My blog on the impact of my narcissistic sibling has generated a lot of comments from people who were similarly harmed by an emotionally abusive sister or brother. For this blog, I’ll dive deeper into how the interactions within a family, especially between siblings, can create or exacerbate shame intolerance patterns. How parents discipline or fail to discipline children and how they protect or fail to protect abused siblings impacts all of the children in the family and may lead children to develop shame intolerance patterns that can affect them throughout their lives. As I experienced in my family, even well-intentioned parents can unwittingly create narcissists (Other-Blamers) and can create or worsen submissive behaviors in other siblings, creating victims who may be anxious, Self-blaming, guilt-ridden, perfectionistic, overly responsible, and emotionally shut down.
What are the Shame Management Strategies?
Let’s begin by understanding how people learn to manage shame in healthy and unhealthy ways. Based on emotional experiences in childhood, most people cope with shame in one the following ways:
- Healthy shame tolerance through self-acceptance
- Other-Blaming or externalizing shame
- Self-Blaming or internalizing shame
- Blame Avoidance
The key assessment tool is considering: How does the person handle criticism? Do they accept it with good personal awareness, equanimity and accountability? This leads to apology, contrition, relationship repair and attempts to change (#1). Or do they (#2 Other-blamers) lash out in defensive anger at others when corrected, engaging in narcissistic behaviors of blame-shifting, accusations, excuses and lack of accountability? Self-blamers (#3) are excessively plagued by guilt and regret, with excessive passivity in the face of emotional abuse. Read detailed descriptions of these behaviors and their causes. Also read many of my blogs on this subject by searching for “shame”.
What Can Go Wrong in Families to Create Unhealthy Sibling Dynamics?
Robin came to me in her mid-20s and on the surface she seemed to function very well: She got good grades in her engineering degree program and was beginning her career with a good job. Although she was pleasant and personable, there was a guardedness to her that made it difficult for her to form friendships or intimate relationships. She admitted she worked too much, was perfectionistic and was very hard on herself, which indicated issues with low self-worth and lack of self-compassion.
As we began working on these issues, it came to light that she lived with her adult brother who barely held down low-paying jobs, did not chip in to the shared finances, and was a complete slob around the apartment. As we dug further back into her childhood, Robin reported that her brother was a difficult child, then became a troubled teen, did a lot of drugs, got arrested several times and argued constantly with their parents, who struggled to manage his behaviors. When I asked how she talked to him about the current issues of chores and finances, it became apparent that she was somewhat scared to talk to him and just did all the chores herself.
Therapists can learn a lot clinically about an individual’s emotional and relationship issues by examining sibling relationships and the family dynamics that created them. This concept is based on family systems concepts. We relate to each other as social beings and one person’s emotional state or behaviors influences others. Our brain’s mirror neurons read our social environment and respond in ways that help us gain acceptance and manage relationships. Ideally in relationships we have two pro-social people who have the same goals: Maintaining and strengthening the relationship in ways that are healthy and balanced for both of them.
Unfortunately, those with narcissistic tendencies have learned to increase their anti-social characteristics and downplay their pro-social traits to get their needs met, specifically the need to avoid shame. Anti-social people (Other-blamers) have a severely individualistic and non-reciprocal stance toward relationships, where they care very little or not at all about others’ needs and the impact of their behavior on others. Anti-social personalities, or severe Other-blamers, may even gain pleasure from dominating, controlling or harming others.
How Parents Create Narcissistic Children with Unhealthy Shame Tolerance
Ideally, parents model and teach healthy shame tolerance skills in children consistently throughout childhood. Parents do this by disciplining children in age-appropriate ways and for age-appropriate behaviors, by provoking some guilt, but not using excessive guilt. Parents should be firm but loving in their correcting comments and a focus on emotional support and teaching children how to be resilient and learn from their embarrassments and mistakes. Parents teach shame tolerance by being available to help the youngster work through the resulting experiences of guilt.
