BPDFamily.com

Hello all,  

I think I might write here only at this time of year. All year I can and do function like a perfectly capable grown up even in relation to my mum and sister. Add Christmas to my mum and sister and our extended family antics and I successfully turn in to either a victim or a persecutor.  
I have nothing to do with my sister anymore, not through choice, until my mother moved home we had a relationship and it was ok. I now only know about her life through tales told to me by my mother, which for the most part just wash over me. I am neutral. They live together in our family home, my mum moved back there after my dad died 6 years ago. My sister is married and her grown up daughter also lives there also.

I spend as little time there as possible, it is hard to be somewhere and be actively ignored, but harder still have a grown woman ignore my son who is 9 and has autism. The situation floors me emotionally so I avoid it at all costs. I find it very triggering and I feel such anger and sadness when it occurs. I understand the psychodynamics of what has taken place since my mother moved back home and have tried to maintain both relationships. It has not been possible, my mother continually sabotages any attempt to try and be friends my sister. My sister is so fragile emotionally she now has me always as her persecutor, even though we no longer have a relationship. It is really sad. I miss her being in my life and I miss her being an aunt to my son. It's like how did things get so messy? I know the answer, but it's like I only get to have one or the other. Or of course nothing at all is also an option.

My son and I spend time there when my sister and her family are abroad which is often. My son adores his grandmother, and for the most part, although I am well aware it is based around her terms only, their relationship is positive. We spend a lot of time with my mum going out and about, but as soon as I ask for a bit of support so I can attend a clinical review for my husband or just a nights break on my own, it is nearly always met with a no.

Just recently I asked her if she would accompany me to London for the weekend as my son had a ballet masterclass weekend and I was feeling a bit anxious about it all. I found out that she lied to me about not being able to come when she tripped herself up by forgetting why she didn't come. I didn't call her out on it, she knew I knew.

The current annual dilemma. My sister always holds a festive family meal, I don't usually get an invite because everyone uses the excuse that I like to have a small family Christmas (which for the most part is true). This year is different when the family event is occurring my husband will be back in hospital, this is well known. He has been a psychiatric in-patient since June of this year and is currently awaiting a long stay mental health rehab bed.
I thought it was just a small dinner for my mum and her sisters and in-laws, but during a random conversation with my mum she mentioned she was out buying presents for the children. I asked her what for and she said the family meal on Saturday. I could tell she hadn't meant to say anything, but it transpired everyone is going, my brother, his girlfriend, her family, my nieces and nephews. And I like a fool feeling really upset said, why aren't  s9 and I not invited? Oh she replied, h will be home so we thought you wouldn't want to come. And like a switch being flicked inside my head the next 5 minutes were me ranting at her oscillating between full victim and persecutor mode. My mother was her perfect best, invalidating, cold, insensitive and completely focused on her needs, which is looking the very best in front of a captive audience at the pending meal. I put the phone down on her, something I never do.

I feel wretched, this stuff hurts my heart, and I realise now how very lonely and isolated all this makes me feel. I don't even know how to deal with it all. The only thing I do know is allowing my mother to talk to me about my sister, even if I stay silent makes me complicit in the triangle. It keeps me attached emotionally.

I would love to see if I could salvage a relationship with my sister, but I'm so confused by how we got here I don't know where to start or if I should. My sister has been properly mean and spiteful and downright callous at times when I have asked her directly for support and somewhere to stay when my h was in full blown psychotic BPD mode.

I don't know how to move forward with my mother. The whole meal thing which is happening tomorrow leaves me feeling all over the place emotionall. I feel hurt for the absence of my extended family in my son's life.

I want to feel better about this, but it feels as though there are no good options here. I want my son to have access to my extended family, they're all he has, but I really don't know what's possible anymore.

What would you all do going forward to try and change? What healthy options to people see here for the New Year?

Hi sweetheart

I am sorry your mother and sister's behavior is affecting you so. I can understand how not being invited when 'everyone' else is, could be so upsetting for you.


How did this change in your relationship with your sister come about? I know your mom moved back after your father died, but did the relationship change instantaneously or was it more a gradual process?

When your mother talks about your sister, is it mostly negatively or positively? How would you describe the relationship your sister and mother have with each other? You mention your sister casting you in the role of persecutor, is she treating your mother as rescuer?


Could you elaborate on this, in what ways does your mother sabotage your attempts at having a relationship with your sister? What does your mother say and do to achieve this?

The Board Parrot

This is a long reply, and there's a lot in it, but it's helping me calm and sort through my thinking a bit... .

