Hate In The Family

Concealed inside walls, a life of conflict and knives waiting to stab backs, this is a family reality. After church on Sunday, when people go back home, things turn from appearing to have it all together outside to in-house fighting. There are sides taken and labels given. The black sheep, white sheep debacle, is deeper than just how some people In the household behave, how one member does not live up to family expectations and how the other makes it in life. The source of all things is the reality that no matter where you are or who you are deadly sins can get to you, and if you can defeat them they will come at you using your family, there are no limits as to how low the negative side of life is willing to go, you need to remove any elements of being naïve and handle your business as best as you can in order to live the life you need to live to be happy.

There are things in this world that move in shadows and felt deeply, we cannot explain greed yet it exists, we wage wars against drugs for years yet they still exist. That is why it should concur in your mind that certain things can influence certain behaviors even from the people you love, the people who are meant to love you unconditionally, protect from the shadows, we have all found ourselves in a corner asking ourselves why someone who shares the same DNA as you can do something to hurt you.

Jealousy is one of the misunderstood emotions, the most common understanding is that whenever someone does not wish you well, they are jealous I’m certain many of us have been accused of being jealous, simply because you did not hand someone a compliment yet In truth it comes from the places and spaces we share with people very close and seemingly loving to us, the people who share the same demographic as us, for example when a black woman becomes very successful coming from a poor neighborhood black women who also come from that poor neighborhood could experience some jealousy. Because it standardizes scenarios and gives an analysis that asks the question why her and not me? Hence the easiest place where jealousy can find a home is in a family, amongst family members, because family is a simpler standard of familiarity, it is where all things are standardized and a similar pattern of life is most expected. But how do we see that someone is jealous because in all honesty to wake up after a fight and assume that someone is jealous because this other morning when you woke up they did not greet you, not every behavior and action can be dissolved into jealousy, even the most, unreasonable!

The most primary suspicion that you could raise is when you discover that a family member discredits you to other members or sometimes friends and in-laws, this could be subtle like them seemingly joking about a mistake you once made or blatant where they accuse you of negligence or any action you are not conscious of, now you might have had incidences that raise their brows, but you should be mostly suspicious when you have not done anything they are accusing you of, more especially look out when these things are happening and the person that is doing them is hoping that you do not find out.

If a family member has a pattern of questioning your success, example If you just graduated from university and they play down your success by saying things like at least you had people supporting you so you could graduate, or put it to you that you wouldn’t have been able to do this had it not been that your mother has money etc. then yes that is pure jealousy.

Then there is envy, although it is seemingly harmless, there are people that do questionable things because they envy you. You know the feeling when you wear a dress then someone comes and wears the same dress, only better! Envy has a reputation of ensuring that people do the same things you have done, it can be cute, but It has a dangerous side to it especially amongst family members. It would not be fair to assume again that just because someone bought something that you bought then they envy you, but there are sure signs that will tell you that a family member envies you, when you buy a car and they do so immediately, when you buy a house and they do so immediately, when you notice a pattern that someone is doing things immediately after you do them, so at to suggest that they are waiting on you to them so that they follow and do the same thing then yes the envy has taken place, it can be awkward for you whenever you have to be around such a person and influence you to place some distance which can then make them assume that you are not being nice, because tone and actions speak louder than words.

What is more difficult is when you are trying to establish a path of your own, and in the process the person is constantly asking you what are you up to, how far you are in what you are doing and how you are doing it, this disclosure can make you feel a bit uncomfortable even if that person is family.

The other thing that makes family members grow a resentment amongst each other is insecurity, I have come to understand that each and every person has a button that if pressed it can reveal thoughts and actions no one, not even their parents knew it existed, this the deep fear that people have. There are scenarios whereas some members of the family might experience the death of a loved one, and develop a fear of losing people, the most common one is when siblings assume that one is more appreciated than the other, then the one that feels less appreciated develops an insecurity that they grow with and somehow feel the need to always prove themselves and try to outshine others, basically they live their lives proving points. Yet when this manifest itself into a rivalry, you see one always trying to outshine the other and finding gross joy in being celebrated no matter the cost.