Unfortunately, certain parenting styles can make things worse for all types of children, whether the child tends toward Other-Blamer, Self-Blamer or Blame Avoider. Shame is an emotion like any other, yet most parents have no idea when they are shaming their children — because they likely suffer from poor shame tolerance themselves and desperately want to avoid this difficult feeling. The result can be three styles of parenting:
- Permissive parents
- Authoritarian/Strict parents
- Avoidant/Emotionally Distant parents
Permissive parents are sensitive to shame, so they feel “bad” when disciplining children, even if those corrections are healthy for a child, such as telling her to be home by a curfew or do his homework. Permissive parents may try to protect children from guilt by not setting or enforcing consistent rules and may bail children out when they are in the wrong. While this may be well-intentioned, children need to learn to experience and handle these emotions, because without this skill they cannot navigate the adult world that is filled with experiences of criticism and failure. With these weaker parents, the strong-willed child learns quickly that if he pushes back, parents cave in because they are afraid to hold the child accountable. The parent becomes submissive in the face of the domineering child, which exacerbates Other-blamer tendencies, rather than moderating them.
Some permissive or passive parents fool themselves that they are forceful parents because they ignore the difficult child’s behaviors and only correct the easy sibling who gives no pushback. Obviously, children often notice this unfair parenting style and become resentful (Self-Blamer) or entitled (Other-Blamer).
Strict parents direct excessive amounts of criticism, guilt and shame at children. Harsh, demanding and authoritarian parents can also create narcissistic children by teaching them that “might makes right.”
Avoidant parents teach children that all emotions are to be dismissed and not reckoned with, even helpful emotions such as guilt and embarrassment.
If only parents learned to tolerate shame themselves, then they would not be so afraid of teaching a child that they should be appropriately ashamed of bad behaviors. Importantly, they should then teach the skills to manage what comes next: accountability, and the resilience to learn, grow, change — and stop behaving in shameful ways.
People like Donald Trump have worst-case-scenario parents, as described by his niece Mary Trump in her book, which I reviewed. He had a rejecting, strict, authoritarian, domineering and distant father who modeled Other-Blamer behaviors of greed, hatred and abuse of power. His weak, passive, permissive, non-involved, and non-nurturing mother sent signals he was unworthy of love in the form of discipline. Both parents appeared to be distant and emotionally unavailable. His father was overly critical, likely overwhelming Donald with excessive shame that was not regulated. He was also not appropriately and moderately disciplined by his parents and when he had behavioral problems their solution was classic Avoidant parent: Ship him off to boarding school.
How Parents Create Self-Blaming Children who are Primed to Tolerate Abuse
As we worked out her family dynamics in therapy, Robin learned that as a child she had come to believe she had to be the good, happy child, and had to downplay her own emotional needs — maybe even the need to be a little bit bad or unhappy once in awhile — because her brother occupied the behavioral niche of the “bad” child. The caring, pro-social aspects of her personality were obvious as she subconsciously chose to not over-burden her parents with her needs. Unsurprisingly, she is not burdening her brother as an adult by demanding that he step up and do his share of chores. On a surface level, she witnessed her brother misbehaving and correctly learned the lesson that his behavior got him a lot of negative attention. But she also learned that she got less attention of any kind. Many victims of Other-blamer siblings develop habits of passively waiting for attention, love, or the cessation of abuse in their childhoods.
This was also my experience. I recognized, much later in my adult life, that while I may have had some tendencies toward shyness and passivity, these traits were severely worsened by my sister’s emotional abuse and dominance. Her loud, dramatic, verbose personality sucked the oxygen out of every room, leaving no space for me or my brother to get our needs met for attention, from our parents specifically. I recall thinking throughout my childhood: “Someone please pay attention to me. If I’m really good and quiet my parents will notice my obedient behaviors and I will be loved. If I sit here silently long enough, someone will recognize that.”
During a six-month car trip through Europe when all of us children were elementary school age, I spent many hours in the far back of the Volkswagen van with little view of the countryside we were driving through. Much of the time my sister and brother occupied the forward rear seats and argued who should sit in the best seat. My parents tried to moderate their arguing and failed to notice who wasn’t involved in the arguments — me. I patiently hoped that someone in the family would notice my suffering. It’s no surprise that I grew up to be someone who gave excessively to others, tolerated abuse, and suffered in silence without asserting my needs.
Even events such as shoe shopping with my mother and sister strengthened this dynamic: My wide, large feet that needed special fitting were ignored because my sister, with her average size 7 feet, demanded attention from my mother and clerks. I stuffed my feet into any shoe that came close to fitting and… suffered in silence with blisters. Decades later, while visiting my sister, she wanted to go shoe shopping and I bit my tongue as she rudely demanded high levels of service from the clerk for her “special feet,” completely unaware of the attention-seeking dynamic she was repeating.
