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JoeParticipantAnita (sorry for the delayed response 🙁 )
“Now, my question to you is: can you make the needed changes you need to make this year, make it so that you operate not as a “glutton for punishment” but operate for your own well being while you keep contact with family members? All of them?”
I feel like I’ve got this – like I said, I’m feeling pretty confident about myself lately. As for my family members – I guess people have no choice in the matter as to who they are related to. A phrase I’ve been pondering on over the past few days is “you kill more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”. That’s not to say I’m not taking any more crap from anyone, but I do believe it’s possible to stand up for yourself without resorting to their standards.
My sister has always been and always will be super judgmental and critical of other people and I don’t expect she will stop being super judgmental or critical.
The next time she has something she would like to pick at, I’m just going to respectfully tell her I’m not okay with it. I’m nobodies scapegoat.
We’re not even close at all – my other siblings are all best pals with each other, they always phone each other and do things together, they only text me when they don’t have anybody else to talk to or when they need something like me putting money towards buying a big present for mothers or fathers day (I just buy my own just to spite them haha!) I’m okay with it – like I said before, if we weren’t related we wouldn’t be friends. We don’t share the same interests, we’re not into the same things. I know it sounds cruel and heartless but I can think of several other people I would happily spend time with instead of my siblings.
I’m 24 and I’m old enough to make my own decisions. My grandmother passed away last October – she was the linchpin that kept the family and relatives together. Now she is no longer with us, I am under no obligation whatsoever to spend time with my other relatives and attend family functions.
My sister also has a nasty habit of being rude to me in front of everybody at family events and humiliating me. She plans to get married in Italy either this year or next. The truth is, I really don’t want to go. I’m not sure if I will be able to afford it and I don’t want my parents to pay for me to attend. Even if money wasn’t a problem, I don’t want to spend a lot of money to go to some snotty hotel just for my sister to be rude to me in front of all her guests. She is a very shallow, materialistic judgemental person and I just know she will find something to nit-pick over. I hate weddings – I hate making small talk, I just get ignored at these things. Am I right to not want to go to her wedding?
JoeParticipantName
I know this is going to seem like clichéd advice but this is the only advice I can give you – just ride it out and hang in there. You probably won’t believe me when I say this but things do get better eventually. There have been times over the past four years when I felt as if the s*** had hit the fan and at the time I was convinced things were going to stay that way forever, but I found that those states of being don’t last forever. 2015 was another example of a crappy year and I’m only starting to get back up and fight back.
I agree with Jim when he said “try to help somebody less fortunate” – is there an organization or cause you could volunteer for? I have done a bit of volunteer work over the past few years – I worked at a charity/thrift shop run by the British Heart Foundation (this was extremely fun – getting to play shopkeepers on the cash register and getting first dibs on all the cool books and cds haha!) I currently volunteer at a public library – mostly it’s boring stuff like putting books back on shelves (somebody has to do it!) but sometimes I do get asked by members of the public to help them out with computer-related matters and that is the stuff I enjoy the most. I find helping other people is great and you feel good.
You also mention that your friendships bother you and that they are unreliable backstabbers. They sound like generally toxic people if you ask me, and in my opinion people are better off not associating with such people. Are there any other friendships you don’t deem to be dishonest and unreliable? Try spending more time with them. If you do decide to maybe do volunteer work or something, you could make new friends there.
I hope the tables turn for you soon, my friend. Sending you light and strength.
Joe
JoeParticipantHi Humour
I guess I’ve never really been a big fan of board games, I just tend to lose interest after a while. Me and my friends used to love playing on a board game based on ‘The Walking Dead’ but that’s about it.
I do find something calming and satisfying about jigsaw puzzles, however.
Joe
JoeParticipantAnita
I guess there is no point in trying to reason or logic with my family where there is none.
A few months ago when my grandmother was dying, the entire extended family and myself were keeping vigil at her home. The things I’ve had to put up with from my own family are frequent regular things in the extended family. It’s one of the few times I’m glad to be introvert because I could observe their behaviour, and see how it affects everybody in the family.
My family (I’m talking about the majority of my relatives here – aunts, uncles, cousins etc) are just insensitive, unaware, ignorant, there is no other polite way of putting it.
I have relatives who think they know what they are talking about when all they talk is a load of bull.
Most of my relatives are just pig-ignorant. One uncle in particular is a chauvinistic prejudiced bigot whose attitudes are still clearly stuck in the 1970s.
