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 Post subject: i accept that my family is messed up
PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 11:45 am 
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So here I sit on Christmas day. At my mom's house. She is yelling at everyone and doing everything in her power to make everyone's life as miserable as possible. However, I accept this.

It sucks that a lot of my friends are going to their supportive families house and are having a healthy happy holiday being surrounded by warmth and love, and I am at my mom's house feeling this emptiness. I feel like an outsider. I wish I had a loving family to walk into on Christmas day and be accepted with open arms and have a wonderful holiday. However, this is not reality. I accept that holidays, until I get a boyfriend (which I have to do for the right reasons and not just to mesh with everyone) are going to be a little lonely.

I accept that my mom doesn't see reality and thinks that the holiday is all about her, with little regard to her kids feelings or wants. I accept that she feels that same way about life.

I accept that I do feel a little bit like a victim because I just feel like everyone is having a happy family holiday and I am sitting here depressed.

I also accept that this is just a day. A day that won't provide me with a strong family (I have my wonderful brothers and sisters, but I mean an extended warm loving family, with support from older people.) I accept that it is what it is.

I accept that the kids got a lot of stuff and had a wonderful holiday, and that's all that I am going to get out of this holiday.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 2:25 pm 
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(((Erin))),

I think you ARE getting something out of today. I see you as a strong person who will be sure, one day, that your own family has the kind of Christmas that you wish you could have today. I'm sorry that you don't have it now, but you can make it happen when you raise a family of your own.

There is something else positive in your list of what you have to accept. You wrote "your wonderful brothers and sisters." They are family, so you do have people who care about you. They count, don't they? And the kids who got a lot of stuff? They count too.

One more thing. Many people do not have the ideal, warm, fuzzy holiday that you imagine. It's true that a lot of people do, but in general, family holidays are often stressful and put a strain on relationships. It's still okay for you to want it to be better, and for your Mom to be loving towards you. But I think you have a good grasp on reality, and that is "something" to hold onto for today.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 7:45 pm 
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hey, erin. i have to disagree with wondering (hugs) here. i have never known ANYONE who has the type of holiday you describe as wanting. sure, we all wish we had it. but honestly, i dont know anyone who hasnt some issue with someone on a holiday. why is this put in our heads? some day should be where things are perfect, everyone is joyful and loving, the cats have no hairballs, the dogs ask to go out to pee...and all the dishes wash themselves. not to be making fun of a thing, but do you know someone who has no issues in their family? i dont think it exists but on tv. i really dont.

but the good news is where it CAN exist! in us. yes! can you watch your mom? you say she """She is yelling at everyone and doing everything in her power to make everyone's life as miserable as possible. However, I accept this. """" hows about accepting something else? she can try all she wants. what a waste of energy on her part. but she cant do shit. she cant. she can yell, or scream, or be hateful. its up to you to not take it! find something great in the day. in every day! its out there, just look.

damn, took me years to learn this and im giving it away for free to you! :) seriously, it did. i wasted lots of my life not knowing it and feeling bad when anyone acted like a jerk to me or around me. we dont have to!

if you know that many and are friends with them to boot, i envy you. you ,must know some group i never met. supportive families? warm, loving? wow. i hear more people say this..and i think most just hide things better than we do. holidays are stressful, as wondering said. a bunch of people who cant get along with distance are shoved in a house together --with all their history and personalities--hell, a recipie for disaster! kids bring their childhood problems, parents bring their parents issues, and wham. a bonfire of dysfunction.

i have fought feeling like crap all day. but its a normal feeling, and nothing to do with myself. i loved today. it was great. i found many small things that were too cool. hell, theres a "cops" marathon on court tv! that alone is cool to me.

i would kill to have brothers or sisters! see, your one ahead of me already!

my ideas may sound simple, but the simple stuff works. it really does.

i hope you find other things to radically accept, better things for yourself. there was a lot positive in your post. :) excellent!

your moms issues are hers. whyever, whatever, she is the one to pity.

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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 7:56 am 
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I accept that holidays, until I get a boyfriend (which I have to do for the right reasons and not just to mesh with everyone) are going to be a little lonely.


Hi Erin.

I'm sorry your Christmas was not what you had really wanted. : (

As others have said, and I dont know if it will make you feel better or worse to hear this, but it really does seem uncommon to have that perfect Christmas experience with the perfect family.

I noticed one thing though you wrote (above). I dont know the details of what's up in your life right now - maybe you really want a boyfriend and so it's true that you really will feel lonely until you get one. But on the other hand, does one have to have a boyfriend in order for xmas to not be a lonely experience? Just food for thought. Disregard it if it's not accurate for you.

Take good care,
Liz


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 12:24 pm 
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i know you guys are probably right. It's just that I hear all of these people at work talking about going to this aunts house and this family members house and I just feel like a big outsider because not only do I not have a good mom and my dad is dead...........i don't have an extended family either. I have one uncle who lives 7 hours away and both my grams are dead and it just makes me feel bad.


I know feeling sorry for myself does not help this situation. However, I struggle a lot with not feeling good enough because of my family unit and around the holidays it further emphasises it.

