"Why are you so pale?" There are people who serve humiliating comments on Christmas Eve as if they were the thirteenth dish

If any day of the year were to be hailed as a body-shaming festival, it would be December 24th. Why? For some reason, some people allow themselves to evaluate the bodies of other family members during Christmas Eve. "You gained weight", "why are you so pale – are you sick?", "this aunt has grown so old", "why have you enlarged your lips so much?". Humiliation, like the thirteenth Christmas Eve dish, is sometimes served in Polish homes in various ways. We are embarrassed by our aunts, our own mothers, brothers, but also by our personal inner voice with which we kick our own ass by comparing ourselves to relatives or to the ideal stars from a Christmas advertisement.

Let me start with a short reflection from the psychologist's office. This year, before Christmas, it really is much calmer here. Some patients are saying bluntly, "thanks to the restrictions, no one is visiting us on Christmas Eve, so we will be able to rest instead of getting ourselves all hot and bothered with this farce".

Usually, around mid-December, narratives during therapy sessions began to revolve around family gatherings. It wasn't about remembering childhood or admiring the magic of Christmas. The topics were more mundane: "The family will ask me again. They will judge me again. They will look askance at me again." In some homes, Christmas Eve is a synonym of tension, stress, humiliation veiled in petty malice and seemingly benevolent criticism. Sometimes the dinner is associated with an avalanche of awkwardness and the compulsion to answer uncomfortable questions, taunts and comments from relatives. Some of us associate it with gritting our teeth and counting down the time – just until the end of the evening. Although inconvenient, sitting and wearing the 'all right' mask all through dinner is the most popular strategy of choice for surviving Christmas. Because it's not proper to argue during the holidays.

It's Christmas Eve, you could just save your breath

Dorota got into a Christmas row a year ago – exactly on Christmas Eve. Something broke in her. She had hated Christmas all her life. It was a tradition that every year relatives from all over Poland came to her house and drank from noon until Midnight Mass. Men were in the lead. Dorota hated the way she was addressed during this time – those remarks that: her breasts were growing, she had pimples, she was "thin as a chip", she had "long arms like a spider", and she recalls it with disgust to this day. "The worst thing is that my mother was silent as the grave. She would lock herself away in the kitchen and I had to 'entertain the company', that is, sit with them at the table with my sister and allow these jokes. So when a year ago my cousin said to my teenage daughter, "Oh gosh, your ass has grown", I blew up. Nobody will serve Christmas Eve shaming to my child. My husband says it's Christmas, so I could just have let it go. But I am satisfied that I finally told my cousin how I feel. I'm unable to fight for myself, but I will not let anyone spoil my kid's self-esteem. The best thing for me was that my daughter also reacted immediately, and it was very harsh. At her age, I would have died of shame and buried my head in the sand."

The mere sound of unrefined criticism of her daughter triggered an avalanche of memories in Dorota – this is often how the patterns written in our mind work. A small stimulus is enough, and we are already moving "there and then", that is, we unconsciously recreate a humiliating situation from the past in parallel with the present one. This makes us nervous and tense with redoubled force at the sound of comments similar to those we had already experienced elsewhere. There can basically be three reactions to such a "fired up" scheme. Some of us, in Dorota's place, would behave as in childhood – humbly putting a good face on a bad game, enduring her cousin's body-shaming without a word. Some of them would do the opposite and attack with malicious words (so virulent that it would shake him to the core). Dorota chose the third strategy – assertive, setting a limit. Instead of playing ball, she told her cousin what she thought about his remarks, how she felt when he spoke, and that she absolutely refused to listen to humiliating words addressed to anyone.

As it is easier to stand up for your own child than for yourself, as a therapist I often show my patients that it is important to also react to taunts against ourselves, because the child sees our attitude. By defending ourselves, we teach our child a valuable lesson on how to properly respond to abuse. Most of us didn't learn this lesson from our family home. That is why the Christmas table is often like a toxic workplace – one person attacks another, and the rest pretend not to see it for fear that the attack would spread to them.

Have you had your thyroid checked?

Those who haven't experienced body-shaming at Christmas are very lucky. Unfortunately, in many families, Christmas malice is an inherent ritual of the evening. Sometimes so obvious that we don't pay attention to the annual crossing of boundaries, especially with seemingly innocent questions like, "Have you had your thyroid checked because you look bad, so swollen?" Crossing boundaries, if experienced from childhood, is sometimes difficult to notice, hence we find it even more difficult to defend ourselves. If our feelings are denied from an early age (oh, don't sulk about it, I was wishing you well!), nobody reacts to them or we are called over-sensitive – we become convinced that retorting to biting remarks is aggression.

The fact that we lack an accurate response to malicious comments on Christmas Eve doesn't mean that we have a delayed reaction, or we are lost for words. We freeze because malice triggers our bad memories – difficult, unpleasant, uncomfortable – and an automatic reaction to them. If no one has stood up for us our whole lives, and even reprimanded us that we should not react to harassment, then we have learned the rule: someone attacks me, I sit quietly and bear it with dignity, I must be a good child.

