets kicked up and you’re going back to somewhere you don’t want to be emotionally, pull up your phone and look at that reminder right in front of you,” she says.

(Quick tip: Write these notes when you’re relaxed and centered. It can be tough to think logically when you’re emotional. Plus, it’ll be easier to believe the statements you prepped for yourself because you’ll know that you already analyzed this exact situation when you were feeling more sensible—as opposed to scribbling something offhand like “my dad’s an a-hole!!” when you’re upset.)

Get curious about why your relative is behaving like that.If you’re out to dinner with the whole crew and your grandmother, as sweet as she is, shares a seemingly outdated political opinion, ask questions to better understand her perspective instead of barking at her about how she’s wrong or out of touch. You could say: “What do you mean?” or “Why do you think that’s the case?” or “Can you help me better understand your perspective here?” You might assume she’s being shortsighted, but maybe she had a personal experience you don’t know about that shaped her perspective. If you don’t ask, Lurie says, you won’t see where she’s coming from.

We all want to be understood, she explains. By showing your grandmother that you’re trying to understand her, rather than criticize her, you’ll foster more compassion—and be less likely to blow up at her (and vice versa). So, if and when someone says something you disagree with, try to take a curious approach instead of immediately reprimanding or correcting them.

Research shows that listening to other people and allowing them to feel heard promotes trust and forgiveness, which can help you avoid conflict (and isn’t that what a family vacation is all about?). Plus, you might learn something about your relatives that makes you feel more understanding of and empathic toward them and their actions—“people can surprise you,” Lurie says.

Nail down some self-soothing strategies.Last but definitely not least: Identify a few relaxation techniques that you can use whenever you start to get upset. If there’s ever a time to get into deep breathing, it is when you’re staying overnight at your brother’s overcrowded house or on a trip to the remote Colorado mountains with your mom and dad (and not just because you need the extra oxygen). Sometimes, the stress is unavoidable: Your three-year-old niece might scream for two hours straight or your sister-in-law might say something passive-aggressive about your parenting style. You want a reliable way to calm yourself when the vibe gets tense.

There are a ton of grounding techniques—box breathing, exercising, doing a mindfulness activity like a body scan—that can help you self-regulate in the moment when emotions run hot, Lurie says. Experiment with different practices before your trip so you know what works for you: Focus on the ones that make you feel less overwhelmed, and utilize them as often as you need—at the airport when your sister is nowhere to be found as the plane starts boarding, at the reunion when your mom starts gossiping about your cousins a little too loudly, and throughout the tour when your dad keeps interrupting the guide with his own collection of facts.

You can’t control or change your family members (if only!), but you do get to choose how you respond to them. Decide what you want out of this vacation: Do you want to spend the next five days questioning why you spent $500 only to be an emotional wreck? Or do you want to try to salvage the trip so that, despite not loving how your sister still manages to make everything about herself, you can at least genuinely enjoy sipping on an ice-cold piña colada at the swim-up bar—and maybe even have a surprisingly delightful time with your family (overall).

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