A common way of coping with a narcissistic sibling is that the “good child” overcompensates and becomes perfectionistic in the hopes of gaining attention. This leads to traits of:
- over-responsibility
- excessive and misplaced guilt
- over-protection of sibling
- over-protection of parents from sibling’s behaviors
- over-achieving
- perfectionism
- excessive rule-following or even obsessive-compulsive traits (if I follow all these rules I’ll be rewarded!)
- excessive passivity in relationships
- tolerance of abuse
- excessive independent, fear of intimacy and guardedness
- or, conversely, dependency, naïveté and unwarranted trust of others
We know that experiences of young children are developmentally significant because their brains are just developing, so that their environment has a major impact on them. The habits, thoughts, emotional regulation skills and relational models they witness via daily, repetitive experiences within a family are being stored up in the brain. If a sibling is difficult and a parent is conflict averse or passive in the face of defiance, the submissive child learns to avoid conflict by observing what the parents are doing toward more dominant siblings. Siblings may replicate unbalanced relationships in adulthood either as the abuser or the abused.
As a consequence of my childhood experiences, it took me years of work in personal growth to develop a strong sense of self, self-confidence and assertiveness skills to overcome what I learned in childhood through an unhealthy relationship with my older sister.
Some childhoods can create longstanding unhealthy dependencies within the family, such as a parent financially supporting a child into adulthood or Robin’s scenario where one sibling does most of the housework and is overly responsible, while the other adult sibling continues to under-perform and acts like an irresponsible child.
Impact of the Non-protective Parent
My brother, sister and I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s when children had a lot of time together apart from adult supervision. Theoretically, this gives children a chance to learn to work things out entirely on their own and this type of environment can foster healthy conflict resolution skills. However, if one of the children is an Other-blamer, it can merely be the perfect environment to create an abusive relationship between siblings. If parents don’t step in and manage unbalanced relationships for the children and moderate an Other-blamer’s tendencies, the children will not have the skills to do so themselves.
If the parents fail to notice this dynamic, these behavioral patterns can become entrenched in both children. I was perhaps somewhat shy, and was younger than my sister, so was naturally deferential. I believe, though, that her domineering personality was likely strengthened by my parents’ failure to check it.
Parents who are emotionally neglectful or uninvolved can cause great harm, even without overt abuse, because they do not protect the weaker child. In fact, they may be more focused on protecting the stronger child, specifically protecting them from shame. For the victim of sibling abuse, it can create a sense of being unprotected.
Looking back, I see that my parents tried very hard to be “fair,” and when we argued as children they tried to issue equal reprimand to all of the combatants and mostly just told us to stop arguing. I see now that my parents were actually very conflict averse in many ways, not just in parenting. I don’t have clear memories given the passing of time, but I wonder if they turned a blind eye to the pattern of my sister regularly being the source of the conflicts and my brother and I being taken advantage of. I suspect they had learned early on that my sister was difficult to discipline and so avoided doing so, instead claiming to be “fair” and doling out “equal” punishments. I wonder if they should they have been more direct and reprimanded a child who was perhaps being excessively controlling and domineering to her siblings (and parents)?
Narcissistic Siblings and Conflict-Averse Parents
Siblings and parents also learn that nothing seems to control the Other-blamer child and give up trying. Parents may completely abdicate their responsibility and let the defiant child rule the home. The unprotected siblings do not have a choice in this matter and must cope the best way they know how, often with even more passive and compliant behaviors — get along and go along to avoid conflict with the dominant sibling. They are forced to accept that the parent will not protect them from the abusive sibling.
Some parents may turn to a child to help control and parent the difficult sibling or siblings.
Regularly experiencing a narcissistic sibling’s abuse creates tolerance of abuse in adult relationships, a belief that relationships are one-sided and that others will not protect them from abuse.
Other impacts of narcissistic sibling abuse:
- They create excessively guarded individuals who are fearful of vulnerability, because they did not learn to set boundaries that were healthy, moderate and flexible.
- They create excessive empathy or highly sensitive people who are overly attuned to the needs of others and under-attuned to their own needs.
