It’s Christmas season. Decorated trees are setting up camp in living rooms across the globe, carols are pumping out declarations of ‘peace on Earth’, ‘joy to the world’ and celebrating ‘silent night, holy night’. Netflix has released a host of feel-good Christmas romance movies about time travelling Christmas knights (Yeah, I’m confused too) and women all over Pinterest are planning DIY wreaths, table settings and pinning pictures of mittened hands gripping toasted marshmallow hot chocolates in the snow. Everywhere you look, the fantasy of the perfect Christmas begs for attention.

Meanwhile, in reality- Christmas can be the WORST. It’ssweat-city because, newsflash we live in Australia where there’s always a droughtor bushfire at Christmastime, everyone’s sunburnt and tired, families feel likethey’re falling apart, bank accounts are empty, depression rises, and the nightis certainly not silent. It’s broken by the screaming of stressed out families,frustrated tears and sometimes emergency service sirens attending to a tragedyor domestic dispute.

Dysfunctional Family Bingo Printable Package $ 4.00. Perfect for the holidays, this Dysfunctional Family Bingo Printable Package can be printed on a standard 8.5×11″ sheet of paper. Dysfunctional Family Bingo Printable Package comes as 8 Printable sheets per package. Just print and you’re ready for Holiday fun! If you’re in the Tribe, you’re probably familiar with Dysfunctional Family Bingo. The rules are simple: before the holidays, make or download a blank Bingo form (click here to. Dysfunctional Family Bingo Best Game Plan for Gatherings: Find Allies, Structure Time, Get in the Mindset Surviving a family holiday gatherings this year can be easier if a person does some prep work. 5 (3) Dysfunctional Family Christmas Dad.Phil HartmanMom.Jan HooksSon.Dana CarveyOther Son.Mike MyersDaughters.Julia Sweeney and Victoria Jackson Announcer: It’s that time of year, when families get together to reopen old feelings. And Silver Bell Records is proud to present a Dysfunctional Family Christmas. This is the album your family is sure to cherish for Christmases. There are ways to deal with a dysfunctional family at Christmas. Let me share you with some tips so that this Christmas dinner will have you smiling and enjoying yourself, for real, not pretend. Now though we discuss Christmas dinner here, you know this goes for ALL the special dinners.

Merry Christmas?

There’s no doubt Christmas can be an incredibly difficulttime, and I think the most common reason for this are those obligatory familygatherings on December 25^th.

I recently put the call out on Facebook for recovering women’s best tips and tricks to surviving the Christmas season without roundhouse-kicking their entire family in the teeth, or ending the day frustrated, unhappy and exhausted. Here are seven great tips to help you experience just a little of that ‘peace on Earth’ we’re promised at Christmas.

• Don’t go. It may not feel like you have a choice, but you do. Staying home on Christmas Day is always an option, despite the expectations your family may have. Make the best choice for you. Just because you’re related by blood doesn’t mean you have to put up with their crap.

• If you choose to go, setfirm boundaries around time-frames and stick to them, making sure you have control over your transportation or way out. Clearly communicate these from the start e.g ‘We will come at 2pm until 4pm’. No further explanation is needed. Doing so will eliminate the feeling of needing to stick around all day. Long days with difficult people are no good for your mental wellbeing.

• If necessary, chose a safe word. If your partner, children or you feel unsafe andneed to get out, simply communicate that word and it’s time to leave.

• During the event, take time out where you can. Especially if you’re an introvert!Step away from socialising to do the dishes, take a short walk, do some foodprep or hang out on the toilet with your phone for a while! Just tell ‘em youhad Indian take-out for dinner the night before! You may also like to beintentional about chatting with people one-on-one if you have a favouritecousin, sibling or safe person. This avoids the stress tsunami of talking to andhaving to listen to your whole family discuss potentially triggering things.

• Prayabout it. Ask God for peace amongst chaos and opportunities for graciousand wholesome conversation. Pray for radical change in all who need helphealing wounds- including yourself.

