Just took a huge timeout from sister

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Hi,

I usually post on dealing with my husband's ex wife who has BPD, dealing with her and trying to parallel parent 2 teen kids.

After a decade of experience and exposure to this, I have finally put my foot down with my sister's behaviour and have decided that I'm keeping a healthy distance from interacting with her.  I've informed our eldest sister and she is completely supportive of me.  I am the youngest, which probably explains a lot.   I recently received a shocking email that completely attacked me out of the blue.  I suppose she felt I was pulling away and was rejecting her 'trying to reach out'.  The last time she attacked me by email, a couple of years ago, I tried to calm her a bit, that I didn't know what she was talking about (this huge massive over reaction of hers)  She replied with, 'b---sh--t' and was baiting me for a fight.   Recently she got in touch and did this again, coming up with all sorts of invalid baloney to sling at me, including mistreating our mom!  I called my mom and told her what was said, and she couldn't believe it, that she completely denied that she felt that I was mistreating her.  I was so shocked and hurt by that.   I'm assuming that it's from her opinion that I'm not visiting my mom enough but my mom and I talk on the phone frequently, we have a close and loving relationship, we always have, and she completely denies that I'm mistreating her for goodness sake!  This is the most shocking to me.   She chose to deliberately withhold coming to me with all of this without trying to resolve anything first with me and suddenly blindsided me out of the blue with such venom and apparent rage, with this ambush  that I could barely read the email.  At that point I knew for sure that her behaviour was almost identical to my husbands ex wife, and I could count all the numerous borderline traits.  I just don't why I  hadn't seen it before, although I knew she somewhat had the same tendencies, this latest A bomb drop just sealed the deal for me.  I'm in my early 50's, we aren't spring chickens.  I told my other sister that I will not tolerate this abusive and bullying behaviour.  That I have blocked her from my email, de-friended her off of facebook, and blocked her numbers from my phone.  I don't want her to get in touch with me, I don't even think this can be fixed or that I want to.  For me, it's not about me being 'right',  punishing her or making her feel guilty about her behaviour towards me.  My trust has been completely broken.   It's about me creating firm boundaries, putting up a stop sign,  I will not accept her making unwarranted accusations, delusional perspectives, and attacking me when she suddenly feels I'm not contacting or visiting her enough, attention seeking baiting (extinction burst) and being an easy target for her to use as her own personal waste receptacle.   I feel empowered and she is an older sister.  I don't have anything to lose because over the past few years, I've not had much to do with her, she is toxic and angry and her life in a nutshell is sometimes completely full of stress with multiple failed marriages (she cannot be without a man in her life, co dependent) past health scares and job stresses.    She vents to my mother mostly when she visits her and I suppose she has been for quite some time without my knowledge.  I was wondering why mom would not mention her when I called and now I know that she has been put in the middle of some sort of s---t storm that my sister has let fester and secretly was becoming more and more angry and resentful towards me and my absence.  My mom thinks that she is quite envious/jealous of me and my happy life and if hers isn't going so well, then the stress of that seems to trigger her.  I had pulled away slightly by not wanting to visit my mother's house at the same time as my sister and I guess she has progressively picked up on it (but I just don't like being around her! she's so toxic).   This probably has provoked the fear of abandonment issue borderlines have or feelings of rejection.  Now our relationship has really taken a turn for the worst nose dive and I finally have had enough and I feel proud of myself for putting up such a huge boundary.  I don't know what the future holds, but my gut tells me that I don't see us having much to do with each other.  No doubt she will try to find allies within the family to side with her, as she seems to have tried already.  But my relations are strong with everyone else so I doubt she will succeed getting too far with that.   It's still new, so we'll see what the future holds. 

I just wanted to share that and know that it can take a lifetime to get this far.  If I hadn't have had the experience over the past decade with dealing with my husband's ex wife, my step kids' mother, who has BPD, exchanging support and info here,  I would not have been able to cope with this at all, or have the knowledge and understanding about personality disorders that I do now.    I'm glad that I have this site. 

Cheers 

[Klera]

Hi,

I usually post on dealing with my husband's ex wife who has BPD, dealing with her and trying to parallel parent 2 teen kids.

