Working on Thanksgiving is very important to me. Eating the Thanksgiving meal is very triggering for me, and it is something I am very apprehensive about this holiday. I understand that you would like to have the entire family there, but I know it would be a bad idea to put myself in that situation. Even if we have the meal before I go to a shift it would help, so it is very important that I work on Thanksgiving or that we work together to come up with a way to make the meal non-triggering. Given the nature of Thanksgiving, I'm inclined to think that a non-triggering meal would ruin the holiday for the rest of the family.
So... currently I am adamant that I work on Thanksgiving if they give me a shift, but let me know your thoughts.
Love,
Emily
Their response was:
Ah, thank you for this explanation. Now I understand.
And I think I'll be working on Thanksgiving now!
How do you all explain the the triggers of holidays to your parents?
For me, it's upsetting for my family. Whenever we talk about holidays, it's such a touchy subject. I'm glad you got to work in the end and that your family was so understanding.
ReplyDeleteXOXO
i'm glad that they're understanding things now :)
ReplyDeletei'm hoping that Thanksgiving goes well with you. i'm not good with these holidays so i'm just going about them at the moment
as per explaining holidays to parents, well - they choose to ignore the fact that i have an ED. if i eat there or i don't, they don't really care. last holiday i was with my Father actually - shockingly, he's complaining about how thin i've gotten and i was with him for breakfast, lunch and dinner and i've refused all of those meals. he's seen me not eat breakfast. he knows i've declined lunch in favour of full-fat cola. he's seen me tell him that i don't want dinner from there or whatever. and then the next day he was okay with us going to a restaurant and me having just diet Pepsi. yeah. i'm around my Father most of the time when we go out and stuff and he's okay. not sure about my Mother. it's a simple question of "do you want food or don't you?" if i ate a tonne, he'd be like 'oh you only do this like every once in a while so it doesn't count'. calms down my anxiety when i'm eating loads and so forth
-Sam Lupin
I'm glad you were able to voice your concerns to your parents, and that they understood.
ReplyDeleteFood holidays have never been a big issue for me. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving in oz, so it's really only Christmas, which has always been quiet with just my mum and brother. We do presents and lunch and just relax. Last year was the first year in several that I ate Christmas lunch, which was pretty amazing. The year before I ate a ridiculously small amount of separately prepared food, and the two years before that I didn't eat at all. But its never been a huge deal, we just focus on spending time with each other, and what I eat or don't eat at Christmas lunch doesn't cause issues more than any other day of the year.
xx
I found your blog a week or so ago, and have just finished reading. Not wanting to sound weird but I think youre amazing. With everything youre doing in order to recover, I think you are definitely going in the right directiom, even if somedays it doesnt feel like it, keep going, i know you'll get there.
ReplyDeleteHope thanksgiving goes better than you expect it to.
Im just glad I dont have thanksgiving to contend with, christmas is more than enough.
Rx
Your parents are there for you, that's amazing. That e-mail is really good explanation why not and I'm glad they got it. My parents have no idea and since I moved away from home and lived on the other side of the world last year, they don't really care. They never wanted to take the responsibility of me so I've been spending my holidays alone quite a lot. But Christmas is still bad for me, I can't handle that at all.
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll get the shift! <3