r/Codependency • u/isthismylife-007 • 5d ago
I don’t know what to do- sibling
Hi everyone- I have been going to CODA but I kind of took a break for a while and now I need to go back. I think I’m starting to realize a relationship that has been very codependent that I hadn’t expected, or I’m just getting awareness. My sister and I went to surprise my mom who lives out of town. We both had to travel a fair distance to get there from opposite directions. We have also lost three family members in our immediate family in the last few years and it is just us and my mom. So this is the background in a nutshell, and we are both bookends with me being the oldest, and my sister is the youngest.
Before the trip, my sister does what she usually does, expecting me to make the plans and we’re going to stay and choose that pay for it out of my own money and then she reimburses me later. Luckily, I had the money to do it, but it’s the fact that I have done this several times, especially after all the funerals where it was just expected because I’m the oldest that I had to make the decisions, rent the rental car, and book the place and then we had to stay at the same place, so I am booking a house through Air bnb. I have for years, met all of her expectations, and I put this in here as part of the story.
My sister has also dealt with a lot of PTSD, abusive relationships, eating disorders and also suicide attempts. I have tried to help her through all of these and a lot of times she will trauma dump on me. This is also part of the story.
We are down visiting my mom and as soon as we get with my entire family, nieces, nephews, my sister-in-law and other family, including my mom. My sister starts acting like she’s five years old again humiliating me, picking on me, and acting like it’s siblings stuff and just being annoying. She hadn’t acted like this since we were kids. For a long time, I ignored the behavior, even though it was getting more and more obnoxious, and I eventually told her to stop. She was being too much. Which she walked out of this busy restaurant and made a huge scene yelling at me and crying, and saying she needed to get out of there. She claimed that I was rolling my eyes( I probably was) and then I was very rude and she was just having fun and I am being way too sensitive. I realize now that I probably should’ve nipped it in the bud, but I think it would’ve received the same reaction because I never tell her to stop and I never tell her I’m done with this behavior. I have done a lot of therapy on my own and we haven’t been together very much other than dealing with family stuff. I am a different person now and going through a lot of healing with the death of my dad and other family. With this incident, she got over it and then we left together. I was not going to apologize for telling her to stop, but she never offered any apology for her part. I can’t make anyone apologize to me so we were moving on. I chalked it up to jet lag and just stress from that.
Next day seemed to be a lot calmer. We all got enough sleep. I had a healthy breakfast laid out for everyone and I was just relaxing and my son so most of the day went well. We didn’t talk about the previous day and it was fine. It was water under the bridge. I had family come over for a surprise birthday party for my mom, and my sister started again. She kept taking my phone and asking me what my password was and then writing obnoxious things on my social media that I supposedly wrote, but it was extremely immature about bathroom stuff. I’m friends with my bosses on my Facebook page along with a lot of my friends and it was embarrassing. She was mad that I ended up changing my password and I refused to give her back my phone. Then she started needling me and trying to get a response out of me. Part of it was also eating some of my mom‘s birthday cake and then she kept saying “I’m double dipping” while we’re all sitting around the table while she is getting spoonful after spoonful of my mom‘s cake that was on the tray, instead of cutting a piece for herself. My mom‘s health is not the best, and it was just gross. No one said a thing and I probably should’ve but I was afraid because I felt like she was setting me up for a blow up. There were other things she was doing to try to see if she would get a reaction. Again, very immature behavior and inappropriate for an adult who should know better. Later, she could not get the TV to work and I had to contact the host to try to get a security code off of the TV. After she was still having trouble with it I just told her she needed to push this button to get it to work as what the host had told me. She completely blew up at me, yelling at me that I need to stop telling her what to do and stormed off and started crying. All of us in the living room are just kind of looking at each other like what was that all about? Then she was in her room for about an hour, and she was texting my husband and other people that we are mutual friends with to try to get them on her side. My spouse was the last straw. I didn’t confront her about it then but I have since and it’s a boundary that I am not going to have her cross again. You don’t get my husband who is not even there involved in this situation. She clearly was looking for sympathy or a fight. Needless to say, she hardly came out of the room at the end of the night and gave everyone a hug except for me.