Clinicians: Assess for Sibling Relationships — Especially Narcissistic Siblings
Clinician must assess for family dynamics and must not overlook sibling relationships. It may be easy to spot a narcissistic, neglectful or abusive parent, but even in the absence of that, look for permissive parents who did not clamp down on the Other-blamer sibling. Look for uninvolved or absent parents who forced one child to become parentified. Some latchkey children are asked to manage a strong-willed younger sibling who rules the roost in the parent’s absence every day for a few hours.
I ask clients to describe their relationships with each sibling when they were very young and then at each major stage of development, such as pre-teen and teen. Ask how each parent disciplined each child or when the siblings were together. Be on the lookout for a troubled brother or sister or if the client was the identified “difficult child.” These children may behave in ways that are mildly oppositional or may be severely rebellious, drug addicted or have severe emotional issues, such as depression, self-harming, eating disorders, or separation anxiety. There are many ways to formulate the reasons for these behaviors, but it is important to identify how this impacted the victim sibling, such as by monopolizing all the parents’ attention and energy and creating unfilled needs for attention and validation.
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How Does a Narcissistic Sibling Affect the Personality of a Brother or Sister?
Hi Harper,
Wow, I am a 65 years old male who after 37 years marriage was discarded by (as it appears in my research) a narcissist wife.
I am a INFJ and Highly sensitive person spending my life trying to please a wife who was never pleased fully with my efforts.
I grew up with a very narcissistic father who was an incredible bully and controlling individual who would also regularly beat me with a belt (called the “strap”) if he considered me naughty enough.
I have two sisters the eldest (I am certain is a narcissist) two years older than me and the other sister being two years younger.
My Father and eldest sister were constantly at war with each other with massive shouting attacks constantly with occasions where my Father would resort to threats of putting this sister into a child care home etc.
Basically I realize now that my upbringing with the Father and elder sister was traumatic and made me a people pleaser as I could do no right in my Fathers eyes, he would mock me by calling me the girls name Jennifer if I showed any emotions.
Simply I am starting to realize my marriage in all probability was an outcome of subconscious programming making my wife’s personality acceptable to me, as I saw similar traits to my eldest sister in her.
I would really appreciate any thoughts you have to help my healing as I have for 24 months been no contact from my now ex wife, but wish to find a way to become happier after the discovery my upbringing was abusive particularly with my elder sister and Father. For information my mother was emotionally absent but was an enabler to my Father thus never assisted me when I was being abused. My younger sister assured my my Mother loved me however this was never expressed to me by her or anyone else in my family, similar to your experience growing up. I never had any love or emotional warmth from anyone in my family of the ex wife.
Sorry this is so long however any help you can give me towards finding a healing path would be so much appreciated.
Thank you Bill
Bill, you’ve already started the healing process by coming to such good understanding of your situation and history. Identifying narcs and labeling them is important. There are many good resources out there now, including books on healing from narcissistic abuse. Two books that are older are Children of the Self-Absorbed by Nina Brown and Toxic Parents by Susan Forward. I don’t keep up with all the self-help books out there, so I’m sure there are more recent ones. Learning assertiveness skills is key so that you feel empowered to care for yourself by setting boundaries. Again there are many good resources for learning to communicate with assertiveness, but older books I like are Don’t be Nice, Be Real, by Kelly Bryson and Susan Campbell’s Getting Real and Saying What’s Real. Best of Luck!
I too am 65. My goal now is to believe and understand myself rather than to try to get my 2 siblings to understand and agree with me about the effect their behavior has had on me. It is difficult because I tried for years to “convince” them of my love, and as proof they should love me back!, through my giving of time and support and financial aid and other means. Then I tried setting boundaries, which my sister ignored. Then I tried reasoning with moral truths and principles since she professed to be highly moral. It turned out she was more self-righteous than moral. Now that we are no longer communicating by any means, it is a daily struggle to let it go. Let go of the blame and shame from my side and from hers. And set my sights on survival and thriving and growth. Thank you for your insights.
Thank you for this article, I am in my 50’s and my older sister who is almost 60 was the narcissistic sibling. As you mention, growing up in the 70s, we spent a lot of time playing alone. My mom was severely depressed and tried to protect me, but she also felt sorry for my sister because she felt that I was “stronger” and so she kind of gave up. Eventually the whole family was afraid of my older sister, which continues until today. I want to thank you for this article because, until recently I felt that most issues I am dealing with today were related to my mother being depressed (some are), but had not realized the impact my sister had on me. And honestly it makes me angry and sad. And of course even today my sister other blames my parents, and considers my mother the narcissist one, and she goes to therapy, which really is a way to blame others once again. Recently her behavior was very negative to me and my parents, and now I am distancing myself a bit (although she doesn’t really reach out that much anyway, I was the one that always wanted to hang out with her sadly). My issue now is how do I let go of this fear of being vulnerable and approachable, how do I discover who I really am, letting go of this need to be careful of what I say and do, so as to not offend anyone?
