What We Bring to the Thanksgiving Table: A Parts-Informed Approach to Holiday Healing

Because holidays don’t erase our stories—they illuminate them.‍

Thanksgiving can be a tender place in the calendar year. We gather around tables filled with food, memories, expectations, and history—and our nervous systems remember it all. Sometimes we arrive holding gratitude and warmth. Other times we walk in carrying stories shaped long before we ever had language for them.

And the holidays, with their rituals, roles, and rhythms, have a way of activating those stories.

This post is an invitation—not to “fix” yourself or avoid the uncomfortable moments—but to meet them differently. To meet them with awareness, compassion, and the wisdom that lives in your Oldest Wisest Version (OWV), while honoring the parts of you that learned to survive whatever came before.

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The Stories We Bring to the Table‍

We don’t show up to Thanksgiving empty-handed. Even before arriving with a dish, we bring:

• Family roles we learned young (“the responsible one,” “the quiet one,” “the peacekeeper,” “the exploder”).
• Old attachment patterns that whisper: “Stay small,” or “Prove yourself,” or “Don’t need anything.”
• Protective strategies—sarcasm, shutting down, perfectionism, over-functioning—crafted by brilliant Adaptive Parts that once kept us safe.
• Wounded Parts carrying unmet needs, grief, hopes, and memories of holidays that were confusing, chaotic, lonely, or overwhelming.
• The longings—to feel connected, valued, seen, or simply okay.
  

The holiday table becomes a microcosm of our lineage. But brought into the light, this microcosm also becomes a place for choice. Awareness creates openings where previously there were only patterns.

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Noticing the Parts That Arrive Before You Do

Your body and brain enter your childhood home—or even the idea of gathering with family—a few steps ahead of your logical mind.

You may notice:

Hyperarousal Responses

• Feeling defensive or misunderstood
• Sarcasm sharpening in your voice
• Anger rising quickly
• Overexplaining or arguing
• Heart pounding, breath shortening

These reactions belong to Protective Parts who learned: “If I stay sharp, I stay safe.”

Hypoarousal Responses

• Numbing out
• Zoning out
• Feeling small, foggy, or far away
• Going quiet
• Feeling disconnected or “not fully here”
  

These come from Protective Parts who learned: “If I disappear, I stay safe.”

Neither is wrong or broken.
Both were intelligent adaptations.

Holiday gatherings can stir the nervous system into these states because they touch deep relational imprints. But awareness makes space for a different response.

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Showing Up in Your Oldest Wisest Version (OWV)

Your Oldest Wisest Version is the part of you that has never been wounded.

It is eternally:

• Calm
• Curious
• Compassionate
• Connected

When OWV is online, it holds the Wounded Parts with tenderness and the Adaptive Parts with gratitude. It doesn’t silence them—it leads them. It helps them feel safe enough to relax their grip.

You don’t need to be in OWV for the entire holiday.

Even 5 seconds of OWV makes a shift in your inner system.

OWV might say:

• “Of course part of me feels anxious—this used to be overwhelming.”
• “Thank you, Adaptive Part, for trying to protect me. I’ll take it from here.”
• “Wounded Part, I see your tenderness. You don’t have to carry this alone anymore.”
• “We can choose something different this year.”

This is where healing begins—not in changing your family, but in changing how you hold yourself while you’re with your family.

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Grounding Techniques for Holiday Protection States

When you feel your body drifting into hyperarousal or hypoarousal, you can gently guide yourself back into regulation.

If you feel yourself moving into hyperarousal…(defensiveness, irritation, anger, fast talking, tension)

1. Orienting: Turn your head slowly and let your eyes land on 5 objects in the room. This tells your nervous system: I am safe in this moment.
2. Temperature Reset: Hold something cold—a glass of water, the metal faucet, a drink can. Cold brings the system out of mobilization.
3. Exhale Longer than You Inhale: Inhale for 4, exhale for 6. Long exhales activate the vagus nerve and soften the sympathetic charge.
4. Name the Part: Quietly say to yourself: “Ah, this is my protective part showing up. Thank you for trying to help.” Simply naming it reduces reactivity.

If you feel yourself moving into hypoarousal…
(numbing, shutting down, dissociation, wanting to disappear)

1. Ground Through Your Feet: Press your feet firmly into the floor. Feel pressure, texture, temperature.
2. Temperature Upshift: Hold something warm—coffee, tea, a warm towel from the bathroom. Warmth invites the body back into connection.
3. Gentle Movement: Roll your shoulders, stretch, or stand and walk to another room. Movement re-engages the dorsal vagal system.
4. Say to Yourself: “I’m here. I’m safe enough. I’m allowed to take up space.” This affirms safety where the body once lost it.

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Offering Yourself the Possibility of a New Experience

You don’t have to fix your family for this Thanksgiving to be different.
You don’t have to heal everything that’s ever happened.
You don’t have to be perfectly regulated or profoundly insightful.

A new experience comes from:

• Noticing your parts instead of becoming them
• Choosing slowing over reacting
• Letting OWV hold the moment
• Giving your system small doses of safety
• Leaving the table when needed
• Honoring what your younger parts never received

You can offer yourself:

• A pause that didn’t exist before
• A boundary that was once unsafe
• A breath that your body didn’t know it was allowed to take
• A moment of compassion where there used to be shame
• A different ending to an old story

The Thanksgiving table may hold echoes of your past—but you get to decide how you sit in your present.

You are allowed to show up with your fullness:

your OldestWisest Version,
your WoundedParts,
your AdaptiveParts,
and your capacity to hold them all with tenderness.

That is the beginning of generational healing.

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An Invitation to Support This Holiday Season

If you find yourself needing support—before, during, or after the holidays—you do not have to navigate it alone. Holidays can awaken deep stories within us, and having a safe, grounded space to process those experiences can make all the difference.

At Kairos Counseling & Family Therapy, we specialize in trauma-informed, attachment-focused, relationally-centered therapy. We work from models including Polyvagal Theory, Interpersonal Neurobiology, Parts Work, EMDR, ETT, Sandtray Therapy, and IASIS MCN. Our heart is to help individuals, couples, and families reconnect with their Oldest Wisest Version, tend to their Wounded Parts, and soften the Adaptive Parts that have carried so much for so long.

If this season brings up overwhelm, grief, activation, loneliness, or old family patterns, we’re here to help you hold it with gentleness and safety.

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Contact Information

Kairos Counseling & Family Therapy, PLLC
Therapist: Neddy P. Dommer, LMFT
5646 Milton St, Suite 330
Dallas, TX 75206

You are welcome here.
You are not too much.
You are not alone.
And healing is possible.