When Family Gathers, the Nervous System Remembers

Mascari, Brooke | January 2nd, 2026

This past Christmas, I hosted my family in my new home.

It should have felt meaningful. Grounded. Celebratory.

Instead, it felt overwhelming, fast, and strangely disorienting — like the entire day passed without me ever really being present.

When I looked back, I realized something painful but honest:
I didn’t enjoy it.

There was stress, emotional tension, and a sense of pressure I couldn’t quite name. One relative showed up rude and self-absorbed. There were underlying family conflicts — nothing explosive, but palpable. And as the host, I strangely felt responsible for holding everything together.

What struck me most wasn’t just the overwhelm — it was the feeling of being transported backward.

The family time-travel effect

When family gathers, especially in emotionally charged settings, many of us don’t just show up as our adult selves.

Our nervous systems remember:

• Old roles

• Old expectations

• Old ways of staying safe or being “good”

Even after years of growth, healing, and self-awareness, family can activate parts of us that feel younger, quieter, or more vigilant.

This isn’t regression.
It’s patterned memory.

Your body recognizes these relationships before your mind has a chance to intervene.

Hosting adds another layer

Hosting amplifies everything:

• Responsibility

• Performance

• Task-switching

• Emotional monitoring

For someone with a sensitive nervous system or ADHD (like me), this can push the system into overload quickly. Presence becomes impossible — not because you don’t care, but because your nervous system shifts into survival mode.

That “where did the time go?” feeling is often mild dissociation — a protective response, not a failure.

The grief we don’t talk about

There’s a quiet grief that can follow moments like this.

Grief for:

• The holiday you hoped for

• The version of yourself you thought you “should” be

• The ease that didn’t exist

And often, instead of honoring that grief, we turn it inward:

“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why couldn’t I just enjoy it?”

But nothing was wrong.

Your system was responding to complexity, history, and emotional noise — all at once.

A different kind of compassion

What if the takeaway isn’t how to “do it better” next time — but how to understand yourself more clearly?

What if the lesson is:

• You’re deeply perceptive

• You feel emotional undercurrents

• Your nervous system needs care, not critique

Family gatherings don’t reveal our failures.
They reveal where tenderness still lives.

And noticing that — even when it’s uncomfortable — is not weakness.

It’s awareness.