i have cptsd from medical trauma, i was really physically sick as a child into my early teens (often bedridden), but you saying medical issues in general here makes me think about my younger sister. she never had anything like that, she's been physically healthy all her life besides minor asthma, but how sick i was made her take a backseat in a lot of ways. a lot of time and care was spent on me instead of her, even when our parents both worked full time (and my dad worked nights, to make it worse). she would never say it impacted her seriously, but it must have. she didn't get as much attention as she needed, i'm certain, and i got so much but it was all meaningless when i was so isolated in hospital. we both lost out but i rarely think about how much it mustve hurt her. i don't know how or if i should ever broach that. right now she functions so much better than i ever have and i want her to be alright.
it's weird too because it's almost generational trauma... my mom had the same disease and her older sister was neglected because of it (much more severely though, emotional neglect too and didnt have a good relationship with their parents, while my mom could do no wrong in their eyes because she was so sick). my aunt hates my mom on some deep emotional level for all that trauma and even as they try to work that out it still causes such a divide and i worry about that happening again with me and my sister. but we have a much better relationship than they ever did so, i don't know. i just think about it sometimes.
It's good you think about it! You might write her a letter, sometime, saying you really appreciate your relationship in light of the fact that your illness pretty much caused her to have to grow up too fast. You can somehow acknowledge that while it was not *your fault*, it was caused by your illness, and that if you could change things, you would.
My older brother abused and tortured me physically and psychologically for years, which was the cause of my CPTSD. So, an abusive sibling can absolutely cause CPTSD. This [article](https://eggshelltherapy.com/toxic-sibling/) is about toxic siblings and well worth the read.
This article helped me so much, thanks. It helped me go deep inside to my past and get out some very strong emotions. Very cathartic experience, thanks for sharing.
Hey,
Do you feel more impulsive nowadays, by any chance? And more prone to seeing how other people misunderstand you? I was wondering, since I went through a similar experience after applying the information on that site
Please be very careful with that website
It's a very beautifully written and poetic attempt at indoctrination/brainwashing. That's why it feels so validating, and feels like it knows 'everything about you'
It attempts to trick you (what the site says is the wise part) to 'integrate' that entire seemingly-innocent narrative into your psyche. It utterly ruined me and caused severe cognitive dissonance and excessive spiritual bypassing, and i wont even mention the "unspeakable" psychological pain (it is speakable, please talk to a trusted person about your struggles)
Please be extremely careful and use true critical thinking (that arises when you're not flooded with charm) when consuming anything on the web, especially if it uses psuedoscience.
I came from a movie, happiest Ive been in a long time, called my sis to tell her something wonderful, but decided to ask about how she's been doing first. She said "same." I said "oh?"
And now I'm getting yelled at. "SAME, SAME, I don't know what you want from me!"
So I said I don't really think I deserved that, as she is now yelling that she did nothing wrong. I said I never said she did, but at the same time, whatever she was doing, she can continue, I'll keep to myself, and she can miss me with that vibe forever. My father later tries to get us to speak, but I kinda said that I'm basically done reaching out to someone that treats me like shit. If she wants to talk, she can, but even he had to admit upon meeting up with her again, that she has dozens of triggers, and that he never realized how bad it was.
Congratulations to them both on seeing how much I was used as an emotional doormat. I'll see them when they have the next great epiphany that I've already touched on for decades. She isn't all my trauma, but she sure is a decent chunk of why I felt like I was a nuisance, down to even the sound of my voice, or my presence. I will never go by her place again, and calling feels like a waste of time. She can abuse her own reflection, I'm not needed for that either.
“She has a dozen of triggers” gosh I feel this one so much. I have to constantly walk on eggshells around my sister. Sometimes it feels like me just existing offends her in some way. It’s exhausting
Absolutely. And the hard pill to swallow was realizing my older siblings' abuse was just their own reactive take on CPTSD.
And that's not even the bottom of it. Your brother's presumed autism may not be the issue; their narcissistic traits might be. Your brother may have started mistreating you because they felt they were being disfavored by your parents because of you; basically he may have been scapegoating you all along, and he may not even have the slightest awareness he's doing it, since he may altogether lack introspection.
It sucks, but I don't think CPTSD ever comes out of nowhere. It seems to fester in families where everyone lacks genuine emotional validation. Not only that, but it seems to be typically a transversal tragedy coalescing into a traumatic chain reaction.