The relationship breakdown with my sister has been a gradual process starting just before my father died.
I expressed my irritation with her around our family home circumstances when she dug her heels in to my parents returning home because my father's health was starting to deteriorate. I didn't believe that was her call to make and told her so.
It is jointly owned house between her, her ex husband and my parents. The legalities of our family home ownership always have been a complicated hot mess. It is an effective externalised analogy for the emotional psychodrama that our family are always caught up in.
Anyway sadly my father died suddenly, and my mother returned home and took over 'her half' of the house. It became and still is an emotional minefield played out through ownership of rooms and floors. With my sisters new husband thrown into the mix for good measure, who because my family's history is so veiled in secrets and lies, thinks my mother is some kind of sitting tenant causing havoc in his new marital home.
Once my mother moved back home, her and my sisters' sparring ground exists only within the conflict triangle. They are both permanently cast in the three roles. My niece, alcohol, me, either one of them, the animals, money, extended family can be the third part to the conflict. I now realise however after a long time of listening to my mother berate my sisters shortcomings and validating what I believed to be displaced grief at my father's death, that they are entirely co-dependent.
My mother is nearly always cast as persecutor to my sister as well as me. My sister is very much more emotionally fragile, than my mother and cannot bear the suggestion that she might be being cast in some bad light anywhere by anyone. Me having a relationship with my mother translates only as absolute persecution. It is as though we are shining an exposing beam of light into every corner of her life and showing all her flaws. She has become so brittle since my mother moved in it is no longer possible to have any kind of conversation with her that she doesn't perceive as an attack. She has by her own sad admission moved from alcohol dependence to functioning alcoholism in the years since my father's death. My father was an alcoholic for all of our childhood and young adult lives, but recovered 25 years when he died. It was grim to grow up with this, but his alcoholism suited my mum as it gave her the power and control over his life and finances that he relinquished whilst drunk. A codependent relationship with alcohol is something my mother is very familiar with.

What my mother has successfully managed to do in the six years since she returned home is make it so that myself, my brother, my sister all communicate through her. So for this meal, I suspect what happened is my sister said, what about inviting sister and nephew, and my mum says oh don't bother they'll be dealing with dBPDh for Christmas. Instead of sister just contacting and asking me directly where I would have said 'yes.' Then when I ask about why we're not invited, I too ask my mum, not my sister. Reinforcing the dysfunctional dynamic. Same thing happened last year, my mum gave some random answer, excuse, explanation but then denies, or obfuscates what really happened. I'm too annoyed and upset to sort through it properly and round we go again. My mum gets to play the victim and I want to stop a perpetuation of this rubbish from me.

In trying to be a friend with my mother, I feel I am largely seeking to rescue her from aspects of life that will always dissatisfy her. I am aware that I am also desperately seeking a relationship with her that does not exist because she is not capable of it. I allowed her to get in between my sister and I because I felt like I was saving her when my father died. It felt good to be cast in this role after so many years in the wilderness. I was desperate for someone to listen which she did when my dBPDh was at his most unwell. And yet she would never help me with support for my son even when things were desperate and defended my sisters choice not to help with childcare as well.

I've been doing something very similar here with my mother that I did with my husband.

Hi again sweetheart

Thanks for responding, your post really wasn't that long you know

You are able to recognize the dynamics at play in your family and have identified several Karpmann Drama Triangles. Having this insight is key to being able to make a positive change |iiii

You also recognize your own role in these conflict dynamics. What actions do you think you could take to step off of these drama triangles? Can you envision alternative responses or behavior patterns which would allow you to not participate in and/or not get drawn into the drama?

Hi Kwamina thank you for responding.

I'm going to text Happy New Year from me and my son as usual.
I am going to ask about dropping presents around maybe next week as well, this is all fairly usual activity.

I've been thinking a lot about how to change my part in all of it, some ideas are
- to not enter into conversations about my sister at all in order to shut them down quicker.
-to not listen to conversations about family members that are negative or compromise my integrity
-to not ask my mother for things I know she will refuse me and then I am hurt
-to minimise my contact with her some so that it's based on wanting to spend time with her rather than hoping it will lead to her offering me more support
-to make time spent with her about my son as he enjoys being with her
-to keep more of my life private

Should I apologise for getting so irate and putting the phone down on her? My mother will be expecting an apology, and would not contact me again now if I just left it.

Hello  


I wanted to comment on this :


I very much understand what you mean. I am a single mum and for such a long time I have  hoped that finally my parents would take an interest in my daughter (and in me). They never really did, and since I have been installing certain boundaries they have kept away. We are NC, not because I wanted it, but because they wanted it. Same thing with my sister, who's very much under the influence of my mother.

I have felt so bad and guilty towards my daughter because of this. Now I can see more clearly. I should not feel guilty for a situation that I didn't create. Moreover now I am also able to see that having no extended family is not such a bad idea when you compare it with having an unhealthy and damaging one.

And one thing you are saying ('they're all he has' is not true : he has you ! And that's the most important thing.

What do you think ?

Hello Fie, all of this has been in my mind a lot this year. In keeping my extended family in my life it has meant that I am nearly always left feeling emotionally compromised.

I have lots of fear, I am an older mother, I am not technically a single mum, but I am to all intents and purposes. My son whilst doing amazing was diagnosed with atypical autism in January this year. He is beautiful and talented, but I found myself trying to make plans for his care were I to die when he is still young.
I asked my mum and she said, he'll just have to go into care. I asked my sister a long time ago when we had a relationship and she said she would always have him.
A lot of water has run under the bridge since that conversation, including his diagnosis.

I find it hard to let go of these worries, but it is fairly clear that he will be in care were I to die and this just kills me emotionally if I let the thought take over.

I believe I'm a great mum, we've had some tough times with his dad over the last few years, but we are all still intact and together, albeit slightly different from before. Me and my h no longer live together, but we remain married. My h would not be able to ever look after our son on his own either, but he is still very much a dad to our son.

I think because my son is so socially vulnerable, I have worries about him that are still quite new and I'm unclear at the moment what autism will mean to him as he grows up into the world.

I know going into the New Year my boundaries with my mother need to be clearer, they have become very blurred over the last year and I think as I write this my son's diagnosis left me feeling very vulnerable and I have compromised myself emotionally in ways that I would not have done before.