E408 | Communication Tips for Surviving Holiday Interactions

The holidays are supposed to be relaxing. Instead, they tend to throw you into rooms full of tired people, loaded topics, and conversations that go sideways fast.

Everyone’s heard the advice to “just avoid certain people.” That works until you can’t.

In this episode, I break down real conversational situations people actually run into during the holidays—family dinners, extended relatives, friends-of-friends, awkward small talk, emotional dumping, political grenades—and give you specific, usable strategies to handle them without blowing things up or walking away drained.

  ⸻     What You’ll Learn in This Episode   •How to deal with people who drop strong opinions at the table without turning dinner into a debate club   •What to say when someone starts emotionally unloading on you and you don’t want to fix, argue, or absorb it   •How to interrupt long-winded talkers without being rude or awkward   •What to do when someone makes passive-aggressive comments and you don’t want to take the bait   •How to carry a conversation with people you don’t naturally click with (without forcing fake enthusiasm)   •Simple ways to pivot conversations when they start heading somewhere messy   •A few clean exit lines you can use so you’re not trapped in conversations longer than you need to be   ⸻    

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