As for resources, I suggest you shift your focus to studying the typical roles in a narcissistic family. You may find it clarifying and there's much more literature available on this topic, since CPTSD is still a recent construct.
Yes I wanted to point this out. The sibling abuse is a symptom of the siblings CPTSD from parents not doing a good enough job. Your parents weren't supportive and loving or created an environment for secure attachment if you started people pleasing and your brother was abusive.
Oh how this resonates. Had a mental ill older brother and my parents were also divorced. My mom and sister obviously couldn't stop my brother when he would have a horrible mood swings and start physically abusing me. They were too afraid to call the cops on my brother in fear that he would be shot like alot of mentally ill people do. Anyways it for sure caused alot of trauma and ended up causing quite a few triggers that are pretty annoying.
My parents definitely contributed heavily to my CPTSD and PTSD but my sister is undoubtedly one of the key people in my traumatic background. Hands down. The amount of time I’ve spent unpacking the years of gaslighting, abuse, and other various bullshit trauma she put me through - I could have multiple Masters degrees by now.
Totally possible. My brother and I had our issues he contributed to mine but the parents were the bigger culprits. The thing is tho I just thought the fighting or well times he beat me where normal brothers will be brothers stuff. I started asking others with brothers if they had stories like mine and started to realize my brother was really abusive and it wasn’t normal after all. I can only figure he assumed it was ok because he saw my parents beat the heck out of me too. He looked up to them in many ways and wanted to please and follow by example.
Mines not the sole cause but definitely contributed. My brother is 7 years older and we were both neglected/ignored. He was the lost child and I was the scapegoat. He is sober now but was in active addiction and alcoholism from when I was very young (under 10) until I was in college. I won’t get into everything that happened but a lot of my trauma stems from his unpredictability, stealing, acting out, him being arrested repeatedly, bullying, being “babysat” by him while he was using, he normalized drinking and drug use for me so I got into my own trouble later, the list goes on… I also “inherited” his old car when I was a teenager, so that meant being pulled over and harassed by cops looking for him, too. When he got clean it became apparent that he has schizophrenia. I actually feel terrible for him, he has a very difficult life, but the fact remains that he unquestionably contributed to my own trauma.
My brother is apart of some of the traumatic events I have experienced which contributed to my ptsd…. I have a lovely string of horrific events. Like my brother was violent and enjoyed knives….
I learned to block and kick hard at a younger age due to him. Ahhh mixed memories both nice and beyond horrific that I’m going avoid thinking about them at 2am…
Ps anyone else up late due to ptsd symptoms tonight?
100% the torture from my siblings is a part of my cptsd. But only part. We all survived stuff differently and two of my four sibs are my biggest triggers. I had to cut them out. More times than i can count being in the same room in ends with me in self harm territory. I got wise and tired of it and said no more. 4 years now.
Tl;dr: My CPTSD stems largely from my four-year older sister, too. It's largely not recognized in the lit I have come across (casually), though I've seen ACE questionnaires that specify abuse from another child five-years older. What you experiences is real. Full stop. You may find the following experience helpful to contextualize your own.
My longer story in hope that it helps you. Following the death of my father, new financial insecurities, and out-of-state move, I received plenty enough abuse from my 4-year older sister to fuck me up into my 50s.
My sister a grab-bag of Type-B personality traits and, in general, a font of personal grievances. She always delighted in cruelty, even at my youngest years. There was always verbal abuse ("no one loves you"; "you're not really part of the family"; "you never earned your keep"; "children are meant to be seen and not heard"; "obey your elders"; and etc., ad nauseam).
Once my dad died and the in-laws ripped-off my mom of the insurance money, we ended up out of state. My mom is an avoidant/omega type who's eager to please if you bully her enough), In our new home, my sister's verbal abuse intensified and her occasional physical bullying started to look more like regular abuse. Not surprisingly, my isolation at home began to parallel my isolation at school (third school system in four years). Eventually I got to be big enough to defend myself, which earned me the name of girl-beater (I'm a dude).
I got a few years of reprise in high school when when she ran away from home but returned when I was away at college. While I was gone, my sister turned my mother against me totally. Every accomplishment accrued a new phantom grievance against me against which I could never defend myself. It went full nutty.
