Cruel Family Members

NursRatchett

I have found in my own experiences that some older people can tend to be very blunt and mean. Not all, mind you, but I wonder if it has anything to do with the times they grew up in, etc.?

At any rate, I think you are doing GREAT. Keep doing what you have been doing.......

NursRatchett

Oh, MY! Does she weigh less than you?

kimothy38

I read this today and had to share it with you:

Relationships are always an energy exchange. To stay feeling our best, we must ask ourselves: Who gives us energy? Who saps it? It's important to be surrounded by supportive, heart-centered people who make us feel safe and secure. It's equally important to pinpoint the emotional vampires, who, whether they intend to or not, leech our energy.

Vampires do more than drain our physical energy. The super-malignant ones can make you believe you're an unworthy, unlovable wretch who doesn't deserve better. The subtler species inflict damage that's more of a slow burn. Smaller digs here and there can make you feel bad about yourself such as, "Dear, I see you've put on a few pounds" or "It's not lady-like to interrupt." In a flash, they've zapped you by prodding areas of shaky self-worth.

My family are well meaning but to me are emotional vampires so I limit the time I spend with them. Sad but true.

hope8311

I think thats apart of life that everyone is made fun of by family,friends, or strangers....I gave up on myself and became accostomed to the verbal abuse, insults.....And realized I just needed to ignore them...Especially when you start losing weight and they are so mean to you and put you down over and over.....You give up or give in....

I decided not to and overcame it...I don't share anything and ignore there comments...Infact if they notice a change I just don't pay attention...ANd when I workout I take out my anger and frustration out on my workouts....

Ignore them and don't care about them.......

People, get made fun of for weight, skin color...and more.......

SycReid

I think my brother's pretty cruel. He doesn't really get fat much. Even if he gets some pounds on, it's pretty easy for him to lose them. Unlike me, I've been since I was a kid.
I hate it when he makes fun of me. Just like this morning. I just went on my weighing scale. And he was like "Wow, you're exercising!" And I was like "Are you blind? Can't you see what I'm doing." All I just really want is to prove him that I can lose weight.
Even my mom, most of the time, she's pretty supportive. But I hate it when she dictates all I do. I mean, I'm doing what's right for me. I think I'm old enough to know what to eat and not.

time4changexx

Well this one wasn't recent but it did affect me a lot. In high school (4-8years ago depending on grade) I was 5ft6 140lbs, which I know now was great and I'd give anything to weigh that again. Well I had a sister same height 2yrs older and she was always super thin, she weighed 115. My mom always compared up. I was always the fat one who needed the bigger sizes. They would bring me shopping and if I went to grab a medium and laugh and say I needed a large. I was meatball and she was spaghetti. That's how it always was. I know now I was perfect(well not exactly but weight wise) but instead i spent my years in baggy cloths and multiple layers to hide my fat. From there I'd just eat whatever. I was already fat so why not eat half a pizza, to me fat was fat. So I guess I kind of resent it now that I am way to heavy. I never had any confidence.

jodie091

While some of us might be fat now, that will change however, they will always be ignorant, and nasty.

The best story I have at the moment is from my lovely 7 year old daughter. The other night she said 'Mummy when I'm old will I be like you?' When I asked what did she mean she said "Fat"

Yay well done darling way to make mummy feel old and fat in one small conversation. i forgive her cos shes only seven but.......

My other instance was when I was maybe 12 and I wanted some bubblegum jeans (tight straight leg jeans from like the 80's )OK I know I am old already we have covered that my step mother said, in front of the whole family "your *kitten* is too big for them"

Families can't live with them, can't bury them in the back yard:happy:

Owlie45

I AM the cruel family member. However, that's because my family is a bunch of sloths, gradually waddling their way toward type 2 diabetes (brother weighs 325 at 5'11", mother weighs 285 at 5'7" as examples), and much like myself, will never do a damned thing about it, unless someone like myself keeps stabbing at them over it. We are a hardheaded bunch, and the only think that got me moving was some rather nasty words coming from a man I greatly admire. Sadly, they will require the same things, and it will take a LOT of it to get them to break their complacency.

