dysfunctional relatives in need, stunted delvelopment

[Delta971]

Hello,

I’m looking for advice and coping strategies for a very complicated family situation that has been going on for many years and is now taking a serious toll on me.

I have an elderly aunt (80+) who is emotionally unstable and highly manipulative. She has an adult daughter (around 50) with cognitive limitations who has never lived independently or worked. That daughter has a daughter of her own (now just over 18), who was taken out of school years ago and has grown up extremely socially deprived. The granddaughter has effectively become a carer for the grandmother, despite having no education, guidance, or real chance to develop a normal adult life.

For a long time, I believed my aunt’s explanation for how things ended up this way. She repeatedly told me that her son-in-law had gambled all the family’s money away and that she had to “save” her daughter and granddaughter. Based on this, I felt morally obligated to help and provided financial support for years. Only last year did I discover that this version of events was deeply misleading, the opposite occurred: my cousin drained her husband's savings.

A few years ago, as I became more concerned about the granddaughter’s situation, I contacted social services to try to get help from outside the family. Unfortunately, my aunt actively resisted any intervention. At the time, the local court ruled that nothing could be done while the girl was still seventeen, and the matter was effectively closed.

Over the years, the household has survived largely on pension income combined with handouts from relatives, including me. However, there has been no meaningful effort from them to seek education, employment, therapy, or external support. I eventually realised that my financial help was not improving their situation but enabling it to remain frozen.

I have now stopped providing regular financial support. I still visit occasionally and may help in very limited, practical ways, but I’ve drawn a firm boundary around money. Since doing this, the emotional pressure, guilt-tripping, and manipulation have increased, along with more frequent phone calls that are almost always about needing something.
They can't manage the pension the grandmother gets, they never pay the bills. The gas supply was disconnected moths ago, but for some reason they still get electricity. The flat they live in is cold, my cousin sleeps in an unheated room.

What makes this especially difficult is the youngest. She is now legally an adult, but emotionally and socially much behind the expected normal mental development, and I struggle constantly with guilt about her future — even though I know I did not create this situation and cannot fix it alone. She is childish, but fascinated by horror, fascism and nazism.

I feel torn between compassion and self-preservation. When I hold boundaries, I feel cruel. When I give in, I feel resentful and trapped. Under stress, I sometimes overreact and then feel guilty afterward, which only reinforces the cycle.

I’m not looking for legal advice or to be told to “just walk away.” I’m looking for:

• ways to cope emotionally with guilt and pressure
• strategies for maintaining boundaries without constant conflict
• insight from people who’ve dealt with manipulative or dependent family systems
• help accepting that some situations cannot be fixed by one person
* what kind of help could be beneficial to them at this critical stage.

If you’ve dealt with something similar — especially involving extended family rather than parents — I’d really appreciate hearing what helped you cope and stay emotionally balanced.

Thank you for reading.

[Notwendy]

Hi Delta- this is a complicated situation- and also you have the right to protect your finances. You aren't obligated to support this family. As hard as it is to step back, you realized that your enabling wasn't helping their independence and it also took a financial toll on you.

Looking at the members involved- other than the 18 year old- whose potential is unknown, they are probably not capable of being self sufficient. It's good that they have the pension but are not capable of managing it.

An important part of this is who gets the pension. The elderly aunt may be eligible for some Medicaid care at home or a nursing home (it's different than Medicare). I am assuming you are in the US but if not, this might not apply.

However if she gets the pension, and it's over a certain ammount, she may not qualify. If she did, Medicaid would take the pension but this would leave the others in dire straits. So that's not a good idea for now.

If the 50 year old has an intellectual disability, she may be eligible for social security disability if she qualifies.

If whoever gets the pension is found to be mentally legally incompetent, a family member can make a case for financial guardianship if someone reliable is willing. This could incur legal costs and a court appearance and so would only be worth it if certified as incompetent by a medical professional.

I think a first step in all this is for you to make an appt at the social security office to discuss the situation and get ideas of what they may qualify. For the older person, a local council on aging can give you information, if any.

If the adults are legally competent, there's not a lot you can do to intervene. As social services once said to me "your parents are legally competent to make their own bad decisions".

