The Pretending Game

[axa]

Beth,

Just read the first post and had to reply before reading any others.  When I was a child everything in my life felt like pretend.  I could not be bothered even thinking about it but when I was 11 years old, i remember the day, the place, I resolved when I grew up I would not pretend anything.  I have lived in this way, sometimes to my cost, there were times when saying nothing would have been more appropriate! but this resolution also got me out of bad places.  It helped me save myself and my soul.  XN wanted more than anything me to pretend everything was ok and normal.......I could not and would not and I got away.

axa

[Hermes]

Hello Gratitude:

Heh heh, you did make me smile.  No matter how caringly you try to help the overweight person see that the overweight is not good for their help, they immediately get uptight.  Of course, in cases of very overweight people, there is some kind of underlying emotional problem at play too.

A friend of mine has a very over-weight daughter.  This girl is about 30 now.  Already her knees are giving trouble because of her weight.  Her mother, my friend, has tried speaking nicely to her about it, and as my friend says: "She nearly cut the nose off me for even broaching the subject".   So now she says nothing.  It is a pity.
I was at their house one day, and the daughter was there too, visiting. We all had a very fine and copious dinner, bI could see that daughter went back over to the cooker and filled up with yet more potatoes and whatever. 
Afterwards, there was coffee, and a lovely cake.  One piece of it was more than enough for the rest of us, including the men at the table.  As we chatted I noticed daughter going over to the kitchen counter, and getting herself another huge slice of the cake.  There was no way she could have been hungry after all the food she already had.
She has been to an endocrinologist who found there was no imbalance or any other metabolic problem (she had been hoping to hear there was!). 
What can you say to someone like that?!

All the best
Hermes

[gratitude28]

Hermes,
Like with any addicted person, you hope that they will come to their senses and see that they are hurting themselves. I think that any person deliberately hurting him/herself has to stop and look for the true root of the problem.
Love, Beth

[gratitude28]

I wanted to add here that I was guilty of this for a LONG time. I used to judge people by my 'intention.' In other words, they could be doing exactly what I did, and I would judge them for doing the thing. Now that I am in a Live and Let Live frame... I do better with other people's choices. I do not feel responsible. I have learned a child's lesson as an adult - worry about yourself!! LOL. I am teaching myself the lessons I teach my kids, since I didn't have them.
Love, Beth

[Certain Hope]

I wanted to add here that I was guilty of this for a LONG time. I used to judge people by my 'intention.' In other words, they could be doing exactly what I did, and I would judge them for doing the thing. Now that I am in a Live and Let Live frame... I do better with other people's choices. I do not feel responsible. I have learned a child's lesson as an adult - worry about yourself!! LOL. I am teaching myself the lessons I teach my kids, since I didn't have them.
Love, Beth

Dear Beth,

Yes! And there's such a sense of liberation about this approach... and the glow of good health!
I think you're a great teacher.
((((((((Beth))))))))))

Love,
Carolyn

[Violet]

Hello Gratitude:

Heh heh, you did make me smile.  No matter how caringly you try to help the overweight person see that the overweight is not good for their help, they immediately get uptight.  Of course, in cases of very overweight people, there is some kind of underlying emotional problem at play too.

A friend of mine has a very over-weight daughter.  This girl is about 30 now.  Already her knees are giving trouble because of her weight.  Her mother, my friend, has tried speaking nicely to her about it, and as my friend says: "She nearly cut the nose off me for even broaching the subject".   So now she says nothing.  It is a pity.
I was at their house one day, and the daughter was there too, visiting. We all had a very fine and copious dinner, bI could see that daughter went back over to the cooker and filled up with yet more potatoes and whatever. 
Afterwards, there was coffee, and a lovely cake.  One piece of it was more than enough for the rest of us, including the men at the table.  As we chatted I noticed daughter going over to the kitchen counter, and getting herself another huge slice of the cake.  There was no way she could have been hungry after all the food she already had.
She has been to an endocrinologist who found there was no imbalance or any other metabolic problem (she had been hoping to hear there was!). 
What can you say to someone like that?!

