So at one of my pre-op support meetings yesterday, the therapist said that the best way to shut negative comments down if someone disagrees with your choice to have surgery is not to respond back negatively, but to reading with open ended questions. For instance, my mom is very opposed to me having surgery. The very first comment out of her mouth was " oh no!, that's so dangerous, so many people have died from that surgery". The therapist said a great response from me would be "wow! I hadn't heard that. What makes it so dangerous" or " oh no, I'm sorry, who passed away?" Obviously she doesn't have first hand knowledge of any of this, so if she were to say "well I heard about it on tv, or so and so said... then again, come back with another open ended question. " I've been doing a lot of research and I haven't run across that. What t.v Program was it on so that I can add that to my research.?" In all honesty, it's probably been 20 years since my mom has heard anything about gps. Then at the point that you've established that she really doesn't have a lot of information, you can simply say, "I'm pretty knowledgeable about the whole process, I've been doing months/years of research and have spoken with experts on this. Would you like me to tell you some of the information I've learned"? And then you can proceed to educate them with "real" information. Do any of you have experience with this or have you run into situations where family/ friends had negative responses? I'd love to hear your suggestions on how you deal with this. After my mom's response, I've now opted to be very cautious as to who I add to my support team.

I love this idea! I'm a week post-op and I wish I'd thought of this when telling people before. I'll keep it in my back pocket... Thanks!

That is great advice. Don't let the uninformed discourage you.

I got similar feedback from some of my out of state family. Funny enough I'm now almost 4 months out from my surgery and up until I actually visited in person a couple weeks ago, I still got questions from some of them like "can't you just lose weight with exercise or dieting?"

Now that I've shown them in-person the progress I've made, how everything they thought they "knew" about weight loss surgery was wrong and how much better my life has become, they're all on board and officially part of the support team again.

So at one of my pre-op support meetings yesterday, the therapist said that the best way to shut negative comments down if someone disagrees with your choice to have surgery is not to respond back negatively, but to reading with open ended questions. For instance, my mom is very opposed to me having surgery. The very first comment out of her mouth was " oh no!, that's so dangerous, so many people have died from that surgery". The therapist said a great response from me would be "wow! I hadn't heard that. What makes it so dangerous" or " oh no, I'm sorry, who passed away?" Obviously she doesn't have first hand knowledge of any of this, so if she were to say "well I heard about it on tv, or so and so said... then again, come back with another open ended question. " I've been doing a lot of research and I haven't run across that. What t.v Program was it on so that I can add that to my research.?" In all honesty, it's probably been 20 years since my mom has heard anything about gps. Then at the point that you've established that she really doesn't have a lot of information, you can simply say, "I'm pretty knowledgeable about the whole process, I've been doing months/years of research and have spoken with experts on this. Would you like me to tell you some of the information I've learned"? And then you can proceed to educate them with "real" information. Do any of you have experience with this or have you run into situations where family/ friends had negative responses? I'd love to hear your suggestions on how you deal with this. After my mom's response, I've now opted to be very cautious as to who I add to my support team.

I LOVE THIS ADVICE!!!! IT IS FOOLPROOF!!!!