Question asked by Ling
In my family I have always been the child that is ignored, looked down upon and viewed as a burden, and concidered stupider than my sister. My parents always favour my younger sister who in reality has a tendency to yell or scold my parents where as I don’t do such things. My parents tend to skew my accomplishments or try to use them against me which makes me quite sad. I can’t talk to them about my problems and negative emotions for fear that they may tell me that I brought this upon myself and that I can’t do anything right …. what should I do to remedy this family problem
Dear Ling,
I am sorry you to read that you have been going through this with your family. I can understand how hard this can be since family are supposed to be the people we are supposed to close to and in harmony with. What you are going through is more common than you would think. You are not alone in this. Know that others have been in the same situation and have overcome the difficulties.
Even though you think that you cannot tell them about how you feel, this is actually what you should do. When we are in these types of situations we usually have a tendency to over think about how they would reply. And because we are emotionally upset, these projections of how they will answer or react are more often than not negative. This itself feeds into feeling hurt, and the cycle repeats itself again and again.
In my humble opinion, I would say in this case you could need to sit down with your parents and talk things through. We spend our lives acting and speaking in ways out of our habits or through our false perception of how things are. We often don’t realise what we are doing. Sitting down and talking things through with the other person can heal the pain and hurt. When you do this you do not allow emotion to get involved, but you discuss things in a logical manner. If you ask to talk with them, make sure that they know the reason that you are talking is something that they should take to heart, because it is how you feel. When they see you being serious, without being overly emotional they are likely to open up themselves and accept what you are telling them.
I understand this can seem like a very daunting thing to do, I felt the same way. However, I have used this method to heal issues with my own parents in this way, and today these issues simply seem like a thing of the past. It can be a hard step to take sometimes, but we must take it to move on and heal.
Coupled with talking with them, you can engage in spiritual practice that can aid both the healing of the emotional pain and foster harmony in the family. Such practices include the joint practice of the Guru Yoga of Lama Tsongkhapa and the practice of Dorje Shugden.
Lama Tsongkhapa as the embodiment of three Buddhas (Manjushri, Chenrezig and Vajrapani) grants great blessings to us. His practice is extremely effective in healing emotional pain and calming the mind so we can live life in a more logical manner without being overly emotional, which is usually the cause of problems with others. The second is the practice of Dorje Shugden, who can remove obstacles in our lives such as difficulties in our relationships and grant the conducive condition of a harmonious family life. You can find the joint practice text and more information here: http://www.dorjeshugden.org/practice/diamond-path-a-daily-sadhana-of-dorje-shugden. I hope this helps.
Thank you