My relatives love to just be as obnoxious, loud and insensitive to everybody and make constant digs. I see them as being really insulting and rude to one another but they would deny this – they would just say “It’s just a bit of banter, we’re a family of piss takers…” They also love to say nasty things about people behind their back – one uncle referred to my cousin as “a lazy bitch” just because she’s having to take time off work due to serious medical issues. Makes me wonder what they might be saying about me behind my back!
I have relatives who think they are so above everybody else just because they are “academics”; they have important letters after their names, they teach and they have more than one degree and they wave these things around like badges of superiority.
And then I have relatives who take the brutally honest approach when they don’t like certain people. One uncle is verbally abusive and delights in shouting and calling his kids every name under the sun – I think it is fair to say my cousins are pretty damaged now.
You can try and logic and reason and argue with these people until the cows come home but that will accomplish nothing because everybody has to have the last word.
The point I’m trying to make here? Cause and effect. There has to be some cause for these people to act the way they do.
I don’t know what the cause is. I’m not in any way implying my grandmother was a failure at raising her children but she did always speak her mind when she smelt b.s. Maybe it’s a generational, societal and cultural thing – my parents, uncles and aunts were born and raised in 50’s and 60’s working class England.
I guess some family members and siblings are just living up to their roles – maybe all older siblings are bossy and like to boss and bully their younger siblings; parents have to give them responsibility to look after their younger siblings and some people just abuse responsibility. My older sister got to take me and my younger sister out to the city centre – my mom had given us some pocket money but my older sister decided to spend it on herself. She has done things like that many times.
All of the relatives I have described, I can see in my siblings – the bossy condescending older sister (the academic aunt and her eldest daughter who has a doctorate), distant-yet-prone-to-verbal-abuse-and-physical-threats older brother (verbally abusive uncle) fowl-mouthed younger sister (combination of both)…It could be a genetic thing, I really don’t know. Nature vs nurture!
But back to your question Anita, arguing is absolutely futile with these people because they just deny everything, tell me I am talking a load of rubbish, making up stupid excuses for themselves…They don’t think the way they behave or treat me isn’t wrong…
If I had a pound for every time somebody used that age old excuse – “I was just joking!” I would be very wealthy indeed…
Being angry towards them isn’t going to help. I have a lot to say, and I am capable of being acid-tongued at the worst of times but I know this isn’t the way, and I am determined not to become emotionally abusive myself. It’s highly unlikely my family are going to think any differently and I don’t expect them to any more.
I do still have my sense of humour, and I think this works in my favour sometimes. I have quite a dry, sarcastic, deadpan sense of humour (reflective on my outlook on life which must have been shaped by these relatives!), and I’ve became very good at sniffing out b.s over the past year or so. I don’t think I’m even that funny but I’ve came across people who I thought wouldn’t appreciate my sense of humour and I’ve had them shrieking with laughter at some of the things I’ve came out with.
In spite of all this I do still love my parents, I just wish I could spend more quality time with them without my other siblings so this year I want to make a point of doing things with just my parents and nobody else. I think I said this in a previous post but my only happy childhood memories are from when I spent time with just me and my parents without the others. I couldn’t care less about my siblings at all – if we weren’t even in the same family I wouldn’t even be friends with any of them.
I think all families are mad to some extent and they probably don’t know it. I remember reading somewhere that it’s estimated that about 80% of all families are dysfunctional.
My favourite book in 2015 was ‘Sane New World’ by Ruby Wax and I highly recommend that people read it. She talks about depression, mindfulness and the effect family members can have on a person, but she manages to talk about all of these things in a humorous way. I must say reading this book has been a real eye-opener to a lot of this…
JoeParticipantHi Saiisha! Thankyou for your input – at this moment in my life I have been re-evaluating my life and thinking about what does and doesn’t work for me, and right now (especially as it is a new year) I feel like I am in a position to be making major changes in my life, and that I feel strong enough to start making them. You said you weren’t going to give me any advice – just out of curiosity, if you did have advice to give me, what would you say? Maybe what I meant to say was I don’t like receiving advice from my family, in part due to some of the points Anita has suggested.
Hi Anita! I think your points are spot on – especially the point you made about me diving into things without thinking because the inner critic (created in part by my siblings) would soon rain on my parade.
