How do you do deal with a sibling who has rationalized your abuse?

[Our abuse recovery guide]

I have two siblings, a brother and a sister. They are both older than me. Our BPD mother treated them both quite well while being abusive towards me. My sister is in pretty extreme denial about the favoritism she was shown and insists my problems were and are self-inflicted. Additionally, she is far more successful in life than I am and has this “people get what they earn” mentality.

When we were young adults, she challenged me on a number of occasions to come up with “one example” of our mother favoring her over me.

I would reply with a long list of examples, and she would either deny or rationalize all of them.

Here is a partial list of things that would come up in those discussions:

1. I slept on the floor in a hallway while she and my brother had their own bedrooms.

My sister counters that this was my own fault because I had previously shared a bedroom with my brother and then was kicked out because “you guys just couldn’t get along.”

What she leaves out is that my brother is nine years older than me, on the autistic spectrum, and was extremely violent towards me. Furthermore, the incident that got me kicked out of the bedroom involved him very clearly trying to murder me in my sleep. One further has to ask why he got everything and I got nothing even if it had been a situation of mutual fault.

Note: When my brother would attack me, my mother would usually punish me for allegedly provoking him rather than punish him.

2. My sister got an allowance while I didn’t.

She sometimes claims she got an allowance because she did more chores than me, which is completely false. She actually did far less. Other times, she claims the chores she did were more valuable than the chores I did. However, I did those chores more than she did, and even if that had been the case, our mother was the one assigning who did what chores meaning she would still be getting preferential treatment.

3. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house except to go to school and school-related activities while my sister had a degree of freedom.

In fairness, while not taken to the same extreme as with me, my parents were more strict with my sister than most parents.

Note: When I say "parents," my BPD mother was the one in control and my father mostly just went along with her.

My sister counters that the only reason my mother seemed more controlling of me was because I didn’t ask to leave as often and/or I asked to leave at the wrong times and/or asked in the wrong ways.

4. My mother sided with my sister in literally EVERY argument we ever had.

My sister claims our mother was simply siding with who she thought was right, and when I would bring up the many, many examples that show how absurd this claim is, my sister would just lose her temper and walk away. Somehow, she would never remember this the next time we spoke about this.

5. My parents paid for my sister to go to college for 6.5 years covering tuition, living expenses, and everything else, while I received no financial help from them whatsoever.

My sister has a number of defenses of this: She says our parents were just in a better financial situation when she started college than when I started college, but this overlooks the fact we overlapped for 3.5 years and she got everything paid for by them, while I was having to fend for myself. She says that our parents knew she worked harder for her grades than I did, which is mostly true, but our GPAs were about the same (both very good) and why should the fact I’m more naturally book smart than she is be used to justify spending tens of thousands more dollars on her than me?  She also brings up the fact I had a better scholarship than she did, so she needed the more, but even when we take tuition out of the equation (which is what my scholarship covered), she still got tens of thousands of dollars for living expenses and fun money to go to night clubs and things that I didn’t get a penny of.

There are lots of other examples. They bought my sister her first car. Her birthday and Christmas presents were usually more expensive than mine. However, most of the examples involve my mother putting me through some type of nightmarish horror story of abuse whereas my sister never had anything remotely comparable ever happen to her. My mother even went so far as to sabotage me when I was in my 20s. She stole my identity and drained my bank account when I was 27 and was having nothing to do with her.

...I’m not sure how much this even matters, because my sister and I haven’t spoken in years.

What got me thinking was, I was talking with my brother on the phone yesterday and I discovered my sister had given him a rather expensive Christmas present from her that kind of shocked me. (I don’t talk to my brother often, maybe three times a year.) I haven’t received any kind of present from my sister in a long time, and when I would receive them, it was usually just a card.

About two years ago, I became “dead” to my sister. I had shared a true story about her to my anonymous, personal blog. When I was three and she was six, she told me I would have to be her slave and do whatever she told me or she would lie to our parents to get me in trouble. I refused. She then goaded me into crossing a street. As I was crossing, she came up behind me, grabbed me by the hood of my jacket, and dragged me to the ground. She then ran to our parents and told them a completely false story about pulling me down to prevent me from getting run over by a car. I then told my parents the truth, but my BPD mother believed my sister and refused to punish her. My mother was so proud of my sister for “saving my life” that she told everyone and I kept saying, “No! There was no car coming! She just lied!” After some time, my mother told me that I was too emotionally immature to accept having been saved by my sister so I must have created a false memory where it was all a lie. My mother continued to tell the story and has been telling it for over 30 years, and she usually includes a bunch of vague references to me being ungrateful and refusing to believe it was true, but never mentions there were  no witnesses and  she just chose to believe my sister over me. My sister, of course, doesn’t remember what really happened, but our BPD mother has built her up as a perfect angel and she really doesn’t want to believe it’s all based on a lie.

