I've always had a really good relationship with my parents, they've been incredibly supportive of me throughout my life. I'm a queer woman who dresses alternatively and has suffered from mental health issues from a young age, and they've always been supportive, telling me that they'll always love and support me and that they just want me to be happy.

My parents both grew up in complicated households. My father was the eldest of five boys, and often had to step in to keep the peace and take responsibility for his four younger brothers - especially one, who was disruptive and actively sought to cause issues. My mother was the youngest of three sisters, who had an aggressive, abusive alcoholic father, and was always stepping in to keep the peace.

Both of my parents were responsible for making sure their households didn't erupt into warfare, particularly my mother, who was the only one of her sisters to avoid sexual abuse. As a result, both are actively conflict-avoidant, and will avoid arguments. My father was in an accident several years ago which left him paralysed, which has only exacerbated the issue.

Enter my brother. Anxious by nature, highly emotionally intelligent but with selective empathy. He has had anger issues from a very young age, and as he's grown older, my parents have increasingly subscribed to the 'he'll grow out of it' mentality.

From very early on, my role became the same as theirs. Don't rock the boat, keep the peace at all costs. If my brother lost his temper and lashed out, the immediate response - especially from my father - was to ask what I did.

Two years ago, the conflict between my brother suddenly escalated. The issues he'd been dealing with got markedly worse, and he took it all out on me. I've always been the target of his anger, always been the one to wear it. He's never physically harmed me, but he's made a point of ensuring that I don't have any power - and verbally confirmed as much. It got to a point where I was completely unable to deescalate a situation, because he would take literally anything I did as an excuse to blow up.

My brother has admitted to my parents within earshot of me that he enjoys 'putting me in my place'. He threatened me with knives, verbally abused me, hacked my computer and accounts to monitor what I was saying about him, told me in vivid detail how he would dismember me. I had pots and even the vacuum cleaner thrown at me - always past my head, never directly at me, as I believe he knew that physically harming me might be the incentive my parents needed to intervene.

I ended up abruptly moving out as I feared for my safety, and worried that the day he did finally physically hurt me would be the day I got stabbed or had my head smashed in.

That was a year and a half ago, and as far as everybody else is concerned, my moving out solved all problems. I tried pushing for family counselling at one stage, but my brother refused to go, and my parents didn't want to make him - a common theme in my family.

It's been a year since then, and I'm becoming increasingly drained by interactions with my family. My brother refuses to even acknowledge that there was ever a problem and pretends as if he's my best friend, my father alternates between sending me the occasional message and trying to make grand gestures of love, and my mother. She's the hardest, because we've always been very close, but I always feel as if every interaction has this undertone of 'please forgive me, I'm sorry, I'm not a terrible parent, I love you so much please come back to me.'

It's hard, because in a very short space of time, I went from being incredibly close to everyone to suddenly becoming faced with issues that none of us wanted to acknowledge, and a part of me still craves that close, loving family connection. My current housemate happens to be my best friend's mother, a woman with a background in domestic violence, abuse counselling and conflict resolution, and while she tries to hide it from me, I know that she - and my friend - are incredibly on edge about my relationship with my parents, and don't like my family much at all.

Everything I can find online about family dynamics is related to narcissistic parents, which I don't feel applies - I would classify my mother in particular as almost the opposite, as she's incredibly empathetic and tries very hard to make sure everyone else around her is well cared for. In that respect we're very similar, and I think one of the reasons she's so upset lately is because a part of her recognizes that I've taken on the exact same family role that she once did, albeit for different reasons, and that much like her mother, she's chosen to ignore an issue for fear of what confronting it might mean.

I'm so tired of feeling conflicted about my family, I hate dreading contact with them, and I feel guilty about the fact that when my parents try to reach out to me or do nice things for me, I just feel resentful. I don't know what to do, and the thought of cutting them off makes me feel like I've just been stabbed.

Has anyone else been in a position like this, and how did you manage it? Could anyone possibly recommend some reading material? I've tried researching, but can't find anything useful.