Sister struggles

[genevieve90]

Hi,

I used to use this board a lot but my sister infiltrated it a few years ago and I had to stop but recent events have made me realise I need to vent.

It's been a huge turmoil for our family and we've been through hell and back with my Bi-polar, BPD sister. My mum and I have started on a journey to self-healing and trying to limit contact with said sister now as our own mental health has suffered greatly trying to help her and be part of her life. This is a long story so please bear with me.

So recent events. It started just over a year ago. She'd been doing fairly well (although still living at home and draining the life out of my mum) and managed to get a good job so we were all fooled into thinking that this time, she'd really turned things around. However, one night she went out and got absolutely paralytic on alcohol (bad idea for her) and came home with 5 random men. My mum freaked out and told my step dad to get them out of the house, which he did although they were very threatening to him. It was just my sister and her male friend left and as usual, she got violent so my step dad called the police who advised him to remove her from the house. She went to the local mcdonalds until 4am, then came home and smashed the back door in to get back in to the house. At this point, my step dad called the police again and they arrested her for criminal damage. Not before she'd managed to beat the crap out of my mum and my step dad and smashed a heavy glass bowl straight over his head.

This time, after years of abuse and letting her get away with it, they decided to press charges for criminal damage until she apologised to them. It took months for her to do that but she did and the charges were dropped. However, realising that she could've lost her job, she went on a tirade of hate against both my mum and step dad and moved in with my dad. To get sympathy and to make people feel sorry for her so she could manipulate them, she concocted a whole story about how they'd abused her and she was a victim. This isn't the first time she's done that but it is the first time she's been so detailed and nasty with what she was saying. As she wasn't talking to my mum, I was next in line to take the torrent of rubbish and abuse she was dishing out. My mum would usually be a buffer for this, God bless her, I don't know how she coped all these years.

Fast forward months of her calling and texting me with the same demented rhetoric about my parents being abusers and it got to the point that I needed to get counselling again because it had made me so ill. Some of the things she was saying were truly horrible and upsetting and I can't get her words out of my head.

That made me realise that I shouldn't have to put up with that and also how truly terrible what I'd been through with her was, so I started to give some tough love and refused to listen to what she had to say. Queue her no longer having anyone to listen to her nastiness so she messaged literally everyone my mum knew on social media, my dad knew and my step dad knew to tell them the same old rubbish.

She's spun this story that my mum has Munchausen's, that she's not mentally ill at all, it's just that mum made it up to get sympathy for herself. She says my step dad abused her as a child (he didn't even meet my mum until she was 13 and the incident she LOVES to bring up was when she was 16). The most hurtful thing about all of this is that PEOPLE BELIEVE HER! My Dad has been ignoring me as a result and when my mum tried to warn him that her behaviour might spiral, he put the phone down on her. I've had to explain to numerous people that what she's said isn't true and I cannot tell you how draining it's been to have to rake up the same old past traumas over and over and over again to people asking why she's saying these things.

The problem we have is that when her problems started and she was putting us through daily violence, fear, drug abuse and manipulation, we didn't have ANY support. Social workers failed us and we had nowhere to turn. So now she's making all these wild claims people believe it because they have NO IDEA what we've been through.

Recently I lost my temper at her after she called me again saying she'd cut me out of her life if I didn't admit that she'd been abused and said I was complicit in her abuse. I've been so patient and diplomatic and it's destroyed me so much, I just lost it. I said to her 'the only abuser in my life has been YOU.' The night she harps on about, she'd beat me up and forced me in to a mental breakdown when I was 17. My step dad restrained her because she was beating them up in front of his kids and yeah he probably did hurt her but she was totally out of control. That night was so traumatic for me I can't even talk about it without crying my eyes out and guess what, I've had to re-live it every single time she's called/text/harrassed me this past year. I'm so tired of it and I've finally come to realise that I don't deserve it.

I have a very supportive partner, who is also angry at her because she's messaged him abuse too but I don't want to drag him in to all this.

Anyway, the point of this is that I am SO ANGRY. Like, I am FURIOUS! I'm going to the gym a lot to try and de-stress and I've had counselling but this time I just can't shake the anger. I don't know what to do with it, it's like it's always lingering beneath the surface. The worst thing is, I'm furious with my Dad and how he's managed it too and that's really affecting me. Also, I recently had an operation and it all went fine but neither my Dad or my sister checked in on me. I really thought that despite what had happened, she might actually turn up to be a sister but turns out she's just that selfish. I've now blocked her on social media but she can still call or text me. Somehow, I just can't turn off the thought that if she tries to call and I ignore it and she kills herself, that it'll be my fault and the thought of living with that guilt is too much to bear.

Any advice on the anger front?

Sorry for this being such a long old rant.

[genevieve90]

P.S - I feel it's important to mention that even though it's my sister, I played a big parenting role for her growing up. My dad wasn't around much and my mum suffered from bad depression so I ended up parenting her a lot. Sometimes it doesn't feel like she's my sister, it's more of a parent/child relationship, although I've removed myself from that a lot the past 10 years.

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi genevieve90, 

Thank you for the update! I'm glad you shared about what is going on. It's pretty easy to understand why you are having strong reactions to your sister. That's a lot to have to swallow all over again, the bringing up of reminders of the past and hurts and previous trauma. I think one of the difficult things about BPD is that you never can tell when the worst of the behaviors will come back once again, yet we know that the pattern doesn't go away because they are so unstable within themselves. Do you think there was something in particular that set your sister off?

It's good that you are finding healthy forms of trying to self soothe, like going to the gym. The feelings are still there, the anger, and I can hear your discomfort with it. Anger is often a feeling that oozes out on the front, but behind it are other strong feelings. Are you able to look at a feeling wheel and see what other emotions might be behind the anger? I think it is good that you are able to feel what you are feeling. 

 
Wools