complicated dynamic with sibling

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Hi everyone,
I’m dealing with a very painful and complicated dynamic with sibling who shows many traits that fit BPD. There is no diagnosis.
This has created years of tension, misunderstandings, emotional escalations, and periods of complete silence.
Recently, we had a therapist-mediated conversation. I had prepared myself for weeks, hoping for some clarity, maybe a bit of understanding on both sides, and mostly peace.
But things quickly spiraled. I barely had ten minutes to share anything before the entire conversation shifted back into the old pattern: defending myself, reacting to accusations, explaining things that never happened, and trying to keep the situation grounded.
By the end, I felt completely drained: physically, mentally, emotionally. I left feeling as if I had been pulled back into something I have been trying to heal from for years.

What hurts me the most:
- Everything I say gets twisted or reframed in a way that makes me the “bad” one.
- Any small mistake or detail becomes “proof” that I’m lying or untrustworthy.
- There is no room for my feelings or pain, even when I try to express them calmly.
- Her emotions fill all the space, mine seem to disappear the moment I share them.
- Conversations feel like fights, even when I’m trying to stay soft, open, and constructive.
- The goal seems to be winning, not understanding.
- She escalates and attacks when she feels hurt, and I shut down from fear and overwhelm.
- Boundaries are taken as rejection rather than self-protection.
- She often flips the narrative, making it seem like I am the one who cut contact or hurt her, even when she initiated the distance.
- Any attempt to clarify something gets turned into another accusation.
- I feel like I can do nothing right: whichever option I choose will be used against me.
- My self-confidence collapses after each interaction, even though everyone outside this situation reassures me that I’m not the crazy one.
- I always leave these interactions feeling shaky, panicked, and guilty, even when I know I didn’t do anything wrong.
- I’m constantly on eggshells, afraid to say something that will trigger hours/days/weeks of fallout.
- I’m terrified of her emotional explosions, and that fear alone already makes me dissociate and shut down.
- Discussions become about proving I’m wrong, rather than trying to understand each other’s experiences.
Even in therapy, the same dynamic takes over, which makes me lose hope that mediation alone can fix this.
When she gets overwhelmed, she leaves, blocks, or cuts off contact, even if she was the one who asked for the conversation in the first place. After each attempt to repair things, I feel worse than before.

I keep ending up in situations where:
I must protect myself, but protecting myself makes me look like “the bad sibling,” and any boundary I set becomes another reason for her to attack or withdraw. I’m exhausted. I feel guilty whenever I take distance, even if that distance is the only way I can stay emotionally stable.

My questions to the community:
- How do you handle conversations that always spiral, even with a therapist present?
- How do you keep your sense of self when every argument makes you doubt yourself?
- How do you set boundaries without becoming “the villain” in the other person’s narrative?
- How do you decide when contact is still healthy?
- How do you manage the guilt of protecting yourself?

Any insights, experiences, or advice would mean a lot to me. I feel very alone with this, and I’m trying to find a way to take care of myself. Thank you for reading.

[dakpan]

Hi everyone,
I’m dealing with a very painful and complicated dynamic with sibling who shows many traits that fit BPD. There is no diagnosis.
This has created years of tension, misunderstandings, emotional escalations, and periods of complete silence.
Recently, we had a therapist-mediated conversation. I had prepared myself for weeks, hoping for some clarity, maybe a bit of understanding on both sides, and mostly peace.
But things quickly spiraled. I barely had ten minutes to share anything before the entire conversation shifted back into the old pattern: defending myself, reacting to accusations, explaining things that never happened, and trying to keep the situation grounded.
By the end, I felt completely drained: physically, mentally, emotionally. I left feeling as if I had been pulled back into something I have been trying to heal from for years.

