Don’t Take It Personally!

Eating the Leftovers

Family mealtimes serve up an array of experiences in taking things personally. Mealtimes in some families are like being at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, where interactions are surreal, confusing, and full of put-downs.

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: “No room! No room!” they cried out when they saw Alice coming.

“There’s plenty of room,” said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large armchair at one end of the table.

“Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all around the table but there was nothing on it but tea. “I don’t see any wine,” she remarked.

“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.

… “Your hair wants cutting,” said the Hatter …”

“You should learn not to make personal remarks,” Alice said with some severity: “it’s very rude.”

“The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this: but all he said was, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

Mealtimes are a microcosm of family interactions, similar to describing the details of one slice of a pie and generalizing to the rest. Recalling family dinner-table happenings can offer you a vivid picture of what it was like growing up. I often ask clients and workshop participants to draw a sketch of their family at the dinner table. Then I ask specific questions such as, “Who was there? Who talked to who? What were the rules?” It takes only a few minutes of doing the exercise to get the flavor of what the mealtime experience was like. This leads to a taste of what life was like growing up in that family. If you want to try your own drawing, you’ll find more information about it at the end of this chapter.

Because the messages we take on about ourselves at the dinner table have such a powerful effect on our lives and relationships, the mealtime sketch is a fascinating activity for couples to do together in a therapy session. Discussing their individual childhood dinner table experiences, provides an important key to clearing up confusion and misunderstandings in their relationship.

When I suggested the drawings to William and Betsy, William looked confused. “We didn’t have a table,” he said. “We were too poor. We just grabbed some food from the pot on the stove and sat around on the floor or wherever. We hardly ever ate at the same time or in the same room. We fended for ourselves. I usually read a book while I ate.”

Betsy stared at him in amazement. She’d known William seven years, but she’d just learned something new about his childhood. Only a few minutes ago she was complaining how chaotic their mealtimes were, how William was always reading a book or getting up from the table every few minutes. Sometimes he didn’t show up for dinner at all. Now, as he related his childhood mealtime experiences, she began to understand how difficult it was for him to just sit still and eat.

“Sit still and eat” was an unbreakable rule when Betsy was growing up. Her father made rigid rules for behavior at the table. One rule was that everyone must show up to family dinners—no one was allowed to make other plans. So Betsy always assumed that people who live together eat meals together. Was it any wonder she got so upset when William brought a book to the table to read? She wanted to talk to him during dinner and felt rejected when he seemed to prefer the book to her. She needed William to be present at the table, and he wasn’t able to do that because he had never learned how to sit at a dinner table.

I know a woman who also grew up with a lot of dinnertime rules, and they were constantly recited to her at the table. In her family the daily message from her mother was, “Sit up straight and eat.” From her father the message was, “Shut up and eat.” Her brother, taking them at their word to “Eat everything on your plate,” would eat the gristle, then noisily spit it out on his plate. Everyone ignored him. These days she prefers to eat alone, reading a book in peace and quiet. Is it any wonder?

Pass the Rejection, Please

From early childhood, Tess developed her own style in clothing, favoring bright colors and mix-and-match patterns. But her father would try to squelch her idiosyncratic fashion statements by bellowing, “Don’t you dare come to the table dressed like that.” Tess remembers sadly, “He’d try to shame me into compliance. I couldn’t be who I really was.”

One man would get up from the table with an upset stomach and have to spit up in the bathroom. His wife would tell herself that the meal she cooked wasn’t good enough—an old childhood message to be sure. Even when his problem was diagnosed as an ulcer, she still took it personally, believing that it was her fault. In couples therapy, he recalled how the mealtimes of his childhood were nerve-racking. He lived in fear that his critical and often mean-spirited father would drink too much again and humiliate him and that his mother wouldn’t protect him from these abuses. The dinner table was not a safe place for him and the knot of fear in the pit of his stomach followed him into his marriage.

In some families there was a demand by the adults for total respect from the children at mealtimes, yet these children didn’t have the opportunity to develop respect and trust for themselves. How can you trust yourself if your father leans over and salts your food until you’re sixteen years old? Or if your mother cuts up your food when you can do it yourself or heaps your plate with second helpings without asking you first—then gets on your case if you don’t eat it all? Or if one of your parents orders food for you in a restaurant without honoring your preferences? Or if you’re repeatedly tricked by your mother at the ice cream parlor? What if your mother asked, “What flavor do you want?” If you hesitated she’d belittle you for not being able to make up your mind. When you finally stammered “Strawberry,” she’d say, “No, you don’t. I’m buying you vanilla.”

How can children who experience these kinds of invalidations learn to trust or respect themselves? One woman’s mother takes over in the kitchen whenever she is invited to the daughter’s house for dinner. And her daughter’s feelings get hurt every time. The mother even brings her own salad dressing, because she doesn’t like the one her daughter makes.

“I hated to go to restaurants with my parents because I didn’t get to order what I wanted from the menu,” remembers one man. “My mother wanted to sample everyone’s food and taste three different menu items so she insisted my father and I each order something different from what she ordered. It didn’t make any difference if I wanted to order the same thing she did. I felt like my own wants didn’t count at all, that I was always getting someone’s tablescraps.”

