Diet Survivors™ newsletter October 2007
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About this issue
Are you different from your family? So was Marilyn Munster, but she coped. Identifying with Marilyn Munster may help you! Okay, maybe if you're a guy it's a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea.
Be like Marilyn Munster
Marilyn was the odd one in her family
Fashioned after a cuddly Frankenstein, and seven feet tall, Herman Munster has a square head, bolts in his neck, and feet like wood blocks. His wife, Lily, boasts long flowing, spidery black hair, with a dress to match. They're creepy, but they think they're normal.
There are also Grandpa and the son Eddie, whose peculiar escapades always border on the ghoulish but never cross the line to the frightening or repulsive. Nothing about the Munsters, in fact, is scary, as their last name, intended to sound like "monster," might imply. This daytime television show, The Munsters, ran a mere two seasons in the sixties. But to those who enjoyed their adventures, its goofiness is unforgettable.
While "The Munsters" seemed in some ways to be a silly, albeit poor imitation of the funnier "The Adams Family," it had one interesting character that set it apart. It was the adult daughter, Marilyn, who was "different" from her family.
Marilyn is blonde, while everyone else has dark hair. She is pretty in an ordinary way, unlike her slightly creepy-looking mother. She is wholesome and fun, with no dark side or penchant for owning tarantulas. Marilyn, unlike the rest of her family, is normal.
Yet in spite of her obvious inferiority, her family nonetheless loves her and accepts her. They do, however, feel sorry for her. Poor Marilyn just didn't inherit the best of the Munster genes.
Likewise, Marilyn loves and accepts her family just as they are. She knows she is different, and has made peace with this problem. Interestingly, she does not find her family to be odd. Perhaps she is used to them.
Are you like Marilyn?
Are you different from the rest of your family? We can define family in any way that applies to you. Perhaps, like Marilyn, you are different from your family of origin (parents, brothers and sisters.) But maybe you are different from your in-laws instead. Or maybe you are different from your spouse and kids. Maybe all of the above.
And perhaps you're not so lucky as Marilyn. Perhaps your family rejects you, marginalizes you, disrespects you, pokes fun at you, or is mean to you. Maybe they've abused you. Perhaps it's important for you to notice they're different, so as to keep yourself and others safe from their evil ways.
We've painted two possible extremes, but your situation could be somewhere in the middle. That happened to Katie.
Katie is close to her family and loves to spend time with them. But since her childhood, they've always treated her as the stupid one. Now that she's an adult, she's gotten over much of her insecurities, and has made a nice life for herself.
But every time Katie visits her family, she regresses while she's in their home. She defers to the superior intellect of her mother and sisters, and reverts to her old negative self-talk. Katie is in therapy for this.
Katie also has another problem with her family. They all overeat, while Katie uses her sense of hunger and fullness when she eats. They are all overweight except her. At dinner together, they goad her into eating more, and express pity at how little she's "allowed" to eat on her "diet." Katie must not really be enjoying life, goes the thinking.
How to be different and still have family
Everyone needs family. It's a basic psychological requirement for mental health. In the most extreme cases, where there is violence or emotional abuse that is ongoing and irreparable, individuals sometimes reject their family entirely.
But even in those rare cases, these folks often find a more emotionally healthy substitute family. They build it from friends or other relatives. This tendency is a testament to how strongly human beings need a sense of belonging to some sort of family.
Hopefully, your own family situation is not as hopeless as that, and can be worked with. We'll discuss a few ways of thinking about and coping with family when you're the one, like Marilyn, who is a little different.
Establish your boundaries
Everyone needs boundaries between themselves and other people. This requires a little thought and self-awareness. Do you have a solid sense of who you are? That will make it easier to individuate from your family, and ironically, to get along with them better. If you need help with boundaries, you might seek counsel, or conduct a web search on a book about boundaries.
Katie established a boundary for her children. Whenever she visited her parents, her mother would comment on her children's picky eating. Once having been afraid of her mother, she decided she'd gain just a tad of courage.
She did two things. First, she explained to her children that this is Grandma's habit, and that they could ignore her comments in good humor. "Isn't Grandma silly sometimes? But we do love her, don't we." Second, she started responding to her mother's comments with a cold, hard stare. Eventually, Grandma stopped commenting!
Plan an escape route
Avoid trapping yourself into situations you cannot tolerate. For example, if someone in your family drinks excessively, make visiting arrangements that will never require you to be in that person's car while they're driving.
As a second example, if you're contemplating a two-day visit but you're not sure you can handle that, why not plan a one-day visit that's open-ended? Start letting it be okay if feelings get a little hurt. People do recover! This is about being true to yourself, not everybody else.