All the best
Hermes

I agree issues of overweight are often based in emotional problems.  As someone who has yo-yo dieted for 20 years, I am often puzzled by why I engage in self-sabotage and always regain the weight.  Having become aware of NPD has made me even more curious recently.  My mom, in her 80s, is anorexic.  She and my other 2 sisters are all skinny, narcissistic control freaks who probably have OCD as well.  My mother's only sibling, her younger sister, my aunt and I got quite close by telephone for about 4 years before she died.  (We lived in different states).  I am so happy I had a chance to talk with her at length and learn about the patterns of my Nmom's FOO.  My aunt shocked me by telling me her mother "absolutely hated" her and tried to kill her, this conversation was the beginning of our getting close and building a relationship.  Some of the puzzle pieces began to fall into place!  My Nmom grew up in a family where her own mom LOVED her (daughter number 1) and despised my aunt (daughter number 2).  Guess what, my mom doted on my older sis, number 1, and despised me, number 2.  My aunt struggled to lose weight her entire life, unsuccessfully.  I can remember years of observing my mother's snide, cruel, smug, self-aggrandizing, destructive, proud, off-hand and not so off-hand comments and comparisons about their differences in weight.  My mom has been doing the same thing to me for years.  It is like somehow, with regard to my overweight, I have my mom's voice inside me.  Either I do not believe at my core that I can successfully be thin or I believe at my core I don't deserve to be, not sure.  I just know that I finally see the truth that my overweight is very much Nsupply for my Nmother.  I do not know if I will ever be able to get control of my weight for the sake of doing it for me or deserving it for me.  I feel trapped in the body she has created for me.  I wear my failure as a daughter on my frame, as a fat suit, every day of my life....
Violet

[Violet]

A friend of mine has a very over-weight daughter.......
 
I was at their house one day, and the daughter was there too, visiting. We all had a very fine and copious dinner, bI could see that daughter went back over to the cooker and filled up with yet more potatoes and whatever. 
Afterwards, there was coffee, and a lovely cake.  One piece of it was more than enough for the rest of us, including the men at the table.  As we chatted I noticed daughter going over to the kitchen counter, and getting herself another huge slice of the cake.  There was no way she could have been hungry after all the food she already had.

Hermes

I wonder if she truly is hungry for something deep inside herself, like acceptance from others and herself for being a real person in spite of her weight, a real person who cries, bleeds, thinks, feels, rages, hurts, wants, etc., just like all the thin people.  Maybe she knows she is doomed to be rejected so just uses food to comfort herself in a very visceral way.  It is a mighty powerful comfort, BTW.  Maybe she was left in her crib hours and hours, day by day, when she was hungry, wet or lonely and is still trying to feed that little sad baby inside....  Just some thoughts.....  Violet

[Leah]

A friend of mine has a very over-weight daughter.......
 
I was at their house one day, and the daughter was there too, visiting. We all had a very fine and copious dinner, bI could see that daughter went back over to the cooker and filled up with yet more potatoes and whatever. 
Afterwards, there was coffee, and a lovely cake.  One piece of it was more than enough for the rest of us, including the men at the table.  As we chatted I noticed daughter going over to the kitchen counter, and getting herself another huge slice of the cake.  There was no way she could have been hungry after all the food she already had.

Hermes

I wonder if she truly is hungry for something deep inside herself, like acceptance from others and herself for being a real person in spite of her weight, a real person who cries, bleeds, thinks, feels, rages, hurts, wants, etc., just like all the thin people.  Maybe she knows she is doomed to be rejected so just uses food to comfort herself in a very visceral way.  It is a mighty powerful comfort, BTW.  Maybe she was left in her crib hours and hours, day by day, when she was hungry, wet or lonely and is still trying to feed that little sad baby inside....  Just some thoughts.....  Violet

Violet, you have clearly conveyed, my very thoughts.  Leah

[Hopalong]

I've never known a single overweight person who "needed" another person to tell them, you need to lose weight.

Not one.

Hops

[Hermes]

Gosh.  My post got lost in cyber-space!

My friend's daughter got married a couple of years back, to a very nice guy, and she works herself outside the home, quite long hours in fact.
I am pretty sure her parents were good to her as a baby and as a child.  In fact she was a very slim child, did swimming at competition level, very active.

However, I remember her mother did once say to me that her daughter told her she started to put on weight after she broke up with a man she had been dating for quite a while.  She went abroad to work at that time, and said she started to gain weight then.
 That could be it, I suppose.

Then again, she met her present husband, quite a number of years back, and as I say, they married two or three years ago.  She desperately wanted to lose weight for her wedding day, but was unable to do so.  So, it is difficult to know where the problem lies.

All the best
Hermes