Want to feel brave but also want to cry.

[wantmorepeace]

After one pissy text from ubpd sibling, I felt good because it didn’t bother me. After another plus an email to me and my daughter,  I want to cry and that makes me want to cry even more because I was happy about not being bothered.  Not responding to them but I’ll share with this board how upset I am at having to deal with this stupid self- righteous nastiness and that I brought it into my daughters life too.

[CC43]

Hi there,

It's sad that your sibling is acting out and being mean.  I could tell you that it has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with their stress, jealousy, inferiority complex and feeling aggrieved by the world.  To a pwBPD, it's "normal" to put other people down, in a vain attempt to feel in control or superior, or just to hurl their inner nastiness onto other people.  The pwBPD in my life would send nasty correspondence to relatives, to "punish" them and "teach them a lesson," when reality was, she was acting like a total brat, and the "punishment" and "teaching them a lesson" should have been coming her way!  (Note the delusional thinking pattern here.)

If a relationship with your sibling is too painful, you might consider going Low Contact and sending your sibling's emails and text messages directly to the spam folder.

Look, untreated pwBPD tend to generate drama everywhere they go.  They also tend to create no-win scenarios.  For example, they might get themselves kicked out of a living situation and demand that you house them indefinitely.  If you refuse, they'll accuse you of being selfish and irresponsible (see the projection there?).  But if you relent, they become an extremely difficult and entitled roommate, making your own homelife miserable.  So no matter what you do, it's a lose-lose situation for you.  And that is why boundaries are so important.  If your sibling is being mean to you, then you have every right to ignore her and not to respond.

I've often posted here to imagine the messages as Spam, because they are Spam!  If a spambot wrote you a message accusing you of being a horrible person and ruining the bot's life, you'd think, that's ridiculous and delete it without much further thought.  I'd say, try to do that with your sibling's messages.  You need to reclaim your mental bandwidth--and save it for YOUR life.  Let your sibling deal with their life, on their own.

[Notwendy]

After one pissy text from ubpd sibling, I felt good because it didn’t bother me. After another plus an email to me and my daughter,  I want to cry and that makes me want to cry even more because I was happy about not being bothered.  Not responding to them but I’ll share with this board how upset I am at having to deal with this stupid self- righteous nastiness and that I brought it into my daughters life too.

I think even when we work at being less emotionally reactive to the things our BPD relatives say, we are still human, we still have feelings. There were several times I was in tears over something BPD mother said.

The difference was in how I responded to her. By not responding in a reactive way, it lessened the drama between us. That didn't mean I didn't cry- I did at times.

Another difference was that- there were also times when what she said didn't bother me as much, but keep in mind- we are human, it's not an either or. Sometimes it won't bother you, sometimes it will. You can have your feelings.

[wantmorepeace]

Thank you both. I know you know what I’m talking about. That alone helps. And your words are wise. No shame in being human. 

[Strawberry29]

I totally get what you are talking about. I have been there so many times.
If I have to see the positive, though, I think it is a slow process but once I started to understand the situation and be able to talk similarly to how you are doing in this post, things gradually improved. Initially, I used to not be able to sleep or to be anxious all day for a single text. Then it was only for multiple texts. Then only if sent to other people, a bit like it happened with you and your daughter. It is talking about it with others that helped a lot, and hearing other people's experiences.
It is of course just my experience, but I find that, slowly, after understanding these things you tend to heal. And there will still be tough moments, but they will tend to be much shorter, or caused by worse things.

Also my experience is that sometimes, when there are challenging situations, they seem to know which buttons to push to make you feel bad. And because bad situations happen irrespective of having BPD siblings around, there will always be moments when with all we might have learned, we still cannot react well to something mean said or done.
When my dad's health started deteriorating, I was worried and anxious because of that, and had to deal with my brother acting as a saviour and attacking pretty much everyone and wanting to be in control. By that time I had started to learn how to deal with his behaviours, but in that circumstance I was too fragile to manage to do it properly, and also I had to listen anyway to what he was saying as somebody himself worried about our dad and close to him than I was. You don't know how many times I cried like you did.

My kids are very young still, but he often threatens to "tell them the truth about me" when they are older. I will see how I will react if and when that happens.

 

[Notwendy]

When my dad's health started deteriorating, I was worried and anxious because of that, and had to deal with my brother acting as a saviour and attacking pretty much everyone and wanting to be in control. By that time I had started to learn how to deal with his behaviours, but in that circumstance I was too fragile to manage to do it properly, and also I had to listen anyway to what he was saying as somebody himself worried about our dad and close to him than I was. You don't know how many times I cried like you did.

I was an emotional mess when my father was ill. BPD mother's behavior escalated- as one would expect when she was stressed over it too. I also was not emotionally able to deal. I did react at times, and then she reacted too.

I can't even tell you how many times I have cried over this situation with my father and later, with BPD mother, but I want to say- there is nothing wrong with us if we do cry. There's nothing wrong with crying. It's not a sign of weakness, or not being brave, or not being able to handle the situation.

I think expecting us to be the ones in control or able to manage is an unfair expectation. It may be that our family dynamics required this from us- for us to tolerate, excuse the pwBPD's behavior. We may not be used to the idea of reaching out for support when family members were not able to be this for us.

I think it helps to get counseling at times, if needed- from someone who actually can validate our feelings and be supportive.

[wantmorepeace]

Oh, gosh.  I really resonate with these stories of what went on with bpd sibling when parents were ill, dying (and had died)  -- fighting with health care providers, listening but not hearing, recriminations, and huge drama at a time when I was also vulnerable.  In some ways, I'm glad that we were able to stick together through all of that, but in other ways I'm angry looking back at what I had to deal with.