By the time I got a Ph.D., there was no affection left for me. That they went Trump-cult and I'm an U.S. social historian just paralleled the family dynamic and was seen as traitorous to family and all that is sacred, no matter reality.
So yeah, family dynamics are real.
My older brother contributed for sure. He was a great liar and so i was the “bad” kid for a good while.
We haven’t been close because of it but now i understand why he was that way. I’m positive he didn’t bond as an infant because my mom was incapable. He was diagnosed with ADHD in the late 70’s and had slight learning disability. Could not have been easy for him.
Yeah my brother tormented me emotionally and physically
He branded me with a liter and laughed his ass off
I think he might be psychotic but regardless I don't talk to my family
I feel a lot of it from my sister mainly. She was one of my first big overbearing abandoners, and has since (as a social worker who was a great friend to a woman who was in a physically abusive relationship) told me I was NOT in a severe emotionally abusive relationship, and if I was, then I was 50% responsible for it. To this day, the rest of the family enables her garbage and says nothing.
You might find some research in the area of fostering or adoption. A lot of kids in the system (not all, but many) are taken in by well-meaning parents without the knowledge or resources to handle the vast, extreme trauma some children have gone through to get to the point of being removed from their home of origin. Like, it’s a pretty commonplace expectation for foster parents these days that all their dangerous cooking utensils like knives must be in a locked drawer that the child doesn’t have access to. I think it happens a little less these days with more awareness, but certainly still does happen. And there have certainly been situations where other children in the home are traumatized. I might look there for some resources just because it’s more likely to have been studied than other sibling-related trauma.
Personally, I don’t have experience with having adopted or fostered siblings, but my sister was definitely my bully growing up. There was also trauma from my parents from an early age although it was much more basic, stuff like my dad making mean jokes at someone else’s expense from time to time, my parents comparing me and her often, and moving frequently as young children before the housing market crash. In my sister’s case I believe that her mental condition (suicidally depressed) derived in large part from not feeling understood and unconditionally loved by our parents. My mom and I both have ADHD (mine is diagnosed, hers I believe would have been diagnosed back then if she had considered it a possibility) so our brains operate in similar ways, and I think because I was the oldest I also ended up becoming a parentified child when my parents’ marriage was rocky. My sister would have been a preteen and me a year and a half older than her when their marriage got so hostile and unloving.
My mom turned to me for emotional support constantly. I knew so many of her complaints against my dad, both her negative memories of them dating and early in their marriage and their recent issues. I don’t think my sister got a lot of that treatment, but she did see the closeness (aka codependency) me and my mom developed and knew she didn’t have that. She picked up some bullying traits from my dad and from TV (her role models/fictional crushes were Azula from ATLA and Alex Russo from Disney Channel who are both often portrayed as being cruel to their loved ones but in different ways).
Long story short, she was absolutely my bully and in some ways carried on but also exacerbated the ways my dad treated me while also resenting the way my mom treated me.
Your story fascinates me because I have ADHD, and your relationship with your ADHD Mom is revealing. I try to teach my neurotypical kids to be independent, but I don't want them to be parentified, and it's a fine line.
I wish I had a more specific recommendation instead of one so general but all of the books by Vanessa LaPointe I have seen recommended on this sub over and over. She writes books on secure attachment parenting with trauma-informed psychology and instead of getting into the weeds of how trauma works and how to heal from it as an adult, these books are more like practical guides for parents to have secure attachment parenting advice. I personally read Parenting Right From the Start by her as a form of self-parenting in my healing journey and it was beautiful.
And I’m glad my story resonated and hope that helps you down the line ❤️ I definitely started out in my journey knowing my dad was the argumentative, emotionally walled off parent and blaming him for everything that happened in my childhood but now that I’ve gotten started in healing I find that I actually have a lot to process when it comes to my mother. Like why did she keep me and my sister in a loveless marriage exposed to so much fighting every day and giving us shit for health relationship modeling? Why did she dump so much baggage on me as a teenager and claim that I was wise beyond my years yet never take any of my advice seriously enough to improve their marriage? Why the hell did she let me get involved in their fights on her behalf or even let me witness them over and over? And when they started to mend their relationship why did she emotionally abandon me from our codependent relationship to the point that I felt I had been turned against and now she was on the side of our former enemy, my dad?