I seek out a lot of reddit discussions on these topics but this was my first time coming across your website. I’ve never considered that my younger brother could be a narcissist or other-blamer. I’ve always blamed myself in some way for his abuse.
I’m 30 and I’ve been trying to figure out what’s “wrong” with me since I was around 15. Ive blamed SO much on me. Me! Not my younger brother who spent our entire childhoods abusing me and getting away with it. Not my parents, who made choices much the same as yours. I’ve directed everything inward and I almost want to throw up now that I know this.
Thank you for this seed. I will plant it in my mind and use it to forgive myself more. I hope one day it will help me see my worth.
There can be feelings of disgust and grief when this family dynamic is uncovered and understood. But just use those emotions to motivate yourself to do exactly as you plan — build your self-worth so that you do not tolerate emotionally abusive relationships in your adult life. You couldn’t control your childhood situation but you can make healthy choices for yourself now, as you already know. Take care!
It’s not you. I spent years in my 20’s 30’s and 40’s trying ti figure out what I did wrong. Don’t waste time on these people. Do what makes you happy
Wow. Amazing to learn there are others in their 6th or even 7th decade of life who are just learning their sibling is a narcissist. I have always been considered by everyone who knows me and my family, to be “close” to my sister who is 15 months older. For decades, so many things I’ve said or done have been minimized, invalidated, and ridiculed. With that, I’ve walked away from encounters feeling bullied, degraded, and confused. I’ve lived my adult life being a people pleaser, a perfectionist, and an over-achiever having her one-up me, or minimize my achievements. Seriously, I just always wanted to be close to and accepted by her, but, until I finally started reading about this stuff, I never knew what this was. There were never terms like “gaslighting,” “boundaries,” or “co-dependent” in my younger days. I get it now…the last straw before I finally decided on minimal contact was in a small restaurant with another sibling and our spouses when she decided to scream at me, humiliating and embarrassing me beyond words because she heard I had a conversation with a nephew about something she didn’t like (and was very wrong about). I guess she doesn’t realize that I am free to talk to my nephew (and anyone else I want to talk with), and decided to take me down in public. This, I realized, had been going on episodically my whole life, and now I am caring for myself. Yes…I get it now.
Virginia, sounds like you are handling the situation well -we want to practice compassion for our former selves who didn’t know what we know now. We’re all doing the best we can at this present moment. And, yes, caring for yourself!
Thank you for this article. I experienced abuse from my brother through my childhood: name calling, control, putting down, threats. My parents would say „we need to stop fighting because we have one another”. I remember being confused about this. How is it fighting on both sides when I’m being put down. We are over 40 now and just yesterday when visiting him for Christmas he didn’t like my comment, called me names, put down and yelled at me. My father said „oh please stop you have only each other”. In the morning, like nothing happened. I believe he will be in jail one day. He feels superior as he became financially very successful, which he commented on: „you didn’t achieve anything, I have everything, I could buy you all”. I’m now starting to understand a huge impact the ongoing abuse had on me. It’s hard to see it as it was labeled as siblings being just „so different” and „always fighting”, or him being a „typical brother”.
I used to live in Texas, I moved to be closer and help sister. I was too far away, we’re the last of our family. She had recently broke her knee cap and I came to help her. When I got here within about a one month or two. I didn’t realized that she started badgering me calling me names telling me I’m laz y stupid. And I was working and at the time I hurt my knee at work . I got osteoarthritis and torn medial now am having surgery for total knee replacement. She thinks it’s a joke I’m lazy I don’t want to do anything, I’m on disability right now. Just telling me I’m going to call the disability to take that away. Like I had my legs busted up they already know. I asked her, so what do you want me to do cut the grass. I go to physical therapy but it is just a long process to get this done.. since I was working from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. and sleep last day . Now I’m home everyday and it brothers her. I pay the rent and I pay the bills. She pays not a thing. I’m sick of the arguing fighting everyday. I just ignore her, close the door and listen to Christian music. I just want to take care of myself and go back to Texas on have the operation. I was so happy that everything was peaceful. I grew up with her and she has a warped sense of the way we were as the family. I told her what family did you come from because it doesn’t sound like ours. I’m moving out shortly and if I do I’m just going to keep it no contact, she narcissist. I want forget being respectful, just let her have it. Know, it’s not being God’s children if we do that. Learn something reading it.
