How many problems do your relatives share with you? How much support to you offer in return?
Of course I’m not going to share problems with people if in doing so I make myself feel worse. I don’t even begin to understand why you would do that. I have relatives I’d never share problems with because it turns into a conversation about them, or they’d give incredibly stupid advice, or criticism, or whatever. It doesn’t mean they aren’t trying their best, it’s just not a skill they have.
You’re welcome 
It helps that I know families that are worse than mine.
I learned a long time ago not to give my family any ammunition to use against me.
People like to be useful. I read somewhere that when you do a favor for someone, you tend to have more positive feelings for that person because you rationalize to yourself that you must like them, since here you are helping them out! I wouldn’t be surprised if others are more likely to like you if you allow them to give you advice.
So giving your family members a chance to give you advice about something might help you to have stronger bonds with them.
I don’t share all my bidness with people. For serious stuff, either I try to work it out on my own or I go to my therapist with it. But I like having something to talk about when I’m talking to people, and minor problems are great conversational fodder. So when I’m talking to my mother–who usually gives very Hallmarkian, churchy, pseudo-spiritual advice–I’ll only share concerns with her that are “surface”. No deep emotional stuff. Like, I’ll exaggerate the drama in a workplace story just so that my mother can have a chance to say something like, “Well, that coworker is just trifling. Probably wasn’t raised right. If I were you, I’d tell them to kiss my ass!” This is my way of giving my mother an easy problem to “fix” so that she feels like she’s being supportive, while not actually turning to her for real advice. My mother likes being an advice-giver, even though she’s not really good at it.
I also share problems on the internet. You get a lot of garbage responses this way, but sometimes you also get some good advice and validation.
Okay, now you must tell us where your mother buys her Hallmark cards.
Well …what exactly are you looking for in the way of feedback? It’s kind of unclear.
When we were much younger my ex used to come to me and discuss her various work and school issues with her professors and co-workers, and I would give her “here’s how to fix it and make it better” feedback. It took me far too long to realize this was not what she wanted. She didn’t want solutions of any kind, she just wanted me to listen and be sympathetic.
People close to us are not always the best for concrete feedback as both listener and talker often have far too much history and baggage with each other in any advice they would give which derails the interaction. It’s fully logical you would het better and more useful advice on a message board from people with an objective view of your situation vs your intimates.
It’s frustrating but wholly unsurprising if your family can’t play sympathetic listener. Recall your reaction to our father’s asking you for validation of his talk and you gave him a speech therapy critique. If your personality has this practical/ctitical, fix-it orientation it’s unlikely you’re going to get the sympathetic listening cuddles you need from others sharing your DNA. You need to talk to friends, not family.
Since my father has asked about my day precisely twice in the six years I’ve lived with him, and since when I do try to offer info about my day he glazes over and looks like he wishes he could back to his TV, no, I don’t share unless it’s something so overwhelming that I am bawling. Then I have to say, he does his best to comfort me.
I don’t know whey we should give certain people a pass into our private struggles “just because the’re family”. I do not have a close circle of extended family, and I try to keep the discussion to small talk with my brother as I do not trust him and he can offer no help to me at all anyway. I trust most of my friends more than him with personal stuff.
No. I don’t. My close and immediate family is pretty much just my two kids, my boyfriend’s father and son. My own father is still living but not part of my life. My mother is dead. I am more likely to share a problem with, and seek advice from, my guy, his dad or a dear friend. And I suppose that if I couldn’t go to any of them, I would just figure it out on my own.
I don’t tell my family anything of importance if I can help it. I was in the hospital for several days in October, and I didn’t say anything. Unfortunately, one of my co-workers (and I had to tell my employer) ratted me out.
I have exactly one relative (out of approx. 10) with whom I can converse.
I love her (she is a sister), but she is one of those with a canned response to every issue. Earthquake? “Watch out for Aftershocks!” - a trite (and useless) response.
I was once written off as ‘probably dead’. Her response: “You should have told me”.
Um, so you could do exactly what? Worry? Come up with a trite warning?
Did I mention that we live 2,000 miles apart?
If you can’t do anything about it except worry, why should I inform you?
I’ll sometimes tell my mom. If my mom weren’t around and I needed some family insight, I’d talk to my cousin and her husband. They are both smart, caring, and have their own stuff together. Unlike my idiot brother.
My dad and stepmom are good people, but they live in some weird Fox News 1950s world in their heads. So, no.
The only family memeber I’m close to is my brother and he’s so anxious already I don’t want to burden him with my problems. I don’t talk to anyone at all about my problems IRL. That’s what my internet posse is for.
Yeah, I wouldn’t go to my family with any personal issues. I always said that if I was getting divorced, they’d be the absolute last people to know, like after all the documents were signed.
I don’t really think they are worthless, I just think that in order to get wise advice their would have to be a large amount of backstory and I’m just not that willing to that far into it. And I don’t think they would be able to keep the backstory straight and in proper perspective.