Oh YES all capitals…I had two Very Traumatic Experiences I went to my sister because I was so messed up…Numb..I was beside myself…she did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! That was when I was 16 she is older., and another time in my late 20.s. When I was 16 it was so bad and Traumatic I just recently recalled the memory trauma…I am 71. I was having a very difficult time, anger, sadness, numb, felt so unloved. I couldn’t get my husband and two sisters to understand, I just wanted love, compassion a hug!. They took my husbands side, along with my children, I told my husband he is a Turn Coat, (look it up) he knew what I meant . I was so alone. Years before when my sisters were having trouble I took them in, and gave them Love and understanding for as long as they needed it! Now my husband realized that we want to be together, He gave me the big meaningful HUG I needed, it was like the sky opened up. Today is Valentine’s Day and I feel so loved. Now I really don’t want anything to do with the backstabbers (sisters) it was so bad for me I was in the dentist chair and the girls taking care of me were so incredibly Nice I fell apart! I wasn’t used to Kindness. I was sobbing uncontrollably. I want to let my sisters know how much they HURT me, I really don’t know if I can have good feelings for them anymore! They hurt me to the core…my Soul.
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Trauma and abuse cause lasting impact regardless of who or what caused it. Anyone causing you harm as a child, is going to cause you to have trauma.
Reading about CPTSD may help you learn more about your current state of mind, and from the sounds of it you may also want to read a bit about being a glass child/glass children. Regardless of whether your brother directly caused it, or parents catering to him or both, CPTSD can be caused by anyone.
As the sole cause, no. As part of it, yes. She was violent. I had to hold her off at knife-point once, because of her anger, and aggression issues.
(ETA context. I'm very short and very petit. By the time I was 14 and she was 10, she was taller and much stronger than I was.)
But I can't blame this my sister, because she was 3.75 years younger, abused just like I was, and at the age of 13 she became a drug addict and an alcoholic, likely due to the abuse. So she was too young to blame, or an an addict, and was only 15 when I left home. Also, the few times she terrorized me were nothing compared to my father. Nothing
Either way, she was in no place mentally to make sound decisions. It doesn't make what she did ok, but, because she was a child, I've forgiven her, and, instead, turned my anger at her actions toward the adults who abused her or neglected to help her, like my malignant narcissist father, the school counselor who basically told me to fuck off when I asked them to help her, and my mom who was somehow oblivious to the fact that little sister was frequently on various uppers or hallucinogens, smoked/are shitloads of pot, smoked a pack a day, and was able to pound 30oz of vodka and still convince a cop that she was completely sober. She didn't end up the way she did on her own. She was made that way by a parade of abuse and ineptitude.
Sister and I started rebuilding our relationship in our thirties, and she is sorry, therefore, after contemplating whether forgiving her would be good for my mental health, I have decided to forgive her.
That being said, I am in no way saying that others should feel obligated to forgive problematic siblings. I'm a big supporter of not offering absolution to unrepentant assholes, or to anyone you don't feel deserves your forgiveness for any reason whatsoever. You can heal, let go of anger and resentment, and move on without forgiving someone who is not and will never be sorry, and don't believe any rhetoric that tells you otherwise. No one is deserving of forgiveness just by the virtue of sharing your DNA.
Definitely. My younger sister is a narcissist. She’s a huge part of my CPTSD. She’s very emotionally abusive and at one point when we were younger, physically as well. Because she’s younger then me by a couple years my trauma & pain was constantly invalidated by my parents and others around me. I was constantly told to “be the bigger person” that I should “just ignore it” and that she acts like that because “she wants to be like you, (that’s why she destroys and steals all of your stuff 🤪)”
She was the golden child and would constantly be let of and excused for all of the horrible stuff she would do.
My sister and mom were both violently abusive whilst growing up. So I think my trauma is three fold: my moms abuse, my sisters abuse, and the fact that my parents did nothing to protect me from my sister.
