Dear Amy: I recently decided to move in with my mother and younger sister again for the rest of the pandemic.
The problem is that I think extremely unfriendly things about it, because both are overweight.
I think I almost obsessively think about how rude I find their bodies and feel angry about how they eat and their unhealthy lifestyle.
Maybe something of this comes from the fact that I was nervous about my own weight – even more so during the pandemic.
Do you have any advice on how to be friendlier and less judgmental?
How can you get space from average, biased thought patterns? I do not want to be like that.
I have a therapist, but I think I was too ashamed to be honest about how ugly my internal monologue is because I’m disgusted by it.
– Secret average girl
Dear average girl: I acknowledge that you acknowledge that your harsh judgment of others affects your own self-esteem.
If you come from a family where people eat their feelings compulsively (have been there, have eaten it), you cause you to be at home, your own fear of disordered eating.
Sometimes our strictest judgment of others will reveal our own vulnerabilities.
It may seem a bit out there, but I believe you and your family members are all struggling with a concept commonly defined as ‘self-love’. They caress and punish themselves by overeating. You punish yourself by hating your own attitude.
Look at the concept of ‘radical acceptance’. If you learn to truly accept a situation or person while being exposed to their faults and shortcomings, it will set you free.
I consider it learning to love people “… anyway.”
Tell your therapist! Exposing the thing you hate to yourself is how you will begin to heal.
Amy Dickinson, author of the column ‘Ask Amy’.TNS
Dear Amy: About five years ago, my mother gave each of her four daughters something from her home, in preparation for a move.
I received the family silver because my surname matches the engraving. My two younger sisters got small trinkets and family heirlooms.
The problem is with our older sister, who received all the photo albums.
There are about eight of them, one dedicated to each of the daughters, family members, our parents and ancestors.
Amy, this is my past!
Our sister will not share these photos. She will not bring them to family functions. She will not scan it and make copies.
She does not even want to admit that they exist.
The rest of us kept asking her. We offered to buy new photo albums to replace when the pictures fall outside the original albums. She says they were given to her and nothing can be done about it.
My mother tried to reason with her, but she would not move.
My father tried to reason with her before he passed away. Well, my kids now do not know any of their grandparents, great-grandparents or great-grandparents because of my older sister.
How can I show her what she did to my family?
– Seer in Ohio
Dear hurt: your question is pretty common: if you distribute heirlooms, one brother or sister ends up with the whole collection of family photos; if they do not share it, it can create a generation – or more – of hard feelings.
This can be avoided if elders do not consider family photos as a single item, such as a transferred cipherphore – to leave to one child. Photos must be distributed among descendants, who can then share – or trade with each other. This way, even if one sibling refused to show or share their stock photos, other photos would still be in the family.
I think it’s possible – or likely – that your sister is deliberately hurting you and your other sisters. Could it be that you get all the silver?
You and your sisters can offer to “exchange” different items that you got for accessing photos.
Otherwise, these photos were given to her, and I do not think you used much to force her to share them.
Dear Amy: Wow, you really woke up on the wrong side of the bong with your idiotic response to ‘Smoked Out’, the housewife who did not like her husband’s daily pot-smoking habit.
You described this man as “always more or less baked.” This is untrue!
– You’re wrong
Dear wrong: if someone smoked on and off all day (as this man did), it goes without saying that the consequences would remain in his system. Otherwise, why smoke at all?
(You can email Amy Dickinson to [email protected] or send a letter to Ask Amy, PO Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy of Facebook.)
© 2020 Amy Dickinson. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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