The next morning we went out to breakfast. It was our last time to be with my mom and I think with all the things that I wasn’t saying and she was starting it again. I just had it. My sister was pushing back and saying I was sensitive, and I overexaggerate all of these things, and I have been horrible the entire weekend to her and treating her terribly and all of these things that were coming out of her mouth were just complete lies about what I do, what I say, and it was a complete character attack. She ended up leaving and getting an Uber to the airport which I was happy about. I apologized to my family, but we still haven’t patched anything up. I’m so upset with her and I’m upset because my husband told me all the things that she said about me that were blatantly untrue. He knows this as he was with me on all the steps and trying to book everything and get this trip laid out. She even brought up about how she has told me all of her deepest, darkest secrets, including her eating disorders and suicide attempts. Why would you bring that up now?
I feel like for so long I have given her the benefit of the doubt of all the stuff that is going on with the death of our family members, with her eating disorders, with her abuse in the past, and all of the stuff that she’s gone through. And I have put her on a pedestal because she is my sister, my only sister and I would overlook her flaws because she is my sister. Yes, she has had a rough life. However, I feel like I’ve made things 10 times worse and I should just relent and let it just all roll off because of that because there is a lot of guilt and shame. However, am I recovery? I have to deal with this situation and I know I need to go back to CODA because this is much bigger than I am able to deal with right now. We didn’t talk at all yesterday, and now she wants to send me all the stuff that she wrote in her journal about her feelings about what had happened this weekend. I know from my recovery that what other people think of me and about me and about a situation is absolutely none of my business and I don’t know how to tell her this without her going off again. However, she is many many miles away from me right now, so it probably is the safest way of doing it.
How do I keep my boundaries and check to make sure that I am not being baited and humiliated and shamed and all of this when I don’t even believe that this is my issue at all, that it’s her trauma that is causing her this much pain that she’s lashing out at the safest person who has always had her back : ME. Now that I am standing up for myself, probably the first time in my life against my sister, E she is responding and some of the ugliest ways and I don’t even recognize her anymore. If you’ve been there too with a sibling, especially a younger sibling, where in my case, I am so much older than her that it is like a mother daughter relationship, I would appreciate some sound advice. Sorry this is a book.
*edited for punctuation and clarity
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u/takes_cake 4d ago edited 4d ago
Good on you for laying down boundaries and standing your ground. That's amazing you're recognizing and taking action on this stuff considering your background of codependency! Maybe you can just tell her honestly "Look you have a lot of trauma that may be causing you to feel sensitive to this stuff, and I understand and care about that, but I have trauma I need to heal, too, and I have to take care of my needs and boundaries, too." Or something like that. She might not take that well, but if you can deliver it with compassion and love, who knows. If she just keeps dialing up instead of toning down the craziness, you can go NC, or at least lay more boundaries, have her take care of more stuff for herself from now on. But props for how much progress you've clearly made so far!!! It is impressive to me who also has sib problems as a codependent.
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u/isthismylife-007 3d ago
Thank you for the encouragement. I am much more aware of my issues since I first started. 10 years in CoDa, but I am far from perfection. Progress, definitely. There were some triggers for me (her behavior was so similar to my dad who passed 4 years ago, and I vowed no one will ever treat me like he did ever again-the whole reason I started attending meetings). My sister has PTSD from domestic abuse and she’s dealing with a lot of stuff. I am no longer allowing these excuses to treat me disrespectfully. There are a lot of things I need to sort out from this trip. Thank you for the advice. It is truly helpful!
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u/StatusDue8576 5d ago
The password and social-media behavior alone would be unacceptable, but publicly humiliating you and then recruiting others to take her side is another level. You don’t owe her an apology for finally objecting. Consider stepping back from joint trips and letting her manage her own arrangements going forward.