Hello Everyone,
I hope all is well! I have a dBPD mother whose dementia has quieted her lifetime of rages and verbal and emotional abuse of me.
I have had difficulties dealing with my brother who I suspect has a quiet type of BPD. It’s more subtle because there are no rages and visible splitting. He appears to be pleasant and cooperative. I think others would describe him as a very nice and mature individual.
His main symptom is being passive aggressive. For example, he promises to help with something important and it doesn’t get done or information doesn’t get passed along. The consequences of letting things slide are often very expensive or cause my elderly parents health to deteriorate. His negligence caused my mom to get 3rd degree burns on her arm. He always states he made a mistake if called out and won’t do it again. But he does. He’s never apologized.
I’ve dealt with it by taking over my parents health care and my own/my parents business concerns.
His other tactic is to goad me into exploding with anger with others present.
He commanded me to clean up a child’s vomit (not my kid) at a recent family get together. I didn’t respond and simply walked away from him. I felt so good doing that I can’t tell you!
As I said above I’ve had an issue with recognizing a split. I think I have it though I am running it by you guys. Part of his split is his goading I assume.
I’m not sure if this is also it. We’ve have an issue with overseas real estate. I’m on the way to being a co-owner with him and two cousins (one of whom I suspect has anti-social tendencies) but there’s plenty of gotchas.
This country has had political and economic turmoil for the last 100 years and land ownership from that time still remains on the books. Our 2x great grandfather is the last recorded owner. My parents, my brother, my two cousins and I were there 6 years ago and saw an attorney to adjust ownership. It was supposed to take a year but is still not settled.
That was my parents last time there as it was for me. In the interim, my brother and cousins have been there almost every year. There’s been lots of inconsistencies and signs they were pushing me out from their stories about actions. I let it go knowing I had to go there to see filed paperwork.
Well, I’m going in a few months. My brother started to give me information that I discovered was a lie and stonewalled me when I demanded answers and became really angry. He’s started to avoid me and ran away from me. He did respond to the lie in a very childish way, mocking me..
We had a neighbor stop by and he ran away from them. He went to a room and closed the door.
Could the child-like, regressive behavior be a split? He’s 66. In the past when this has happened, his flying monkeys would do something weird/abusive to me. They’ve not come out this time.
I decided to detach from him about this and not bring it up. There’s nothing more to say to him.
PS Notwendy, my deepest sympathy on the loss of your mother.
