Here's the thing. Responding to friends and acquaintances in a forum like this is a very different thing from talking with your relatives. If you do, in fact love and care for your relatives, you don't want to be constantly baiting them, challenging them, insulting them, being snide and "clever" as can be done in other situations where you don't really care how the other person responds. You have to go on living with your relatives unless you want to divorce them all. I suspect that Stan wants to keep his family.
So (1) understand that they think differently from you - I mean really a different set of cognitive functions. You don't think like they do and they can't think like you do. Once you accept that there is a basic cognitive difference it might help you simply ignore their statements. (2) give up trying to get them to see the rationality of your views. It's not going to happen. Accepting the reality of the situation will help take away a lot of the frustration you feel. (3) If they bring up subjects to try and convert you - be humorous, light, and change the subject. If they persist appeal to their family love, be honest and just tell them that it really makes you feel rejected by the family when they talk this way. They will feel bad and let you change the subject. (4) initiate conversations yourself on every other innocent topic you know will not get you trapped in their cosmic world view. By taking control of your conversations and steering them away from difficult topics you will feel much better. (5) when you overhear them saying things to one another that make your head spin, walk away to where you can't hear them and start up a conversation that will make you feel better - sports or something.
I know all of this works even though it is hard. I have struggled with a very very totally Christian family and extended family that I love for 63 years. It's hard. You have to learn to protect your soul from within, by the things you tell yourself. Do not fill your mind with all the things you disagree with them about; fill it with the things you love about them and can agree with them about. The Tao, the natural flow of life, can give you a mental state of equanimity in turbulent waters.
So (1) understand that they think differently from you - I mean really a different set of cognitive functions. You don't think like they do and they can't think like you do. Once you accept that there is a basic cognitive difference it might help you simply ignore their statements. (2) give up trying to get them to see the rationality of your views. It's not going to happen. Accepting the reality of the situation will help take away a lot of the frustration you feel. (3) If they bring up subjects to try and convert you - be humorous, light, and change the subject. If they persist appeal to their family love, be honest and just tell them that it really makes you feel rejected by the family when they talk this way. They will feel bad and let you change the subject. (4) initiate conversations yourself on every other innocent topic you know will not get you trapped in their cosmic world view. By taking control of your conversations and steering them away from difficult topics you will feel much better. (5) when you overhear them saying things to one another that make your head spin, walk away to where you can't hear them and start up a conversation that will make you feel better - sports or something.
I know all of this works even though it is hard. I have struggled with a very very totally Christian family and extended family that I love for 63 years. It's hard. You have to learn to protect your soul from within, by the things you tell yourself. Do not fill your mind with all the things you disagree with them about; fill it with the things you love about them and can agree with them about. The Tao, the natural flow of life, can give you a mental state of equanimity in turbulent waters.
having passed through many states of believing I was right I have come to the place of finding "rightness" rather irrelevant to the project of becoming human
