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#1
Aug 30, 2016, 02:58 PM
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Hi Everyone,
So I haven't ever posted on an advice forum like this before, but I thought I would give it a go  To give some background, I am 25 and graduated uni a couple years ago and currently live with my parents. My brother is 2 years older than me and lives nearby in a flat he rents with his friend. So I’ll just start off by explaining what triggered me to start this thread. I just came in from work. A few minutes later, my brother came round, as he usually does several times a week to eat food and talk with us. I had thought we were getting on well lately, we seemed to be having a quite normal adult relationship, without the childish bickering that we may have had when we were younger. But, of course, he has to go and ruin things. I can't remember precisely what happened, but I was feeling really shattered from work so lay down on the sofa in the living room and closed my eyes. Somehow I end up telling my brother that I am tired because the air con in the office plays up with my sinuses and makes me feel dizzy and tired. I think I said something along the lines of "the cold air from the air con gives me sinus pressure and makes me feel dizzy, you know like when you move your head and everything goes out of focus and you feel like you're gonna faint". Tbh, if you have never experienced this, it might sound a bit odd. But not for me as I have experienced sinus issues and migraines for years. Anyway, my brother is clearly not in a good mood as he does this nasty laugh and simply says "you sound mental." I don't pick up on it straight away, thinking perhaps he is just being jovial. I continue saying something like "you know, sinus pressure, when you blow your nose and your ears pop, and you feel all dizzy". He just says "yeah, you just sound absolutely mental" in a callous voice and walks off. I say after him "it's called sinus pressure..." but he doesn't respond. Lol. I just don't know why he has to be like this. I don't know what he is trying to achieve by behaving like that? All I can assume is he is trying to hurt my feelings, by calling me mental. He had a stressful day at work, so I suppose he is taking it out on me. It was just so unexpected, I was in shock. I sat there in shock for a few minutes, then went upstairs to my room and just sobbed! I was surprised at myself. My brother and my dad are the only 2 people who can make me cry like this just by some off-the-cuff spiteful remark. Why am I so sensitive...?  I think it's the fact he was calling me "mental" that got to me. My brother doesn't know much about mental health issues (like my dad, he is blessed with thinking all mental health issues are just people being silly and they just need to get a grip or something) and I don't think he knows I have anxiety or that I suffered 2 panic attacks in the past. But he knows that several times over the years I thought I had cancer or some other terrible illnesses. He refers to me as a hypochondriac, but he doesn't know I sought professional help for health anxiety (just some crappy online service that my GP referred me to). He also knows that I suffer heart palpitations and other physical symptoms of anxiety, but he probably doesn't link those to my anxiety. My brother is the type of person who only acknowledges things he understands or that he can see physical proof of e.g. he accepts that I have heart palpitations because I had a 7-day ECG that showed cold-hard evidence of 1000's of palpitations a day. I feel so so angry at my brother. This is not the first time he has behaved like this. He often treats me like I am nothing. When this happened today, I got flashbacks of the time when I was 13 or 14 and he got so angry at me about something stupid (I can't remember what it was but I recall that it wasn't me in the wrong, although you can't always trust memories ) that he grabbed me and pinned me against the wall and called me a ****ing ****. To be fair, that is the only time he was ever physically violent against me, I remember my mum was very shocked. I also remembered numerous other occasions where he has become very verbally aggressive over very small issues, often when I was not even in the wrong or he had just jumped to the wrong conclusion. I don’t have much to go on to understand why he treats me like this, except that a few times over the years he has said that I always “got away with stuff” when we were younger or was “spoilt”. I believe he thinks that as I was the youngest, and a girl, I was able to get away with things that he wasn’t. Perhaps he even thinks my parents favored me. I would disagree with this as I always felt our parents treated us equally, but it would explain why he holds some contempt for me. I would not say our sibling relationship growing up was bad though. We were very close at many times during our childhood. However, as teenagers, we drifted apart and became quite different. I started getting anxiety and some depressive issues as a teenager, so I became quite closed off from a lot of my family (I mostly just wanted to stay in my room and be left alone for several years lol, but nothing too severe). Over the last few years, my brother has changed quite a lot though. He has become very arrogant. I feel bad calling him that, but even my parents reluctantly agree. He is critical and judgmental and can be plain spiteful. And nobody ever really calls him out on it. He comes round to our house and starts critiquing and mocking me and my parents for how we choose to do things. Like the other day, I used one of my days off work just to relax at home as I had gone somewhere the day before and he made it clear he thought this was stupid of me. You can have interesting fun conversations with him, but it is only inevitable that after a while he will make some nasty comment or mock you cruelly. He acts like he is so mature and independent yet he comes round several times a week, eats half the food in our fridge, uses our shower (even though he has 2 perfectly good showers at his own flat) and dumps his laundry in the laundry basket for my mum to do. I don’t give any laundry to my mum, because I know how stressful she finds it (she once shouted at me for putting a big load of laundry out, so since then I always do it all myself). The most frustrating thing is how completely differently he acts when his girlfriend is around. When he comes to see us with his girlfriend, oh my gosh, it’s like his personality completely flips 180 degrees. He is really nice and never does any of his usual cruel mocking or makes any of his ultra-arrogant critiques. He even changes his voice to a softer, gentler tone. It is really nice to actually spend time with him and his girlfriend and you completely forget that this is not the “real him”. But thinking about it, if you look closely, you can see him almost biting his tongue, not to say the cruel things he wants to say. I just don’t know how he can justify this kind of personality change. Maybe he doesn’t even realise it? The whole thing is making me really upset. I really want a nice friendly relationship with my brother, but he makes it so hard. I don’t know if I should say to him, look, you really upset me earlier by calling me mental, do you realise how rude and hurtful it was? But we’ve never had that kind of frank conversation and I would be worried how he would respond to it. But he has managed to keep a girlfriend for 5 years so he must understand something about feelings. What do you all think? I know I am being very sensitive here; I am a sensitive person unfortunately. It just upsets me so much when people who are supposed to love you are spiteful like this. I honestly can’t deal with it. I’m the type of person who can’t say spiteful things to people; I will feel really bad and end up apologising to them profusely. I’d hate to think my brother is happy to just make his own sister feel like utter ****, so all I can hope is that he doesn’t realise how bad he made me feel. I just don’t know. Sometimes I wonder though. A few years ago I was unlucky enough to stumble across an online conversation between my brother and his friend. His friend was making some vile really explicit sexual comment about me and my brother didn’t call him out on it, he actually joined in by making another vile sexual comment about me, his OWN sister. Like WTF, who does that. I was really shocked about that and shaken up for days. I still feel disturbed thinking about it. I never told my brother or my mum, it would be too awkward. But it makes me think a lot about his moral integrity, like how can he just do that and move on? How can you hurt your sister’s feelings or say something so disgusting about your own sister and just move on? What do you guys think about this? Am I just overreacting? I've always wanted a nice happy brother-sister relationship, but I just don't know if it's ever going to be possible with him. I think he's always going to end up making me feel like utter ****. But yeah, I’m gonna end this essay now. I needed to let some thoughts out. I would appreciate any advice or input. Ciao for now
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 Crazy Hitch, Skeezyks
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#2
Aug 31, 2016, 10:19 AM
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Hello KittyKat91: I don't really have any advice for you here. What you want from your brother, & what you're going to get, are two different things. He is who he is.
