My Narcissistic Sister

[trenton]

I have had a bad relationship with my sister for a very long time. It goes back to our dysfunctional childhood in which my father showed favoritism toward me for being a boy. He started telling these stories about how I was the one who would break the cycle of criminal life and how I gave my grandpa hope when he saw the good in me. During this time my mother wanted me to have empathy for my sisters for their position, but there was not the same emphasis on empathy when speaking to my sisters. This is a common bias in how boys are raised in that they are talked to about compassion and empathy more than girls because it is assumed that boys are less compassionate. The girls needed to understand my position because I myself was conflicted about my father because my love for him led me to enabling his criminal behaviors. This is the trauma that my sister has begun to weaponize against me as a means of getting revenge for me telling our cousin that my sisters didn't like his behavior at the renaissance festival and that they were mad at him.

Unfortunately, my sister appears to have a chronic deficit of empathy. She would lash out at me over very minor issues to the point that I would cry. She would make excuses about her performative outrage claiming either that I was overly sensitive or that she was on her period. Whenever I tried to express that she had hurt me, she would refuse to self-reflect and immediately find any way to frame me as a hypocrite. She would mention the past favors she did for me, implying that I was ungrateful despite all the harm she was causing me. She would tell me that I was inconsiderate for many things including risking myself to save my mother's life from my abusive step-father while protecting my younger siblings in an environment that was far too dangerous. She would place logically impossible expectations on me such as being more open while not being too honest. She simply could not handle criticism because her ego was far too fragile. She would ask me how I felt, yet I constantly felt unsafe because I was walking at eggshells, and I would inevitably fuck up again anyway. Every interaction with her led me to getting paralyzed because I would understand that anything I say would be weaponized against me and lead to a worse outcome. Nevertheless, if I stayed silent, she would call me childish for not being able to handle conflict. She would intentionally place out of reach standards on me while looking for reasons to get offended so that she would keep me in a position of perpetually out of reach approval. She would not only weaponize my trauma against me, but also demand I take 100% responsibility rather than being so one-sided only to capitalize on the situation should I apologize in an effort to humiliate me.

I felt trapped in this awful relationship for about 8 years. I am still terrified to see her. When she is present I start having anxiety attacks, I lose my balance, my heart races, I get trouble breathing, I start having muscle spasms, and I feel deeply angry and powerless as she makes seemingly benign comments which were implicitly targeting my trauma. I noticed how my vulnerability was now being used against me and she had no remorse. She would then manipulate the rest of the family into gaslighting me as they treated me like I was the problem. They would insist that I be the one to apologize even when I clearly did nothing wrong. They would make all kinds of incorrect assumptions about how I think and they would project their behavioral problems onto me. My sister would consistently reverse victim and offender, causing me to be blamed unfairly constantly. I would have nightmares about my sister, including sleep paralysis episodes in which I could hear her and she sounded angry. I felt terrified in those nightmares.

I tried to explain that she had a pattern of behavior that I did not like. When I would bring up examples of her behaviors, she and my family would tell me that that was in the past and I need to let it go. They would insist that I be more forgiving even though it was impossible for me to feel emotionally safe in her presence. They would tell me that I need to spend more time downstairs and socialize more. On top of that my therapists would tell me that I was the problem because I kept ruminating on bad situations with my sister and would not let them go even though these were symptoms of severe trauma. Therapists are often terrible because they are hyperspecialized, leading them to pathologizing trauma responses. The result is that I was given ineffective anti-psychotic medicine which damaged my liver, and I am still trying to get help recovering from this. My medical insurance has complicated this though. My family repeatedly insisted that all of this was normal family conflict and it was okay to have little tiffs, even if they involved mom threatening suicide. They insisted that I needed to go to therapy for depression, but my sister decided she didn't want to go as she insisted I needed to.

I wrote a message to some of my family members explaining the situation. So far it seems that my cousin is the only one that understands me. I have sent the message to my grandma, mother, and younger siblings as well. My younger brother might understand the situation because he is aware of my older sister's behaviors and how she reacts when you say something negative about her. I haven't told my other grandma yet. She also thinks I need to just let go of the past even though the presence of my sister was making me feel suicidal because of the intense emotional reactions it caused. My family is ignorant of my trauma responses, so they treat them as if they were moral failings, proving that I was the problem and my sister was doing everything just right. Sometimes I wanted to cut myself in response to these intense feelings.

