Fitting In Is Overrated by Leonard Felder

Author:Leonard Felder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Sterling
Published: 2011-12-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Finding Peace with Your Family

A few years ago I was on a national media tour for my book When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People. At a television station in a major city, I was scheduled to be interviewed by the very well-liked host of a popular talk show. A few minutes before the show was to start, the host, an elegantly dressed woman with perfect makeup and impeccable hair, walked quickly onto the set where I was seated by myself.

She leaned close to me and said in a low voice, “Dr. Felder, I don’t want to talk about this during the interview. But I do want to hear from you offcamera what I should do about my family situation. My parents and my two older siblings still treat me horribly. Every year at family get-togethers, I go through the motions and try to pretend nothing is wrong. I’ve always been the outcast in my family—the only one with liberal views and the only one who isn’t married and who doesn’t have two-point-eight kids. No matter how much I accomplish in life, they still treat me like I’m a disappointment in their eyes. What can I do to improve the way I’m treated by my own flesh and blood?”

For a moment, there was genuine sadness in her eyes. Then she quickly put on her lapel microphone and got back into character as the award-winning TV journalist everyone expected her to be. But I was struck once again by this glimpse of a widespread reality: no matter how much we accomplish as adults, we still often feel estranged from certain family members who judge us harshly.

When the on-camera interview was done, I stayed around until the entire program was over and then spoke with the host for almost an hour. Like many other intelligent men and women who seem on the surface to be competent and functioning well, she was secretly torn apart inside from the coldness and criticism she received from her closest relatives. I remember vividly the look on her face as she asked me, “Will it ever get better? Will I ever be able to spend time with my own family and not feel so painfully alone?”

When Did It Start for You?

After years of researching this topic, I can safely say that in our society, there are tens of millions of men and women like this talk-show host—good and decent individuals who carry deep invisible scars from feeling isolated while growing up in families that refused to accept their differences or recognize that being different might be a positive attribute. This lonely feeling that you’re a fish out of water in your own family can be a recurring problem that tugs at your shaky sense of well-being year after year. No matter how far you move away from your relatives or how infrequently you see them face-to-face, you may still worry, “Maybe there’s something wrong with who I am.”

If you feel emotionally distant from judgmental or harsh

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