Celebrating Thanksgiving is a bit of a nightmare if some of your relatives have fallen out with each other. You’re forced to choose between different loved ones. And somebody almost inevitably ends up feeling hurt. The healthy thing would be not to get jealous if someone prioritizes their kid over you.
Internet user u/egwenealvere vented to the ‘JUSTNOMIL’ online community about how toxic her mother-in-law got after she chose to go to her own child’s Thanksgiving dinner, instead of visiting her in-laws. Scroll down for the full story and to see what advice the net had for the frustrated author.
Thanksgiving is meant to bring your family together. However, that's not always possible if there are lingering tensions between your relatives
Image credits: YuriArcursPeopleimages / envato (not the actual photo)
A woman asked for advice on dealing with her mother-in-law, who went 'nuclear' after learning that she'd be spending the holidays with different loved ones
Image credits: YuriArcursPeopleimages / envato (not the actual photo)
Things only got worse from there. Here is the author's update
Image credits: egwenealvere
Relatives who continue ignoring your boundaries end up introducing a lot of stress and anxiety into your life
Healthy boundaries are absolutely paramount if you care about your mental and emotional well-being. The clearer your expectations for other people’s behavior, the easier it is for everyone to know when they’ve disrespected you.
But the thing with boundaries is that they are completely powerless if you don’t enforce them. If you’ve asked someone to stop behaving a certain way, warning them that you’ll, for instance, have to spend less time with them, then you have to follow through with that promise.
If, on the other hand, the problematic individual ignores your boundaries and you don’t do what you said you’d do, then they know that your warnings are meaningless. And so, they’ll likely continue disrespecting you.
In truly serious cases, where the other person constantly disrespects you and leaves you feeling drained, you may want to consider cutting them out of your life. Whether permanently or temporarily, it depends on you.
But it would be madness to spend time around someone who continues to erode your confidence and definitely doesn’t have your best interests or well-being at heart.
As ‘Parents’ magazine notes, toxic family members, who demean, hurt, or exploit you, can damage your mental health.
They can contribute to low self-esteem, stress, anxiety, and depression. The irony is that you’re supposed to feel the safest and most secure among your family members. But alas, you don’t choose your relatives. And some of them can be less than friendly.
According to Leslie Halpern, PhD, from Yeshiva University, toxic individuals are typically those who “never hesitate to criticize you or others in their family and tend to blame others for their own life’s problems and unhappiness.”
“Sometimes they can be manipulative and act as though it is your behavior that is harming them or that you are not caring for or showing them enough respect or love and taking care of their own needs,” Halpern told ‘Parents’ magazine.
If you find that your family keeps arguing over the holidays, you should set some ground rules and avoid topics that trigger everyone
Image credits: Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)
Some of the biggest red flags to watch out for, indicating that someone is a toxic individual, are things like:
- Creating unnecessary drama
- Unpredictable behavior
- Lying
- Disrespecting boundaries
- Refusing to take responsibility for one’s own actions
Not all conflicts are unhealthy. However, if you find that your family holidays tend to descend into drama, judgment, and anger, you may want to set some ground rules beforehand.
For example, NPR states that one thing you can do is agree on some basic boundaries before you get together for dinner. You can agree not to touch certain topics that you know from experience are bound to rile everyone up.
The issue isn’t with the sensitive topics themselves, but with how people tend to approach them. If you approach them from a place of curiosity, empathy, open-mindedness, and compassion, you’re likely to have a riveting discussion.
However, if you go into the discussion full of judgment and inflexibility, it’s going to lead to holiday drama. And you shouldn’t be surprised that your loved ones may want to spend less time with you if all you ever do is shout at them.
What’s your perspective, dear Pandas? Have you ever had your family members get upset at you for choosing one group of relatives over another over the holidays?
How would you react if one of your in-laws started insulting you? What would you have done if you were in the frustrated author’s shoes? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Many internet users were horrified by what they read. The author shared more context in the comments of her post
People online shared their reactions and gave the woman some heartfelt advice