It makes sense that these family members will be manipulative. Feeling guilty, I think it's a part of the situation because you do care but you also need to have your boundaries. You have no obligation to support them. For me, groups like CODA, ACA, helped me to manage my own tendencies to "help too much".

Sometimes people don't change until they have to. It may be that the whole situation has to topple before changes can happen. That change may be that the elder person eventually needs a nursing home, or they depend on resources like soup kitchens. If the living situation gets bad enough, social services may need to look into it.

The younger one seems to be trapped in this situation. However, she is being useful and gaining skills as a caregiver. One idea for her may be to start with getting her nursing assistant certification at a local community college, and then she could also work a bit while caring for her grandmother. With some maturity, she could continue schooling later if she chooses. She may first need to get a GED. It's also possible she has some intellectual disability if her mother does but if so, there may be supportive work programs for her.

[Pook075]

Hello Delta and welcome to the family!  I'm so sorry you're in this position and I'm equally sorry that there aren't any solutions to this problem.

Why?  You're dealing with three generations of mental illness and entitlement, and cutting off one hurts all three.  Normally, if we were only talking about the daughter or the granddaughter, then we'd advise to help them see that they must move on from the cycle they're currently in.  But when it's three people completely co-dependent on others while refusing to even try to make ends meet, then no amount of help will ever be enough.  They'll simply spend the money and expect more.

Hopefully you can see here that the problem isn't money.  They just want money so that's what you hear about.  The real problem, however, is mental illness and entitlement.

Let's get to your questions, and I'm going to start backwards since your most important question is last.

What kind of help would be beneficial?  That's easy, get the youngest out of there, get her into therapy in a balanced home.  But here's the problem with that, only she can decide what is best for her.  If she wants to stay in the chaos, she'll stay and there's nothing that anyone can do about it.

What's best for the daughter?  The answer is exactly the same and it has the same limitations- only she can decide that for herself and her kid.

What's best for grandma?  I'm not sure.  This could possibly be an elder abuse scenario so I worry about the wellbeing of all three.  Yet grandma still gets to decide what's best for her.

Can you see the pattern here in these answers?  You can't do ANYTHING to make this situation better unless they actually want things to change.  They're not asking for that though, they're asking for more money.

So they want your money, you want to help, but you want to be the adult in the room as well and figure out a way to instill some boundaries.  What are the boundaries when it comes to money?  In other words, "I will help you with $xxx when you __________________________ but I won't help if you _________________________________."

That's an actual boundary and it's for you.  They are the ones making the choice to respect your boundary or ignore it.  If they respect it, you go with the first part of the above sentence.  If they ignore it, you go with the latter half.  The boundary is the only thing you can actually control.

I understand you feel guilty.  We all want to help friends and family.  They must be willing to help themselves, however, and it doesn't sound like they're doing that.  Giving them money only ensures that it will be another month, another year, before they even consider doing something different.  Because here's the thing- unless you're filthy rich, you're not the only one.  Many, many people are supporting them as well and they are so used to it, it feels like an entitlement.

The answer here is to make a very clear boundary about when you will and won't help.  And maybe you don't want to be that involved in their lives, I can understand why.  Maybe this is a family conversation instead of a "you thing".  Hopefully you can see though that you don't owe them anything and you've been taken advantage of for a very long time.

"Cutting them off" is honestly the most compassionate thing you can do because it forces them to make tough decisions...do they become homeless, or do they try something different?  There's no reason for them to try anything else when family is making it easy.  And if everyone did cut them off, then maybe the teen would end up in a much better position in life with a different family member.

[zachira]

Welcome to BPD family while sad for the circumstances that bring you here! It may not seem like it now as you experience extreme push back for setting healthier boundaries with your disordered relatives, yet in the long run you are setting higher expectations for yourself and disordered family members. Time will tell if the newer boundaries bring out some positive changes in some of the disordered family members. What is certain, if we continue to enable disordered people, we hurt ourselves and do not allow for the disordered people to take the steps they need to get better. The situation with the granddaughter is tragic and sad; my heart goes out to you witnessing the abuse of this young adult who is a family member.