I ran into a similar problem when i ran into someone i had not seen in a long time...it was someone i had worked with. I knew i had gained weight and dreaded a moment like this. She patted my belly and said "you going to have a baby" (she was foreign) and i said "NOOOOOO i am just fat". (and it was not like she was any kind of thin herself)I thought she was going to die of embarassment. She did not know what to say to me then. So i walked away. the look on her face was priceless but her comment still hurt. It is also reasons like that that i am so readyyyyyyy to loose this weight.

I seriously think I would have punched her. Hard.

dlphn -

I've had that happen before, too. I think it also had something to do with the type of clothes I used to wear - very lose fitting and (to be honest) somewhat maternity looking, to "hide" my belly.

I do feel sorry for people in that situation, though. I really do. Because I think they're caught in a catch-22. If someone were really pregnant - visibly so - and they ignored it, then that person would get her feelings hurt. I've seen it on message boards before where women have asked "why didn't she say anything or congratulate me on being pregnant?" and they were seriously upset about it.

OTOH, if the person isn't pregnant then the person risks offending.

Honestly I think there are a lot of situations where the poor innocent person on the other side is just caught inbetween a rock and a hard place.

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Why? someone makes an innocent mistake and you'd resort to physical violence? I don't understand that thought process.

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I would have opted for a "Uhh, no, I'm just fat." and then tried to laugh it off, since the person made that comment trying to be nice.

But I once had a guy that has seen me probably 200 times before since I was a kid sarcastically ask my fiance if I were pregnant. NOTHING about me had changed and actually I'd lost weight, so what -- I was pregnant since his barber shop first opened in my neighborhood when I was 11? I wanted to punch *HIM* bc he was just being an @sshole. Also, my body type is not one that would suggest pregnancy, so he was really just being a jerk.

Thanks everybody for the responses. It's been a really, really busy couple of days so I didn't get to follow up sooner. I admire those of you who can completely separate your feelings and not respond emotionally when someone touches a sore spot for you -- I still have some room to grow in that direction, clearly.

In the meantime, live and learn. Thanks again everyone!

Oh believe me, I can't always do it. But I *have* learned over time to recognize when I'm doing it ... and to at the very least not let it show on the outside.

And honestly, I do think as you develop more self confidence, it's a little easier to do each time. Like everything - it takes practice!



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I've been very overweight (let's call it what it is .... obese) for many, many, many years. I carry most of it in my gut. SO, I'm always a target for that line...

"When is that baby due?!?"

I would turn to the speaker, smile, add 4 months to the current date and say, "January!" and walk away.

Of course, these were never people who knew me because those people knew I wasn't pregnant! These were just the people in the store....

(awesome!)

Reading photochick et al's comment made me think of the Dhalai Lama. The Art of Happiness {and a few other books} talks about how only we can control getting angry. I've been working hard to explain to my children that no one "makes them" angry/sad/cry/etc.

Like PhotoChick said, it takes lots and lots of practice, to get to a point where there's even a 50/50 chance that an idiot being an idiot doesn't upset you when you're a target of their idiocy. It takes lots of practice to remember it's their problem not yours.

For me, laughter was my cure. Humor has always been my comfort zone (laugh at yourself, and it takes the sting out of anyone else doing it - and most of the time they won't even try if you're already laughing at yourself).

I was lucky to be fairly witty, and pretty quick with a comeback. In gradeschool I found out that if I could "trump" an insult with a better insult, people laughed harder at the bully than they did at me. So, at first, humor was my weapon to hide my hurt feelings. But eventually, I really started to see the humor in some of the comments. People really can be idiots, and I'm not exempt either, as I've certainly stuck my foot in my mouth on more than one occasion. I've had a friend or two who took offense at a stupid comment I made, and decided I was a horrible person and no amount of apologizing changed their mind, and it destroyed our friendship. I was hurt by that, but I think the person who decided the offense was unforgiveable lost more than I did.

It's why I tend to remind myself to practice finding such things forgiveable and even funny. Not "for" the other person, but mostly for myself. Negative emotions often trigger emotional eating for me, so for my peace of mind and my waistline I practice the positive emotions of forgiveness and humor. Sometimes it's easier to practice than at others. You'll sometimes see the term "reframing," to mean practicing reinterpretations of negative thoughts.
It's a good exercise.

A simple example of reframing is if you think "I blew it today" when you eat off plan (in a big or small way). When you think it, you remind yourself that you did not "blow it," you simply made a mistake, and try to think of a way to avoid it next time.

Much the same when someone's comments rub you the wrong way, instead of getting angry, there are other options. You can find it funny or you can pity the person or you can dismiss it as unimportant, or you can get momentarily angry but able to erase it from your mind soon after. The important part isn't your reaction, it's how if affects you. If it's affecting you negatively, you owe it to yourself to learn to make it less negative - because it isn't about you - it's about the other person.

They may be well-meaning and just have crappy social skills, they might be so miserable they want to spread their misery around, they may be so lonely that they want to connect to somebody and don't know how to do it in a positive way..... there are tons of reasons that could account for their behavior, but none of it has anything to do with you.

