My BPD Sister abused me...

[Our abuse recovery guide]

"I have been trying to figure out why I've had so much trouble maintaining a safe relationship with my BPD sister and then the lightbulb went off... .my whole childhood I was horribly abused by my BPD sister.  She is much older than I and instead of protecting me, the youngest of three, she teased me, tormented me, made fun of me, got pleasure in making me cry, stole my things, broke my things, and made my childhood a nightmare.  We shared a room and she was very messy.  If she knew I was having a friend over, she purposely messed up everything as I would attempt to clean our room so it looked okay.  She never stopped until she made me cry. 

When she got married I was so happy.  After she was out of our house, she apologized and I forgave her.  In fact she encouraged me to share my life and secrets with her which I did.  Remember, she is quite a bit older than I and I trusted her.  After about 15 years of that I discovered she betrayed all my secrets to our mom whom I did not want to know.  She was getting information from me, sharing with the people I asked her not to and trying to make me look bad which worked for a while.  This game of divide and conquer went on many years until my mom and I mended fences. 

My mom was not a perfect mother but she apologized and meant it and spent the rest of her days proving it to me and my children whom she loved so.  Anyways, I never got over that childhood hurt and betrayal of trust.  She can not understand this.  She also is on a distortion campaign against me, my brother and deceased mom. 

I am happy I have this board to write and help heal.  Anyone else been abused by a sibling?

[deux soeurs]

"I have been trying to figure out why I've had so much trouble maintaining a safe relationship with my BPD sister and then the lightbulb went off... .my whole childhood I was horribly abused by my BPD sister.  She is much older than I and instead of protecting me, the youngest of three, she teased me, tormented me, made fun of me, got pleasure in making me cry, stole my things, broke my things, and made my childhood a nightmare.  We shared a room and she was very messy.  If she knew I was having a friend over, she purposely messed up everything as I would attempt to clean our room so it looked okay.  She never stopped until she made me cry. 

When she got married I was so happy.  After she was out of our house, she apologized and I forgave her.  In fact she encouraged me to share my life and secrets with her which I did.  Remember, she is quite a bit older than I and I trusted her.  After about 15 years of that I discovered she betrayed all my secrets to our mom whom I did not want to know.  She was getting information from me, sharing with the people I asked her not to and trying to make me look bad which worked for a while.  This game of divide and conquer went on many years until my mom and I mended fences. 

My mom was not a perfect mother but she apologized and meant it and spent the rest of her days proving it to me and my children whom she loved so.  Anyways, I never got over that childhood hurt and betrayal of trust.  She can not understand this.  She also is on a distortion campaign against me, my brother and deceased mom. 

I am happy I have this board to write and help heal.  Anyone else been abused by a sibling?

[Deb]

Hi deux soeurs,

My dBPD sister also did many of the things your sister did. She is 2 & 1/2  years older than I am, but acts much younger. In addition to the teasing, tormenting, lies, stealing and blaming me for things she did, she physically and sexually abused me. She has never acknowledged her bad behavior and yet I forgave her. I finally had enough and have been NC for many years. I came to this NC when she was divorcing her 4th husband and her 2 older children (both grown and having different fathers) asked me to support their step dad in custody of their youngest sibling. They shared what she had done to them and it made me remember some things I witnessed her doing to them.

Anyway, I have come to forgive her. Not for her but for me. I can forgive her because she is a sick woman who will never seek help or admit guilt. That doesn't mean I have to allow her in my life, to wreak havoc on me. I also grieved the sister that I never had. I never had that sister I could count as my best friend. I will never have that kind of a relationship with her. Her illness makes that impossible. Still, should she actively seek help and start on recovery, I would be willing to try.

[deux soeurs]

Hi Deb. Thank you for sharing your story with me.  You have been through so much with BPD sister, I really admire you for being able to forgive her.  When you do say you forgive her, do you mean in your mind?  I am assuming you are still NC from reading your post.  Is it possible to forgive someone and still have no relationship?  I can totally relate to "grieving the sister I never had"... .I feel the same way.      Does your sister know you forgive her?  Can someone forgive another whom does not take ownership of their wrong doings?

