What do you think I should do with her on facebook. My mom says I should keep her as a friend or it may trigger her to be even angrier. I am really stuck as I have only responded with love and calmness with her but she only gets more angry.
You cannot control your sister's mood. You can't stop her from feeling triggered or angry. You can't reason her out of her emotional state.
It's entirely up to you to do what makes you feel comfortable when it comes to your social media accounts. I think on facebook you can adjust settings for each post, which allows you to create exceptions so that a specific person won't see it. You probably already know your other privacy options: to completely block her, which would keep her account from seeing that you have a profile at all; "unfriend," which would still allow her to see that you have a profile and anything else you share publicly; or keep things as you have them now. Of course, with any of those options, if she's hacking other people's accounts or creating multiple of her own, it won't stop her from seeing everything. And yes, any of those solutions might feel hurtful to her, and she may respond with anger--but it's not up to you to keep that from happening. You don't have the power to control how she feels. You can't cope with her distress
for her. Regardless of your settings, you can always choose to delete or ignore any inciting messages from her about something you've chosen to share. You get to decide what to spend your time and energy on.
My mother picks fights when she needs an external excuse for why she feels so ashamed. She will poke and poke until the other person explodes, and then as she goes crying to her room, it's that cruel other person's fault that she's so upset. Once I figured this pattern out, it felt so freeing. I didn't have to try to argue with her. I didn't have to prepare a lengthy defense for myself. I didn't have to worry about how long I would be able to control my temper. I could just calmly say, "I'm not going to discuss this," and then get up and leave if she kept at it. In your situation, you did something very similar. I would just add that you don't have to keep replying every time she writes you. You can say it once and mean it. As you experienced with your sister, there's often a good deal of pushback when communicating a boundary to a person who's experiencing a heightened emotional state. What's important to remember is that you don't have to make the other person understand your boundary, and they don't have to agree to comply with it--you just have to be willing to take care of it. Our boundaries are for
us.
There's a workshop here that was helpful to me called
How to stop circular arguments. There's also some good information about boundaries here:
BOUNDARIES: Upholding our values and independence. They might be able to offer you some insight as you decide what you want to do.
Wishing you peace,
PF