For you to tell if you raise an insecurity in someone in the family, you have to analyze how they bring themselves into the spotlight, what is it that they want to be known and respected for in the family or life in general, how is your role in the family viewed by this person? Like the example I used about insecure siblings, whenever attention is given to you, they feel the need to question that attention in extreme cases they create a diversion just for that attention.

The triggering of an insecurity can trigger a war, where people need to choose sides and you find a group of people hating on another group of people and involving the children, hence you should identify insecure behaviors before they escalate.

Then you find that other family members have a sense of entitlement , that either limits the interactions of others in certain spaces or reduces the ability for others to express themselves in certain ways. This creates subtle rights among family members and increases gossip. When other feel that they cannot express themselves because they do not hold certain positions in the family they will either find a source of comfort from outsiders where they feel that they will be valued, and start to collaborate with such people to diminish the entitlement of others, have outraged about simple things like for example what to watch on TV, something so small can become a huge fight, simply because one is trying to reduce the entitlement of another. Entitlements increase the feeling of being displaced and sometimes when a person has a huge sense of I am, or this belongs to me. There will be fights, and these have the power to become tha=e fights that finally give people a glimpse of what is happening in the family, where outsiders can come in and intervene, or in unfortunate circumstances take sides. These are the fights that are ego driven, where there is the ego there is a great chance that chaos will incline rather than decline, because in the attempt to save the ego, some people will not back down, if this is happening amongst siblings then there is a possibility that others will develop more rage as they grow older and possibly pass it on one generation to the other. You have to be able to recognize signs of entitlement, fortunately it is easy to tell when someone owns a space that belongs to everyone in the family, or form a tribe within a family that owns everyone's space, basically you will be looking at a bully, you will feel it when they shove you around.

You can tell when someone is being petty, simply because everything that they bring up is below the belt, in some cases, some family members try to make you feel small. Pettiness comes from people who feel the need to be silly or funny just to have a positive light shine on them and a negative light shine on them, often they hide this with jokes or simple phrases like “what goes to Becky never returns”. This sounds light-hearted and innocent, but it is covered with an intention to make it seem as though Becky can not keep things safe and these are consistent and surround families like a plague. It is important that you recognize pettiness as a petty act and not a joke, or just a statement said without meaning. Perhaps that is the most important part, the view and understanding that you have from things you see and pick, the mistake of thinking that petty acts are exactly that petty, and dealing with them by simply ignoring them or pretending that they do not exist, it that they escalate, and give power to the person who brings them out to define who you are, because you do not question or do anything about the labels that they are putting on you.

There is an absolute remedy for these shadows that come into your home and threaten your peace, and that is awareness and accurate action, when you are aware of what someone is trying to do, where that action comes from and what is influencing it, then you can act precisely and accurately, it should be a priority to you to act directly to an action and not allow emotion to cloud your judgment, you should remedy a situation not let it slide assuming that it will never happen again, or that you can ignore it into null existence.

With that it is also important to proceed with thought and caution, because we hear on the news brothers killing sisters, cousins murdering aunts and so on. These are not coincidences or things that start overnight, they have been building over time, and finally, get exposed in the worst of ways.

When confronting either, jealousy, envy, insecurity, a sense of entitlement, or pettiness, take less that 24 hours to understand it, less than 24 hours to diagnose it, and less that 48 hours to72 hours to deal with it. Dealing with things while they're on the surface helps not deepen the wound with other people getting involved, and allows you to be brutally honest.

What is important also is to never be apologetic, if something is on your mind speak it with your truth and be able to listen to someone else's truth with the same sense of not being apologetic, this gives you strength to confront, talk to some and not talk at someone.