[bethanny]

Deux,

One of my siblings, a brother, was ferociously malicious toward me growing up.  He seemed to project all his self-hate (looking back this is how I see it) and sense of shame outward at me as well as enormous jealousy.  Any respect or affection I got from people outside the family circle he dismissed as me somehow having tricked them. I found his malice breathtaking and overwhelming.

We have opposite temperaments and instead of live and let live, he attributed my differences from him as evidence of my being stupid and wrong. If I had different tastes in music or art, I was WRONG. Lots of narcissism and power and control issues.  

It was painful and confusing because he was so passionate in constantly correcting me and trying to re-train me. I was very intimidated by him growing up and enduring it often proved easier than fighting him which brought on an escalation of abuse. When I did become emotional he pointed to my emotionalism as a sign of how superior he was.

I think looking back today he was covertly encouraged by my uBPD mother in abusing me.  She dismissed his cruelty as boys will be boys teasing and told me I should ignore it and it was my fault for handling it wrong and couldn't empathize. I think she framed me to him behind my back as unworthy of respect, sadly, and a source of frustration for her since my brother was temperamentally more like my mother than I.

It was impossible to ignore such a flood of malice.  I also saw how there was a double-standard between us in terms of treatment from my mother.  He challenged her belief systems and expressed his anger freely without fear of rejection and abandonment.  I was on the tight rope.  Growing up there was such over-reaction to my challenging even a little my mother's belief system and if I expressed anger I was shot down as selfish, evil and/or crazy. Especially being a girl, I must be a Stepford accommodating daughter and sister.  

If I am honest, too, I think my brother blamed me for my Stepford behavior with my mother and that is why I heeded his rage so much, because he called me out constantly as being a coward and I felt confused and ashamed of why I was so frightened and wary and unchallenging of my mother as well as authority figures in general. But I was scapegoated by my mother as he was not.  And his rage didn't help me free myself, it made my self-esteem sink even lower than it was already with my disordered and frightening parents.

Today my brother and I get on so very much better,  but there are times when I see flashes of irrational impatience in him toward me and it reminds me of the old days. I am much more assertive with him and faster if he slides back to disrespect today and he is much more vigilant about curbing expressing disrespect and exercises a lot of good will toward me. This was after me fighting hard over the years to push back against the old dynamic.  

I think he has some awareness of his cruelty growing up and some guilt but I don't think he begins to get how crippling it was.

[deux soeurs]

Oh Bethany, that sounds horrible.  Does your brother have a PD?  While you and I have different stories, we both share in the pain of not only having difficult childhoods, but no support from from our siblings.  It is hard enough to deal with toxic parents, but we did not even have the safe shell of connecting with our brothers or sisters to protect, comfort and reason.  I think you are right about your brother projecting his hatred and feelings on to you.  I know my toxic, abusive sister did that is still doing that as I write this.  I am sorry if your mom encouraged your brother.  that is just awful.  I now my sister was constantly trying to make me look bad to our mom so she could feel better about her own pitiful self.  I am going to try and work on forgiving her in therapy... .not contact, ever, she scares me too much.  Does your brother still try to malign you like my sister does to me?

[bethanny]

Deux,

Thank you for the empathy and back at you, my friend. Good going establishing peace with your mother.  I am so sorry re your sister.  You use the word "safe" -- that she threatens your existential "safety". You have the right and the NEED to be SAFE in your life and if she threatens that she does not deserve a place in it!  Your self-protectiveness deserves crediting!

Growing up my younger brothers were kind and fun and non-threatening but when my estrangement took place with my mother their choice of staying remote broke my heart and I kept assuming any day they would reach out and want to know more my side of things and support me. That hope died slowly and painfully.

Today we are connected and have worked through a lot of the pain and disappointment of that period. As I have with the troubling brother which is pretty miraculous though with some skirmishes occasionally but I don't stifle myself as much any more if invalidation happens.

That period of NC was hard but helped me raise my consciousness and my self-esteem, not only away from my mother's intimidation and my dad's roller coaster alcoholism, but also my brother's ferocious non-stop condescension and acting out on me. 

