I live about 2 hours from my brother and sister in law and don’t see them often, but when I do I’m regularly triggered by my sister in law who I see as “snotty” and “stuck up”. She is “perfect” weight/ life/ stay at home mom/ yoga instructor/ beautiful/ they travel a lot and have big house and the quote unquote perfect life. For some reason my brother doesn’t bother me as much even though his life is the same. I know deep down this is more about me and I can’t seem to figure out why things she says bother me so much and why I can’t find what’s going on in me to solve it. She doesn’t really ask me questions or inquire about my life/… I feel like when she does make comments they’re judgy like what I should I shouldn’t be doing with my kids/ doesn’t ever inquire about our life. It’s like she’s got it together and I’m just her lowly sister in law who doesn’t matter at all to her. She tolerates me because I’m family and deep down that’s how I feel about her. I don’t have a desire to be close with her per se, but I would like to have positive thoughts about her, so I don’t dread our time together.

Recently she had a surprise birthday party for my brother’s 40th and she didn’t invite my husband and I. I know I’m a little bitter about that.
They have a close group of friends and that’s who they do things with so we’re out of sight out of mind unless it’s the holidays or something. As I type this, I notice myself getting very annoyed… so I’m just gonna keep writing and go with it to get it out!! Hard to capture it all and I hear myself sounding like the victim and I am struggling to see my way out!!

So I guess my question is: How do I best identify my specific thought and trigger and manage my mind around this more effectively so when I see her or think about her I don’t have to tolerate these constant negative thoughts. I feel like this brings me suffering and I dont’ want to worry about her, however this is a good test for me, because I’m rarely triggered when it comes to people in particular. I can usually navigate those very well in the workplace/ my day to day personal life/… so I get thrown when it’s with her. In fact, my thoughts about her prevent me from putting myself out there as a coach because I feel like she represents people who would judge me and I of course am resisting that. She made a comment about people who post too much on social media over thanksgiving and I assumed she was in a round about way talking about me and my facebook posts for my coaching biz even though she didn’t say that directly.

On a side note: something that came up for me on the “change your past” month that might be applicable here is me going through rush as a college freshman. it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I felt completely exposed and judged all in the end to be chosen by only a handful of houses out of 20 or more I believe. It’s been a story that definitely shaped what I thought of myself and my worthiness. Like why wouldn’t these houses choose me… my grades were good… I was in honor society… I was thin… I was popular… I was in extracurriculars…(Maybe this is a separate entry… please guide me if so). Anyway, my sister in law was in one of the most popular sororities on our college campus 2 years later than me… but just my overall impression of the people/ experience of rush/ sororities is my point. Probably part of this deep down I attach her to that experience and that feeling of being judged and that girls are “selecting” people to be good enough or not. I can see this… so she represents a “type” to me. I just want to wrap my head around my work here and be intentional about finding more helpful thoughts about her in general and that negative experience in general. I never quite mastered creating a new story on that one!! 🙂

Any guidance on this situation/ Circumstance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much