Am I shallow preferring strangers to family.

[CityPressure]

I think I need some sort of emotional antihistamine, every family member is just irritating me at the moment.
May be I'm too old, carrying too much history to react in an appropriate way. From the in-law group chat to my mum ringing up, everyone is just an emotional vampire. I have all the back stories, all the facts and I have run out of fucks to give. I'm bored of the lot of them and MIL's cheery 'we'll all muck in' just made me roll my eyes after thirty years of back story.

I don't think I'm depressed, I've just done a month's work with groups of different strangers and aside from one obvious pompous arse, I found the good and the entertaining in all. Came back all happy and excited and motivated. Three days at home and I'm back to carrying the weight of the world.

Any ideas, am I just shallow happier dipping into superficial interactions or have I just run out of fucks for normal family non-drama.

Christ this sounds perfectly normal to me.

Im lucky. My extended family are all dead or miles and miles away.

It's much easier to interact with strangers than family, I find, especially if there is any heightened emotion involved. It's quite odd, really.

What is it that family members are asking you to ‘carry’ that strangers don’t?

I was just thinking how much my dad was like this. He always preferred non family, projecting all sorts of good qualities onto acquaintances and strangers and being quite rejecting to us. I actually thought the fault lay with him, he was quite an emotionally stunted man.

But maybe you are really unlucky with a dreadful family

I wonder OP if you are the default coper in your family, the one that people go to when they are struggling, or to dump their emotional problems on? Many of us have a sort of role assigned to us in our family, or that we take on and it kind of sticks.

In that case, the dynamic is likely set over many years, and maybe you have woken up and realised it doesn't suit you anymore (a lot of women realise this in menopause and become less people pleasers)...but to them you are still the same person in the same role and they have the same expectations of you.

Spending time with others, just being able to be you without those expectations has maybe made you realise the dynamic and it bothers you.

If this is the case, your best bet is to put in place more boundaries with your family - don't be so available, don't just say yes to everything, just become more self serving. They will eventually learn you are not going to be lumped with everything.

I could be emotionally stunted @fiskalina or maybe emotionally suppressed. My mum and brother are locked in an age old battle of 'look at me' my dad barely got a look in at his own funeral. Information is just a relentless put down of others.

The in-laws have a different dynamic of stiff upper lip, mustn't grumble, it's all very polite. You have to piece together major health problems after the event. Everything is perfect and you find out it wasn't at all but the solution is now perfect. It's stressful in a different way

And I'm trying to support to detach from a homesick uni student.

But I was initially going to sum them all up with ''normal' 😁

Sounds like mobile phone syndrome.

There was a time when we didn't have family groups and constant updates from/about everyone.

Oh for simpler days 😁

I think your family can get under your skin in a very unique way, with strangers/vague acquaintances you don’t have any shared history or pre-existing memories/opinions/feelings in the way you do with family, paired with established dynamics and other complex feelings.

Plus you tend to be on your ‘best behaviour’ with colleagues or people you work with, only talking about surface stuff and being generally quite mild. Much easier to navigate than family!

You’re overwhelmed with absorbing the perceived needs and issues of others. As women/mothers it’s often our default setting: shouldering it all. But decades of it takes its toll. I love the bright exchanges with people I am not close to, like colleagues. They’re restorative. But I know it’s my responsibility to manage how much energy I spend on family/close people - it’s not easy though I know.

This is a sign to you to detach from people who drain you. Not necessarily NC, just start to whittle away at your habits with regards to how you connect to them. Carve out some space.