How family ties shape our holidays

I just finish my third (or is it fourth?) phone call this week trying to figure out which family members are gathering where on which holiday. It seems that the older we get the more complex this transaction becomes. This year it involves four generations of relatives and more than 30 people.

It's easy at times like this for me to remember just how important family is, and how much influence it has over my life. Yet even when we aren't so consciously aware of our family ties, the reality is we are consistently and powerfully influenced by our families whether we like it or not.

This influence can be - and usually is - both good and bad, and impacts our past, present and future.

Family therapist Carl Whitaker likes to point out that our families are the one "club" we didn't have to join, and the one we can't quit. There is a lot of truth to that.

We were born into our families without any choice or decision on our parts. As a professor of mine once put it: "You got what you got." And no matter how much physical or emotional distance we put between ourselves and our families, no matter how much we might try to limit our contact with our families, we can't escape their continuing impact upon our lives.

There is a good reason for that. Families are the crucible into which we are born. They are the school in which we learn about life and love, and the first laboratory in which we experiment with what we've learned.

Families are our first support system, and often our last, whether they do that job well or not. Care and comfort from a family member has a special power all its own.

Families provide us with a sense of belonging and of identity. And, implicit in that, they bestow upon us our sense of worth (or worthlessness) as individuals. If our family was from "the poor side of town," we will continue to be influenced by that history even if we are the only one who knows about it.

If we were "the shy" daughter, we can live out that identity into adulthood even when it doesn't really fit who we are.

Families play these and many other roles in our lives. They do so with varying degrees of skill and success. No family is perfect, and all of us will grow up with a few emotional scars to prove it.

And, sadly, some families are very far from perfect, and can seriously cripple family members for the rest of their lives. Families are always a mixed blessing.

All this is leading up to a point I want to make.

In our culture, we tend to equate holidays with families. And, intentionally or not, most of us will find ourselves more aware of our families during holiday periods. Past and present family dynamics will play a larger part in our lives than they normally do.

We may find ourselves struggling with emotions that come out of nowhere and seem to have nothing to do with our present reality. We can wind up behaving in ways that were more characteristic of who we were 20 or 30 years ago than who we are now.

We might be consciously aware of this process, or it all may go on outside our conscious awareness. We may just feel happier, more excited, more filled with anticipation than is usual for us. Or we may find ourselves feeling sad, depressed or anxious for no apparent reason. We might be more affectionate or more withdrawn, eat more, drink more, and so on.

When we find ourselves feeling or behaving in ways that seem disconnected from who we are or from what is going on around us, we need to be aware that, for better and for worse, we are probably being put in touch with "family" and some of its meaning for us.

We don't have much choice about that. We do have choices as to what we will do with such emotions and behaviors. Once we are aware of them, we can decide whether they really fit who we want to be now, or are simply vestiges of our past that we need to monitor and keep in check.

We need, then, to accept our "familiness" as a basic part of our lives. Even if we are alone, our families will continue to live on in our memories, our basic personalities, and our way of dealing with others.

If we are conscious of this influence, we can decide to celebrate and enhance the good, and also to forgive and work to change the not-so-good. That's a choice we do have.

• Dr. Ken Potts is on the staff of Samaritan Counseling Center in Naperville and Downers Grove. He is the author of "Mix Don't Blend, A Guide to Dating, Engagement and Remarriage With Children."