I hope you read these so that you will understand that being cruel wont help.
Personally if someone I admirred did that, I would be enraged (possibly facing assault charges) and then I would become depressed.

jesse1379

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Serve it up

MDALUV1

Before I started trying to lose weight people I didn't even know would say things like, your cute, it is too bad your fat. Then I had one friend who just kept it up in a bar one day, over and over. It was humiliating. What kind of friend says such mean things. Then when I lost 60 pounds a friend came up to me and waned to know if I had aids. You can't win. Do it for yourself. Eventually, everyone will know what they said was hurtful. I wish you the best. Take care.

Gallowmere1984

I AM the cruel family member. However, that's because my family is a bunch of sloths, gradually waddling their way toward type 2 diabetes (brother weighs 325 at 5'11", mother weighs 285 at 5'7" as examples), and much like myself, will never do a damned thing about it, unless someone like myself keeps stabbing at them over it. We are a hardheaded bunch, and the only think that got me moving was some rather nasty words coming from a man I greatly admire. Sadly, they will require the same things, and it will take a LOT of it to get them to break their complacency.

I hope you read these so that you will understand that being cruel wont help.
Personally if someone I admirred did that, I would be enraged (possibly facing assault charges) and then I would become depressed.

The difference is that he dropped information, not just nasty comments. Believe it or not, there is actually a segment of the population that doesn't respond well to "awww, poor you, it'll be okay, try harder next time". I am a good example. It just gives us a sense that failure is fine, so long as we get there one day, while ignoring the fact that we may be dead before 'one day' comes.

"Take a good hard look at yourself. You look like a pile of laundry covered in mayonnaise. Humans are not designed to suck, so stop ****ing sucking. It's time to stop patting yourself on the back for that 315 pound squat, and get pissed that there is a 114 pound girl out there who makes you her punk ***** every day." These are the things that are more likely to work for people with a mentality similar to my own.

AmberJo1984

My uncle (mother's brother) wrote her an email a few months ago to remind her what a horrible person she was. (BTW... she's not... he's the one that is gone off the deep end lately.) She was crying so much over the next few days. I didn't know why. I finally convinced her to tell me what was wrong. She showed me the email. In the email, he told her how she had ruined her life and my life (like that's any of his business)... and how I (not her -- but me) was a fat slob because of her.

Personally, I think he's just lost his mind... but, it still hurt. Later, my aunt (mom's baby sister) told mom (after some pleading for answers) that the brother had said that he hates me and mom. No one is sure why, though.

Long story short... we don't talk to him anymore. Mom never brings him up... but, I know it still hurts her. She's the oldest. He is her baby brother... and she's always been there for the family.

RobinvdM

Family can be either be the foundation for success with their support, or can be that awful hack that works at undermining success. I've chosen (with MUCH difficulty sticking to that) to ignore anything detrimental my mother mentions. According to her I am intimidating people who know me cause I am an overachiever, I am borderline symptomatic of a potential candidate for anorexia, I shouldn't be eating (x, y, z) foods cause they aren't good for me/weight loss... I could go on and on. In my heart I know she MEANS well (I chose to believe that regardless of it feeling like a lie...) but it still sucks to hear family ripping you apart. My dad has my back, and that guy has told most of Smalltown Hicksville (where I grew up) all about me and my weight loss. With his pride I can easily ignore my mother's "support."

I wish you (OP and all others) the same luck at learning how to not take to heart the undercutting hurtful thoughtless comments that tend to spew like vomit from people who are intimidated by your success or have no faith in you. Good luck guys!

beanerific518

This remark wasn't made by friends at all. My senior year of high school, three years ago, I had to do a group project where we had to reenact a part of Shakespeare; we had to improvise with things we had right then and there. Well I was going to be the sound effects, thunder mainly. Well my group was up, so I was making a "boom" sound and in front of the whole class the two "popular" girls said:

1st girl: "Wow, she sounds like a cow making those sounds."
2nd girl: "well look at her, she is a cow."

It simply broke me hearing those words. I wanted to cry, i wanted to hurt them, anything to make me feel better. But what I did do was simply smile at them and went on. However after school I bawled my eyes out for hours.

I hear ya. In middle school I was called a cow to my face mercilessly. They would even moo at me and steal my notebooks and write moo all over them. It hurt like hell.