After a decade of experience and exposure to this, I have finally put my foot down with my sister's behaviour and have decided that I'm keeping a healthy distance from interacting with her.  I've informed our eldest sister and she is completely supportive of me.  I am the youngest, which probably explains a lot.   I recently received a shocking email that completely attacked me out of the blue.  I suppose she felt I was pulling away and was rejecting her 'trying to reach out'.  The last time she attacked me by email, a couple of years ago, I tried to calm her a bit, that I didn't know what she was talking about (this huge massive over reaction of hers)  She replied with, 'b---sh--t' and was baiting me for a fight.   Recently she got in touch and did this again, coming up with all sorts of invalid baloney to sling at me, including mistreating our mom!  I called my mom and told her what was said, and she couldn't believe it, that she completely denied that she felt that I was mistreating her.  I was so shocked and hurt by that.   I'm assuming that it's from her opinion that I'm not visiting my mom enough but my mom and I talk on the phone frequently, we have a close and loving relationship, we always have, and she completely denies that I'm mistreating her for goodness sake!  This is the most shocking to me.   She chose to deliberately withhold coming to me with all of this without trying to resolve anything first with me and suddenly blindsided me out of the blue with such venom and apparent rage, with this ambush  that I could barely read the email.  At that point I knew for sure that her behaviour was almost identical to my husbands ex wife, and I could count all the numerous borderline traits.  I just don't why I  hadn't seen it before, although I knew she somewhat had the same tendencies, this latest A bomb drop just sealed the deal for me.  I'm in my early 50's, we aren't spring chickens.  I told my other sister that I will not tolerate this abusive and bullying behaviour.  That I have blocked her from my email, de-friended her off of facebook, and blocked her numbers from my phone.  I don't want her to get in touch with me, I don't even think this can be fixed or that I want to.  For me, it's not about me being 'right',  punishing her or making her feel guilty about her behaviour towards me.  My trust has been completely broken.   It's about me creating firm boundaries, putting up a stop sign,  I will not accept her making unwarranted accusations, delusional perspectives, and attacking me when she suddenly feels I'm not contacting or visiting her enough, attention seeking baiting (extinction burst) and being an easy target for her to use as her own personal waste receptacle.   I feel empowered and she is an older sister.  I don't have anything to lose because over the past few years, I've not had much to do with her, she is toxic and angry and her life in a nutshell is sometimes completely full of stress with multiple failed marriages (she cannot be without a man in her life, co dependent) past health scares and job stresses.    She vents to my mother mostly when she visits her and I suppose she has been for quite some time without my knowledge.  I was wondering why mom would not mention her when I called and now I know that she has been put in the middle of some sort of s---t storm that my sister has let fester and secretly was becoming more and more angry and resentful towards me and my absence.  My mom thinks that she is quite envious/jealous of me and my happy life and if hers isn't going so well, then the stress of that seems to trigger her.  I had pulled away slightly by not wanting to visit my mother's house at the same time as my sister and I guess she has progressively picked up on it (but I just don't like being around her! she's so toxic).   This probably has provoked the fear of abandonment issue borderlines have or feelings of rejection.  Now our relationship has really taken a turn for the worst nose dive and I finally have had enough and I feel proud of myself for putting up such a huge boundary.  I don't know what the future holds, but my gut tells me that I don't see us having much to do with each other.  No doubt she will try to find allies within the family to side with her, as she seems to have tried already.  But my relations are strong with everyone else so I doubt she will succeed getting too far with that.   It's still new, so we'll see what the future holds. 

I just wanted to share that and know that it can take a lifetime to get this far.  If I hadn't have had the experience over the past decade with dealing with my husband's ex wife, my step kids' mother, who has BPD, exchanging support and info here,  I would not have been able to cope with this at all, or have the knowledge and understanding about personality disorders that I do now.    I'm glad that I have this site. 

Cheers 

[Catlady3.14]

 

Good job on set firm boundaries and avoiding more damage.
I'm sorry, I know how it hurts to fight with family and how damaging it is all around. Seems you have this under control and you're standing your ground.
How are things going?

[Klera]

Thanks Catlady3.14 

I wish I could feel better about this!  I don't like conflict at all, obviously none of us do! I'm trying to heal and letting the dust settle a bit and trying to carry on as normal despite the abnormal happening right now.

There's more to this story so this is an addendum:

 This has happened right in the middle of a couple of huge things, one is we just found a 1/2 sister we didn't know existed only about two weeks ago! And a family gathering with cousins from Europe currently visiting us here.     I know! right? Like great timing or what.  Although this huge happy event (new discovery) is a positive exciting thing developing, it really doesn't have anything to do with this current locking of horns.  It's more about my sister's behaviour within this event, not about the actual discovery of this sister.  I hope that makes sense. This is about my loss of trust and me putting up huge firm boundaries for the first time in my life with a (I'm diagnosing her) borderline sister whom has presented me with this sudden outburst of rage, and in my opinion, was way out of proportion not to mention feeling side swiped with it.

I had found my 1/2 sister via my Ancestry DNA project results out of the blue. I got a match and a contact from this person.
 
