Thanksgiving in Canada can be complicated.
While media images show long tables, laughter, and connection, many people experience something entirely different—tension, silence, or absence. Some dread returning to family homes that feel unsafe or critical. Others are grieving estrangement or exclusion and wondering what’s wrong with them because their family doesn’t look like the ones in commercials. They can never walk down the card aisle and find something sweet that fits.
If this weekend feels heavy, sad, or scary, you’re not alone. Many people in therapy share that holidays like Thanksgiving bring up loneliness, shame, and old attachment wounds.
The Myth of the Happy Family
Family therapist and author Dr. Joshua Coleman, who has spent decades studying estrangement, notes that family breakups and long-standing conflict are far more common than most people realize. Similarly, sociologist Karl Pillemer, author of Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them, found that family estrangement affects a significant portion of families and often lasts for years.
Both experts emphasize something important: these ruptures don’t happen overnight. They often stem from a mix of emotional pain, boundary violations over a long period of time, unresolved trauma, or deep differences in values and communication styles. In other words, if your family doesn’t fit the picture-perfect mould—it’s not because you’ve failed. It’s because families are complex systems, shaped by histories we didn’t choose.
When Family Feels Unsafe or Unreachable
As an individual, couples, and family therapist as well as a trauma therapist in Hamilton, Ontario, I often meet people who say, “I love my family, but being around them is just too hard.” Others describe the loneliness of estrangement – the grief of loving someone you can’t safely connect with. This situation is sometimes described as ‘ambiguous loss’, or the kind of grief society generally doesn’t understand — leaving the person grieving feeling even more alone.
Sometimes distance is a protective response. When the family environment is emotionally unsafe, our nervous systems go into survival mode – fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. That’s not weakness. It’s wisdom.
Through attachment-based therapy, which includes EFT, EFFT (Emotionally Focused Family Therapy), or IFS (Internal Family Systems) for instance, clients begin to understand how old family roles still shape their adult selves: the peacemaker who stays quiet, the caretaker who over-functions, the truth-teller who gets labelled as difficult. Therapy helps you unpack these roles with compassion rather than shame.
Holiday Tensions: The Unspoken Triggers
For some, Thanksgiving dinner feels like walking into a minefield—unresolved politics, old resentments, or questions like “When are you settling down?”, “Why have you gained weight?”, “Why aren’t your kids better behaved?”, or “Why don’t we see you anymore?”
It’s easy to fall back into childhood patterns in these moments. Trauma and attachment wounds can quietly hijack the best intentions. Even if you’ve done a lot of personal work, being in the presence of your family system can activate deep, preverbal feelings of inadequacy or rejection. It can create anticipatory anxiety (the worry that something bad will happen because it has in the past), which doesn’t bring out the best in you either. Many of my clients worry about these events for weeks before they’ve happened. They worry about losing control, about others losing control, about being attacked, or silenced.
Therapy can help you recognize those patterns in real time. You learn to notice your body’s cues—tightness, heart rate, the urge to flight, flop, fawn, or flee—and to ground yourself before reacting. Sometimes, this also means choosing to leave early, limit contact, disengaging from certain conversations, using radical acceptance (which means a lot of self talk), or skip a gathering altogether. Boundaries are not rejection; they’re care for the parts of you that never felt protected.
Estrangement, Repair, and the Many Paths to Healing
Both Coleman and Pillemer write that reconciliation is possible in some cases—but it’s rarely quick or simple. Repair requires accountability, empathy, and readiness from both sides. For others, healing looks different: building chosen family (you know “friendsgiving”?, finding community, or making peace with what can’t be repaired. Mindful self compassion work can be enormously helpful.
Therapy offers space to sort through these choices without judgment. It’s not about deciding who’s right—it’s about understanding what helps you stay whole, grounded, and aligned with your values.
Creating a Thanksgiving That Fits Your Reality
If your Thanksgiving looks quieter, smaller, or completely different this year, that’s okay. You can still create meaning and ritual in your own way. Healing sometimes means letting go of “how it’s supposed to be” and finding gratitude in authenticity, not performance.
Whether you’re facing family tension, grief, or distance, you don’t have to do it alone. Individual, couples, and family therapy can help you understand the deeper patterns at play and guide you toward connection that feels safe and real.
Reach out today to learn more about family therapy or trauma-informed counselling in Hamilton, Ontario, or online anywhere in Ontario. I offer a free, 15 minute phone consultation. Let’s see if we are a good fit. This season, give yourself permission to be exactly where you are.
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