"January!"

Three or four years ago, I was heading home on foot when a neighbour I’ve known ever since I was a little kid called for me. She’s this little old lady who loves to gossip about other people’s lives, so she’d usually watch the street for hours from an open window in her apartment. Anyway, as I stood by her window, she promptly said something along the lines of: «You’ve gained weight, haven’t you? I was here watching your belly bounce as you walk. You know, you should really try to lose all that weight while you’re still young. It becomes much harder as you grow up». I remember she went on and on for a few minutes, but I couldn’t really get past the “watching your belly bounce” part. That truly felt like a slap in the face. I knew I was fat, but I didn’t know I was so fat that people would feel comfortable making such rude remarks about it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with a good reply. I felt like being mean and alluding to past scandals in her family (just for the sake of humiliating her), but I decided against it. A simple question like: «Have you looked into the mirror recently?» would’ve worked, but that didn’t occur to me at that moment. Between being *****y and leaving it at that, I simply decided to leave it at that.

On a different occasion, also years ago, I was paying for some groceries at the store when a woman approached me, pointed out a finger to all the snacks (stuff like chips and Coke) I had lined up in the counter and started repeating, like in a mantra: «Junk, junk, junk and more junk food. All of this is unhealthy». Politely, I explained that I didn’t eat those things all the time, that it wasn’t all that unhealthy every once in a while and also something along the lines of delicious food being one of life’s small pleasures (LOL), but she said that I should never eat those snacks by any chance and proceeded to show off her own and very much healthy groceries. I didn’t feel like expanding what I knew would be a pointless discussion, so I just smiled condescendingly at her and her sweets-deprived little daughter, paid for my things and left. So what does she care about other people stuffing their faces with unhealthy food? It’s none of her business. She wouldn’t have bothered me if I was older and thin. It was really funny, though. I could tell she didn’t mean any harm.

It is hard to rework our emotional wirings.

I used to work with a woman who was nasty. It often took all of my might to do what I needed to do, politely, and get the heck away from her. It was very, VERY hard, but I had to act very uninterested in her mood swings. Even if under the surface I was boiling. I just remember driving home sometimes and thinking "Why on earth do I care what she thinks and does? She's just a misinformed, old, gossipy woman." I was often more angry at myself for having any sort of emotional reaction to things she did, even if I was able to hide it from her. Looking back on it, I'm happy with the way that I responded most of the time. But, boy was that draining... and I'm GLAD to be out of there. I guess at some point it's better to save one's sanity and avoid certain people, too... Strangers, well at least we don't ever have to see them again.

Faerie - it's so funny you should share that story because I am currently dealing with something similar.

My office is in an old building/warehouse/arts complex in my town. All of the tenants tend to be social and we often wander over to each other's offices for lunch or "office gossip" or something like that. All very friendly and chatty.

Earlier this year I'd become a lot closer to one of the women who works for one of the other businesses here. She and I are both dealing with some personal/emotional issues right now (some of which I've talked about in another thread here) and we had kind of bonded over our shared troubles. Except, I learned after a couple of months that she is the most NEGATIVE person I've ever met. She cannot see the bright side in anything. You ask her how she's doing and it's a huge sigh and rolled eyes and a litany of what's wrong. Even her "joking" and "teasing" is negative.

The problem is that because *I* have been dealing with a bunch of personal stuff, I allowed myself to be sucked into that "life is horrible" mindset. I found myself sharing woes with her, complaining about everything, taking every little comment someone else made to her as a personal affront, sharing negative gossip about other tenants and her employer (who is a friendly acquaintance), and so forth. Ultimately the negativity turned to depression for me - and I found myself sleeping more, feeling down and sad all the time, lacking motivation. I found myself dreading going to my office and actually avoiding my own work (which I love). I also found myself falling behind in my responsibilities because I was depressed.

It took me a while to realize that I had developed a very negative relationship with this woman and that I was allowing her an incredible amount of power over my emotions and feelings.

My first step had to be distancing myself from her, even though I knew she was hurt by it. After a few days to get my bearings back, I had to sit down with her and tell her that she and I could not continue this KIND of friendship. That I thought she was a really sweet person and I knew she was going through a lot of crap, just like I was ... but that the spiral down into negativity had to stop. That *I* personally couldn't deal with it any more. She took it very personally and hasn't spoken to me since.

I don't know if she will want to come back and be friendly or not, and I regret having to hurt her feelings, but I cannot let other people's emotions drag me down like that. I'm normally a very cheerful, upbeat, optimistic person and I didn't like the person I became around her.

So ... I guess aside from Faerie's story making me think of this situation, I wanted to share that even NOW, even though I am mostly pretty darned strong about not allowing others to influence my feelings and emotions, it happens. And I hate to hurt people's feelings, so I let it go on for longer than I should have because I knew she would be hurt - and because I knew I have to still see her in the building every day.

It's HARD not to allow people power over your emotions. Really, really hard.

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Photo, you did what was right. You were as nice as you could be, but it had to be done. All you can do is wait and see what happens. Clearly you already know this, but you just *cannot* let people suck you down like that.