Thanksgiving dinner can be a hotbed for family quarrels.

Hal Runkel is a marriage and family therapist and the author of multiple books on parenting and relationships.

Runkel said it can be helpful to display vulnerability during a fight with a family member.

The word "ouch," as in, your comments hurt me, can help defuse conflict.

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At Thanksgiving dinner, you may be sitting with family or a partner who knows you really well — which can be a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, you can be yourself around them — your unfiltered, sometimes un-showered, lame-joke-telling self. On the other hand, they eventually learn better than anyone else exactly which buttons to push that set you off.

Hal Runkel puts it eloquently: "No one can touch you like the one you expose yourself most to, but no one can hurt you like the one you expose yourself the most to."

Runkel is a marriage and family therapist, and the author of multiple books on parenting and relationships, including "Choose Your Own Adulthood."

When he visited the Business Insider office in 2017, Runkel shared his best advice for de-escalating a conflict that's spiraled out of control because one person said something that cut deep.