Quote:
Originally Posted by Fool Zero
It sounds as if it's easy for both of you to "push each other's buttons" and hard for either of you not to react accordingly. When you see your only options as criticizing or ignoring, that's a pretty sure sign you've just had your buttons pushed and are too busy reacting to be fully available. For all you or I can tell, wanting to destroy the world may be her off-topic way of expressing that she's mad at someone*, and frustrated that they react and pass judgment and aren't willing to hear her.
Speculating a bit here -- her refusing therapy if you were to suggest it could be another obvious way to get back at you for what she perceives as, oh, trying to control her or something. If she were ever to find herself talking to someone who really seemed to her to be listening and being there looked like her own idea, not someone else's, she might never want to leave. [/speculating]
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*Not always you, though you may be closest at the time.
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Ohh the ever-insightful FZ! You've stepped on my anger button! Fortunately here from the other side of the screen I know that the fact that you've stepped on this tells me you're onto something. Anyway, you're saying the things that I've suspected myself. Though I still have this intense need to
help her, somehow
shelter her, somehow
save her from this lifestyle which could kill her!! But that's my stuff and it's true, it's true, it's so terribly, awfully, horribly true that the more I try to put myself in the position of being her savior, the more she rebels against anything I suggest. And the more suggestions I give the more she fights to have something of her own. And the more self-destructive she gets. I have played my own role in this!
The thing that kills me is that she keeps asking me into this role, and then getting angry when I fulfill it. She expects me to rescue her and then I do, and then I set boundaries, and then I give in when I feel like she really needs it.. but it's not helping, it's not helping!! To me it is so much easier to see how this can be unhealthy when I am on the job.. I am so good with boundaries in my job and so bad with boundaries in this case. I am so scared that without me in her life that my sister would die, would kill herself on drugs, would fall to pieces. But that is my own need for control. Maybe the best thing for her is for me never to make suggestions to her again, so she can find her own way.. because all she can do with my suggestions is rebel.. it is so frustrating for me. And then there is this guilt fearing that the way I have been acting, this mother act I've got going on, has been very unhealthy for her and has led to her further descent into chaos.
I don't want to take my hands off of this. It is just so hard!!! I talk about my relationship with my sister a lot with my T but.. it is still so hard to change these patterns.. I am the older sister, I rescue her.. and when I don't, I am selfish, so says my sister, and I hate to be seen that way, so I react by accommodating more, then suggesting more, then being rebelled against. These patterns keep repeating..
You really hit the nail on the head, FZ, but what is really the healthiest thing to do? I keep seeing these absolute solutions but they all seem bound to fail.. either I keep accommodating and suggesting ideas, or I stop and she's out of my life, I could give up on trying to help, and maybe that would help, or.. or WHAT? I mean even my T says this is just such a complex and tricky situation and there is no way to know the best path to take.
I just want to do anything, anything, anything, anything that will work. I wish someone could tell me what I could do. Which path leads to my sister being okay, in the end? I just keep thinking she's going to die unless someone does something!