Katie likes being with her in-laws, but lately they've all been on an extreme low-fat diet. Katie can tolerate their food for only one meal, and no longer. She also hates the way they point out the number of fat grams in what she is eating. So she and her husband decide to use a hotel instead of staying at the house. The hotel would be excuse enough to limit the number of meals they will eat at mom's house.
The tradeoff is that they visit less often, due to the expense of the hotel and restaurants, but they think it is worth it for their sanity's sake.
Get past the anger
Tyler has been angry with his family for a long time. He's always felt cheated in life, and he lets them know it. But underneath, he has a nagging need for some sense of family, however imperfect they are. It's time for Tyler to rethink his expectations, so he does some cognitive therapy.
Tyler makes a list of all his expectations of life and of family. They're supposed to be perfect, they're supposed to be enlightened, they're supposed to understand and love him unconditionally, and the list goes on. Then he asks himself what evidence he knows of that these things are facts.
Tyler eventually realizes that he has far less control over people than he once thought, and he's kind of relieved about that. He learns to accept that people are flawed, and that even our loved ones, or perhaps especially our loved ones, fail us. He now understands that life is full of frustrations, many of which are caused by people. He decides it's still worth it to have some kind of relationship with his family, and he begins to work on deciding what his boundaries are.
One thing that's been bugging him is that ever since his gastric bypass surgery, his family has felt sorry for him over how little he is able to eat. Tyler starts to realize the humor in this. He decides, just like Marilyn, to just let his family feel sorry for him, and every once in a while this fact gives him a good chuckle.
For more about cognitive therapy, see Dr. Michael R. Edelstein's web site. You can view his book, Three Minute Therapy, on amazon.com by clicking on the picture.
Dare to be a little disloyal
In some families, changing your eating habits or becoming otherwise emotionally healthy feels like an act of disloyalty. "What? You don't want seconds of my Easter pie? You don't like it? You insult me." Does this sound familiar? Families don't always like it when you change for the better.
In fact, while we're on the subject, many folks, family or not, may not like the idea of normal eating. They'll tell you that you're taking the easy way out. They'll tell you that you're getting too much fats (or carbs, depending on their choice of diet). They'll say, "You must be starving." Worse, you might hear, "Oh I tried that method. It didn't work." Learn to laugh it off.
Or perhaps your family members are limited in their ability to talk about deep subjects or to express their feelings (without plenty of alcohol). But you're in therapy, or you're using cognitive therapy on your own, and now you feel disloyal to your family because you've become increasingly different from them.
You might decide it's best to maintain a low profile about your deep subjects when you're around them, but neither do you have to suppress who you are. Give your relatives a chance to grow on their own. They might respond well to the "new you" over time and might even look up to you. Dare to be disloyal when it's the emotionally healthy thing to do.
Be loving
All people need to be loved and accepted. It's easy to love people who behave in acceptable ways, but can you love the unlovable? If you would like to have some kind of family, it may be a worthy goal to apply yourself to loving them, or at least to do loving things for them. However, you'll probably need to take them in small doses.
Bear in mind that loving does not mean forgiving. However, by doing loving things for them, you might see the folks who have hurt you in a new light, and the need to forgive will become less important.
Surrender to the energy required
A wise family therapist once said, "Being true to yourself is draining, almost as draining as trying to make everyone around you happy." Yes, it takes energy to figure out how to deal with family in a way that will be true to yourself. But look at the alternatives—you could give up on family entirely, or you could give up on being true to yourself.
If you've decided that your family, however flawed, is important to you, then you'll need to see it as a tradeoff. Nothing in life is free. To have your family in your life in some way, you'll have a little work to do, and sometimes you'll be tired. There's no point in complaining, "But it shouldn't have to be this hard." Who ever promised that? Relationships require work, but only you can decide which ones are worth the effort.
Protect the innocent
If someone in your family is truly dangerous in any way to you or your children or other loved ones, you might need to make a more extreme decision. You may need a lot of boundaries and limited visits.
Or you may even decide there is nothing salvageable in the relationship or no way to truly stay safe. In this case, you may need to withdraw completely. But then be creative. Find reasonable substitutes as best you can.
More about family issues
To discuss family issues, check out the Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board.
Learn more about the new book, How to Survive Your Diet, available now!
What is normal eating?
Visit our Diet Survivors™ group on
Yahoo!
Subscribe to this monthly newsletter
The odd one |
Are you like Marilyn? |
How to be different |
Establish your boundaries |
Plan an escape route |
Get past the anger |
Dare to be disloyal |
Be loving |
Be willing to work |
Protect the innocent
Copyright © 2007, Linda E. Moran. All rights reserved.
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Last Modified: Wednesday, 06-Feb-2008 07:13:12 PST Betterway Press
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