Family issues

[kn94]

Hi everyone, 

I have been treated with constant infantilization by my family, especially with my cousins, who I have grew up with since I was a child.  For context, I am a 30 year old female with a good career, friendship circle and active lifestyle.  I am the youngest in this cousin group, and as a child, we always used to hang out with each other on a monthly basis, and also, to this day.  I felt good hanging out with them as a child, but as I am getting older, I do not feel the same.  I always feel misunderstood, let down and incredibly sad - these feelings have stemmed from years of them not acknowledging my feelings, downplaying my achievements and patronizing me.  I find the most extroverted, well-travelled, cultured person in the group gets the most attention/affection and they can get away with any bad decision or mistake that they make.  However, this is different for me.  I am met with judgement and criticism when this happens, always feeling like the family's scapegoat.

As the people-pleaser that I am, I still go to events they invite me to make my parents happy, but would feel extremely irritable afterwards and would need considerable alone time to repair myself mentally and emotionally.  I have discussed these issues with the closest ones in the group.  They say they understand, however, old patterns don't change, and I can see these toxic dynamics resurfacing.  What should I do?

[therising]

Hi kn94

I think one of the toughest challenges involves waking up to certain people and situations. When we wake up or become more conscious, we don't always like what we see and especially what we feel. My heart goes out to you as you face such a confronting challenge.

Would definitely become so much easier if we had lessons, as kids, in how to become more conscious. At least we could then follow some procedure or flowchart. Maybe the flowchart could look something along the lines of 'Are you waking up the the nature of a person, a place, a situation, a belief system or something else?'. If you chose 'person', that could lead to 'Are the emotions you're experiencing while waking up to this person's nature positive emotions or deeply challenging ones?'. If the answer is 'deeply challenging', perhaps that could lead to 'Do you share a similar nature or and opposing nature?'. If the answer is 'similar' this could lead to 'Are there elements of their nature that reflect things you need to change in yourself?'. Or if the answer is 'opposing', this could lead to the question 'Does this opposing nature help you better define who you naturally are?'. And on it goes.

If you are challenged my someone's irresponsible behaviour, does this reveal you as being a largely responsible person? If you're challenged by their closed mind, does this point to you being an open minded person? If you are challenged by their arrogance, does this point to you being a humble person? If they are largely insensitive, does this point to you being a sensitive person, someone who can sense what you feel, how you think, the compassion you feel for others, the need to please yourself more than you do and so on?

I've found as I gradually wake up to the nature of others I also wake up to my own nature. For example, I had no idea how much of a people pleaser I was until I became more conscious of people's insistence in being pleased and not upset. At first this created the illusion that I was just not good enough based on me occasionally upsetting people. Then, as I began to wake up more, it led me to experiment. I experimented with consciously not pleasing people all the time, while choosing to please myself a little. While it felt good to please myself, it tended to trigger some of the people I'd stopped pleasing. It was then that I was even further led to wake up to a part of me that had laid dormant for some time. It was the intolerant part of me. Not only does this part of me refuse to tolerate the self pure serving nature of others, it is also upstanding and outspoken. Bringing this part of us to life definitely doesn't win us any popularity contests but it does award us greater self esteem. People will either come to respect this part of us or they will cut themselves off from us because it doesn't suit them. It can be a wise part of us that sifts out those who care about us from those who care more about themself.

When we state the obvious, such as 'You don't listen to me' or 'You're far from conscious, when it comes to my feelings', some people will appreciate the wake up call and change their ways and others will choose to never open their mind to what we've told them.