My siblings (especially my older sister) and parents have given me advice before and it didn’t turn out to work in my favour. For example – I wanted to go to a particular 6th form after secondary school – I had been to an interview/open day for this place and I fell in love with the college. My family, however, suggested against it and told me to go to another college which in their opinion would have been better – the place I wanted to go to, I would have only had to concentrate on my one subject (art). The place my family wanted me to go to, I could still have done art but I would have also done my other academic subjects as well. I felt pressurised to going to the place they wanted me to go to but I hated it and I felt really isolated. Maybe they think they know what’s best for me (they still do) but only I know what’s best for me when I am being completely objective about myself. What is normal to the spider is chaos to the fly.
Maybe I just deliberately go against their advice or their wishes just to spite them and rebel against them. My older sister still speaks to me in a condescending manner, criticizing me and loves trying to rain on my bonfire despite the fact we no longer live under the same roof – I recently confronted my parents about the fact they allowed her to treat me like dirt most of my life but you know what they said? “WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH…”
I think you are absolutely spot on Anita – I sometimes find it hard to deal with advice and constructive criticism because it reminds me of times when my family criticized me harshly.
2016 is going to be the fresh start I want in life, and I have decided to no longer see myself as a victim. That’s not to just suggest I’m just going to condone the fact my siblings have been horrid to me but I don’t want to let them win and I am determined not to let them control my life at all costs. I guess I need to be more objective when it comes to making decisions and only asking people I trust for advice.
But thanks again for your input Anita, this is a real eye-opener 🙂
Thanks
Joe
JoeParticipantHey all!
I’m taking on 2016 with a vengeance also – I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to play the victim of my circumstances and that I’m going to be more active in doing what I possibly can to be happy.
In an earlier post where I debunked 2015 I identified as being a ‘glutton for punishment’ – what I meant by that is I have this pathological need to learn the hard way, to make things hard for myself and to just dive head first into things without thinking about the consequences.
So I guess I’m going to make things easy for myself for a change, and to take a step backwards when evaluating where my life is heading. Questioning whether doing a particular thing will be good or bad for me. Hindsight is my mantra for 2016.
As far as goals and visionboards go, I’m finding a lot of inspiration on Pinterest (my new addiction!)
JoeParticipantHey Jack! Thankyou for you input – I will have to try that at some point (I don’t meditate as such, I prefer walking so I will have to try this next time I go walking!)
I agree about sense of humour being important for survival as well 🙂
JoeParticipantMerry Christmas to Anita, Jack and everybody else on here!
From Dismal Rainy England 😀
JoeParticipantHey Jack
Did you ever listen to any of her songs from The Sugarcubes, her previous band?
JoeParticipantOh yes, I love cocoa as well! Especially with cinnamon and coconut milk 😀
JoeParticipantAnita
That is one of my future goals – I am trying to run a crafting business on Etsy and trying to find work as a freelance illustrator online. I really hope this takes off soon and that I can manage to find some work online from this. I would really love for my work and business to be predominantly online-based so I could move out and travel. I know it sounds mad and there is going to be a lot of hard work involved but I’ve been searching for a job for a year now and not had any luck whatsoever. I still need to complete my TEFL course but I want to go back out there to teach English (but I’m only teaching adult students and university students, teaching school kids is exhausting!) I am still financially dependent on my parents – I don’t want to be but I need to start working harder because I want out of here.
Thankyou for all your advice and insight Anita, I really appreciate it 🙂
Joe
JoeParticipantHi Anita
No, my parents have never stepped in to back me up when my siblings are horrid to me.
“If what I wrote here is true to your situation, how do you handle this truth, how do you interact with your parents and siblings currently? Do they keep bullying you?”
I guess this whole ‘my family are emotionally abusive arse-holes’ has been something I have only just realized – having put up with this kind of thing for 24 years now, you just assume that this is the norm – this is how every family functions. A few months ago I read a book entitled ‘Sane New World’ by the comedian Ruby Wax – she’s currently an advocate for mental health and educating people about depression and she perfectly highlighted the kinds of things parents and families might say or do to people to cause them to become depressed in adult life. I started to think about all of the things that happened, all the things my family used to say and I realised that their words must have left deeper scars than I imagined. I’m depressed, anxious, I have no self-esteem and little faith in the rest of humanity.
