Letters to the Editor
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Love & Respect Thyself
Love & Respect Thyself first and the rest will follow. If it doesn't, well you won't care so much any more.
Oh, no. Absolutely do not cut these adoptive parents off. You may have to work for it, but you deserve their love and their respect, so you need to learn the art of bragging on yourself. I’m not saying in an over-the-top way. Just insert your accomplishments into the conversation. Mention how proud of you your husband is. Throw in a friend’s approval. One side of my own parents’ family is hyper critical and what my brother learned to do (and what I eventually learned to do) was to blow his own horn, talk of his own accomplishments as if they should be proud of what he had done. I learned to do the exact same thing and to build up my Mother and Dad to the family as well, to praise them and put them in a very positive light. Then I heard my hypercritical relatives repeating what I said in the same positive fashion. Yes, this will take time, but it will work. Build yourself and your husband up in your family’s eyes, but in a subtle fashion, just mentioning certain things in passing like it’s not the most important thing in the world to you, just a fact of your life. You don’t care, but you thought that you would mention it to them. I think that both my brother and I came upon this solution after many years of frustration in trying to deal with our very critical family. We also had to teach via this nonchalant matter as if it didn’t matter one way or the other, our own parents not to listen to criticism of us without responding with their own little bragging about even our minimal accomplishments in pride. Understand? We were proud, but it wasn’t any great big thing, just a matter of fact and so they were proud in passing and what we said was so passed on to other members of the family.
Also , let them know you’re busy. Let them know that you’re taking time out from your busy schedule to talk to them and give them the slight guilt trip. Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll have to call you back. Something from work, name whatever, just came up and I will call you back tomorrow. You see, they’re important, but you have a life. Tell them to call you back if they’re the ones doing the calling. I’m sorry, but husband and I are going out right now and I would love to talk, but…you have a life of your own. They’re important, yes, but you know you have a life of your own. They will learn to value your time and eventually learn to respect you. If they start about your weight, read a few articles and go on about how terrible it is that young girls these days have eating disorders from being harped at as children. Talk about the unrealistic standards of the modeling industry and how it subliminally affects everyone due to mass publicity. Talk of those who have died of eating disorders from your Google research and thank God you're not that way you say. You don’t even have to say they harped at you for them to feel guilty if you practice your phrasing.
Accept yourself no matter what your weight, no matter what your perception of your beauty. You are a survivor. You have survived hypercritical parents and on grades (only A’s acceptable) and weight, I am also a survivor. Difference is I knew that my parents actually loved me or I did after awhile and that they were just pushy and one was from a very hypercritical family. It’s like when you want to lose weight and you become so obsessive about it that you can’t lose because it matters too much and the more you think about it, the more likely you are to cheat on a diet and eat even more than you usually do. Once you only semi-care, it’s easier to just slightly alter what you eat and add a little exercise and you start losing. Same thing with your adoptive parents. You just care too much and obsess too much about their opinions. Be a little jaded and learn to respect and love yourself for who and what you are and be a bit aloof from them when you have to communicate with them and they will sense this change and respond accordingly. Took me awhile to learn to do this, but you can do this and you can love & respect yourself whether you gain their approval or not, but chances are you will gain their approval and gradually the way they talk to you and the way they respond to you will change because subtlely and gradually, you have shifted things to your terms and not theirs.
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Drama.
The LW sounds like a drama queen. There are always two sides to a story. Drama queens -- thumbs down.
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Just observe negative message "tapes"
I was deeply moved by your letter and your circumstance. This is a difficult journey, one worth making. It is helpful to have a professional guide, as others have mentioned.
To acquire unconditional self-love, positive self-messages are very helpful. You may also feel tempted to rebut the negative self-messages that you feel/hear internally. This initially helps but only goes so far.
Instead, observe these negative voices as phenomena, without countering or even judging them. Avoid arguing with them. Just see them.
Sort of notice them in a disinterested way. Slow down; be present in the moment. Stay grounded with yourself.
This drains the negative voice of its power.
Eventually this may be externalized to dealing with nasty people in general. This is different from killing with kindness. It is more like fighting fire with water.
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What is love?
As someone who experienced both emotional and physical abuse as a child, I just wanted to add one thing to Cary's spot-on advice. We learn about love from our parents -- how to recognize it, what it feels like, how to inspire it in others and ourselves. We take our cues about relationships from our parents; as far as children are concerned, however their parents treat them is by definition "love".
If they kiss, that's "love". If they slap, that's "love". If they insult, that's "love". If they hug, that's "love". Whatever our parents do to and for us, that becomes our concept of love... and even if we are intellectually aware that physical violence and emotional degradation is not love, we will still seek out the comfortable familiarity of the only love we know. So abused children seek out abusers, even if they are only in our heads, to give us the kind of "love" we were taught was our "inalienable right."
You've escaped the outer trappings of the abuse cycle, but since your husband doesn't despise you, you must despise yourself. You must give yourself that "love" fix, it's the only one that rings true. You worry about the veracity of your husband's love not just because you don't think yourself worthy of it, but because it is not recognizably love to you. And you call your parents to fill this need too.
I wept when I realized just how damaged I really was. That I would never love light-heartedly and with an unguarded heart. That I could never really transcend the abuse; it was a part of me and always would be. Accept that, and you'll empower yourself to change it. I started to think about it as if I had been given a bad data set I couldn't erase from my hard drive without crashing my system. I can't wipe it, but I can add corrective software and compensate as I go. And now I can love myself and others without an underlying sense of despair. It's not an unsullied love, but I think it all the better just the same.
Best of luck to you.