We have all dealt with a difficult person in our lives, and we are all individually almost certainly a difficult person for someone else too, it turns out. This becomes especially clear at Christmas, when families gather and discover that while the faces at the table have changed, the emotional seating plan has not. For many people, Christmas is not simply a holiday – it is an annual return to the place where our patterns were formed, a re-entry into the emotional climate of childhood, with all its insecurities, roles, unspoken rules and long-held tensions.
Clinical psychologist Rachel Samson, co-author of Beyond Difficult: An Attachment-Based Guide to Dealing With Challenging People, says this sense of emotional repetition is one reason Christmas can feel charged. “Family gatherings can be really tricky, especially in cultures where people aren’t very direct communicators. There can be a lot of unspoken or lingering tensions that never get properly addressed.” This intensifies during the holidays because, as she puts it, “often it is what you might call the original wound. The reasons we developed these insecurities usually come from patterns of relationships that started in childhood. So something like Christmas or a big family event doesn’t just bring people together, it also brings all of those old dynamics into the same room at once. That can make it a very emotionally loaded time.”
These pressures exist everywhere, but the Irish context adds distinctive layers. Dr Monica Whyte, systemic family therapist and former chair of the Family Therapy Association of Ireland, says one of the defining features of an Irish Christmas is the pressure for perfection – not emotional perfection, but the appearance of it. This comes with intense organisation, financial strain and the heavy cultural expectation that the whole thing must look effortless. “There’s a huge pressure culturally that everything has to look perfect,” she says. “We have a lot of trying to keep the peace and trying to put a good face on things, and sometimes that can be trying to put a good face on things that really shouldn’t be hidden.”
In a culture shaped by silence and the primacy of family unity, acknowledging a difficult personality can feel like treason. Whyte notes, “other family members will set somebody up to be the bad guy”, and the person who tries to address unhealthy behaviour or longstanding hurt can quickly become “the one who ruined Christmas”. Add to this the Irish reliance on humour to avoid vulnerability, the indirectness, and the devotion to getting on with things, and even warm, well-meaning gatherings can become volatile.
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The provocateur, the button-pusher, and the return of childhood roles
Most Irish families also contain at least one person who treats provocation as a sport. The sibling who loves to poke, the aunt who “only said it for the laugh”, the uncle who launches into political monologues designed to inflame rather than persuade. Whyte describes these figures bluntly: “Partly it is somebody who gets that vicarious pleasure from winding people up. They see it as their role in the family to burst people’s bubbles.” These figures usually draw on dynamics that have existed for decades, and our bodies often respond to them as if we are still children.
Samson’s attachment-based lens can help explain why. The traits we associate with difficult adults, she notes, often resemble the behaviour of toddlers: being self-centred or inconsiderate, ignoring boundaries, being inappropriate or attention-seeking, being overly sensitive, yet insensitive to others. These patterns often emerge from “feeling threatened, insecure or vulnerable in some way”. When you consider a difficult adult through the lens of their “inner child”, you may find a sliver of compassion that can be far more effective than judgment or frustration, especially when dealing with family members you cannot simply avoid.
Attachment styles and temperament differences also shape how conflict unfolds. Anxiously attached family members may interpret neutral comments as criticism, while avoidant members may minimise or shut down emotion entirely. Differing levels of sensitivity can spark misunderstanding. Samson notes that families often contain one more-sensitive and one less-sensitive sibling. “The less-sensitive sibling will see the more-sensitive one as dramatic or over the top,” she says. “The more-sensitive sibling will see the other as dismissive or insensitive.” Each experiences the world differently, and the mismatch itself becomes a source of tension.
When considering a difficult dynamic, Samson and Whyte agree that turning inward and reflecting on your own traits, behaviours and role in the dynamic are far more helpful than simply blaming the other person. As Samson puts it, “sometimes you are someone else’s difficult person”. Whyte encourages people to ask what they are bringing into the room: exhaustion, resentment, expectations of conflict, or an old role they unconsciously slip back into. Without self-awareness, even neutral exchanges can feel loaded. She suggests mapping the family pattern itself and identifying who escalates, who provokes, who withdraws, and where you fit within that choreography. “You have to be able to see the pattern, including yourself in that pattern,” she says. Only then can you consciously change your part in it.
The modern curation of boundaries - and the risk of avoidance
But what should we do when conflict emerges? In recent years, the language of boundaries has spread widely, and online culture often encourages distancing or “no-contact” at the first sign of discomfort. Relationship coach Clarissa Herman, known as @clarissasocandid on Instagram, who works extensively with highly sensitive and queer clients, thinks this trend has gone too far. “I do think we have taken boundaries and no-contact too far,” she says. “Boundaries are an essential relationship skill, but in our current cultural moment they’re being used to avoid conflict. They’re also being misused as a way to control other people’s behaviour.” A genuine boundary is an action you take, not a demand you impose.
