How to deal with the next few days

Discussion in 'Help with Life' started by Scarred Nobody, Jan 19, 2017.

  1. Scarred Nobody Where is the justice?

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    I wanna keep this as short as I possibly could, mostly because going into the full story would involve going deeper into some family drama I'm not comfortable making public right now. I also don't wish for this to become a political thread; while politics are involved, that's not the real purpose of my posting here.

    My immediate family is made up of Trump supporters, very loud and boastful ones at that. And with the inauguration being tomorrow, I'm sure things are not going to be too pleasant for me. I have been anti-Trump since the beginning, and they are well aware of that. My siblings, especially my 22 year old sister, love to torment me because I don't follow their politics.

    Since I help out at my family's restaurant, and I have no scheduled classes tomorrow, I plan to silently protest by ignoring it completely. While there are television sets in the restaurant, I can easily put on some headphones and tune out the whole thing.

    However, I'm sure that my sister will try to say things to provoke me and to make it look like I'm unhinged. She's been doing it for a long time now, sometimes where I can hold it in while other times I lash out. It's an atmosphere that is just complete garbage and I'm not looking forward to dealing with it.

    This entire situation has been going on for several months now and it's made me depressed. Do you guys have any advice on how to deal with behavior like this, not just for tomorrow, but for the future?
     
  2. Karuta Reborn

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    If there's one thing I know well, it's that not having the same politics as your family can be a really ****** experience. Somewhere around the start of 2015, I had a pretty significant political awakening that was a surprise to both myself and my family. Prior to this happening, I had never taken any kind of interest in politics and usually just went with whatever was deemed acceptable and left it at that.

    When my politics began to change I started to notice just how much I disagreed with with some of the sentiments that my family held. For a long time I didn't have the guts to say anything and just let every little thing they said or did eat at me, and I eventually became pretty depressed. This depression and frustration built up to a point where I lashed out pretty significantly in a way that I'm not exactly proud of, causing a long period of tension and awkwardness between me and a family member.

    Things sort of worked themselves out after some time had passed, but there was still a lot of apprehension in any context where something could lead to a similar disagreement. It was at this point that I approached my family in a somewhat serious manner and said something along the lines of "my politics & ideology are very personal & important to me, but it is clear that they are very incompatible with your own, so I think that its best that we keep these things to ourselves as best we can and don't try to involve each other in anything that can lead to serious conflicts".

    It was met with a general acceptance and things since then have been kind somewhat better. I've accepted that I will likely never be in any way politically compatible with my family, and I've built other groups of friends and acquaintances that I'm more compatible with to discuss politics with.

    tl;dr, I think the best thing you can do is approach your family honestly, tell them that your politics are important to you and they won't change you, and that what they're doing may end up harming the relationship you have as a family, and that you would appreciate it if they could stop, etc.