Thanks to Facebook I've seen current pictures of some of these girls. Guess what? They didn't age so well; i look better, younger, fitter, hotter than any of them. I suppose I get the last laugh :-)

robin68562

Oh, I have an answer for this one.
I had an uncle and cousin (his son) who always liked to 'tease'. I've always had a pear shape and all through childhood and well into adulthood I was always 'lard *kitten*' or 'fat *kitten*' and my cousin's favorite thing to say was, "You've got an *kitten* two ax handles wide!" Keep in mind, neither of them were thin. My mother, who I inherited my pear shape from, would hear all this and never say a word. Maybe she was glad that the heat was off her --- I don't know.
One year at Christmas she called me and asked me if I was going to go over to Aunt Betty and Uncle Don's for our traditional Christmas Eve get-together. Having had two babies in less than two years and having put on some weight, I told her no, because I wasn't going to put up with the comments from Uncle Don and Tommy about my weight. I told her in no uncertain terms that I had put up with it my entire life and I wasn't going to put up with it anymore.
She called me back a little while later and she told me that she had called Uncle Don and told him what I had said and she ASSURED me that nothing would be said about my weight. I took a chance and went and not only was nothing said that night, but nothing was ever said by either one of them for the rest of their lives.
Sometimes you just have to put your foot down and demand respect when people aren't respectful or intelligent enough to give it to you on their own.

sammniamii

Blarg, family can be beyond cruel at times.

Congrats on your loss so far, 14 pounds is great!

robin68562

My grandpa one time said at someones birthday party: "Don't you think you shouldn't be eating that cake" in front of a lot of my family. I felt so embarrassed. I feel that older people are very opinionated and aren't able to hold in their thoughts as they get older...ha...oh well. Some people will encourage you along this journey, some will pretend you don't exist anymore, some will not even say anything after you've lost nearly 50 lbs because they are jealous.....no matter what, you are doing this for you, and no one else, yes I love that my mom is so proud of me now, but in the end I want to just sit down and cry for how happy I am for accomplishing this on MY OWN!

That's baloney! Old people say the things that they say just because they think no one will say anything about it because they're old and they can get away with it.

CricketWhiskers

When I was about 12 years old or so my Grandmother come to visit and made it a point to take me aside. She sat me down and told me that I needed to lose weight and that I would have a horrible life if I didn't. She said that I would never be able to get a good job because companies won't hire fat people, I would never get married and I would never be happy or healthy. I ate my feelings that day and never told anyone what she had said.

Fast forward several years and I had an epiphany. I realized that at 282lbs I had a wonderful fiancee', a great job and I was truly, really happy with my life. The only prediction that she had made that day that came true was that I wasn't healthy.

I started this journey for me but also because I had proven her wrong and I was ready. I married the love of my life weighing 230lbs and she was there to see it. It wasn't until I spoke with my Mom about this that I realized my grandmother hadn't said those things to be mean but in her mind they had been the truth. She was so obsessed with staying thin and her happiness depended on that one fact for so long thay by saying those things to me she had been trying to save me from her own personal hell. I forgave her and I'm still trucking along and losing weight for ME.

My advice is to find your reason for losing weight and stick to it. Remember that when people say mean things it's because they don't feel good inside or because making others feel bad makes them feel better. Don't let a bully make you feel like you haven't accomplished anything, Losing that weight is something that YOU did by YOURSELF and NOBODY can take that from you!!! Keep it up and show them all what you're made of!

robin68562

Towards the end of my senior year I put on wuite a bit of weight because i wasnt involved in activities and sporta like i was in the fall and basically became all around lazy. On the night of my graduation one of my boyfriend's friends (whom i also did marching band with in the fall) comes up to me as im going to greet my parents and says "there's been a lot of rumors floating around in bamd so i just wanted to know, is it true that you're pregnant? because you have really put on a lot of weight recently" and i laughed it off like " no, just a few too many cheeseburgera lately!" but it really scarred me. thats my most vivid memory of my graduation. People can be really cruel sometimes

A guy that I used to work with walked up to me at work once and asked me if I was pregnant because I was wearing a loose fitting top. I looked at him and asked him, "Why? Are you worried?" It shut him right up.

robin68562

My favorite thing to say is, "I may be fat, but you're ugly and I can lose weight."
Shuts them right up.