BPD sister, tips and advice?

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Hi,

I have written a full story regarding my sister in the welcome page so I won't retype it! I find it very hard being an older sibling to a sister with BPD.

Over the years she has shown a lot of resentment towards me. When we were younger she made life very difficult for me by manipulating my mum and driving a wedge between us as my mum is the person she is attached to and borders on obsessed with and she was always jealous if me and my mum were getting on. As a result me and my mum had a very tempestuous relationship when my sister's BPD was very bad. Now we are best friends and work together to help my sister when her behaviour is bad.

However, my sister is still very resentful as I still live in the family home and she cannot due to her behaviour. She is very jealous that I am emotionally stable and have a good relationship with my family and boyfriend.

She swings all the time between treating me as her best friend and idolising me and my life to hating me and blaming her problems on me due to resentment regarding my mum. Does anyone else experience this as a sibling to someone with BPD?

Sometimes I sit and listen to her talk for hours about her problems and she often comes to me for advice as I am often very straight talking and logical and she likes this when she is wallowing in her feelings and irrational behaviour. The other day I had to call the police on her as she was physically attacking my mum which I felt incredibly guilty about as I then had to give a statement to them. She has not properly spoken to me since and has told my mum she feels as if I am taking her away from her. I am so hurt by this and have spent my life trying to come to terms with her BPD and be supportive. Please tell me I’m not the only one who is struggling with this?

It sounds stupid but I feel like I am mourning her already. I know her behaviour is so risky and she gets suicidal so often that I feel it is only a matter of time before she seriously hurts herself or dies. I have been in an ambulance with her before after she took an overdose and cut herself. I feel so guilty because in my mind I know I am already starting to prepare myself for the worst and feel that I should have more faith in her turning her life around but I know if the worst did happen I wouldn’t cope very well at all and I’ve spent my life protecting myself from the emotional turmoil she puts me through. I also feel guilty for making issues about me when it’s her that is suffering. Does anyone else feel like this?

[Blondy90]

Hi,

I have written a full story regarding my sister in the welcome page so I won't retype it! I find it very hard being an older sibling to a sister with BPD.

Over the years she has shown a lot of resentment towards me. When we were younger she made life very difficult for me by manipulating my mum and driving a wedge between us as my mum is the person she is attached to and borders on obsessed with and she was always jealous if me and my mum were getting on. As a result me and my mum had a very tempestuous relationship when my sister's BPD was very bad. Now we are best friends and work together to help my sister when her behaviour is bad.

However, my sister is still very resentful as I still live in the family home and she cannot due to her behaviour. She is very jealous that I am emotionally stable and have a good relationship with my family and boyfriend.

She swings all the time between treating me as her best friend and idolising me and my life to hating me and blaming her problems on me due to resentment regarding my mum. Does anyone else experience this as a sibling to someone with BPD?

Sometimes I sit and listen to her talk for hours about her problems and she often comes to me for advice as I am often very straight talking and logical and she likes this when she is wallowing in her feelings and irrational behaviour. The other day I had to call the police on her as she was physically attacking my mum which I felt incredibly guilty about as I then had to give a statement to them. She has not properly spoken to me since and has told my mum she feels as if I am taking her away from her. I am so hurt by this and have spent my life trying to come to terms with her BPD and be supportive. Please tell me I’m not the only one who is struggling with this?

It sounds stupid but I feel like I am mourning her already. I know her behaviour is so risky and she gets suicidal so often that I feel it is only a matter of time before she seriously hurts herself or dies. I have been in an ambulance with her before after she took an overdose and cut herself. I feel so guilty because in my mind I know I am already starting to prepare myself for the worst and feel that I should have more faith in her turning her life around but I know if the worst did happen I wouldn’t cope very well at all and I’ve spent my life protecting myself from the emotional turmoil she puts me through. I also feel guilty for making issues about me when it’s her that is suffering. Does anyone else feel like this?

[twister]

Hi Blondy

I'm the older sister of an udBPD sister myself.  I just realized about 3 years ago she is BPD.  My sister has been resentful and jealous of my relationship with my husband and even when he was my fiancé for many years.  My relationship with my younger sister has never been as close as yours.  My sister has never confided in me on any level, ever.  I however did give her the benefit of the doubt many years ago when I confided in her a couple of times, but she inevitably broke my confidence by telling others and I found out much later.  It was then I realized I couldn't trust her with anything I wanted to keep confidential.  We still spoke, but we have had 4 major breaches in the last 26 years.  Currently we are in a NC time, it's been 4 years this time. 

I do struggle a little with guilt, but it's not because of her suffering.  It's because of my entire family suffering, especially my children and my parents and her children.  My sister is extremely manipulative and along with BPD she has a fixed delusion.  She is falsely obsessed by the thought in many situations that she is or has been abused by certain men in the situation.  This has been a persistent obsession of hers since she was young around the age of 12 or so.  She has systematically accused many men both in and out of our family of abusing her.  She has a solid victim mentality and many people who reinforce it.  She is however, if you can believe quite high functioning and has almost all of our family fooled except a handful of people who see reality. She is a hoarder too, there are a lot of mental health issues. It's sad for her children.

Recently she made an attempt to reconnect with me, however she only did this by showing up at my parents house with all of her young children (15, 13, 10 and 8) essentially using them as a shield and at the same time having them with her to prove to them she was "talking" to me as the older ones ask why.  Even though she didn't actually initiate any of the conversation what so ever that day, I did all the talking.  She did this so she wouldn't have to actually address issues with me, she knew I would confront if her kids weren't there. In the past she has told them that it was me who wasn't talking to her, when in fact the opposite is true and has always been.  She gets to a place where she can't do it and be around her fake family, so she declares herself unable to cope and removes herself from contact with my family. Then she in the past has manipulate my parents into convincing me that she's ok now and we can resume the charade.  The last time this happened I said absolutely no more, I told my parents I won't play her games.  She has to talk to me about the issues and take some responsibility for at least some of the past.  I realize this may never happen however. 