After those 10 years of NC, when I became re-engaged everyone treated me with kid gloves and I them, EXCEPT that brother who started in on me with an automatic disrespect as if I had never separated. I was astonished.  I became enraged and vowed to him quickly on I would have NC with him forever and let him know that I was dead serious, it wasn't a casual bluff.  It was up to him. If he kept on I was gone.  Then I let go of it.

He chose to have a relationship with me and rein in the "I'm okay and you're not".  I didn't think he could do it or cared enough to, but I am grateful he did.

I wish you the best with her. The serenity prayer helps me. Especially the part accepting the things we cannot change. 



 

[Deb]

Hi Deb. Thank you for sharing your story with me.  You have been through so much with BPD sister, I really admire you for being able to forgive her.  When you do say you forgive her, do you mean in your mind?  I am assuming you are still NC from reading your post.  Is it possible to forgive someone and still have no relationship?  I can totally relate to "grieving the sister I never had"... .I feel the same way.      Does your sister know you forgive her?  Can someone forgive another whom does not take ownership of their wrong doings?

My sister doesn't know I forgive her. And it wouldn't matter anyway because in her mind, she has done nothing to be forgiven for. In fact, she believes she's the one who is owed apologies. She has stated this to people I know. So my forgiving her was for ME. So that I could let it go. I used to have a boyfriend, who when someone was angry would say "Will you get over it?" And if the person said no, he would then say "Then I guess you will die with it." I don't wish to die with bitterness, anger and hatred.

It has taken me a long time to come to this point. It's not an overnight thing. First, I needed to see the problem: my sister's mental illness. Then I was angry with her for what she did to me. Then I was angry for having been "robbed" of a sister. After awhile, I had acceptance. Acceptance of her illness, accceptance of what it did to me and all of my family and acceptance of the fact in front of me. Then I needed to decide how to heal me since healing her isn't something I can do. Besides the forgiveness, I can say that I don't hate her. I pity her. She threw away everyone in her family, but believes they threw her away. She believes I am responsible. She doesn't have the insight to see that HER actions caused her children to go NC with her. And that is sad.

She wrote her two eldest children, grown with their own kids, a letter. It was the same letter just duplicate copies, with their names written in. It basically said "I know I wasn't the best mother but that's who I am and you have to accepot me because I will not change." Well, no, they don't have to accept her. And they don't. They both have said the same thing as me: If she ever gets real help, we will support that.

[deux soeurs]

Bethany, I do feel blessed to have established a wonderful and loving relationship with my mom before she passed away.  My mom had her issues, but she tried hard with me and I gave her a fair chance although I did have to tell her how I felt growing up.  My mom did change though and I felt her love.  My sister has a mental illness and even up until my mom became ill with cancer she would call mom up and tell her how horrible a mom she was.  My mom would call me up visibly upset.  My brother heard these phone calls too, and verified that my mom was telling the truth.  My sister scares me emotionally.  She will not stop the smear campaigns.  I try to tell myself it is not her fault, she is mentally ill, but the stuff she says is horrible and I do believe she is evil. 

You are lucky you found some sort of a middle ground with your brother.  It seems like it took a long time but you found it.  There is some peace knowing you don't have to be NC, don't you think?  Again, sometimes I think the sibling abuse is worse than parental because we look to our sisters and brothers for validation and support because they are in the same boat so to speak.  You seem like you are handling the cards you've been dealt with grace!

[deux soeurs]

Deb, we could have the same sister in some ways.  I so understand the part where you say she doesn't think she has done anything wrong, just feels she is the victim.  My sister is the same way.  She calls herself the scapegoat of the family.  I looked up scapegoat and what a bunch of nonsense.  Because she is writing about me so much on another forum it will be hard to try and turn my feelings into pity but I am going to try.  I do think it must be awful to be her, living with BPD, few friends, family estranged from her, all her doing.  Yes I will try and tell myself these things and I am doing much better not reading her lies that she writes!

[deux soeurs]

Do they ever stop saying the same old thing and do they ever grow tired of abusing us nons?