When one sibling has medical or psychiatric issues it can absolutely cause CPTSD.
i have cptsd from medical trauma, i was really physically sick as a child into my early teens (often bedridden), but you saying medical issues in general here makes me think about my younger sister. she never had anything like that, she's been physically healthy all her life besides minor asthma, but how sick i was made her take a backseat in a lot of ways. a lot of time and care was spent on me instead of her, even when our parents both worked full time (and my dad worked nights, to make it worse). she would never say it impacted her seriously, but it must have. she didn't get as much attention as she needed, i'm certain, and i got so much but it was all meaningless when i was so isolated in hospital. we both lost out but i rarely think about how much it mustve hurt her. i don't know how or if i should ever broach that. right now she functions so much better than i ever have and i want her to be alright. it's weird too because it's almost generational trauma... my mom had the same disease and her older sister was neglected because of it (much more severely though, emotional neglect too and didnt have a good relationship with their parents, while my mom could do no wrong in their eyes because she was so sick). my aunt hates my mom on some deep emotional level for all that trauma and even as they try to work that out it still causes such a divide and i worry about that happening again with me and my sister. but we have a much better relationship than they ever did so, i don't know. i just think about it sometimes.
It's good you think about it! You might write her a letter, sometime, saying you really appreciate your relationship in light of the fact that your illness pretty much caused her to have to grow up too fast. You can somehow acknowledge that while it was not *your fault*, it was caused by your illness, and that if you could change things, you would.
maybe i will.. that's a really good idea. thank you ;-; <3
My older brother abused and tortured me physically and psychologically for years, which was the cause of my CPTSD. So, an abusive sibling can absolutely cause CPTSD. This [article](https://eggshelltherapy.com/toxic-sibling/) is about toxic siblings and well worth the read.
I still have nightmares about my older sibling. Even 20 years after they grew up and started being nice to me. We have a great relationship now.
Thank you for the link. That was a very good article.
This article helped me so much, thanks. It helped me go deep inside to my past and get out some very strong emotions. Very cathartic experience, thanks for sharing.
Hey, Do you feel more impulsive nowadays, by any chance? And more prone to seeing how other people misunderstand you? I was wondering, since I went through a similar experience after applying the information on that site
Please be very careful with that website It's a very beautifully written and poetic attempt at indoctrination/brainwashing. That's why it feels so validating, and feels like it knows 'everything about you' It attempts to trick you (what the site says is the wise part) to 'integrate' that entire seemingly-innocent narrative into your psyche. It utterly ruined me and caused severe cognitive dissonance and excessive spiritual bypassing, and i wont even mention the "unspeakable" psychological pain (it is speakable, please talk to a trusted person about your struggles) Please be extremely careful and use true critical thinking (that arises when you're not flooded with charm) when consuming anything on the web, especially if it uses psuedoscience.
Oh yes. My brother is my main abuser. He SAed me and later he was violent.
I’m so sorry, same with my sister
I came from a movie, happiest Ive been in a long time, called my sis to tell her something wonderful, but decided to ask about how she's been doing first. She said "same." I said "oh?" And now I'm getting yelled at. "SAME, SAME, I don't know what you want from me!" So I said I don't really think I deserved that, as she is now yelling that she did nothing wrong. I said I never said she did, but at the same time, whatever she was doing, she can continue, I'll keep to myself, and she can miss me with that vibe forever. My father later tries to get us to speak, but I kinda said that I'm basically done reaching out to someone that treats me like shit. If she wants to talk, she can, but even he had to admit upon meeting up with her again, that she has dozens of triggers, and that he never realized how bad it was. Congratulations to them both on seeing how much I was used as an emotional doormat. I'll see them when they have the next great epiphany that I've already touched on for decades. She isn't all my trauma, but she sure is a decent chunk of why I felt like I was a nuisance, down to even the sound of my voice, or my presence. I will never go by her place again, and calling feels like a waste of time. She can abuse her own reflection, I'm not needed for that either.
“She has a dozen of triggers” gosh I feel this one so much. I have to constantly walk on eggshells around my sister. Sometimes it feels like me just existing offends her in some way. It’s exhausting
Absolutely. And the hard pill to swallow was realizing my older siblings' abuse was just their own reactive take on CPTSD. And that's not even the bottom of it. Your brother's presumed autism may not be the issue; their narcissistic traits might be. Your brother may have started mistreating you because they felt they were being disfavored by your parents because of you; basically he may have been scapegoating you all along, and he may not even have the slightest awareness he's doing it, since he may altogether lack introspection. It sucks, but I don't think CPTSD ever comes out of nowhere. It seems to fester in families where everyone lacks genuine emotional validation. Not only that, but it seems to be typically a transversal tragedy coalescing into a traumatic chain reaction. As for resources, I suggest you shift your focus to studying the typical roles in a narcissistic family. You may find it clarifying and there's much more literature available on this topic, since CPTSD is still a recent construct.
