The holiday season can be a time of joy and connection, but it can also bring complex emotions and expectations. For many, this time of year shines a spotlight on unspoken family dynamics, unconscious beliefs, and internal conflicts—what we call loyalty contracts. These invisible agreements often govern how we relate to others and ourselves, creating tension as we navigate traditions, relationships, and expectations.
At Think Recovery, we believe in exploring these dynamics with curiosity and compassion, helping you confront the tension and rewrite the rules that no longer serve you.
What Are Loyalty Contracts?
Loyalty contracts are the unspoken rules or beliefs we adopt to maintain connection, harmony, or acceptance within relationships. These contracts often form early in life, shaped by family dynamics, cultural expectations, and/or societal norms.
Examples of Loyalty Contracts:
- “I must always put my family’s needs before my own.”
- “If I express my true feelings, I’ll hurt others.”
- “I can’t outgrow or succeed beyond what’s acceptable in my family.”
These contracts may have once served a protective or adaptive purpose, helping you navigate relationships and environments that you were in at the time. However, as you grow, they can become constraining, holding you back from living authentically and prioritizing your well-being.
Tolerating Tension: Environment and People
The holiday season can intensify loyalty contracts, especially in environments where old roles and expectations resurface. Family gatherings or social obligations may bring up feelings of anxiety, conflict, shame, guilt, or discomfort.
Holding Yourself Through Tension:
- Acknowledge Discomfort: Notice when you feel tension or unease. What unspoken rules or expectations might be at play?
- Reflect on Your Role: Ask yourself, “Am I acting out of obligation or authenticity? What do I truly want in this moment? Is it possible to do something different here rather than defaulting into what is familiar?”
- Set Boundaries: Tension is often a signal that boundaries need to be reassessed or strengthened. Saying “no” or stepping away isn’t selfish—it’s self-care and a necessary act of self-preservation.
Confronting these dynamics doesn’t mean rejecting relationships. Instead, it’s about creating space for and exploring the possibility of a more mature, mutually affirming relationship that includes room for honest reflection, sharing genuine feelings, as well as connection and independence, culminating in healthier, more sustainable interactions.
Implicit Learning and Unlearning
Loyalty contracts are often rooted in implicit learning—the unconscious ways we absorb patterns, beliefs, and behaviors from our early environments. These lessons shape who we are, often without our conscious awareness.
Implicit Learning in Action:
- Growing up in a household where emotions were suppressed may teach you that vulnerability is unsafe.
- Watching caregivers prioritize others and their experience may instill the belief that your needs are secondary or will go quietly unnoticed.
While these patterns can feel deeply embedded, they are not unchangeable. Healing involves unlearning these automatic responses by identifying and replacing them with more intentional action.
Steps to Unlearn and Rebuild:
- Identify Patterns: Reflect on how certain patterns of behaviour, decision making or assumptions show up in your life that may feel conflictual, or difficult to change.
- Challenge Beliefs: Pause to consider whether there is an underlying, implicit belief that may be driving this pattern of behaviour, decision making, or assumption. Ask yourself, “Does this still serve me? Is this truly mine, or was it given to me? Where does this come from?”
- Practice New Responses: Take time to identify an alternate decision, or course of action that would feel more affirming and aligned with your values as well as more adaptive for you within your current context. Then consider experimenting with these new behaviours and ways of thinking and being that better align with your values, understanding that they will feel unfamiliar at first.
Unlearning takes time and patience, but it’s a crucial step toward greater authenticity and freedom. With repeated practice of the above steps with the various loyalty contracts you may be unknowingly holding onto, you are providing yourself the gift of renewed choice and agency.
Giving Yourself Grace During the Holidays
The holiday season is often a mix of joy, stress, and connection. It’s important to remember that growth and change are lifelong processes, and perfection isn’t the goal.
Ways to Show Yourself Grace:
- Prioritize Self-Care: Rest, recharge, and do what nourishes you, even if it means declining invitations or modifying traditions.
- Celebrate Small Wins: Every time you honour your boundaries, make even minor modifications, challenge a limiting belief, or even just take the time to consider doing so, you’re making progress.
- Practice Compassion: Acknowledge that navigating family dynamics or changing old patterns is honestly not easy! Understand that it is a process full of ups-and-downs, and it’s natural for it to feel messy or confusing along the way.
This holiday season, let go of the pressure to meet every expectation—yours or others’. Instead, focus on what feels meaningful and true to you.
Moving Forward
Exploring and releasing loyalty contracts is a courageous act of self-liberation. It allows you to step into the holiday season—and your life—with greater authenticity and purpose. At Think Recovery, we provide a supportive space to navigate these complex dynamics, helping you reconnect with your inner wisdom and create meaningful change.
If you’re ready to explore your patterns, unlearn old habits, and meet yourself with compassion, ask your family doctor for a referral today. Let’s work together to create the space you need to thrive, not just during the holidays, but all year round.
N.B. psychologist Patricia Gianotti has written more on this topic of loyalty contracts, and psychoanalyst Joseph Weiss under the different term of ‘Pathogenic Beliefs’ within Control Mastery Theory