I was trapped in a toxic family dynamic which the others were blind to, and I was the only one trying to work on myself and improve myself. I tried the book list on this website, the life purpose course, and so many different things, but it just was not enough. I was hoping that emotional mastery would help me to overcome the constant torture in my mind which kept me locked into a traumatic thought pattern. Once again others would tell me that my thinking was the problem and I needed to focus on something else.

My experience with mental health has demonstrated to me how stupid the average human being is. Not even the therapists could be trusted because I had done enough research and self-education to objectively know better than them. So many people make all the wrong assumptions about me and it makes it hard to communicate with people. Too often do people overestimate their intelligence and their capacity to help as well as their moral character. There is a bit of a paradox because I tend to think of myself as objectively more intelligent than the average person, but I am aware of the potential problem that could come with this. There is some trauma around this as well because my family treated me like I was stupid.

I understand that my profound suffering has strengthened my empathy for the suffering of others. I recognize the mental torture that seems beyond our control no matter how hard we try to make it stop. I used to think it was my fault, but actually it was PTSD. I have been struggling to love myself all my life, but I have found that I love myself even more when I extend the love to others. It was kind of like the dream I had back in high school. I jumped into a black abyss of deep suffering with unwavering faith that I would return to the light stronger. Through this journey I have come to realize that I am the light and it is love which makes me stronger while giving others the strength they need. Originally, I saw Jesus in the dream, but I still have no interest in being a Christian. In fact I am even more repulsed by it because my therapists made me pray when I objected to the practice. I do not want to make people miss love by trying to make them be Christians who clearly have no idea what love even is. From my point of view it looks like moral posturing in which they pretend to be selfless and loving when they are not.

I tried forgiving my sister, but I simply could not do it. I tried Leo's forgiveness exercise, but it did not work because Leo said that they did not hurt me intentionally. In my case, it was far too obvious that my sister wanted to hurt me because she was emotionally abusive without any remorse or respect for my boundaries. I simply could not forgive her no matter how hard I tried and even as the family told me that I was in the wrong for not being more forgiving and letting things go.

I have found a method of forgiveness that works now that I am away from my sister. Rather than framing forgiveness within a psychological or interpersonal viewpoint, I framed it as more of an existential viewpoint. I struggled with a deeply dysfunctional situation for my entire life and I used whatever I could leverage best to help me be able to love myself. In my case I chose truth, intelligence, and goodness. I did however devalue relationships in favor of a "higher purpose." Meanwhile, my sister chose power, control, and manipulation. She chose a survival strategy which shaped her into a covertly abusive narcissist who enjoys having power over others, and therefore cannot find genuine love for them. She will act like she loves me until the second she gets angry and decides to weaponize my trauma against me. I don't want to forgive her in the sense of wanting to be within 50 miles of her because of how good she is as a human being, but I do forgive her in the sense that she is existentially limited by whatever she can best leverage as a survival strategy even if it leads to intentionally harming others. I don't expect her to recover from her condition, not only because of my experience with her, but also because her chances of recovery from narcissism are not good statistically. She is too psychologically resistant to self-reflection because it would be too painful for her to realize how terribly she has been treating others and getting away with it all her life.

I now feel a deep sense of love for myself because I chose love, truth, and goodness. Of course I was limited in my understanding of these things and I had to make a lot of mistakes in the process. It kind of makes me want to cry because of how fucking awesome I am. I initially used these values to compensate my self-worth problems, but I now see the incredible being I have become because I chose love over hate, truth over lies, and good over evil. From my point of view it would not have been intelligent to not be committed to truth because if I intentionally lie to myself all my life then everything I believe is probably wrong. Therefore truth and intelligence were closely related to each other, although my understanding of intelligence was as something that would make me feel good about myself. I now realize that it would be incredibly fucking intelligent if this entire process throughout my entire life was designed to lead me to realize that the universe is very fucking intelligent.

I still need to stay the fuck away from my sister as I continue to look for ways to navigate this situation. I find it very hard to be in her presence. I will also need a fuck ton of trauma therapy, no matter how much my family tells me I don't need it. It is actually not a good idea to trust my family at all because they don't understand me in the slightest. I also see how deeply ignorant people were on this forum including myself as I struggled to figure all of this stuff out.

I hope you guys find this helpful.