This was an amazing article. Thank you for unpacking this. It helps me understand how our family got to be the dysfunctional one that it is.
I feel so validated by reading this. I remembering vowing to be “nice” when I was in first grade and I have always strived to be the good girl. I remember being 11 or 12 and accepting responsibility for my sister’s (16 months older than me) mistreatment of me. It was how I stayed safer. Later, I became my mother’s sounding board as I heard all about my sister’s struggles for the rest of my mother’s life. My mother passed away two years ago.
I had a buried memory pop up the other day. My sister was driving us into our small home town to go to High School and she decided to take the dirt road into the back side of town going full speed. The car spun around and as we overshot the turn. It was truly miraculous that she didn’t flip the car. “What the heck” I exclaimed. “Well, I don’t really feel like living anymore” my sister responded. “Well, I want to live. Don’t take me with you.” I responded. And, that was that. I really didn’t think anything much about it until recently.
But, now I see what I couldn’t see then. I was probably her best friend at that time. It wasn’t the first time she had talked about killing herself so it seemed like the little boy who cried “wolf”. And, I didn’t want to rat her out and get on her bad side. So, I said nothing to anyone about it. But, now I see that she could have killed me and she didn’t care. She could have seriously maimed her best friend and it was all about her. She didn’t want to live and she could care less about how her reckless behavior affected her best friend. I was just along for the ride and an inconsequential bystander to her impulses. I was all about her and it always has been and it always will be.
But here now is the bigger issue that I am so glad that you are pointing out. I was so self-abandoned and so other people centric that I thought nothing about my own personal safety. I hopped right back into the car with her behind the wheel without thinking that I was putting myself in harms way. My mother even once told me that “My sister was always better when she was with me.” It was as if my only purpose in life was to support others to my own detriment.
My sister lost her temper and verbally and emotionally assaulted me as our mother passed. Then she went and triangulated lies about me to my siblings and friends and community and ran a smear campaign against me. She made my entire family “unsafe”. But now, my blinders are off and I’m finally seeing my role in the family to take the blame for my sister’s anger and blame games. She never learned to adult and be accountable and I’m not going to be around her as her emotional waste basket anymore.
It is so hard to learn how to be there for me and to recognize my experiences and reality and truth as being valid. My inner voice was always shouted down through the false narration of “blame-throwers.” I realized the pressure my mother put on me to be perfect. Her overconcern and enabling of my sister taught me the I didn’t need to be worried about as if I am unworthy of care and concern.
Thank you for this article. There is too little information about narcissistic sibling abuse.
What a remarkable story and insights you have gained. I think many of us “support others to our own detriment” as you so wisely say. The niceness is a good trait, but needs balance with boundaries and self-protection. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the nice summary of the effect on siblings.
I learned early on to subjugate my needs to keep the family peace. My parents tried, but my older sister was like this for as long as I’ve been old enough to be aware. When discussing it with my parents, they told me that “We never had to worry about you.” To them it was a compliment, and I took it as intended. But the sorrow of having a mentally disturbed sibling taking up so much of the family dynamic is real.
My loving, decent, hardworking parents were overwhelmed by her tantrums. I don’t blame them for not knowing how to deal with it. They did look into it My parents have passed and I gradually stopped contact unless she texts. I have much more peace in my life by not having contact with her.
Wow! I am in my 50s and realized recently I have a narcissist/gas lighting sister. Growing up, she had my mom in tears constantly, pretty much gave my mom a difficult time til this day. My parents were aware and say she is a bully, has to control everything in the family, needs to know what’s going on with everyone, etc… my parents see how my sister treats me and don’t understand why she is the way with me til this day in our 50s and 60s. My mom said I didn’t have a chance from the day I was born with my sister. I have tried to get along with her and exhausted all means. Anything I do with my parents, she has to know about it and at times gets upset. My mom has said the last Cple years she is just grateful they are getting along. They are getting along because my sister has been asking for things from their home and gets it, my mom doesn’t want to say no. When she had kids years ago, my mom said she didn’t want to confront my sister as they were afraid they wouldn’t see their grandkids. Very sad to think that of her own daughter. So many examples of where she created a scene and ruined family plans. I am having a difficult time coping with how my sister gets my parents and siblings involved with things about me, she creates a lot of drama. People say she is jealous of my relationship with my parents. I think I need to break contact with her but it’s difficult with my parents and siblings, I want to keep relationships with them.