To this day, he doesn’t order his own plate of food in restaurants. He samples from the plates of his wife and children. You could say he eats the “leftovers.” And in other areas of his life, he re-creates those childhood mealtime experiences by “tasting around the plate.” So it’s not too surprising that he had four different majors in college, or that he starts up new business enterprises one after another. “I like to have a finger in every pie,” he says.

Eating Away at the Pain

One woman recalls, “My mother was a schoolteacher and would make lunch for herself every morning and rush off to work. But she hardly ever made lunches for me or my sister to take to school. So I’d “borrow” bits and pieces of lunches from the other children. She’d tell herself she couldn’t be worth much because Mommy didn’t care enough to make her a sandwich. And as she grew into adulthood, she continued to tell herself, “I’m not worth much,” as she stuffed herself with bits and pieces of food. Food has come to symbolize love, and overeating is her way of comforting herself.

Phillip’s mother was usually zonked on prescription drugs. She rarely cooked dinner, so he had to fend for himself. Over the years he fixed himself a lot of peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. Once in a while the family ate meals in the same room, but never at the same time. He began to use food to transport himself to a more secure world. He still uses eating as an escape, the same way he uses TV or reading.

Angela and her mother and sisters were forced to sit at the table quietly while the father ranted and raved about how inadequate each of them was. He would go around the table and tell each of them in turn how fat and unattractive they were. While he spoke, they’d lower their heads, avert their eyes, and keep on eating, stuffing themselves with food in an attempt to cushion the verbal blows.

Eating as an escape, eating as a way to comfort ourselves, eating as a way to pad and protect ourselves, eating as a way to manage feelings—all of these behaviors came out of the messages we received about food and mealtimes when we were young. Some of these messages translated into how we came to see our emotional selves and caused low self-esteem. Other messages translated into how we see our physical selves and caused body-image distortions. When an adolescent girl looks in the mirror and sees her whole body as overweight because her thighs are large or her calves are a little thick, or her upper arms are muscular, the distortion isn’t in the glass, it’s in the eye of the beholder.

Often we see ourselves as fat, large, or ungainly because someone else saw us that way. When messages about weight are thrown at children who don’t seem to have a weight problem, it’s a safe guess that one or both of the parents are concerned about their own weight, can’t acknowledge the degree of their anxiety, and project their fears onto one or more of their children. Examples of this dynamic are seen in mealtime messages such as, “Don’t eat so fast, you’re eating like a pig and you’ll turn into one,” or “If you take another helping you’ll get fat.” Then they put that pie or cake right in the middle of the table. It looks so tempting, and it’s okay for everyone else to dive right in—except of course for the child who might “get too fat.” It can be very confusing when parents send mixed messages like these.

Sometimes parents’ anxiety about their own weight is transferred to their children in other ways as well. Maryann’s mother was always dieting “to lose five or ten pounds” and complaining often about how fat she was. She used to tell Maryann, “It wouldn’t hurt for you to lose a few pounds as well.”

Whenever they went shopping for school clothes together, Maryann’s mother bought her everything in a size too small as an inducement to lose weight. For years Maryann has dieted in an attempt to take off a few pounds, but seems to gain the weight back all too quickly. She doesn’t believe her friends when they tell her she looks fine, and was shocked when an aunt told her recently that she was never a fat child, in fact, she was “pretty normal.”

Although I’m barely touching on food issues and body image here, it seems a chapter on mealtime messages warrants this small side trip to explore how these issues affect taking things personally. But there’s a lot more to say about these issues. For further information on food, weight, and body image, see the notes for this chapter.

Mealtime Sketches

Although Lyle was comfortable enough at restaurants or large parties, he couldn’t understand why he was so miserable at small dinner parties (whether they were at the homes of friends or in his own home). He’d clam up and find himself thinking, “There’s something wrong with me, I’m not doing it right.” “Right” meant the way his dad would do it. Lyle, of course, was comparing himself to his father, who was the perfect host, a sparkling conversationalist. “He was so entertaining, the focus of everyone’s attention—I just can’t be like that, as hard as I try.”

When we drew Lyle’s dinner table he didn’t draw one table, he drew two. First, he drew the kitchen table where the family usually ate dinner. “It was a round table where Dad was the boss but not the star. At that table there was more equality and I knew where my place was.” Next, Lyle drew the rectangular dining-room table where the family sat with relatives or other guests. “This is where my dad would shine. He’d sit at the head of the table and hold court. And from the time I turned thirteen, my place was across from Dad—I was expected to be the ‘other head’ of the table. It was awful. I felt I was in a glass container, wanting to participate but not knowing how. It was like being there and not being there at the same time. I knew I was expected to speak up but I was afraid to say anything for fear of embarrassing Mom and Dad. Once I managed to work up the courage to make a funny comment. I was proud of myself because I thought I was doing what was expected of me, but Mom considered it off-color and slapped me in front of my cousins. I was so shocked and humiliated, I can still feel my skin burning where her hand struck my face.