The feeling of shame, humiliation, and sadness that accompanies us when we fall victim to body-shaming can be overwhelming. It turns us into little children who cannot defend themselves. When we then go back to our adult SELVES, we feel frustrated. The French call this feeling "l'esprit de l'escalier", or "an idea on the stairs" – because usually only after some time, when it is too late to react, an accurate response to a malicious remark of a relative appears in our minds. We then sink into fantasies about how we might have responded to body-shaming.

Why did you have your hair cut, you were so pretty...

Benevolent denigrating, or messages shrouded in passive aggression, are associated with fat shaming, that is, pointing out the kilograms. But we shouldn't forget that body-shaming is also saying, "why have you had your lips injected so much, they used to be so beautiful? Why did you have your hair cut, you had such long hair..." Those who say that often hide behind good intentions – they basically wanted to compliment, it wasn't meant to be malicious, they didn't want to hurt anyone. The respected sociologist Tomasz Sobierajski, PhD, recently published some of his reflections on the American series "The Undoing". He deals with the topic of the viewers' assessment of Nicole Kidman's facial expression. He quoted critics that this beautiful actress had lost all her facial expressions, and due to botox and hyaluronic acid she has no wrinkles and looks like a mummy. "So beautiful, what has she done to her face?" concerned commentators wrote. T. Sobierajski assessed it unequivocally – such comments are also nothing but body-shaming.

Why is it so easy for us to judge the physicality of other people? From an early age, we are taught to value one another. Praise for being a pretty baby is sometimes heard literally from the cradle. Then comes the competition – because some people receive more praise and I receive less. The neighbour's daughter, whom your mother always comments on when she leaves the lift, gets the least. Seemingly innocent word, such as: "What is she wearing", "and we must lend her a mirror", teach us that making fun of someone's appearance is the fault of the person who looks like this, she is just asking for this, for example by dyeing her hair blue or wearing torn tights. The child soaks up all this mockery, still thinking about themselves quite well. Because today most mothers know that you need to say encouraging words to your children so that they don't have insecurities later. So they praise and appreciate their beauty with enthusiasm. Then, however, they stand in front of the mirror and habitually argue about their own unattractiveness. As a result, the child is surrounded by jurors that hover around them at every step of the way. This is how judging gets into our blood and becomes a natural way of seeing the world.

Specialists in non-violent communication (NVC) encourage experimenting with changing the optics of looking at the world. They advise you to try not to judge anyone for a while – neither positively nor negatively. Instead, to focus on your feelings, on your impression that someone makes on you, and to think about where it comes from. Why do we look at someone's figure so critically or with such delight? Why do we come up with such comments? Instead of passing judgement, it is good to ask yourself the question: why do I really need this judgement? Do I feel better when I attack a relative? Do I feel a sense of power? Do I finally feel important and listened to? My therapeutic observations show that body-shaming is often a mask that hides various negative experiences and beliefs about oneself and the world. These beliefs are often completely inadequate, based solely on resentment, for example. For example, someone was ridiculed in adolescence – today they overcompensates for this by ridiculing others. Someone was praised, but the years have passed, and today no one appreciates them – so they expresses sharp disapproval in retaliation. If someone feels worthless surrounded by attractive relatives, that person will display their criticism of their relatives so that they can see that that person is not as weak as they take them to be.

Start by not smiling

If we know that Christmas Eve body-shaming is a family ritual, it is good to prepare for it internally. Eventually, the pandemic will pass, and it will be necessary to return to feasting with relatives. Now it's worth taking the time to learn to care for the sensitive part of ME, the part of ourselves that "turns on" when someone unfavourably judges our appearance. How do we replace the stupor with which we react to criticism? Certainly a more dynamic response of opposition. Even delicate and subtle. Setting clear boundaries for someone who has never set them may seem like a daunting task. But sometimes the limit may be set by simply saying: "It wasn't nice for me", or "it made me feel bad". It is good for your own sense of agency to react in any way. One of my patients, who would completely lose strength in the presence of relatives, started by stopping smiling politely at hearing body-shaming. And the lack of the smile alone gave her a lot of strength, because she felt that she was somehow defending herself, for the first time.

The most important thing, however, is what meaning we give to humiliating our physicality. If we find malicious comments from relatives valuable – then we have a problem. Because in fact, they are often someone's duds (someone's anger, frustration, uncertainty) that someone wants to sell to us in order to feel better. Yet we don't have to buy everything that is offered to us. Therapist Joanna Godecka in one of our joint interviews said the following sentence: humiliating body-shaming is like a garbage bag. When someone hands it to us, it doesn't mean that we should take the rubbish home and put it in the middle of the bedroom. Godecka says emphatically: do not take someone else's bag, do not take care of it, do not look at it, do not analyse it. Instead, say to yourself: this is not my rubbish, I will not take this rubbish with me, I will leave it with the sender.

Author: Katarzyna Kucewicz 

• Katarzyna Kucewicz – psychologist, psychotherapist, sexologist. She runs the INNER GARDEN Psychotherapy and Coaching Centre in Warsaw. She specialises in individual work with adults and couples. Author of three guides and hundreds of articles on psychology. Formerly associated with the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. She belongs to the Polish Federation of Psychotherapy. She popularises psychology on Instagram @psycholog_na_insta.

Article published on wysokieobcasy.pl on 19 December 2020.