How do you deal  with someone who has been told from a young age that she's an angel and your the devil and that every horrible thing that was done to you was justified?

[Being Honest]

I have two siblings, a brother and a sister. They are both older than me. Our BPD mother treated them both quite well while being abusive towards me. My sister is in pretty extreme denial about the favoritism she was shown and insists my problems were and are self-inflicted. Additionally, she is far more successful in life than I am and has this “people get what they earn” mentality.

When we were young adults, she challenged me on a number of occasions to come up with “one example” of our mother favoring her over me.

I would reply with a long list of examples, and she would either deny or rationalize all of them.

Here is a partial list of things that would come up in those discussions:

1. I slept on the floor in a hallway while she and my brother had their own bedrooms.

My sister counters that this was my own fault because I had previously shared a bedroom with my brother and then was kicked out because “you guys just couldn’t get along.”

What she leaves out is that my brother is nine years older than me, on the autistic spectrum, and was extremely violent towards me. Furthermore, the incident that got me kicked out of the bedroom involved him very clearly trying to murder me in my sleep. One further has to ask why he got everything and I got nothing even if it had been a situation of mutual fault.

Note: When my brother would attack me, my mother would usually punish me for allegedly provoking him rather than punish him.

2. My sister got an allowance while I didn’t.

She sometimes claims she got an allowance because she did more chores than me, which is completely false. She actually did far less. Other times, she claims the chores she did were more valuable than the chores I did. However, I did those chores more than she did, and even if that had been the case, our mother was the one assigning who did what chores meaning she would still be getting preferential treatment.

3. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house except to go to school and school-related activities while my sister had a degree of freedom.

In fairness, while not taken to the same extreme as with me, my parents were more strict with my sister than most parents.

Note: When I say "parents," my BPD mother was the one in control and my father mostly just went along with her.

My sister counters that the only reason my mother seemed more controlling of me was because I didn’t ask to leave as often and/or I asked to leave at the wrong times and/or asked in the wrong ways.

4. My mother sided with my sister in literally EVERY argument we ever had.

My sister claims our mother was simply siding with who she thought was right, and when I would bring up the many, many examples that show how absurd this claim is, my sister would just lose her temper and walk away. Somehow, she would never remember this the next time we spoke about this.

5. My parents paid for my sister to go to college for 6.5 years covering tuition, living expenses, and everything else, while I received no financial help from them whatsoever.

My sister has a number of defenses of this: She says our parents were just in a better financial situation when she started college than when I started college, but this overlooks the fact we overlapped for 3.5 years and she got everything paid for by them, while I was having to fend for myself. She says that our parents knew she worked harder for her grades than I did, which is mostly true, but our GPAs were about the same (both very good) and why should the fact I’m more naturally book smart than she is be used to justify spending tens of thousands more dollars on her than me?  She also brings up the fact I had a better scholarship than she did, so she needed the more, but even when we take tuition out of the equation (which is what my scholarship covered), she still got tens of thousands of dollars for living expenses and fun money to go to night clubs and things that I didn’t get a penny of.

There are lots of other examples. They bought my sister her first car. Her birthday and Christmas presents were usually more expensive than mine. However, most of the examples involve my mother putting me through some type of nightmarish horror story of abuse whereas my sister never had anything remotely comparable ever happen to her. My mother even went so far as to sabotage me when I was in my 20s. She stole my identity and drained my bank account when I was 27 and was having nothing to do with her.

...I’m not sure how much this even matters, because my sister and I haven’t spoken in years.

What got me thinking was, I was talking with my brother on the phone yesterday and I discovered my sister had given him a rather expensive Christmas present from her that kind of shocked me. (I don’t talk to my brother often, maybe three times a year.) I haven’t received any kind of present from my sister in a long time, and when I would receive them, it was usually just a card.