The truth is, just handling this truth is all I can do – there’s no point in confronting my family about it because they would just laugh and deny everything, or just completely twist and distort everything I say to make me out to be the villain. My younger sister loves to make passive-aggressive remarks about how I am an unemployed failure – I was expected to do everything by myself when I had to find a job and when I got dismissed from that teaching placement in Spain, they made me feel like a complete failure. My family have done everything they could to help my younger sister find a job now that she’s graduated – they asked their friends and other relatives and because of that my younger sister now has a £18,000 per year job. If I confronted them about the fact they never tried to help me out but they were willing to go out of their way for my younger sister, they would just tell me to shut up.
My older siblings have left home now but that doesn’t stop them from returning and taking potshots at my emotional wellbeing – my older sister still loves to criticise me about everything. She hopes to get married soon and she will probably expect everybody to go out of their way for her when she does but I really don’t want to attend at all…
All I can do is grin and bear it, I suppose…
JoeParticipantI’d like to say and think “they did their best” about my parents – I really wish I could stand by that statement 100%. Bearing in mind I have had to put up with bullying siblings. At times it has felt like I’ve had to compete with my siblings and it almost seems like my parents didn’t exactly distribute their attention evenly, or stick up for me when my brother and sisters were constantly putting me down…
My older sister – always seemed to get what she wanted whenever she wanted. Parents were constantly driving her to parties and driving her to social engagements yet whenever I always asked for a lift home or whatever, they would just groan “Bloody hell, can’t you just catch the bus?” yet I never heard them complain about being my older sister’s personal chauffeur. She would interrupt me often to talk about aspects of her own life (mundane things like her friends, job etc) and parents are genuinely interested in her conversation but they don’t really seemed at all interested in what I have to say about my life. Very superficial, vain and concerned about appearances. She doesn’t like my lifestyle choices (she criticizes the fact that I’m a vegetarian even though I don’t force my vegetarianism on other people), she doesn’t like my clothing style (I wouldn’t say I dress alternative, I’m just a scruffy tshirt and jeans kind of guy) or my tattoos, she doesn’t like “my weird friends” and is always telling me to find new ones. Domineering, loved (still loves) to boss people around and criticize other people – she has many times told me “Why can’t you be normal?”
My older brother – has a really close relationship with my dad – they talk about things like football, fixing cars, you name it. He used to steal from all of us to fund whatever it was he was into (going out and getting wasted with his friends). Has been physically and verbally abusive to me most of my childhood – he is twice the size of my dad. Nobody tried to intervene when he was beating me up (probably because they were too scared of being beaten up by him).
My younger sister – always seems to get what she wants. Seems to enjoy stealing my personal possessions or reading my personal things. She used to blackmail me all the time to get what she wanted so to an extent she is very spiteful and manipulative – “If you don’t buy me this I’m going to tell mom that you did such-and-such…” If ever I had something from my parents, she had to have it (and always got it). My parents went out on a limb to make sure her birthday party was extra special – making sure the house was immaculate for all of her friends when she came round but they didn’t really go out of their way for me. Also loves calling me a “freak”, “why can’t you be normal?” along with more foul-mouthed abuse.
All three of my siblings are close to each other but I just feel like I’m the rotten egg. They always go out with each other, invite each other to their parties…My brother got married last September in Crete – I was unable to attend the wedding because I couldn’t afford to go (I guess I didn’t really have any intention of going either) – afterwards, my mom said “We would have paid for you to go!” They do things like this all the time – sometimes I think they say it deliberately just to spite me.
I hope I’m not coming across as a spoiled child here crying because my parents gave my siblings more attention but I think now most of my problems stem from my brother and sisters trying to push me around most of my life and my parents didn’t really do anything about their bullying. It didn’t help that I was bullied at school – my family just kept saying things like “Freak” and “loser” and “Why can’t you be normal?” They thought I was in a constantly bad mood just because I wanted to be, like I was angry and depressed just for the fun of it. They didn’t ask me what was making me unhappy, they would just tell me to shut up. Sometimes to this day I confront them about the emotional abuse and not caring about it and they still just tell me to shut up.
In fact, the only happy childhood memories I have are of when it was just me and my parents – like when they would take me for days out on my own.
Do you think having siblings might have anything to do with the question that has been raised?
JoeParticipantThings I like? Hmm…
Art. With a lot of colour.
Creating art. With a lot of colour. Using watercolours.
Autumn. Being outside in Autumn. The colours of the leaves.
The kind of music that I love listening to (ambienty-electronic-rock type of stuff)
Anything purple (it’s my favorite colour!)
Coffee.