But I guess some people would be envious of me because I have so many brothers and sisters ( I am the oldest of 6.)


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 10:25 pm 
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i, for one, am envious you have sisters and brothers! i hate being a only child now, and i hated it when i was young.

just a idea, do you believe everything people say? one of my granddaughters is in the 2nd grade. she came home whining because C had something "hannah montana" she didnt. we had to explain to her, this kid didnt have it because we watch the net and the item wasnt even out yet for sale..(a video). that went into a discussion of others and their need to build themselves up. and that some people embellish the truth a awful lot.

the bottom line is a 8 yr old was pulling this even. people just dont tell the truth, they like to brag and look bigger than they are. so i would take things said with a grain of salt. have you noticed it is never something you can prove? or disprove? its always...oh , its at home or my uncle john has it, or something.

just a idea to think on.

i am so sorry you dont feel good enough, as you phrase it. your family has nothing to do with how "good" you are or not.. half of mine have been in prison or couldnt read and write..lol...

but im me. im proud of me. :) im not them and even if i was,,so what? God loves us all...

there is good and bad in everything. bad with so many siblings as money (for me)would be tight going around. good in that, hopefully, yall have each other always. my old man (adopted) his adoptive mother (i use the term very loosely) had 14 kids. last count, anyways. most hate each other and are extremely dysfunctional.

go figure.

((erin))

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 Post subject: feeling like an outsider
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:41 pm 
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erink wrote:
I just feel like a big outsider <snip> and it just makes me feel bad.

know feeling sorry for myself does not help this situation. However, I struggle a lot with not feeling good enough because of my family unit and around the holidays it further emphasises it.


Hi Erin-

This is my first post and I am really happy to find this group. I had a difficult holiday, too, and very much identify with feeling like an outsider. I moved out of my mother's house when I was eleven b/c she is an emotional abuser and an addict. She told me when I left that my father isn't my real father and doesn't want me. I think she was lying about the biological father part, but it planted a seed that still bothers me. My father remarried when I was seventeen, and his new wife has worked very strategically to distance him from me. I stay with my grandmother when I visit, and even there, I feel strange. We don't seem to be on the same wavelength. My therapist describes the problem by saying my grandma is not attuned to me emotionally. She contradicts and invalidates a lot, and then disavows that she did anything of the kind. I am working on reducing my emotional reactivity to her, but it's going very slowly. But back to the outsider at the holidays topic, in this environment I felt very lonely at Christmas, and I sent a message to my sister saying I feel like I don't belong anywhere. It's a very disorienting feeling, and I don't think it is completely a matter of self-pity to feel depressed over this problem of not being nourished by our environments.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:43 pm 
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I should have said two other things: I'm 35 now, and I wish I had a better handle on how I feel about my family. And the topic of radical acceptance is very much on my mind b/c I don't know how to accept that I'm not getting what I need from my family, which is why I was so drawn to this forum topic.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 9:54 am 
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Hi girlinneed and the others here.
I joined 2 days ago.

I dont believe in radical acceptance of abusive family members, if this is what is meant here. Accepting that you cannot change them, yes indeed. That you are not bad as they made you think you are, ofcourse. But to recover you need to be away from the hurtful environment. If you strive to be stable, you need distance, as much as possible.

The pain of not having real parents and a warm house will always be there. The question is how often that wound bleeds and if it scars and doest bleed, how often you'll feel the bump. No way any of us won't hurt in the presence of what made us hurt.

I have lived in another continent from my parents for 26 years, my sister joined me 11 years ago. 2 years ago my parents were thinking of returning and we two big girls, 39 and 42, were hysterical. We manipulated our mother to desert the idea.
Over the previous years I tried reaching out to my mother, but she was never there, as she wasnt when I was little. I gradually learned not to try, almost not to hurt. My sister talks sometimes about forgiveness and compassion and I am silent. I dont forgive but I dont lash at them anymore as she inevitably does. The distance is the best thing in my relationship with my parents. I have some contact with them, especially via email. I severed my connections with all my uncles, aunts and cousins because unfortunately, all were either abusive to me or are too disturbed today for my own good.
I have my sister, who is mildly BPD and requires walking on egshells, but I love her and do my best with her. I have 2 healthy children and a husband that I dont love, who comes from a freakish family as well. We dont have christmas but on our holidays we used to run away to some resort, or celebrate with one friend that invites us, or ignore the fact that its a holiday. I do hate holidays and that my children dont have any extended family apart from an eccentric aunt.

But in the last few years I started having myself. I have recovered with the help of a wonderful therapist.
If you can manage that, and preferably at a younger age than me, you will be less alone, sometimes. Its difficult to explain what it means to have yourself and it probably does not belong to this thread. So bye for now.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 11:23 am 
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I don't think radical acceptance of not getting something from one's family equals acceptance of abuse. Two different things.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:10 pm 
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True.

But real radical acceptance is slow and very painful because you than have to accept things about yourself that might not have surfaced earlier.
And not accepting any form of abuse in the present, be it even pestering and criticism is not possible if you spend lengthy periods of time near it.

