Crazy making uBPD adult sister

[robotchicken]

I've come to the conclusion, after a bunch of research and reading books about BPD, that my older sister has BPD, or many BPD traits. She can say incredibly biting/hurtful things in person, at holidays with my family of origin, and this manifests itself also in group family text messages and social media. My instinct is that she is smearing me to various shared friends and family, and I've sent out a few messages to selected people to check on this, and not received a response after only having positive interactions with those people -- I find this pretty disheartening.

For instance, my sister continually creates different group text messages, with different members of my family of origin/extended family in each group -- it's mildly irritating, but comes across as some way to divide my family of origin, cause miscommunication/confusion, or just be controlling. My sense is she feels fear of being left out, so wants to go ahead and make sure she is the one leaving people out/the center of attention. Other times, her behavior manifests as passive aggressive behavior on social media, that comes across as competitive, manipulative or just feels off.

About two years ago, my SO and I had a baby -- at the first family holiday that we brought him to, my sister kept taking the baby from me. When my father or mother, or other family members held the baby, she would intercept the baby -- and sometimes take him out to a different room to be alone with him. It was really hard as a new parent, but my instinct was that something was just off. One of my parents indicated that they also noticed this, but I think is afraid to confront her, as it seems my parents are also walking on eggshells with her.

Aside from this, I find her behavior to often be controlling, sometimes quasi-stalking -- especially when I am visiting mutuals (family or friends) -- where she will show up on the phone, text or facetime to multiple people in a particular social situation where she is absent -- often times she was invited to avoid making her feel left out, but couldn't come -- but even so tends to insert herself and make problems when she isn't there. While this is simply intrusive, sometimes she can insert herself in a way that seems to be tied to an on-going smear campaign, or just to let you know she is watching or something like that.

I've tried to talk to her, but after the last time, I realized that she doesn't have a developed sense of self awareness -- I perceive she is often acting out of rage or sense of abandonment -- and thus am more and more considering that she may have BPD.

One last thing is that my mother has some BPD traits, which we all had to deal with growing up -- and that involved some substance abuse -- a key difference there is that my mother has a strong conscious which keeps her behavior within certain reasonable bounds -- it seems my sister lacks this, and can sort of justify any behavior to herself.

[zachira]

Your instincts that your sister is conducting a smear campaign is highly likely based on what you have shared. I have a NPD sister with strong BPD traits. She has conducted a smear campaign against me for many many years. I always used to wonder why certain people who had not seen me or had any contact with me for a long time or did not know me well were suddenly talking down to me with contempt in their voices. I found out the real truth a few years ago, when my sister and I went to visit some relatives we had not seen much of since childhood. I caught my sister smearing me to one of the relatives, telling her some unbelievable lies about me, when I came back from the bathroom.
The challenge is to know how to deal with the smear campaign. Most people say to let it go. I disagree with this advice, as those who are easily recruited as flying monkeys, can do quite a lot of unreparable damage. I would occasionally say something that is absolutely true about your sister and in one sentence only, to give yourself some protection from the lies becoming a belivable narrative about you, because the lies have been repeated so often and so long, that certain people believe them and repeat them. I say one short sentence, because if you say too much than those people who are incapable of empathy start to see you as the crazy one because they can't stand to listen to anything that is not about them.

[robotchicken]

Thanks for your reply. One question, have you ever experienced or had your uBPD relative imitate you? Or, more specifically, try to takeover specific hobbies/interests that you've long had? I've been noticing this from my uBPD sibling, in various venues, i.e., interpersonal, family group texts and on social media. It sort of feels like she is trying to stake out territory that she views as part of my identity.

[zachira]

In response to your question, I would say my sister has done everything she can to make sure I had no identity whatsoever and likes it when I fail at anything. She is very succesful professionally, has a high IQ, wealthy, has a family, and one of the golden children of the large extended family and immediate family. I am a scapegoat. My sister always got upset whenever anybody paid attention to me or said anything nice about me. She has tried to take everything: helping herself to all my mother's things, stealing large amounts of money from me and runnning an ongoing smear campaign. She is very insecure, and I am a threat despite having very modest means, living alone, and not especially professionally accomplished. As a narcissist, she has a picture perfect life on social media. She once got very jealous because I was going to therapy and doing better. She went to therapy, and bragged to me about how she convinced the therapist that she was low income, the complete opposite of the truth. She kept telling me how she talked about me in therapy. I went to therapy for many years. My therapist told me of all the clients she had, I was the one most willing to look at myself. I have never lost my integrity or my authenticity despite all the bullying I have endured at the hands of my sister and the flying monkeys. My sister is an empty shell with a propped up image which can quickly metamorphose into her acting like a two year old when her artificial self image is not being enabled by others.