Cats.
Thinking outside the box.
Really good food (especially Mexican, Italian, Indian, Morrocan, Chinese and Spanish tapas).
Sleeping.
Quiet places.
Books. Libraries.
Charity shops (or thrift shops).
Tekken.
Bonfires.
Japanese art products.That’s all I can think of XD
JoeParticipantThanks everybody for your insight.
I’m going to try and seek positive changes in my life – I am starting off by changing what I can have control over, namely trying to introduce and reinforce healthy habits. I have quit smoking – I talked about this in another post here, I quit two months ago, started again and I am three days into stopping again. I am also a month into sticking with a vegan diet, I’m only starting to feel more energetic and my clothes feeling a lot looser. I had tried veganism when I was at university but I only stuck with it for three months. During that time I had felt happy and energetic and I started to learn how to cook meals from scratch instead of just eating junk food and ordering takeaway all the time. It got to the point where one night I couldn’t sleep because I was excited about trying out this new recipe I had read about on the internet a few hours before!
I’m still trying to get my art and craft business off the ground so I need to focus my energy on this venture. I am hoping that trying to take responsibility for my physical and emotional health will inspire me with my art – unfortunately I am suffering from artist’s block at the moment 🙁
I want to create art and illustrations based on my experiences but my problem is that I find another artist whose work is amazing and really inspires me, but then I feel inadequate about my own work when it doesn’t end up looking like that of the other artist (a vicious cycle to fall into). I wish I could stop comparing myself to other people and focus on my own productivity but after trying to be like that other artist, I am left with this burning question – what does my art style look like? What is my art all about?
Lately I keep thinking about the relationships with some of my friends and whether they are worth holding on to. My best friend for instance – we have been good friends for a while but sometimes I feel annoyed at him – I get really peeved off at the fact he asks a lot of questions about myself and how he can act really interested about something I find really mundane and trivial, but sometimes I find that he is really nosy and I feel that most of the time he doesn’t understand my need for wanting to be quiet most of the time. It also feels like we no longer share common interests and I just feel bored out of my skull when we go out to meet – a lot of the time revolves around waiting in shops while he spends hours browsing through comic book and record shops. One time we missed the train back home because he just had to go back to the record shop to trade in a vinyl record for something else. He is always asking me if I am up for attending things I am not interested in anymore – heavy metal concerts, shopping (I want to try and establish healthy spending habits in my life as well as trying not to accumulate a lot of things I don’t really need), going to the pub for beer, junkfood-fuelled all night gaming sessions (I need to be in my bed at a certain time, if I don’t get my sleep I go beserk) going to the cinema (I’m not a film person, I couldn’t care less about Hollywood action blockbusters – I would rather watch those made for TV films on the True Movies channel!) I’m not the most patient of people.
I keep thinking about my friendship with somebody else in our friendship group as well – this girl I have been friends with since childhood. She is one of the funniest people I know – we both have the same cynical sense of humour but we also laugh about horrible things about people we don’t like, after which I feel guilty for finding that kind of thing hilarious. We are prone to having toxic, vicious arguments and we can go for months at a time without speaking. Last year I had resolved to ending this cycle and we both officially called off our friendship last year but we both agreed to keep things civil for the sake of our other friends, but these days it seems like we are back to being almost like best friends again.
I also keep thinking about another friend from uni who has moved back home since graduation (he lives in another city which is a while away from where I live) – somebody who doesn’t really bother staying in touch to ask how I am doing unless he wants something. It feels like it’s always me who has to make the effort to stay in touch and find out how he is doing. Recently he got in touch to tell me he’s going to be back in town for a week. I really don’t want to meet up with him because I just feel nothing but resentment towards him, and it feels like I put a lot into the friendship than I get out of it. I can also tell that if I were to meet up with our old group again, it would involve meeting at the pub. I don’t really drink alcohol these days and this is somebody who pressures me to having a drink when I really don’t want to and being rude and obnoxious about it.I feel like I don’t have a lot in common with them anymore. They also constantly remind me of the past and things that I would much rather forget about. Am I just being selfish thinking about this kind of thing, or is it normal to have these insecurities about friendships? I’m not sure about what to do most of the time – I did have close friends back at school but they just stopped getting in touch and ignoring my calls one day.
I desperately need to make positive changes in my life and I can only think about how my friends will try to hold me back. Am I being selfish and insecure for thinking that I should try and find new friends?
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