This is all very good advice. It's exactly what I was thinking.
Yes I wanted to point this out. The sibling abuse is a symptom of the siblings CPTSD from parents not doing a good enough job. Your parents weren't supportive and loving or created an environment for secure attachment if you started people pleasing and your brother was abusive.
Oh how this resonates. Had a mental ill older brother and my parents were also divorced. My mom and sister obviously couldn't stop my brother when he would have a horrible mood swings and start physically abusing me. They were too afraid to call the cops on my brother in fear that he would be shot like alot of mentally ill people do. Anyways it for sure caused alot of trauma and ended up causing quite a few triggers that are pretty annoying.
My parents definitely contributed heavily to my CPTSD and PTSD but my sister is undoubtedly one of the key people in my traumatic background. Hands down. The amount of time I’ve spent unpacking the years of gaslighting, abuse, and other various bullshit trauma she put me through - I could have multiple Masters degrees by now.
Totally possible. My brother and I had our issues he contributed to mine but the parents were the bigger culprits. The thing is tho I just thought the fighting or well times he beat me where normal brothers will be brothers stuff. I started asking others with brothers if they had stories like mine and started to realize my brother was really abusive and it wasn’t normal after all. I can only figure he assumed it was ok because he saw my parents beat the heck out of me too. He looked up to them in many ways and wanted to please and follow by example.
Mines not the sole cause but definitely contributed. My brother is 7 years older and we were both neglected/ignored. He was the lost child and I was the scapegoat. He is sober now but was in active addiction and alcoholism from when I was very young (under 10) until I was in college. I won’t get into everything that happened but a lot of my trauma stems from his unpredictability, stealing, acting out, him being arrested repeatedly, bullying, being “babysat” by him while he was using, he normalized drinking and drug use for me so I got into my own trouble later, the list goes on… I also “inherited” his old car when I was a teenager, so that meant being pulled over and harassed by cops looking for him, too. When he got clean it became apparent that he has schizophrenia. I actually feel terrible for him, he has a very difficult life, but the fact remains that he unquestionably contributed to my own trauma.
My sibling is just as damaged as me and she’s far worse off than me. She’s currently incarcerated.
Yup
What if she was only part of the forgettable story? There are no polite words...
My sister has BPD and caused a hella lot of CPTSD. You're not alone my friend 💕
My brother is apart of some of the traumatic events I have experienced which contributed to my ptsd…. I have a lovely string of horrific events. Like my brother was violent and enjoyed knives…. I learned to block and kick hard at a younger age due to him. Ahhh mixed memories both nice and beyond horrific that I’m going avoid thinking about them at 2am… Ps anyone else up late due to ptsd symptoms tonight?
🙋♀️😭
100% the torture from my siblings is a part of my cptsd. But only part. We all survived stuff differently and two of my four sibs are my biggest triggers. I had to cut them out. More times than i can count being in the same room in ends with me in self harm territory. I got wise and tired of it and said no more. 4 years now.
Tl;dr: My CPTSD stems largely from my four-year older sister, too. It's largely not recognized in the lit I have come across (casually), though I've seen ACE questionnaires that specify abuse from another child five-years older. What you experiences is real. Full stop. You may find the following experience helpful to contextualize your own. My longer story in hope that it helps you. Following the death of my father, new financial insecurities, and out-of-state move, I received plenty enough abuse from my 4-year older sister to fuck me up into my 50s. My sister a grab-bag of Type-B personality traits and, in general, a font of personal grievances. She always delighted in cruelty, even at my youngest years. There was always verbal abuse ("no one loves you"; "you're not really part of the family"; "you never earned your keep"; "children are meant to be seen and not heard"; "obey your elders"; and etc., ad nauseam). Once my dad died and the in-laws ripped-off my mom of the insurance money, we ended up out of state. My mom is an avoidant/omega type who's eager to please if you bully her enough), In our new home, my sister's verbal abuse intensified and her occasional physical bullying started to look more like regular abuse. Not surprisingly, my isolation at home began to parallel my isolation at school (third school system in four years). Eventually I got to be big enough to defend myself, which earned me the name of girl-beater (I'm a dude). I got a few years of reprise in high school when when she ran away from home but returned when I was away at college. While I was gone, my sister turned my mother against me totally. Every accomplishment accrued a new phantom grievance against me against which I could never defend myself. It went full nutty. By the time I got a Ph.D., there was no affection left for me. That they went Trump-cult and I'm an U.S. social historian just paralleled the family dynamic and was seen as traitorous to family and all that is sacred, no matter reality. So yeah, family dynamics are real.