What hurts me the most:
- Everything I say gets twisted or reframed in a way that makes me the “bad” one.
- Any small mistake or detail becomes “proof” that I’m lying or untrustworthy.
- There is no room for my feelings or pain, even when I try to express them calmly.
- Her emotions fill all the space, mine seem to disappear the moment I share them.
- Conversations feel like fights, even when I’m trying to stay soft, open, and constructive.
- The goal seems to be winning, not understanding.
- She escalates and attacks when she feels hurt, and I shut down from fear and overwhelm.
- Boundaries are taken as rejection rather than self-protection.
- She often flips the narrative, making it seem like I am the one who cut contact or hurt her, even when she initiated the distance.
- Any attempt to clarify something gets turned into another accusation.
- I feel like I can do nothing right: whichever option I choose will be used against me.
- My self-confidence collapses after each interaction, even though everyone outside this situation reassures me that I’m not the crazy one.
- I always leave these interactions feeling shaky, panicked, and guilty, even when I know I didn’t do anything wrong.
- I’m constantly on eggshells, afraid to say something that will trigger hours/days/weeks of fallout.
- I’m terrified of her emotional explosions, and that fear alone already makes me dissociate and shut down.
- Discussions become about proving I’m wrong, rather than trying to understand each other’s experiences.
Even in therapy, the same dynamic takes over, which makes me lose hope that mediation alone can fix this.
When she gets overwhelmed, she leaves, blocks, or cuts off contact, even if she was the one who asked for the conversation in the first place. After each attempt to repair things, I feel worse than before.

I keep ending up in situations where:
I must protect myself, but protecting myself makes me look like “the bad sibling,” and any boundary I set becomes another reason for her to attack or withdraw. I’m exhausted. I feel guilty whenever I take distance, even if that distance is the only way I can stay emotionally stable.

My questions to the community:
- How do you handle conversations that always spiral, even with a therapist present?
- How do you keep your sense of self when every argument makes you doubt yourself?
- How do you set boundaries without becoming “the villain” in the other person’s narrative?
- How do you decide when contact is still healthy?
- How do you manage the guilt of protecting yourself?

Any insights, experiences, or advice would mean a lot to me. I feel very alone with this, and I’m trying to find a way to take care of myself. Thank you for reading.

[dakpan]

0

[zachira]

How do you decide what contact is healthy? There is no right or wrong answer here. What is most important right now is you do not have to decide what kind of contact with a sibling will work forever. Many of the members on this site, have gone through years of figuring out what works with a disordered family member, sometimes alternating with periods of low contact/no contact, sometimes deciding to have low contact with boundaries that protect them the best from the disturbing behaviors of a disordered relative/to go no contact.

I am very low contact with my brother with strong BPD traits and no contact with my sister with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Our mother with BPD is deceased. These types of contact with both siblings have been in place for several years now and are unlikely to change as neither my brother nor my sister have any interest in personal growth, continually blame others for their dysregulated emotions, especially me as I am one of several generations of family scapegoats.

[ForeverDad]

Sadly, it appears the therapist allowed the session to devolve into a Blamefest.  Those never turn out well.  The therapist should have quickly stepped in and repeated respectful ground rules.  People with BPD traits (pwBPD) are known to do that, to Deny, Project, Blame, Blame Shift and more.  They've had years of experience using overwhelming emotions and emotional claims to trump reality and facts.

Unless your sibling starts and diligently applies therapy in her own life and perceptions, likely this lack of respect for you and others will continue.  You may have to encounter her in the future in family scenarios but you can decide not to expose yourself to contact with her any more than absolutely necessary.  We have a catch phrase for that ... MC or LC ... medium chill or low/limited contact.

I have a sibling I've always known as somewhere between grumpy and nasty.  I too suspect I see at least some BPD traits.  My sibling lives very close but I've chosen not to reach out to him and we haven't spoken for years.  Not my wish but that's how it had to be.