My husband of 26 years is one of the people she has accused of sexual abuse and had the police investigate along with social services.  There was No proof and no case, then a few years later she says in writing that she lied, but resurrects it again when it's convenient and says its true.  I simply can't have her near us as she acts like all is good and then I find out days or weeks later she has been spreading lies to everyone about something he did to her at our last interaction. 

I would say you are preparing yourself maybe for the worst case scenario?  My advice to you is to only take responsibility for the things you know you did wrong and not take false blame. False guilt is crippling and is not a healthy thing to allow to be established.  It doesn't do anyone any good to let your own sanity and mental health deteriorate out of false guilt.  It sounds like you have supported her quite well considering how much she has put you all through.  It sounds like you've tried to develop firmer boundaries for yourself too.  There is a book out there called "Boundaries" by  Dr's Cloud and Townsend, have you heard of it?  I recommend it.  Good luck.

[Blondy90]

Thanks for the advice twister!

I have spent years now establishing boundaries with her and have had to get counselling myself to deal with the trauma she put my family through. We are really close, I could never imagine going NC with her but I have learnt very well when to distance myself from her and can detach myself emotionally from her when her behaviour is bad which is something my mum finds too difficult to do. I think if I ever have kids and her behaviour spiralled again it might be a different story, I wouldn't want them to have the experiences with her that I have.

I can totally relate to what you say about your sister. She is very jealous of my stable relationships, particularly with my boyfriend. I know part of it is because she is desperate to be able to maintain a relationship but can't. She has broken my confidence many times too, mainly to manipulate my mum in to thinking I have been badly behaved to make herself look better. I have learnt what I can and can't tell her now! I had to battle the whole 'sweeping her issues under the carpet' thing too. My mum was desperate to play happy families for a long time. I finally put my foot down when I was 17 and refused to do it any more. Me and my mum never agreed on that and I was called selfish and cold. I started detaching myself from her then which was hard because I'd had to parent her at a young age due to my mum having severe depression and it was a hard process. I look back now and think how strong I was for a teenager. My mum realises now I did what was best and was protecting myself and now my sister isn't in the family home we get on brilliantly.

The abuse situation rings so true with her too. She is obsessed with the idea that my step dad has abused her and even accused him of sexual abuse which she later admitted she lied about to get a reaction. It's in no way true, although he did sometimes have to restrain her when she was out of control. We are still trying to get her to take responsibility for her actions but this has always been a hard line to take with her! The façade you talk about is spot on. Only our immediate family has ever seen her true side and even therapists in the past have been fooled by her when she has been lucid.

You are so right about the false guilt. I blamed myself for bad things happening to her because we’d had an argument and I felt like I should have been able to protect her as her big sister and that I’d let her down. I’ve dealt with that now and I know that she is ill and it’s all part of having BPD. It just saddens me that one day she might take things too far. Part of me would die with her and that’s hard to handle!

Thanks again for the advice, I’ll check out the book it sounds interesting. Amazing to know I’m not alone with this!

[Jodi_WG]

Hi Blondy, I'm so sorry you've suffered the consequences of her behavior over the years.

As you've read from my posts, my sister is uBPD.   While we don't live together and haven't for years, she will always find a way to gain the upper hand (in her eyes) in our relationship and make me out to be the bad guy somehow.

It's a cycle that solidified itself over the years and now she feels threatened because she senses that I'm on to her 'game'.  It seems to be putting her in a new panic and causing our relationship to spiral out of control at a much faster rate than normal.

However, caring for yourself first is key in all of this.  Self care is NOT selfish.  It allows you to be the best version of yourself possible.  For everyone's sake.

Many prayers for peace to you!

[wkjkek]

She swings all the time between treating me as her best friend and idolising me and my life to hating me and blaming her problems on me due to resentment regarding my mum. Does anyone else experience this as a sibling to someone with BPD?

I have experienced this, not to the degree that you have, but definitely at times. At times it appeared to my parents, and sometimes to me, that she wanted to be just like me. Wanted to spend time with me. Then, she would hold me responsible for all the crap in her life. I remember once, she screamed at me that it was all my fault her then-husband was never accepted as part of the family. That he was disliked only because of me. Of course, the fact he was verbally (and according to her, physically) abusive, gross and a constant liar had absolutely nothing to do with why we all detested him.

It sounds stupid but I feel like I am mourning her already. I know her behaviour is so risky and she gets suicidal so often that I feel it is only a matter of time before she seriously hurts herself or dies. I have been in an ambulance with her before after she took an overdose and cut herself. I feel so guilty because in my mind I know I am already starting to prepare myself for the worst and feel that I should have more faith in her turning her life around but I know if the worst did happen I wouldn’t cope very well at all and I’ve spent my life protecting myself from the emotional turmoil she puts me through. I also feel guilty for making issues about me when it’s her that is suffering. Does anyone else feel like this?

It doesn't seem stupid to me at all. It sounds as though you are just trying to prepare yourself for the worst possible eventuality of her behavior.  Something you fear greatly and which may or may never happen. You sound as though you are attempting to be "realistic" as you have described in another thread. Right or wrong, I do this at times as well with various events in my life. I understand it very well.

I also understand the issue of guilt. Truly, you have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about when it comes to looking after yourself. You did not cause her issues and you can't make them go away as much as you would like to do so. All you can do is to be the best you that you can be. And that means taking care of yourself physically and mentally.