Accepting to a degree that your psyche abandons any hope for love and recognition is a very high level of recovery. But awareness that some things will simply never be, is very important, I agree.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:11 pm 
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Good distinction between abuse and non-nurturing environment. I have cut off relations with my mother who is an abuser, but I'm trying to salvage a relationship with my paternal grandmother who is not an abuser but does invalidate and discount my perceptions as much as she supports and loves me. I think it's really hard to discern the line between growing as a person and "radically accepting" her behavior, on one hand, and subjecting myself to an environment that triggers me and brings out less healed and less evolved sides of me, and every part of me wants to get away and never go back, but I think that might be an extreme reaction to being invalidated. I do think I would be more stable if I never saw her - I was deep in depression since Christmas up until about two days ago - but I want to be less easily triggered, and to accept that I'm not going to get nourishment from her, to be able to say "that's just the way she is" without personalizing it or letting it get to me on such a deep level, since I know it isn't malicious on her part. BUT I very much identify with the postings on just cutting contact. It's simpler and cleaner, somehow. Still, I am not convinced it is right for me, and I am still unclear in my own mind about the difference between radical acceptance and devaluing myself by not insisting on more nourishing environments. Not that I have other more nourishing environments at this point. I am single and without children (two fantastic shih tzus, though). My new year's resolution is to nourish social relationships with people in the town where I live, in the hopes that if I get my emotional needs met by a social network of my own creation then I won't show up at my grandmother's house with so much need that I already know won't get met. If I had other people in my life, maybe grandma's shortcomings in the terms of hearing me, accepting me, letting me have my own emotions, etc. would be less upsetting for me?? . . . Thanks, Jillo and Mystery Road, for writing back - this is a good conversation for me.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2008 7:53 am 
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girlinneed wrote:

I am still unclear in my own mind about the difference between radical acceptance and devaluing myself by not insisting on more nourishing environments

I certainly think you should insist on more nourishing environments, or lets say, what strengthens opposed to weakens you. But its not a matter of value. Your value is always the same. I know it may sound trite or abstract. Its not value, it is a practical matter.
Maybe you go to your grandmother's for some kind of pampering, food, nostalgia, something reminiscent of a home environment, a mother figure. But you pay a price. It does not matter if she is malicious or not. I have known enough poisnous figures. Some were evil but most were unaware, set in their ways and acted like that because of their own needs. I feel the drama of "radical acceptanvce" again puts the emphasis on "them" and not on the essential - you.
Physical separation can begin an internal separation. The state when we can really, really feel - that is her, this is me. I am ok, I can be in peace. And than you live and feel and know what is good for you and what isnt.

You are not a girl, are you? you are 35. And I hope you have days when you are not in need, so you can know what it feels like. Its nice. But it is also nice to have a forum like this, isnt it?


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 Post subject: radically accepting grandma (or trying to, anyway)
PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 7:46 am 
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jillo wrote:
I feel the drama of "radical acceptanvce" again puts the emphasis on "them" and not on the essential - you.
Physical separation can begin an internal separation. The state when we can really, really feel - that is her, this is me. I am ok, I can be in peace. And than you live and feel and know what is good for you and what isnt.


I disagree about where the emphasis is, in radical acceptance. The goal is reaching a place where I can accept and be at peace with who my family is, how they behave, how they react to me. So the emphasis in radically accepting them is really still on me, on my level of peace.

I go to my grandmother's house, I think, out of a sense of duty and a sense that maintaining familial connections with difficult but nonabusive family members is healthy. I definitely don't go there for pampering. I grew up in my grandmother's house, so I go there like other people go to their mother's house. But when I arrive, I am met with a lot of mixed messages. She tells me she is happy that I'm there, and she does nice things, cooks nice meals, makes plans for us to go to the movies, that sort of thing. But she is very uncomfortable with anything I might say about real feelings, about being disappointed, for instance, that my stepmother tries to create distance between me and my father, or even about a book I was reading on Asperger's syndrome and how I relate to the difficulties that these mildly autistic people have in connecting with family members. She changes the subject, says something about the weather, and then I feel frustrated and wonder why am I here if we can't even have a normal meaningful frank conversation?

So what I am reaching for, in thinking about radical acceptance, is getting to a place where I can be there for her, out of duty, out of the positive elements of familial connection, without needing her to be other than who she is, without needing her to respond to me on the same emotionally meaningful level that I speak to her. But it's very hard to accept her for who she is when I am experiencing such a void in my life of having no one, currently, with whom to have these meaningful conversations about my emotional life (other than my therapist, of course), so I think if I could develop a social network of friends who meet my needs for meaningful contact then I might be more able to reach radical acceptance with my grandmother.

I am only speculating at this point, though, because I really don't know what would allow me to just accept her and not be frustrated with her, which is why I resonated so much with Erin's post on Christmas Day about accepting that her family is messed up - that is a goal I share, and one I am actively working on, but one I have not reached and am not confidant that I *can* reach. I want to, but I don't know if I can.


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