Herman gives an example: choosing to spend only four hours with others at Christmas instead of eight, because you know you become irritable after a certain point in time, is a healthy boundary. “Going for four hours keeps you in healthy relationships with your family,” she says. But refusing to attend entirely simply because a sibling annoys you is not always an act of self-care; in Herman’s view, it can be a way of prioritising comfort and avoidance over connection.
Herman sees a cultural expectation emerging that relationships should never involve discomfort. “We have a loneliness epidemic,” she warns, “and it’s really harming people, because we’ve developed this expectation that we shouldn’t ever have to be uncomfortable or unhappy in our relationships. We absolutely do. That’s being in a relationship with a person who’s different from you.”
Samson stresses the importance of repairing relationships, but notes that this depends on mutual willingness. “It’s only possible if both people are willing, if it’s truly reciprocal,” she says. “The key question is: has this person demonstrated or expressed willingness to change?” If so, repair can strengthen connection. If not, “then they’re not willing. At that point, it’s about what you do, not what you can make them do.”
Herman argues that when willingness exists, conflict becomes a route to intimacy rather than a threat. “To build intimacy in our close relationships, we need to show people who we are,” she says. “Without showing our people our most true selves and letting them disagree with us, we’re not making our whole self available for connection.” Healthy conflict becomes, in her words, “fighting to stay close”, unlike destructive conflict, which is “fighting to win”. If you peel back the layers of most family arguments, even the political ones, she says they often collapse into two fundamental questions: Do you see me? and Do I still matter to you if we disagree? Remembering this, she notes, can soften even deeply entrenched tensions.
Navigating Christmas without losing yourself (or your mind)
So how can people improve their experience of Christmas? Samson suggests entering gatherings with a degree of emotional distance, almost like observing an experiment. “Almost like a scientist looking at a Petri dish, observing, thinking, ‘Isn’t it interesting they said that out loud!’” This gentle detachment helps prevent personalisation. Restructuring the day can also help – rather than long static meals that encourage simmering tensions or political arguments, incorporating walks, games or staggered arrivals can interrupt predictable conflict patterns.
If there have been longstanding issues, Samson is unequivocal: “Christmas is not the time to air them.” Whyte agrees, noting that the combination of stress, alcohol and multigenerational expectations almost guarantees misinterpretation and blame. Addressing the issue later, once emotions have cooled, is far more effective.
Herman notes that families can also establish rules of engagement well in advance. “If there’s a hurtful dynamic that only comes out during conflict and damages or jeopardises connection, I like to come back to family values and say things like ‘that’s not how we talk to each other in our family’. The trick here is to stay in your vulnerability instead of going cold, even when conflict is coming up, so that you can say things like ‘That hurt my feelings’ and ‘I feel sad that you said that to me’.”
She encourages people to adopt shared principles: “Some common ones are no name-calling, focus on your own experience (use ‘I’ instead of ‘you’), no blaming, things like that. The most important one to establish is ‘We always come back’, which means that no matter how angry someone got, the opportunity for repair will always be available.”
If conflict arises despite preparation, bodily regulation can help. If necessary, take a break or go for a walk. Herman suggests somatic tools that can calm the nervous system enough to allow for clear thinking, and recommends gentle swaying, slow exhales, tapping your feet, holding something cold or leaning against a wall.
When it comes to dealing with a difficult person directly, Samson recommends active listening as an effective form of de-escalation. “If someone is extremely difficult and conflict is starting or tension is building, really listen and then say back, in your own words, what you’ve heard. Usually they stop escalating because they feel heard, and the whole interaction de-escalates. If what they’re saying is really offensive or abusive, it might not be appropriate. But if you just don’t want it to escalate, then saying something like, ‘Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, this is really a problem for you,’ or ‘This is your view on this topic, I hear you,’ can stop the push to be heard.”
[ ‘I’m dreading Christmas – it will be my first without alcohol since my teens’Opens in new window ]
Finally, Whyte recommends having something restorative planned for after Christmas. “We can cope with a lot if we know something pleasant is coming afterwards,” she says.
A Christmas worth having may not be free of conflict
Herman believes that avoiding all conflict leads not to harmony but to emotional stagnation. “Being willing to enter into and move through conflict within your relationship, even if it’s a bit fumbly, increases your relationship’s resilience,” she says. “This is what secure attachment is, knowing that we can disagree and test each other, and the relationship won’t end.”
If Christmas exposes the fault lines in your family, it does not mean the system is beyond repair. It simply means intimacy is difficult, messy, and always unfinished. The most encouraging message from all three experts is that difficult people are often overwhelmed people, or people re-enacting old patterns, or people whose vulnerabilities have never been safely addressed. The path forward lies not in avoidance nor in explosive truth-telling, but in compassion, boundaries, timing and the willingness to repair.
In a season that prizes peace, it is worth remembering that peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of trust – even when the turkey is burnt, the sibling rivalry resurfaces, or the familiar tensions start to hum. A truly good Christmas is not the one where nothing goes wrong; it’s the one where things go wrong, and we still try to find our way back to one another.
