why do you want those people in your life even if they are relatives?

If they can’t take a “sorry uncle Bob, but I disagree with everything you think of X. Why don’t we just avoid this and enjoy dinner”, then they are too emotionally immature/toxic to have in your life

I’ve been working inpatient psychiatry for almost a decade now and here’s how we talk people out of delusions…

…you don’t. Confronting the delusion directly helps their brain practice protecting the false belief system and strengthens the neural links / pathways. It’s like the ruts made by a wagon wheel, the more the wagon travels the path the deeper they get. You can try and haul the wagon up out of the ruts onto a different part of the road using brute strength but 10 seconds later it’s gonna fall back in and you’ll exhaust yourself trying to wear a new track so close to the old one. You’re much better served just sending the wagon somewhere else entirely and waiting for the ruts to erode on their own (this metaphor also maps well to addictive / difficult to discontinue behaviors; it’s often easier to disengage from the entire constellation of behaviors and stimuli around the habit, including things like people and places, than it is to just stop the habit itself).

So if you really do love this person and want to bring them out of it, do your best to send the wagon somewhere else. Just glaze over for a second while they rant, then change the subject and engage fully with something reality based you can create a connection with. Try to connect over knitting or gardening or woodworking or music or old movies or sports or whatever other hobby or social activity / discussion you can use to connect with them over that’s reality based.

That’s how COVID sucked them into all this. It broke up the knitting groups and gardening clubs and cooking classes and all anybody had left to socialize with was Facebook conspiracies. If we want out, we need to focus on rebuilding those communities.

If you engage even one out of ten times, you’re reinforcing it. You can redirect the conversation. Talk to another person, change the subject, completely disengage with them on that specific topic.

You can set expectations privately going in. Set the boundaries. Reiterate them gently but firmly in a general manner. Polite and businesslike when the forbidden topic comes up, cheerful and interested when any other topic comes up. Again, never directly engaging with the forbidden topic.

All this assumes you still want to get along with this person.

Guys I’m 43 and my generation is already turning the “fuck this shit” dial a bit. If you guys are younger than 35 please PLEASE turn it all the way up!
Your abusive uncle, your homophobic aunt, you shithead brother and your permissive parents FUCK THEM.

If you have to “deal with it” to spend time with people you love they don’t love you back.

edit: just want to add if someone needs to hear: They are not your universe. Being alone can be freeing and rebuilding your life can be easier than you think

What happens if you actually leave the conversation?

you just don’t invite those people. if it’s out of your control, then you don’t engage

Don’t invite them? If you know what’s going to happen, and you don’t like it, avoid it.

Develop an extreme interest in whatever sport is playing and say you have to watch it intently. Alternatively get a friend to ring with afake emergency

Set healthy boundaries.

“I don’t want to keep talking about this today.”

And then leave the room.

If they make suicidal threats.

“If you’re serious I’m going to have to call a welfare check.”

“If this is your entire personality it makes sense that the only place you have to talk about it is with people who think they have no choice but to invite you.”

“If you don’t learn how to read the room you may not be invited back into it.”

“can we talk about something else? How’s your pet doing btw?”

Some of you lack very basic communication skills.

Don’t.

Just removing obligations, and even going no contact does wonders.

Buy your own house, host the events and when they start up threaten loudly to throw them out if they keep on spewing that racist shit in your house.

Damn that felt good. Best thing ever about owning your own home.

Tell him loudly that he doesn’t know shit and to shut the fuck up. This is the year you let it all out. You’ve been building a dam of tolerance for this person, a dam which he’s been trying to undermine because he’s too fucking dumb to understand the extreme restraint you have shown against the potential flood right behind those walls.

Let him have it.

Honestly I’ve never had that issue.

One of my favourite things to do at a holiday get-together is hijack the TV with my MacBook. Most people think Apple stuff only talks to other Apple stuff in the Ecosystem/Walled Garden and that Android is some rebel front against Apple. Most people are also fucking stupid. If I’m on your WiFi and you have a smart TV, best believe I can take that shit over with like two clicks. My family has one of those TVs, I think it’s a Roku? where if you don’t watch anything, it goes to this city skyline screensaver with billboards advertising the streaming services it has? Like there’s a Netflix billboard, there’s a Disney+ one, you might even see one for Apple TV at some point. But it’s just a looping video. When I see that — nobody’s picking something — I pull out the MacBook, find a movie, and cast to it. Nobody questions why the TV did that without anyone touching the remote.

Last time, it was KPop Demon Hunters. Maybe a couple people assumed I had something to do with it, but within minutes, all the kids were occupied with it. By the second or third song, even the adults were singing along (I was playing the Sing-Along version). It was great. Might do it again. I can’t just put on anything. It has to hook a few people, which in turn draws others.

So, distraction.

Also, I sit at the kids’ table. They have far more interesting conversations. And there’s always some kid, almost always a girl, usually one around 7-12, who will tell me I don’t belong there. Like some little Philosopher’s Stone-year Hermione, some little know-it-all. I’ll wait until none of the other adults are looking, and she’ll catch a pea or a carrot slice to the face, look at me, and see my look of “I’ll do it again” on my face. That usually settles it. Once in a while it turns into a food fight, which I never get blamed for because I know when to stop.

We only do these whole-family get-togethers a few times a year. It’s usually a good time. But honestly, by the end of the day I just wanna take my pants off and wind down watching TV (at home I mean, and we don’t have kids so I don’t mean anything weird). Get tired of people after a while. Even the fun ones. But the time I gotta be there? I make it work for me.