I have spent the past 2 years, during my mom’s final illness and watching how that crisis intensified the family’s psychopathology, combing the internet and reading all the recommended books to get to the heart of what this article finally nails 100%.
My jaw dropped as I read. This is me. This is my sister. This is my family. What a pattern!
I had just scheduled working w/ a new therapist because I had just sent an email to my siblings letting them know I would no longer participate in family functions, following mom’s funeral, but a nephew (peacemaker!) intervened–he requested I give a deadline of two months and then try to rejoin the family. I needed to know, “What do I do in the meantime? how do I judge? What then?”
Before our first session, I gave the therapist a fairly objective written summary of my siblings and our childhood–and it sounds uncannily, even freakishly, similar to the characters and events in this article and in the comments. Even the fact that my mother apologized for “all of the above” before she passed away, saying “you were the capable one, the kind one, the one we could count on, and I’m sorry you ended up neglected.”
The therapist only needed two sessions with me (thanking me for the helpful descriptions of the family) to say, Why do you even bother? Why go back?
For me, it has become a case of “once you see it, you can’t unsee it.” Putting it down in writing, and then encountering it here, well, now it’s so obvious–what would I tell a friend (or even a sibling) who described these things? I’d say, Why go back? Why bother? Who needs it?
Go take care of yourself. That’s what I would say.
I have spent the last two years in grief over realizing I was literally losing my family, the siblings whose love I clung to despite their behavior.
Well, I guess dealing with that will be what’s next.
None of this matters, given that when help is sought by an aware parent and or by a sibling, no help is to be found anywhere. No consistent, constrictive early interventions.
Telling a parent to go and do a positive parenting course is not productive when others work against positive changes, for various reasons and motives.
The negative narratives, spins and twists employed by counsellors, legal personnel, family courts, who have tendencies to find fault, target a family member (usually mother), take other stories at face value, allow rules and information that is not disclosed, yet used as evidence. These are all crazy-making tactics, strategies, systems that traumatize, exacerbate, gaslight, and make unwarranted conclusions based on highly selective discovery.
When help is sought, help could be given, but instead, blame, fault, incompetence, and adversarial contentious issues are held against party and even child, children. Asking a parent if a child is lying, and the parent stating a yes, automatically implies an indicator for parental alienation.
Imagine not getting to 65 before realising that abuse, and use, and manipulation, and exploitation, and threats were not okay.
Systems are disjointed and constructed to narrowly fulfil specific roles.
Yet family courts will play and game the systems. If a crime is committed, it belongs in the criminal courts.
Abuses by siblings are safeguarded by parents, grandparents, relatives, educators, counsellors, creating the perpetuated roles of the dreaded drama triangle and creating personalities that lack social refinements – but the target is always one parent, the mother more often than not.
Children go to childcare, family day care, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, (often more, including nights, and weekends). The dynamics in those environments and households are never taken into consideration. Educators, the majority of, who work directly with children, are not skilled communicators, not skilled at conflict guidance and resolution, are also distracted by their own family agendas, and unwittingly (but not always) cause problems for individual children, siblings, parent, by making assumptions, interfering, being proxy and taking sides, gossiping, complaining, sighing, or favouring one parent.
Outsourced, commercial child care began around the 70s, and abuses have escalated, depression and anxiety have escalated.
So, nothing has changed, other than people make money off of other people’s, including children’s harms (mostly preventable) and suffering.
Narcissistic siblings as adults never let go of their version of fairness and entertainment.
Many grandparents foolishly will do whatever it takes to not miss out on buying their grandchildren’s attention.
When excessive stress, stressors, are deliberately placed on a parent – something or someone is bound to break.
There needs to be a whole system with the whole intention of literally helping, each family member as a whole unit, seeing the whole picture, and the whole dynamics. Anything less is systems’ abuse.
“How Narcissistic Siblings are Created and How they Harm Their Siblings
by Harper West | Jun 30, 2023 | Narcissist | 17”