How to Deal With Estrangement During the Festive Season
- Brainz Magazine
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Nadija is a multi-award-winning trauma and empowerment specialist with a double diploma in hypnotherapy, mind coaching, and online therapy. She is also a Reiki Master and a grief educator, and she has been trained by an international grief specialist and best-selling author, David Kessler. Nadija is also an end-of-life doula.
As the festive season approaches, the world seems wrapped in golden lights, joyful music, and images of perfect families smiling around overflowing tables. For many, this is a time of warmth and reunion. But for others, this season carries a heaviness that is often invisible, the weight of estrangement.
Estrangement is a unique kind of heartbreak. It is a grief without a funeral, a silence that echoes loudly inside the heart, a loss that society often does not know how to validate. When you experience estrangement, whether from a parent, child, sibling, friend, or partner, you carry not only the pain of absence, but also the pain of expectations. You are grieving someone who is still alive, someone you may still love, someone you may hope to reunite with one day.
During the festive season, these emotions amplify. The contrast between your inner reality and the world’s “cheerful narrative” can feel unbearable. Yet there is empowerment in acknowledging the truth: Estrangement is grief. And like all grief, it deserves compassion, space, and healing.
What follows are powerful, practical, and deeply supportive insights and techniques to help you navigate this season with strength, resilience, self-compassion, and self-love.
1. Understand the truth: Estrangement is grief
One of the most empowering acts is simply naming your experience. Many people dismiss or minimise estrangement, expecting you to “get over it,” “just call them,” or “let it go.” But the emotional reality is far more complex.
Estrangement can trigger:
Ambiguous loss: A loss without closure, without certainty, without rituals.
Identity confusion: Questioning your worth, your role, your value.
Emotional looping: Replaying conversations, analysing what went wrong, imagining what could have been.
Shame and isolation: Feeling misunderstood or judged by others.
Hope fatigue: The exhaustion of waiting for reconciliation that may or may not come.
Understanding that estrangement is a form of grief helps you shift from self-blame to self-validation.
Say this affirmation aloud, “My feelings are valid. My grief is real. My healing matters.” This simple acknowledgment opens the door to empowerment.
2. Remove the mask: Honour your emotional reality
During the festive season, we often feel pressured to perform happiness. But pretending does not heal pain, it buries it. Empowerment comes from honesty with yourself.
Allow yourself to feel:
sadness
anger
confusion
longing
relief
guilt
hope
Your emotional landscape is not “wrong.” It is human. Instead of resisting the emotions, give them compassionate space.
Powerful emotional awareness exercise:
Sit quietly for a moment and close your eyes. Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your stomach. Ask yourself gently, “What emotion is asking for my attention right now?”
Name it. Tell yourself, “I see you. I hear you. I am here for you.” This simple technique activates emotional regulation and self-soothing, creating an internal environment of safety.
3. Break the internalised shame
Estrangement often carries a sense of failure, even when the decision was an act of survival, self-protection, or healthy boundaries. You may wonder, “What will people think? What does it say about me? Why could I not fix it?”
This shame thrives in silence. But understand this:
Estrangement does not define your worth.
Your boundaries do not diminish your goodness.
Your decision to create distance may be the most courageous act of self-love you have ever made.
Repeat the following empowering statement, “I am not broken. I am healing. I am choosing peace where there used to be pain.” You are rewriting your story, not ending it.
4. Redefine the concept of "family"
The festive season amplifies the myth of perfect families. But the truth is, family is not only blood. Family is a connection. Family is safety. Family is love.
You have the power to create and expand your definition of family. You can choose people who support your growth, who celebrate you, who honour your boundaries, who respect your heart.
Powerful reframe:
Instead of “I don’t have family to celebrate with,” try “I am choosing the people and environments that nurture my wellbeing this season.”
Empowerment is recognising that chosen family is as real and meaningful as biological family, sometimes even more.
5. Create new rituals that support your healing
Old traditions may be too painful. Instead of forcing yourself into emotional turmoil, choose new rituals that align with who you are today and who you are becoming.
Some ideas:
Write yourself a letter of healing and hope.
Light a candle for the relationship you are grieving.