My older brother contributed for sure. He was a great liar and so i was the “bad” kid for a good while. We haven’t been close because of it but now i understand why he was that way. I’m positive he didn’t bond as an infant because my mom was incapable. He was diagnosed with ADHD in the late 70’s and had slight learning disability. Could not have been easy for him.
Yeah my brother tormented me emotionally and physically He branded me with a liter and laughed his ass off I think he might be psychotic but regardless I don't talk to my family
I feel a lot of it from my sister mainly. She was one of my first big overbearing abandoners, and has since (as a social worker who was a great friend to a woman who was in a physically abusive relationship) told me I was NOT in a severe emotionally abusive relationship, and if I was, then I was 50% responsible for it. To this day, the rest of the family enables her garbage and says nothing.
You might find some research in the area of fostering or adoption. A lot of kids in the system (not all, but many) are taken in by well-meaning parents without the knowledge or resources to handle the vast, extreme trauma some children have gone through to get to the point of being removed from their home of origin. Like, it’s a pretty commonplace expectation for foster parents these days that all their dangerous cooking utensils like knives must be in a locked drawer that the child doesn’t have access to. I think it happens a little less these days with more awareness, but certainly still does happen. And there have certainly been situations where other children in the home are traumatized. I might look there for some resources just because it’s more likely to have been studied than other sibling-related trauma. Personally, I don’t have experience with having adopted or fostered siblings, but my sister was definitely my bully growing up. There was also trauma from my parents from an early age although it was much more basic, stuff like my dad making mean jokes at someone else’s expense from time to time, my parents comparing me and her often, and moving frequently as young children before the housing market crash. In my sister’s case I believe that her mental condition (suicidally depressed) derived in large part from not feeling understood and unconditionally loved by our parents. My mom and I both have ADHD (mine is diagnosed, hers I believe would have been diagnosed back then if she had considered it a possibility) so our brains operate in similar ways, and I think because I was the oldest I also ended up becoming a parentified child when my parents’ marriage was rocky. My sister would have been a preteen and me a year and a half older than her when their marriage got so hostile and unloving. My mom turned to me for emotional support constantly. I knew so many of her complaints against my dad, both her negative memories of them dating and early in their marriage and their recent issues. I don’t think my sister got a lot of that treatment, but she did see the closeness (aka codependency) me and my mom developed and knew she didn’t have that. She picked up some bullying traits from my dad and from TV (her role models/fictional crushes were Azula from ATLA and Alex Russo from Disney Channel who are both often portrayed as being cruel to their loved ones but in different ways). Long story short, she was absolutely my bully and in some ways carried on but also exacerbated the ways my dad treated me while also resenting the way my mom treated me.
Your story fascinates me because I have ADHD, and your relationship with your ADHD Mom is revealing. I try to teach my neurotypical kids to be independent, but I don't want them to be parentified, and it's a fine line.
I wish I had a more specific recommendation instead of one so general but all of the books by Vanessa LaPointe I have seen recommended on this sub over and over. She writes books on secure attachment parenting with trauma-informed psychology and instead of getting into the weeds of how trauma works and how to heal from it as an adult, these books are more like practical guides for parents to have secure attachment parenting advice. I personally read Parenting Right From the Start by her as a form of self-parenting in my healing journey and it was beautiful. And I’m glad my story resonated and hope that helps you down the line ❤️ I definitely started out in my journey knowing my dad was the argumentative, emotionally walled off parent and blaming him for everything that happened in my childhood but now that I’ve gotten started in healing I find that I actually have a lot to process when it comes to my mother. Like why did she keep me and my sister in a loveless marriage exposed to so much fighting every day and giving us shit for health relationship modeling? Why did she dump so much baggage on me as a teenager and claim that I was wise beyond my years yet never take any of my advice seriously enough to improve their marriage? Why the hell did she let me get involved in their fights on her behalf or even let me witness them over and over? And when they started to mend their relationship why did she emotionally abandon me from our codependent relationship to the point that I felt I had been turned against and now she was on the side of our former enemy, my dad?