[CC43]

Some thoughts:

- How do you handle conversations that always spiral, even with a therapist present?
I guess I start by understanding that a pwBPD basically feels traumatized all the time, and they have a trauma-like response to practically every situation which manifests as flight (e.g. storming off, blocking) or fight (bullying, blaming, unfounded accusations, yelling and emotions running too hot).  When emotions spiral out of control, I assume they just can't listen to reason in that moment, and so I usually try to give them a "time out" to calm down.  I would never say, "You need a time out," but rather I might say, "I'm stressed, I need to get some air"--that is, I don't add fuel to the fire by blaming them and their behavior, which they would take as yet another insult.  In most scenarios, they take longer to calm down than a "normal" person, and tend to hold onto negative thoughts for an extended period.  Thus I'm aware that there are no quick fixes, and "progress" will be extremely slow even in the best-case scenario.

- How do you keep your sense of self when every argument makes you doubt yourself?
OK, maybe I'm over-confident, or maybe I've reached that age where I know myself really well.  I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I'm not prepared to roll over and agree with the misplaced blame and extreme accusations that a pwBPD is hurling my way.  I can empathize, and I can compromise on some things, but I'm not agreeing to falsehoods, compromising my core values or agreeing to be cast as a villain when I'm not one.  Yes I make mistakes sometimes, and I could have handled certain situations better, but the preponderance of the evidence shows that I am a good person and try really hard, probably orders of magnitude more than the pwBPD.  If they choose not to see that, that's on them, not me.

- How do you set boundaries without becoming “the villain” in the other person’s narrative?
Boundaries are meant to protect you, but unfortunately, pwBPD don't like boundaries.  If you enforce a boundary, you are almost guaranteed to be perceived as the villain in the other person's narrative.  But that's their problem really, not yours.  You need the boundary to protect yourself first.  Let's say your sibling has a habit of calling you in the middle of the night (or while you are working), and the conversations habitually devolve into an angry blame game.  The conversations never seem to get resolved, and they really agitate you, making you lose sleep (or efficiency at work).  You decide to enforce a boundary, which is you do not answer your phone at night (at work) anymore, because you need to get your sleep (work done) to protect your health and well-being.  You don't explain your rationale, you just stop answering your phone at night (work).  But your sibling paints you as a villain, saying you're narcissistic, ignoring her, refusing to help her, whatever, and she bad-mouths you to whomever will listen.  That's her narrative, and you don't control her narrative.    What you control is your own life and your own responses.  I'd say, let her think whatever she's going to think, you can't control her thoughts.

- How do you decide when contact is still healthy?
I think that depends entirely on you.  If interacting with your sibling is draining you too much, and your life and other relationships are suffering because of that, then you might consider reducing contact or maybe even cutting off contact for the time being.  Maybe you try distancing yourself for a trial period and then re-assess.  The nature and frequency of contact could be dependent on your living situation as well as how you are interacting with your sibling currently.  For some people, going no contact seems extreme.  Maybe one thing you could do is get more control over when and how contact happens.  If you typically interact through phone calls, one thing you might try is to call your sibling on a schedule that's convenient for you, when you are in the right frame of mind.  As an example, you don't take inbound late-night calls, but you make outbound calls on Tuesday mornings when you're on a walk, and you limit the conversation to 15 minutes, saying, "I've got to go now, but I'll call you next week."  In addition, if the conversation turns sour, you invent a reason to hang up early, so as not to get sucked into a negative spiral.  The same "rule" applies to text conversations--if she's texting you mean things, then don't dignify the text with a response.  I'd say, treat a nasty text like spam and delete it from your mind.  By not engaging, you are protecting your own health.

- How do you manage the guilt of protecting yourself?
Don't feel guilty!  You shouldn't feel guilty for protecting your own health and well-being.  Look, I'm assuming you are both adults.  You are both responsible for yourselves.  You owe it to yourself to be kind to yourself!  You are worth it.  Just because she's treating you like dirt doesn't mean you are dirt.  You do not deserve to be abused, and you are right to protect yourself from abuse.