Dear Charity:

I have more time to attend to your thread today, so I will. I understand that you may not want to answer questions asked, and that’s okay. Let see if I can see something in your original post that I didn’t see yesterday:

You wrote regarding your brother, his wife (and perhaps other family members): “I loved them but every time I was around them I was the butt of the jokes. I always left in tears and feeling less than because my brother loved to make fun of me so much”.

For most of your life, you wrote, your beliefs were your family beliefs because you didn’t want to be different from them. When you finally formed your own beliefs which are different from your family’s, most of your family cut you out of their lives.

You are pro choice, they are pro life, you support gay marriage, they oppose gay marriage, you love your family regardless of these beliefs, they (those who cut you out of their lives).. don’t love you regardless of your beliefs. Most of your family cut you out of their lives almost two years ago, and your daily thoughts still “always go back to their rejection”, you still feel the  “raw pain” as a result of their rejection, and you can’t allow yourself to be happy for as long as their rejection stands. You want them to accept you, to take you back into their lives.

You experience a problem with binge eating. Sometimes, when you manage to eat healthily (to not binge), you feel proud, but soon after, you feel “guilty for feeling proud” as you ask yourself: “how can I be proud of myself when I am rejected”? Following that guilt, you binge eat.

In a previous romantic relationship you cheated on a man, and your ex husband repeatedly took advantage of you sexually, if I understand correctly. As a result, you associate sex with guilt and self-hate. When you have great sex with your current husband, you “feel peace, loved, and close to him”, but soon after, you feel guilty and you hate yourself.

“Any advice, book recommendation, anything would be greatly appreciated”- unrequited love is a painful experience at any age, but especially when it happens in childhood: a young child always loves the adults or the older siblings who take care of her, her love for them is unconditional: it doesn’t matter if they are tall or short, or what their personal preferences, feelings and quirks. All that matters is that they love her.  On the other hand, the older siblings or adults in the family are often not satisfied with the young child’s unconditional love. They criticize the child, shame her for what they prefer to not see or hear.. their love is conditional.

I am guessing that when most of your family cut you out of their lives because of your political beliefs formed in adulthood, it was not the first time they rejected you/ cut you out of their lives in one way or another. When a child is rejected by her care takers/ older siblings, it creates a deep emotional pain, which is what you may have meant by “raw pain”.

When that happens in childhood, the child feels ashamed, guilty and angry- angry at those who reject her, and angry at herself for being (so she believes) worthy of their rejection. She tries hard to earn their acceptance in all the little ways available for a child, and when she repeatedly fails, the raw pain solidifies. The hurt child turned hurt adult, tries to soothe the raw pain by eating a lot, or by impulsively doing this or that to make herself feel better, but the pain never heals because of acts and behaviors that long-term, make us feel worse, not better.

There is a poem I like and recommend to you, it’s called Hokusai says, Poem by Roger Keyes.

anita

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