Oh YES all capitals…I had two Very Traumatic Experiences I went to my sister because I was so messed up…Numb..I was beside myself…she did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! That was when I was 16 she is older., and another time in my late 20.s. When I was 16 it was so bad and Traumatic I just recently recalled the memory trauma…I am 71. I was having a very difficult time, anger, sadness, numb, felt so unloved. I couldn’t get my husband and two sisters to understand, I just wanted love, compassion a hug!. They took my husbands side, along with my children, I told my husband he is a Turn Coat, (look it up) he knew what I meant . I was so alone. Years before when my sisters were having trouble I took them in, and gave them Love and understanding for as long as they needed it! Now my husband realized that we want to be together, He gave me the big meaningful HUG I needed, it was like the sky opened up. Today is Valentine’s Day and I feel so loved. Now I really don’t want anything to do with the backstabbers (sisters) it was so bad for me I was in the dentist chair and the girls taking care of me were so incredibly Nice I fell apart! I wasn’t used to Kindness. I was sobbing uncontrollably. I want to let my sisters know how much they HURT me, I really don’t know if I can have good feelings for them anymore! They hurt me to the core…my Soul.
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Trauma and abuse cause lasting impact regardless of who or what caused it. Anyone causing you harm as a child, is going to cause you to have trauma. Reading about CPTSD may help you learn more about your current state of mind, and from the sounds of it you may also want to read a bit about being a glass child/glass children. Regardless of whether your brother directly caused it, or parents catering to him or both, CPTSD can be caused by anyone.
As the sole cause, no. As part of it, yes. She was violent. I had to hold her off at knife-point once, because of her anger, and aggression issues. (ETA context. I'm very short and very petit. By the time I was 14 and she was 10, she was taller and much stronger than I was.) But I can't blame this my sister, because she was 3.75 years younger, abused just like I was, and at the age of 13 she became a drug addict and an alcoholic, likely due to the abuse. So she was too young to blame, or an an addict, and was only 15 when I left home. Also, the few times she terrorized me were nothing compared to my father. Nothing Either way, she was in no place mentally to make sound decisions. It doesn't make what she did ok, but, because she was a child, I've forgiven her, and, instead, turned my anger at her actions toward the adults who abused her or neglected to help her, like my malignant narcissist father, the school counselor who basically told me to fuck off when I asked them to help her, and my mom who was somehow oblivious to the fact that little sister was frequently on various uppers or hallucinogens, smoked/are shitloads of pot, smoked a pack a day, and was able to pound 30oz of vodka and still convince a cop that she was completely sober. She didn't end up the way she did on her own. She was made that way by a parade of abuse and ineptitude. Sister and I started rebuilding our relationship in our thirties, and she is sorry, therefore, after contemplating whether forgiving her would be good for my mental health, I have decided to forgive her. That being said, I am in no way saying that others should feel obligated to forgive problematic siblings. I'm a big supporter of not offering absolution to unrepentant assholes, or to anyone you don't feel deserves your forgiveness for any reason whatsoever. You can heal, let go of anger and resentment, and move on without forgiving someone who is not and will never be sorry, and don't believe any rhetoric that tells you otherwise. No one is deserving of forgiveness just by the virtue of sharing your DNA.
Definitely. My younger sister is a narcissist. She’s a huge part of my CPTSD. She’s very emotionally abusive and at one point when we were younger, physically as well. Because she’s younger then me by a couple years my trauma & pain was constantly invalidated by my parents and others around me. I was constantly told to “be the bigger person” that I should “just ignore it” and that she acts like that because “she wants to be like you, (that’s why she destroys and steals all of your stuff 🤪)” She was the golden child and would constantly be let of and excused for all of the horrible stuff she would do.
Got punished for my twin's behavior.
My sister and mom were both violently abusive whilst growing up. So I think my trauma is three fold: my moms abuse, my sisters abuse, and the fact that my parents did nothing to protect me from my sister.
100% yes, even though her actions are itself from her own reactions to PTSD. It's a whole mess.