WindSparrow wrote: »

The problems with your family members, with any people like this in any of our lives - what's wrong there, causing them to speak and act in hurtful ways, those problems are inside of them. Their ugly words, their cutting words, their resentful words - that comes from inside them. The problem is not coming from inside you.

It is understandable when we feel things in reaction to the problems of others, but we do not have to absorb those problems. If my friend with a broken leg puts his crutch down on my foot, of course I feel the pain. And I might spend a bit of energy evaluating whether it was an accident or deliberate. And if I think it was deliberate, I can spend some energy thinking of ways to keep myself safe. Either way, the crutch and the broken leg are not mine. Precious JAHLadyJ, you deserve love and support. You deserve care. You are worthly of excellent treatment. This urge to pull people down that overtakes people in your family - it does not reflect what you deserve. For whatever reason, whatever pain, whatever incompleteness in their own hearts that they behave this way, that is inside them, not you.

The best thing you can do for them and their pain, is to care for yourself as the worthy, precious, excellent person you are. When those hurtful words come at you, try talking to yourself the way you would to a beloved friend who had gotten discouraged. If a beloved friend made a mistake, you would still love and value her; you would say encouraging things, not punishing things. If a beloved friend felt discouraged because her family was unsupportive, you would say, "forget them, I'll support you." Be gentle and forgiving of mistakes and happy about even the smallest bit of progress, like you would with a beloved friend.

For myself, I have found that mindful, or intuitive, eating helps a lot. This approach puts no moral value on food - there are no "bad" foods, none that are not allowed. When all foods are allowed, much of the guilty pleasures associated with forbidden foods goes away. The emphasis is on listening to cues from our bodies to make food choices, learning to know what signals our bodies give us about what foods are most satisfying at what times, and learning to choose to eat based on those signals. Nutrition, enjoyment, satiety are emphasized. At the same time as I learned to listen deeply to the signals from my body, I also began learning a few ways to handle emotions other than the distraction of food. But one of my greatest struggles is using food to punish myself - rather than eating to meet nutritional needs, to enjoy the satiety that comes from eating the amounts of foods that will give my body the fuel it needs to do the things I want to do, sometimes I have the urge to stuff myself, to punish, to feel the pain of the over-full gut and the pain of the disgust I feel with myself and my body. You do not deserve that kind of punishment - you deserve joy and love and care.