What happened to my sister?

I don't think it is planned all the time though Alisha, sometimes a family member just drifts into it. I don't think it was something she could find a way to explain to you either. I know that's hard, but at least she isn't being out right mean to you. I tried to tell a friend "nicely" and she just didn't get it and kept pushing and I had to just shut her off completely for a long time. (but that's PTSD too)

I know this "hurts", just give it some time.

((Hugs))
OE

OE, I don´t know of course, but I have a strong feeling that her therapist sort of told her to "stay away" from me.

You know, its quite a while ago and I was sort of still struggling with anorexia or anorexia aftereffects then and I think that might be why the therapist might have told her, if you don´t feel like dealing with it, then don´t, nothing that you can do to help, or something.

Reminded me very much when you once told me of the situation when you were in the psych ward and people stayed away from you saying: "well, poor little OE, but we can´t help her anyway, so let´s have a nice thanksgiving".

Family cannot make you healthy again, but sometimes it´s still nice to know somebody is "there" and "cares" instead of drawing away from you....

Well, I think I could have understood if she would have said that she was having trouble herself and that being with me was too much for her. At least then, there´s a "reason". But claiming that she is "super" but still pulling away, that´s what doesn´t make sense to a person who is just confused anyway...

Alisha, I see what you are saying, with your sister getting advice from a therapist, it's hard to pin point the exact "whys" because we don't know what the therapist told her. We don't know what she discussed with that T about her own deep inner challenges either. Keep in mind that when you were struggling with Anorexia, she most likely didn't understand that and could have even felt she failed you somehow because you were close. And it could be that this therapist was someone of authority that finally gave her permission to step away from her role in your family too. See, just as you are confused about her behaviors, she was confused about "why" you were challenged and how she could not seem to fix it, why your mother had her problems and she could not change that either and because she was older than you she had more of a sense to responsibility then you.

A part of you wants her to step back into a role that she really needs to distance from, and that isn't because she doesn't love you, but my guess is what she is doing is just walking away and giving herself permission to live her own life. That doesn't mean that she is going to make all healthy decisions, but at least she is trying to make decisions of her own. And part of growing up and becoming an adult and maturing is stepping out on one's own and making one's own decisions and learning how to deal with the consequences of those decisions.

What I find troubling is that I noticed that when I was struggling and I have seen others have the same challenge, there was no effort made by a therapist/psychiatrist to meet with my family and explain to them what PTSD was, that it can get serious and how to be supportive. It took 4 years for that to finally begin to take place and I was in a dangerous state of mind. When I think back on my psych ward stay where I expressed all the clear red flags and all I talked about was the loss and how it "traumatized me", my older sister should have never been allowed to sit across from me and be mean to me and threaten me like she did as well as leave me feeling like I was now on "lock down" which is true the exit doors were locked and I was trapped with a lot of very disturbed people. And when I was finally released my entire family was mean to me and angry for something I could not help.

What I have noticed over and over is the failure to inform a family in how a patient is struggling and giving that family some ways to be supportive. And my therapist has told me that a therapist cannot work with a patient and any of their family members at the same time. The only thing "I" can do is bring a family member in with me to have a discussion. However, it took 5 years before that was explained to me.

The questions you are asking could be addressed in a healthier way IMHO. If someone sat down with you and said to you that your sister needs to have her own space because she had to manage your mother's issues and your issues and never really got to think about her "own" issues and you need to give her some space now, you would have understood that better. That discussion needed to be done in a way where you didn't walk away feeling guilty either or that you did something wrong or were not loved. And it should have been explained to you that when a parent is an addict/alcoholic or struggling with any kind of illness where the parent cannot be a healthy nurturer, it does put a burden on the entire family.

Alisha, because my husband was an alcoholic and had issues, it did put a tremendous burden on me too. I did everything I could to work around that and be there for my daughter too. I tried to do my best to address the dysfunction in my own family for YEARS. I did reach out for help several times and I didn't find the right help and it is very hard for me to look back with what I know now and see all that failed me. And it pains me to come here to PC and hear the constant hum of so many others that are also failed too. And I do my best to try to reach out and offer some support that would have helped me when I was so challenged, "if I was told" this or that it would have made such a big difference to me and I do see how others could be better helped too.

Your sister needed to hear that the family dysfunction she lived in was "not her fault" and that she deserves to step away from her family dysfunction and finally address her own needs for a change. The same is true for you Alisha, however, that permission can be given in a better way where it is explained to you so you don't feel the way you do.

Anorexia is often a "symptom" and in many cases it is a disorder that stems from a need to have a sense of control or doing something the patient feels is organized that they have control over which leads to that patient experiencing the chemicals in their brain that are set up to reward human beings so they feel they are gaining and can keep going. There are all kinds of things a person can turn to in order to gain that sense of control, like self harming, or filling their void with food, becoming a workaholic, a hoarder, a bully, or even becoming and alcoholic to fill a need that the patient doesn't always understand and didn't get the right help to understand it either and there is a list even longer of things people do to "compensate" for a "need". And often whatever a person ends up doing to compensate becomes their own little way of dealing that they don't want to talk about and often protect and hide, and even do so in a kind of "shame" and denial too. And most of these challenges begin in early childhood where a need was present and went unmet and it was really never the persons fault. And if that person is able to find a therapist and get to a point where they can finally feel "safe enough" to talk about it, that is when that person can finally gain relief and finally get validated and finally get the help they always deserved to have.