“I never knew what to do, it was all so confusing, so I just gave up and clammed up.” At that moment Lyle made the connection between then and now: “That’s exactly what I do now at small dinner parties,” he said. “I clam up.” Lyle’s challenge, now that he recognized the source of his problem, is to make a comfortable place for himself at the table. He’s been experimenting.

Kaye also drew two dinner tables. But hers were of the “before Dad” and “after Dad” variety. “I drew one dinner table for before my alcoholic father left home, and one for after. Mealtimes were so different once he left because I no longer had to hold my breath.” Kaye’s mealtime anxiety had stayed with her through the years until she was able to locate the source of her distress. Now she can remind herself that her father is no longer in the picture, she can relax.

When I was growing up, dinnertimes were so awful,” remembers one man. “We all waited for my father to explode. What would set him off this time? Even if he made a sudden move to reach for the salt, we’d all duck. My mom might just as well have been serving tension for dinner—it was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. I knew if I tried hard enough, something I’d say or do would set him off, so I’d clown around and sure enough, he’d rage at me. Then we could all breathe a sigh of relief and go on with our meal in peace. Mealtimes continue to create tension for me. Even talking about it makes me feel sick to my stomach.”

Mealtime messages affect many of us at a visceral level. Perhaps it’s because with each bite of food we also ingested toxic messages. If your childhood mealtime experiences are still leaving knots in your stomach, acid in your esophagus, or a burn in your heart, here are some ways to deal with these residual effects:

• Identify the body sensation. Is it a tightening? A pressure? Knotting? Heaviness? Where is it located in your body? What else do you know about this feeling? Can you give it a shape, texture, temperature, color?

• Establish the original context. What was the atmosphere? What was said? Who said it? How old were you? Did you feel exposed or did someone try to protect you? Did you try to protect someone else?

• Sympathize with the child who had those upsetting experiences, but remind yourself that you’re an adult now, and the person who said or did those things can no longer hurt you.

• Find a way to rewrite your earlier experience. The mealtime drawing exercise is one way of doing this.

If you want to try your hand at drawing your dinner table, it’s fine to use stick figures. Place your family around the table, and include yourself as well. Draw a large enough table to accommodate everybody. Now take a moment to visualize what it was like to be at that table. Do you remember where you sat? Who sat next to you? Did people talk to each other? What did they talk about? Who talked to whom? Who did you talk to? Who talked to you? Is there anything you’d like to say now to anyone there? Ask yourself what the mealtime rules were. Who made those rules? Who followed the rules and who didn’t? Who pretended to follow the rules? Who got caught? What were the consequences?

Now return to the image of what it was like to be at that table. Give yourself plenty of time to reexperience the full range of feelings that may arise. As you think about being there, what do you feel in your body? Where do you feel it? Notice your breathing. What is it like?

Now ask yourself if there is anything you’d like to say to anyone there. To whom? What might that be? Can you say it now to the figure in your drawing?

If you could add leaves to the table to make it bigger, is there anybody you’d like to add to the table? Who? Why? If you could remove place settings, who would you like to take away? Why? Can you imagine the person or people gone? Now that they are absent from the table, does your body feel any differently? Are you breathing any differently? What else would it take to make a comfortable place for yourself at the table?

Mealtime Revisited

What happens if you’ve moved away from your family and you’re expected to go home again for a family visit or reunion? You might find yourself sitting at the same table with the people who made you feel uncomfortable as a child. Contemplating a trip home is a high-anxiety time for many people. Going home again can awaken long-submerged feelings. No matter what your age now, or how long you’ve been away, all it takes is a few minutes with your family to trigger childhood feelings, apprehensions, and misgivings. Putting words to these fears is a good first step. Then there are ways to be creative about planning the trip, keeping your boundaries clean and clear (see chapter 11), and staying in control of the situation. Here are some suggestions:

• Plan to go for just a few days even though everyone else may be staying longer.

• Try not to depend on your family. If possible, stay with an old friend, a sibling you get along with, or even consider renting a motel room.

• If you do stay with your family, consider renting your own car for at least part of the visit.

• Plan to a take a breather and get away. Take long walks, go on a day trip, or visit old friends.

• If you’ve been involved in any kind of twelve-step program, find a meeting in your hometown. It will be familiar to you and will help you to feel more centered.

• Even if you’ve never been in therapy, consider going for a few sessions before your trip to identify both your fears of and your goals for the visit.

• Don’t even think of confronting any family members about old issues without having a clear idea of “cake” and “icing” (remember this concept from chapter 4?). A therapy session is a great place to practice what you want to say.

• Most importantly, find a way to physically leave if you’re too uncomfortable to stay. As a child, you felt you couldn’t leave. You were stuck at that table, or in that house. As an adult, know that you can leave and give yourself permission to utilize that option.

You know you’ve turned a corner when you can recognize options. Read on to see more possible sources of rejection messages and how to get beyond them to a place loaded with options.