 Unless, or until, you & your parents set some boundaries with him, this is a going to continue to happen.  I see this is your first post here on PC. So... welcome to PsychCentral… from the Skeezyks!  I hope you find the time you spend here to be of benefit.  PsychCentral is a great place to get information as well as support for mental health issues. There are many knowledgeable & caring members here. The more you post, & reply to other members’ posts, the more a part of the community you will become. Plus there are social groups you can join & chat rooms where you’ll be able to connect with other PC members in real time (once your first 5 posts have been reviewed & approved.) Lots of great stuff! So please keep posting! 
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#3
Aug 31, 2016, 11:36 AM
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Welcome to PC.
Wish I had advice about your brother, but I've never had one and have limited perspective because of it. I do know that one of my closest childhood friends, had a falling out with her brother and they just stay away from one another. And how he has been towards her certainly seems at a more severe side of the spectrum. Because of that limited point of view, I say, sometimes personalities just don't mix very well. I understand about the dizzy/near fainting feelings. I never got a full explanation from my doctors aside from attributing to an illness that I do have, but I don't fully feel it is, and thank you for mentioning sinuses...that makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't wish the experience on others, but it certainly would be nice to just share it one time to understand. Hopefully others have more personal experiences with older brothers and can offer advice/experience/support.  "Investigate your hidden assumptions."-Cornel West |
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#4
Aug 31, 2016, 12:32 PM
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Quote:
you are right, that I can't change who he is. I suppose I have a tendency to have certain expectations of people and to be disappointed when they don't meet those expectations. Like how I always thought my brother would be the kind of brother who would stand up for me if someone ever said something sexual or nasty about me, so it was a real shock and disappointment to see that he did the very opposite  (considering he was 22 or 23 when that happened, so you can't give him the benefit of the doubt of being an immature teenager!)and thanks for welcoming me to the forum! 
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#5
Aug 31, 2016, 12:43 PM
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Quote:
It is a shame because my brother and I are quite similar in some respects, like we share a similar sense of humor and can have nice conversations. But he just goes too far sometimes with saying blunt offensive things. When he makes some opinion, you can't even try to refute it because he will just treat you like you are an idiot. He also likes to proudly proclaim how he "deals with facts, not emotions" at work (which makes me feel really sorry for anyone who has to work with him as their manager...) and in many respects he extends this same philosophy to his personal relationships (except his girlfriend who he seems to absolutely dote on, from what I have observed, he treats her like a baby). I see a lot of parallels between him and my dad in this respect, like they both don't seem to understand complex emotions or even the concept of mental illness, and they can both say really spiteful or thoughtless things. It makes me wonder if it's simply a straight male thing, but I wouldn't want to generalise like that. |
 healingme4me
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#6
Aug 31, 2016, 12:49 PM
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Quote:
It is so frustrating when you experience odd symptoms and have no explanation (especially if you are prone to anxiety like myself)! I've had head/face aches for years, they started after I had dental braces as a teen and my dentist told me my jaw had slipped out of place, so I assume it has something to do with that. It is called Temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ) and can lead to so many different random symptoms including sinus irritation and sensitivity to things like temperature changes and cold air.
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| healingme4me
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#7
Sep 01, 2016, 12:16 AM
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Wow, your brother is nasty! Maybe he has some mental issues that he isn't aware of, or doesn't want to admit. He sounds like he might be bipolar as that might explain his rapid mood swings.
He sounds like he has some deep rooted resentment for your parents and yourself, and it sounds like he's jealous of you maybe thinking that you're the favorite, idk. Have you ever talked to him about why he treats you that way? Tell him not talk to you like that and to not call you mental as calmly as possible. The next time he insults you, tell him to never talk to you like that again. Stand up to him. He is a bully it sounds like. If he refuses to stop, just ignore him and walk away and don't talk to him. Give him NO response. If he truly is a bully, then not giving him an emotional response is something you have to do. Bullies love getting a reaction out of their victims. Cut him out of your life. He is toxic. Avoid him as much as possible. You need to stand up to yourself and demand respect and set clear boundaries. |
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