About two years ago, I became “dead” to my sister. I had shared a true story about her to my anonymous, personal blog. When I was three and she was six, she told me I would have to be her slave and do whatever she told me or she would lie to our parents to get me in trouble. I refused. She then goaded me into crossing a street. As I was crossing, she came up behind me, grabbed me by the hood of my jacket, and dragged me to the ground. She then ran to our parents and told them a completely false story about pulling me down to prevent me from getting run over by a car. I then told my parents the truth, but my BPD mother believed my sister and refused to punish her. My mother was so proud of my sister for “saving my life” that she told everyone and I kept saying, “No! There was no car coming! She just lied!” After some time, my mother told me that I was too emotionally immature to accept having been saved by my sister so I must have created a false memory where it was all a lie. My mother continued to tell the story and has been telling it for over 30 years, and she usually includes a bunch of vague references to me being ungrateful and refusing to believe it was true, but never mentions there were  no witnesses and  she just chose to believe my sister over me. My sister, of course, doesn’t remember what really happened, but our BPD mother has built her up as a perfect angel and she really doesn’t want to believe it’s all based on a lie.

How do you deal  with someone who has been told from a young age that she's an angel and your the devil and that every horrible thing that was done to you was justified?

[Harri]

Hi.  I am sorry this is so painful for you.  It is tough when others deny what you believe to be true and especially when they put you down or call you names for it.   

How do you deal with someone who has been told from a young age that she's an angel and your the devil and that every horrible thing that was done to you was justified?

I would start by no loner trying to convince her to believe otherwise.

As painful as it is, try to focus on you, learn to validate your experience without needing your sister or mother or anyone else validate it for you.   Work to accept your reality.

I know I would never be able to convince my mother and father that they abused me in horrific ways.  I also knew not to try to get my brother to see it too.  But I still wanted them to see it and acknowledge it and even apologize for everything.  Work on getting to a point where you can be okay with them being who they are and you being who you are.  I am not saying to accept abuse.  Just accept that you both had different experiences and believe different things.  You will get there, it just takes time and constant reminders about the importance of appropriate expectations regarding your families ability to validate you.

Does that make sense?

[TelHill]

Hi.  I am sorry this is so painful for you.  It is tough when others deny what you believe to be true and especially when they put you down or call you names for it.   
 I would start by no loner trying to convince her to believe otherwise.

As painful as it is, try to focus on you, learn to validate your experience without needing your sister or mother or anyone else validate it for you.   Work to accept your reality.

Harri, I'm going down the path this path right now to accept reality.

Being Honest,I have an older brother who was the golden child (split white) and I was the scapegoat (split black).  It's tough being the scapegoat.   My mom saw my brother hitting me and did nothing. I would cry and she'd hit me for crying.  It sounds like what you went through too. That's pretty much how it still is without the physical violence.

I have a habit which works most of the time of debating with facts, logic & persistence. It's not working with my bpd mom or passive aggressive (perhaps with some narcissistic tendencies) brother. They remain what they are despite my best efforts to change them.

Being Honest, it's never too late to improve one's own life financially, improve career prospects, etc., if that's what you desire. You can work towards what you want with what you have.

Life is not a contest of who has what. The smartest kid in my class (we were in the same schools from grades 1-12. It was Catholic school so we all knew each other from grade to grade) became a janitor. I didn't expect that, but it's his choice. Some execs in my former company went to not so great colleges (my alma mater ranks higher) and they did better than me at work.

I agree not to accept abuse. I am learning how not to stir the pot.

I'm also working my way through this post - https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56280.0 Lots of great info.

I hope all goes well for you. You are definitely not the only one this has happened to. 

[zachira]

It hurts my heart to hear how your sibling has rationalized your abuse. As the family scapegoat, I have been given all kinds of hurtful untrue explanations of why I deserve to be abused by family members. First of all, you are expressing your feelings about how this feels in great detail, which shows just how unfair and crazy the rationales are for abusing you, and it is never okay to abuse anybody for any reason whatsoever. I am working on accepting my siblings while expressing my feelings before they overwhelm me to people who do care about me and are able to understand my distress. I am also going low contact with my siblings and the extended family members that enable and support their abusing me. Sometimes we have to create our own family with people that  treat us with respect, kindness, and generally care about our well being, while doing our best to distance ourselves from those who will never treat us with the respect and kindness every human being deserves.