That is what I did when I taught children how to ride, the riding was only an activity that I used to help each child learn how to have a "positive" way to understand how they "can" learn and gain and feel good about themselves. The most important thing to me was that each child I taught walked away from me feeling "proud" of themselves and if I needed to go over the time in the lesson to get that, it was ok. I did that with my daughter too, and she was often very challenged because she had dyslexia and learned differently, so I did my best to understand how she was challenged and helped her and supported her with it, WHICH IS WHAT A PARENT IS SUPPOSED TO DO. A family is like a very small country and if the leader is somehow incapable, the little country fails to function in a healthy way. What I have noticed about this forum, and for that matter the hum of the many who struggle and come to this site is because so many people just didn't get the nurturing they needed when they were children and even if they were children born with some kind of challenge like my daughter, my husband and my older brother and other family members I grew up with, unhealthy coping methods developed that was not any of their faults.

The human brain is so much like a computer Alisha, and like a computer it can end up picking up viruses and struggle to function. A therapist is a person who is supposed to spend time with that human being and help them figure out their own viruses and find new ways to "self program" so they can function better. You had some viruses that you needed help with and so does your sister and mother too. And the only way "you" can work on all that is to have a chance to identify and repair your own viruses, you sister needs that too. It is just harder with a human being though because while we are a lot like a computer, we have emotions that computers don't have.

I know this is a long post, but I am just trying to help you see the bigger picture if I can so you can think about this situation in a different light. What is important in "your" picture is to understand that while this is a challenge for you, it is important that you continue to spend time working on "your own challenges" as you have been and just step back from your sister, even when you don't think she is making the right choices. I know that is "hard" to do too. If you can get to a point where you "gain" in your own way, at some point if your sister needs help, you will be able to reach out to her in a more supportive way. I have had to distance from my sister too, and when I interact with her even now, I have to be careful because I can't get dragged back into the dysfunctional way she interacts with me. The fact that I can even interact with her is a great improvement from where I had been so crippled that I could not even hear her voice without getting severely triggered and not really understand "why" or even be able to have a sense of control of how an interaction would cripple me. I have to be very careful when I interact with my family right now and I wish it was not so hard, because I know they don't understand how really hard it is for me. I think this is a part of what your sister is doing too, and she is trying to do her best to distance in a way where she can work on slowly healing, and yes, some of her choices may seem wrong to you too. The important thing is however, that she is at least making her "own" choices and doing her best to do so without her family having to put their two sense into it.

If a baby bird doesn't try to leave the nest and fly on it's own, they wont survive being trapped in that nest. Every year I get to see this as the barn swallows come and nest and I watch the babies finally get to that point where they begin to stand on the edge and first flap their wings for a while, just balancing on that edge to where they get past that and fly a little distance and then back again, and "slowly" each baby learns how to finally fly away from the nest for longer periods until one day I look up and the nest is empty and none of them are returning to that nest and they are all outside for a while going in their own little directions, and then one day, they are all gone.

One thing I did notice is that a nest that was built by the parents didn't quite keep the babies all in and I thought to myself how it would have worked better had they built up the sides more. Well, the following year
the babies came back to nest where they grew up, and I watched them
build the sides of that nest much higher and it did work out better. I was so amazed to see that too, and it made me realize that even birds learn
things that we don't realize and they somehow remember enough to improve their efforts to have their own offspring. Interesting huh? So, it might be "ok" that your sister is having her own child because it may help her if she
gets to have her own family and do more in her own home to have a healthier
environment. Sometimes that "does" happen, not always, but sometimes.
Hopefully, if you sister hits some challenges, she will go back to therapy for
more support.

OE

OE; yes I agree with you and understand you.

However, I didn´t have the possibility to write down all parts of the story here, of course, and all reasons that concern me about this endeavour.

What I learned from my therapist and what I consider very important is, that when you decide to have children, it really should be for the right reasons.
Children shouldn´t really be brought into the world to "help" their parents.
What my T told me is that children should be "wanted" not "needed" and that´s a very big difference.

I might be feeling strongly about it, because what I learned in therapy, is that this is probably how me and my sister were born. Our mother really "needed" us, for herself, for her relationship to my father etc.
and I guess children really feel that from an early age on, according to my T, even as babies, which I found hard to believe, but maybe...

Anyways, yes, it is her thing, not mine. And not my thing "to save".

" So, it might be "ok" that your sister is having her own child because it may help her if she
gets to have her own family and do more in her own home to have a healthier
environment. Sometimes that "does" happen, not always, but sometimes.
Hopefully, if you sister hits some challenges, she will go back to therapy for
more support."

Oh yes Alisha, I agree with your therapist, children are not there to fill our needs and please us. They are not something a person should have just to have something to "control" either. A child is also not something someone has to make up for whatever
that person failed to achieve either. So you are right to be concerned about your sister
having a child for the wrong reasons, I do hear you there.

We have a child because we want to nurture and also a person should understand that in their nurturing they are to help that child fill their own potential, find whatever they grow a desire to be and encourage them to pursue it. I always told my daughter that all she had to do is find whatever makes her happy and that would please me. Of course whatever she chose needed to be healthy for her.

So I do hear what your concern is.

OE