Have a “day of gentleness” with no obligations.
Create a gratitude ritual specifically for your resilience.
Spend time in nature, trees and oceans are powerful healers.
Read books that nourish your spirit.
Make a vision board for the future you are building.
New rituals signal to your subconscious mind that you are stepping into a new chapter with intention.
6. Use somatic and mindset techniques to manage emotional triggers
Estrangement triggers can hit unexpectedly during the holidays, songs, smells, memories, photos, traditions. These techniques will help you stay grounded and empowered.
Technique 1: The 90-second emotional reset
Based on neuro-emotional science:
When a painful emotion arises, pause.
Breathe deeply for 90 seconds.
Let the emotional wave peak and fall naturally.
The intense part of an emotional surge rarely lasts longer than 90 seconds.
Allowing the wave to pass prevents spiral thinking and emotional overwhelm.
Technique 2: Anchoring to empowered identity
Recall a moment when you felt strong, powerful, or deeply loved. As you feel the emotion rise, gently press your thumb and forefinger together.
Let the physical gesture “anchor” the emotion. Use this anchor anytime you feel triggered. This allows you to shift your emotional state on demand.
Technique 3: The emotional release breath
A rapid tool for releasing heaviness:
Inhale deeply through the nose.
Exhale audibly through the mouth while imagining the heaviness leaving your body.
Repeat 5-7 times.
Your body keeps the score, your breath can help rewrite it.
7. Understand that reconciliation is not a requirement for peace
Many people feel pressured to reconnect during the holidays, even when reconciliation would cause more pain, conflict, or psychological harm.
Here is a liberating truth:
You can heal without reconciling.
You can forgive without reconnecting.
You can love someone from afar while loving yourself up close.
Peace does not depend on the other person.
Peace begins within you.
8. Seek support without apology
You do not need to carry this grief alone. Reach out to:
trusted friends
grief educators
support groups
therapists
coaches
healing practitioners
online communities
Asking for support is not weakness, it is radical self-empowerment.
If you feel misunderstood by those around you, remind yourself that your experience does not require validation to be real.
9. Transform the narrative: From pain to empowered becoming
Estrangement hurts because it matters. It hurts because you are a human with a heart that feels deeply. But pain can be a portal to transformation.
This season can mark the moment you choose:
self-acceptance over self-judgment
growth over guilt
boundaries over burnout
hope over helplessness
healing over hiding
You are not defined by who left. You are defined by who you choose to become.
10. A final message for your heart
If your heart feels heavy this festive season, let these words wrap gently around your spirit:
You are not alone, even in your silence.
You are not broken, even in your grief.
You are not unlovable, even in your longing.
You are not behind, even in your healing.
You are not forgotten, even in your solitude.
You are becoming.
You are emerging.
You are rising.
You are healing.
You are powerful.
And this season, your power is not in pretending everything is perfect.
Your power lies in acknowledging your truth, honouring your heart, and choosing yourself with courage and love.
Conclusion
Estrangement is a complex, delicate, deeply human grief. And during the festive season, this grief often intensifies. But with awareness, emotional tools, new rituals, compassionate boundaries, and an empowerment-driven mindset shift, you can navigate this time with strength, dignity, and inner peace.
You are not walking through darkness, you are walking toward your own light. Keep going. The world needs you and your light!
Nadija Bajrami, Strategic Hypnotherapist, Mind Coach
French by birth, Nadija lived in Scotland for 7 years and travelled the world. After recovering from some serious health issues, Nadija had a wake-up call and came to Ireland to find her path. She has been living in Dublin since 2017. Nadija is working mostly online worldwide and shares her time between Ireland, France, and Switzerland. Nadija is a multi-award-winning trauma and empowerment specialist with a double diploma in hypnotherapy, mind coaching, and online therapy. She is also a Reiki Master and a grief educator, and she has been trained by an international grief specialist and best-selling author, David Kessler. Nadija is also an end-of-life doula. She is dedicated to helping her clients get empowered, supercharge their confidence and self-esteem, overcome their limiting beliefs, and manage anxiety and trauma responses. She also helps people on their grief and healing journey through her therapy, coaching, grief education and support programmes, and spiritual work.
