Have any of you written a letter to BPD Siblings?

[Daisy Green]

Dear Community:

My therapist has urged me to write a letter to my adult BPD sister and either
a) burn it
or b) actually give it to her and let the BPD's reaction help me determine next steps in our relationship.

My BPD sister and I were best friends since childhood. But over the past decade she has really gotten ill.. she is oblivious to her behaviors.  She was in therapy years ago but dropped out when I think maybe the therapist told her what she had.  Sister has never admitted a diagnosis, but the same therapist told me to read "Walking on Eggshells" & books on narcissism to help me cope with my complicated family. My current therapist has backed up this theory.

Over the last decade my sister has hurt me time and time again... then be sweet, kind, genuine, loving.  Her moods change on a dime and she refuses to get help.  One winter she was nearly suicidal... currently she is high on life and "in love" with her current career, etc.  She lashes out when any one challenges her. I think her illness is progressing. I have grown wary.  She has no idea I'm hurt or angry. She's oblivious to her affects on the world despite a trail of breakups, lost friends, two lost jobs...

I tried twice in the past, long ago, to tell her I needed her support & that some of her behaviors had personally hurt me.  She blew up, threw my words back at me for months, told all of our mutual friends I had called her a "horrible sister" (I didn't.) She also ran to my parent and made a real ruckus.

My fear now is that if I give her a letter about her hurtful behaviors from recent times that the same thing will happen & I'll be drained from the drama of it all.  I'm also keenly aware that she'll smear me to my mum & mum will somewhat believe her. (My Dad is clear-headed, thankfully.  He sees that both Mum & sis have disregulated emotions.)

I keep having dreams that I'm telling her all the ways she's hurt me.  Yesterday I woke myself speaking aloud! My reiki practitioner tells me I need to clear out my throat chakra.

Have any of you ever given your BPD sibs a letter to try to clear the air & move on? 
If you didn't, how did you resolve the anger & let go?

Advice?
Thank you so much... I really appreciate this community.
-Daisy

[Riv3rW0lf]

Hi Daisy Green

The dreaming, calling our pwBPD out, fighting them... I can completely relate to it. The anger, the rage even... My pwBPD is my mother. The struggle might be a bit different than with a sibling, but still maybe this can help.

I am still a work in progress but I do feel better and the anger has somehow subsided, which I didn't think was possible...

For me, it was a puzzle.

I needed to piece it together for the anger to subside. The anger was confusion. My inner child did not understand why things were always so complicated. My inner child thought it was her fault, felt it was unfair, was confused, abandoned and angry. And for my inner child to heal, she needed a parent, a healthy parent : me. And to free and become this healthy parent : I needed to understand.

I did write letters to my mother ... Many letters. And I sent one in which I gave her back her blame and reminded her what she did to me and that I would never authorize her bullying ever again.  This was the angry defender.

Then it was radio silent for a few weeks. And she wrote me. A letter about herself. Her emotions. How she would live her best life with or without me, but would rather with me.  But basically stating she didn't care either way, blaming me for a few things. Painting me both white and black. A crazy making letter. Activated the famous FOG but thankfully I had this family right here to help.

So I finally was able to write from a place of peace, and assertiveness, that I would not be coming back to our relationship, but that I was opened to family therapy. I shared my inner life, what I was going through, my C-PTSD. No blame. I had someone else read it before I send it. It was only about understanding her pain, but explaining why I needed a counselor to help us talk.

And it triggered her, big time. And in her final letter were all the missing pieces I needed to finally complete the puzzle and understand WHY our relationship would not work. The illness was activated, and with it all the resentment she carries toward me, and my father and my love for my father.

So I stopped trying, and finally opened my eyes : I can only help myself. My mother is not sane. She loves me, but she doesn't know me. She projects her past onto me, it is a never ending projection. I am her persecutor and no matter what I do, I will remain this emotionless, ungrateful daughter she created for herself to abuse her. And there is nothing I can do to change that.

So I wrote her a final letter reitaring family therapy, and that I was not the person she depicted in her letter.

And that was the end of our relationship.

And it was not done out of anger this time. I felt strangely at peace with this decision : because the confusion was gone.

The confusion being abused will create.

The confusion that keeps our eyes closed, that keeps us in freeze/flight mode.

I could finally see and grasp that truly... I am an orphan and I have to parent myself.

I've been doing increasingly better since then. I am taking my place in this world.

And I do love my mother, but from afar.

I would personally recommend reaching deep within to grasp the dynamic of the relationship through this illness. For me, it decreased the anger tremendously for some reasons.  

[Mommydoc]

Hi Daisy Green, if I understand your therapist’s intent , the purpose of the letter is for you to express your feelings to your sister? Since option one is to burn it, my guess is the “act of writing the letter” is for you. You have the option of giving it to her if you want, but your therapist also seems to be indicating that the “reaction” is what it is.

Our sisters sound like they identical personalities.

Yes, I have tried to share with my sister how she makes me feel, and it has never gone well. She can rant for 10 minutes about how horrible I am, but if I so much as mention something like, “ I think we have unintentionally hurt each other”, she goes into pure rage, demanding examples and rejecting each of them.