• Games! Cards, bingo, team games, scrabble- people are usually comfortable with fun, if they’re not, they can at least watch what’s going on. This is much better than discussing politics, religion or casual racism. Games lighten the mood, build bridges and create positive memories. Except Monopoly. For the love of all that is holy, don’t bring out Monopoly at Christmas!

• Be awareof using food, sex, porn, alcohol, drugs or overspending as escape. If youstruggle with compulsive behaviours, prepare yourself for Christmas week withintentional accountability, self-care and any other preventative measures youneed.

There are no perfect families, only healthier and lesshealthy ones. Each generation will need to work through some baggage from theirupbringing, and it looks different for each individual. Whether you have traumaconnected to your family, parents with wildly different world-views to you,chronic health conditions that go misunderstood or any other stress that runshigh at Christmas- your pain is valid and you as an adult have the power tomake the best choice for you.

It was the week before spending Christmas with my husband’s family and I was sick to my stomach. This had become the typical response when I was anticipating spending time with them. I had been dealing with their inappropriate behavior and my husband’s denial of the situation for a very long time. Each time I had to see them I was nauseous, had major headaches and had other physical issues days before. This is how bad it had gotten.

This particular week I was reading Oprah’s magazine and found an amazing lifeline in an article written by life coach Martha Beck. She explained her experiences dealing with dysfunctional family gatherings and had come up with a way to actually look forward to them. I said out loud “NO WAY!!” but was intrigued and kept reading. She described how to make a childhood game of Bingo into a sanity saving tool when getting together with dysfunctional families. I decided it was worth a try; anything would be better than sitting in a corner until it was time to finally go home.

I explained the premise to my husband and since he didn’t want to see me physically and emotionally suffer anymore, he agreed to play “Dysfunctional Family Bingo” with me. Per Martha’s instructions, I created blank Bingo cards on two pieces of paper, filling in the center square with the words “Free Space”. With an openness that we hadn’t experienced in a very long time, my husband and I came up with the dysfunctional, disturbing things that his family members typically did. I then filled in the blank spaces on each of our cards with these anticipated acts, making sure each card had the same descriptions but in different boxes on the card. Things like “Your mother will ignore our kids” and “Your brother-in-law will announce that he is invincible and try to prove it” became squares on our Bingo cards. When we had come up with 24 things to fill in the squares on the cards we decided that we would secretly mark our cards, meeting every ½ hour in an out of the way spot at the party to review our progress and to announce “Bingo” once our cards were marked vertically, horizontally or diagonally.

If this seems harsh let me explain by saying this – my husband and I never had a better time at one of his family functions than we did that day. We were on the same page because we were playing a game together and more importantly the things that would have made us upset and would have put a wedge between us became things we actually looked forward to because we both wanted to win our Bingo game. We were able to turn an upsetting day into a fun, memorable moment.

Dysfunctional Family Christmas Bingo Games

That was many years ago and my husband and I have since divorced, due in large part to continuing issues with his family, however the empowerment of that simple game of Bingo has stayed with me. It wasn’t meant to be mean spirited; it was meant to begin the process of seeing difficult situations in a different light. For that one day I looked forward to the inevitable inappropriate behavior that had made me so uncomfortable in the past. For that one day I laughed when my sister-in-law ignored me and smiled when my mother-in-law made passive aggressive comments to me. For that one day I was having fun in the midst of dysfunction, enthusiastically filling out my card in order to whisper…….BINGO!

P.S. If you can’t come up with 24 dysfunctional things to fill up a Bingo card (lucky you!), you can also play “Dysfunctional Family Tic-Tac-Toe”, filling in a Tic-Tac-Toe board with only 9 dysfunctional acts.

Dysfunctional Family Christmas Bingo Printables

• Since this game doesn’t need to be applied to a family situation, what other dysfunctional situations do you have in your life that you could play the game?
• At first glance does this feel like it would help in uncomfortable situations? How?
• Who could play with you? They don’t need to be at the same gathering; you can text/call them when a dysfunctional act happens so they can fill out their pre- arranged Bingo card as well.