This event had happened just previous to  my sister's email attack, the one I'm currently processing.   I then contacted my other 3 sibs via one big email letter all at the same time.  I hadn't gotten a reply back right away but that was due to a couple of mix ups with 2 sib's addresses and them not getting it right away but they eventually responded positively.  The 3rd sib is the one I'm currently at war with, had her news for a week and didn't bother to respond at first, but in fact sat on it for a week.  You can imagine what that was like waiting to hear from everyone after I'd sent out this A bomb of a newsflash.  One week felt like a year.  Once she did come around, the only response to me was, "care to share some contact info?" and that was it.  Not, "hey, wow, great news... .what do you think etc"  it was a blunt, rude and surprising response.  I left it for a day and she finally said, "please" with it.   Not impressed, but thinking 'okay' I provided her an email address to contact our new sister... .

Then I find out later, unbeknownst to me, that this borderline sister of mine, took it upon herself and called my mother and  immediately told her the news without consulting anyone else first!  Us siblings hadn't yet discussed it with each other, not to mention my mom finding out! The 1/2 sister is a result of a relationship my dad had had prior to meeting and marrying my mom back in the 50's. The baby was given up for adoption.  And the birth parents parted ways.   Apparently it happened quite a bit back then as I'm told now.   My dad never told us or my mom.   Despite my mom being okay, (she is in her mid 80's!) surprised, but fine with this news and happy I was livid at my sister for doing it.   This was all during the time that I was waiting to hear back from my other two siblings.    Within this period, my mom called me about a family gathering for my cousins over from Europe.  She sounded fine, normal, chirpy.   A few days after that,  it slipped my mom knew (a phone conversation with my aunt about the gathering) which is when I found out she was told by my borderline sister.  I quickly shot off an email to her saying that I was disappointed that she had told our mom (via her own instigation) and thought that  we all could have discussed it first together amongst ourselves. That's it.  WELL!  that sure instigated this big blow out from her.   That was the trigger.   Suddenly my sister had attention, contact from me.   I assume now that our distance between us, my lack of contact with her prior to this huge event, triggered this, "together is big word coming from you" tone.   I ignored this and several hours later the larger attack email came when I hadn't responded to the earlier one.

So that is some more info.  I'm going through this huge time right now within the family on top of this war with a sister.  Like I said, we are in our 50's and not children or kids!  It's been so incredibly mind blowing that is why I've had to reach out here.

So that is how it's going... .I'm just trying to get back to normal, get to know my new 1/2 sister by emails mostly right now and she is great, we are all quite excited.  What could have been an even better event, my BPD sister had to piss all over it and start this war.  Or at least I'm holding my ground creating this much needed space between us now.

Thanks for reading!  Let me know your thoughts if you feel like it... I'm finding it very helpful to have some support here.    

[Catlady3.14]

I wish I had advice. That is a lot on your plate.
Congratulations on finding and getting to know your half siSter.
That's incredible!
It does sound as though you uBPD sister is out for the attention.
I think I would have wanted to at least be there to be support before blurting it out to mom. I do understand that. There's a time and place and a decent way to go about things.
Was your mom okay with the discovery?

[Klera]

Thanks Catlady3.14!  Very kind of you.  

I wasn't there for my mom's reaction or shock, but she understands this person was before she met my dad and that it's really about us kids and not her (she feels).  The story was, that my aunt just so happened to be present when my sister phoned to tell her, so she wasn't alone at least.  

I wanted all of us to do it and be together.   My dad passed away in 1997 so we've been without him for some time now.  But I wanted all of us to tell her or me be there in person, for support.  I'm still annoyed at how quickly my sister jumped the gun with all of this.   My mom is really strong and healthy for her age, not to mention has a positive outlook so she is okay with this, in fact she thinks it's quite interesting!  if anything she says that she is sad that our dad kept this to himself and from all of us.

Thanks again for your input.  Much appreciated.

[stormy seas]

Thank you for posting this.  Reading this reminded me that when my uBPD sister goes on the attack and tries to tear me to shreds, I don't have to believe it.  I'm not a bad person.  After 25 years of putting up with her BPD (she has been the same since she was a really little kid) I have a lot of emotional baggage and often struggle to not believe what she says.  I completely get it when you say things like "venom and rage".  I'm really glad that you have the support of your other siblings.  I often wish I had other siblings for that, it's just my sister and myself.  My parents only recently started understanding (but think it's just her personality, not that she has any kind of mental illness) but it's still a tightrope walk. 

It is encouraging to think that someday I'll be able to set the same boundaries as you.  Thanks for sharing and thanks for the inspiration