I don’t regret trying because otherwise I wouldn’t know how she would respond, and would always wonder. But the response has been so consistent with even the slightest bit of feedback, that it seems fruitless for me at this point. Your sister might be different. You just have to be prepared for the response.

I don’t like walking on eggshells, so I try  to keep practicing SET, BIFF responses and not JADEing. And I recognize that even when I do all those things, she may still fly off the handle and react negatively. Bottom line, we can’t control their reactions, only our own. It helps to focus on our own feelings and master self awareness, while accepting their reactions as belonging to them not us.

[zachira]

Daisy Green,
I am sad that your BPD sister has hurt you time and time again, and that you were once best friends. You are not alone in struggling with the erratic and hurtful behaviors of a disordered sibling.
My NPD sister does not have the capacity for empathy, and trying to communicate with her in person or by email, only makes her angry if I suggest we need to do things differently. My BPD brother is sometimes open to hearing another point of view, though it depends on his mood, and I never know how my feelings will be received, whether he will just blow up, and accuse me unjustifiably of all kinds of things that he has made up out of thin air.
Probably a letter to your sister would not be well received by her and only make things worse. Writing a letter to your sister and having your therapist validate your feelings about how your sister treats you and the changes you would like to make in your relationship with her, could give you some long needed relief from all the unresolved feelings you have about the painful volatile relationship you have with your sister.

[beatricex]

hi Daisy Green,
Your therapist gave you a difficult homework assignment.  Write a letter.  I think keeping it specific to a particular event or day and fully experiencing all the emotions that arise, then letting them go...might be the goal?

If it is, that sounds a lot like my therapy.

Except I worked on 8 of those events, then my therapist worked with me to reframe how I felt about myself in each instance.

I echo what others have said here, sometimes to move on from abuse we need to first acknowledge a family member has hurt us, really feel the emotions that arise from that acknowledement, and then we will know what the next step is.

b

[WorkingThroughIt]

Hi Daisy Green,

I'm in the same spot right now, I've written several letters over the past few months with no intention to send them to my sister, but today I finished up a 4-page letter I plan on reading to her in person this weekend after hopefully editing it down more with the help of my therapist.

I have a lot of anger towards her from many years of abuse, but I'm genuinely hoping that our talk will make her see her problematic behaviors and maybe our relationship can move forward. I decided to do it in person even though it's scarier because I didn't want to give her the opportunity to go through my letter line-by-line and fight me on every point. Or to share screenshots of specific parts of the letter to show how mean I am to others. Or to share some of my more vulnerable points about other abuse I faced after losing my awareness of boundaries.

If it goes badly, at least I'll know where we stand and I'll be able to start letting the relationship go.

I'm getting married in October and she's supposed to be one of my maids-of-honor, so I'm hoping it works out well so she can be there because, despite all the anger I hold towards her, all I ever wanted growing up was a big sister who actually liked me.

I guess I'll have an answer for you on how it went after this weekend

[Methuen]

Hi Daisy Green.   I don’t have a sibling, but I have a uBPDMom.  I have a lot of letters on my laptop.   I have not given her any of them.  It would be pointless.  My situation is different because my mom is 86.

The notes and letters help me to process.  

Over time I came to realize that what I needed to do was stop wanting a relationship that wasn’t mine to have.  Wanting an aspiring dancer to become a Plumber or a scientist  isn’t realistic.  My mom isn’t capable of the relationship I would like to have with my mother because her brain isn’t wired up for it and she doesn’t have the relationship skills.  So I had to work through that and accept it for what it was.  

My relationship with her now is superficial.  The only purpose I serve to her is to meet her needs.  So I am cordial and helpful on my terms, but share nothing personal, ever. Conversation is on neutral topics.  There was some resistance to this in the beginning, but its ok now.

My life now is basically navigating her behaviors and decisions, and looking after  myself in the  process.

When I was younger I tried talking to her.  It never ended well.  When I started writing things down, it helped me to process and grow, and accept her for who she is.  I had to stop wanting her to be something she couldn’t be.  

This board helped me far more than giving her those letters would have.

That’s just my situation.  Yours will be different and your sister is younger.  

All the best on your journey.

[Daisy Green]

Dear RivRWolf, Mommydoc, Zachary, Beatricex, WorkingThroughIt
& all others who've taken the time to read or comment...

THANK YOU.

Your responses helped me see that as much as I wish to have an in-person conversation with my sister & read her the letter, it would only cause me more damage.
Hearing what all of you have been through validated for me that my fears are legit: she would likely gaslight me, deny the harm in her behaviors, run to my parents & our friends to smear me & hold anything I said in the letter over my head for years and years to come.

I am going to do my best to write a letter, perhaps read it to my therapist or just burn it in a prayerful ceremony.  I can't figure out a way to let go of the anger... I fear I will always carry it like a stone and I don't want it to end up giving me a physical illness or something! It is toxic to remain angry, I know.

WorkingTHroughIT-- how did your confrontation with your sis go? I feel your pain as you plan your wedding, since I am sort of in a similar boat thinking ahead to my own potential wedding and the broken dreams of knowing she probably will not be in it, because I don't want her near me.

Thank you again, everyone.