NC for this, but regular.
There's a dynamic in my family that I'm going to call 'cuckoo syndrome'. I'm defining cuckoo syndrome as the scapegoating of one sibling by another, in order for the last sibling to monopolise all of the emotional, practical and financial resources of the family unit.
This has happened to me. My sister lives with my parents and gets all of their support and help - they do literally everything for her. She has no children, a very good job, a long term partner, and hundreds of thousands of pounds in savings for a house.
I get a grudging phone call once a week.
What hurts is that this relationship is perpetuated by the fact that they all, as a unit, maintain a series of toxic fictions about me: that I was a difficult child, a bully, overly dominant, a nightmare to grow up with - and my sister has been so damaged by this that she needs constant support. I admit that I was difficult, but that is because I was being abused emotionally, physically and even once sexually by my mother. She was utterly controlling because she was mentally ill and could not deal with my becoming an independent person. That said, my behaviour was very, very far from being off the scale for a stroppy teenager. I was a 'better' child than the vast majority of my friends, for instance.
I feel like the focus has been deliberately placed on my behaviour as the 'problem' in order to conceal this much greater wrong that was being done. My sister knows my side of the story, but makes it clear that she doesn't believe it - and, what is more, she is more than willing to exploit an untrue version of events for personal gain.
What worries me is that my sister will often make comments in public fora (particularly social media) about me being a sibling-destroyer. Fortunately, most of my friends are sane and know me well enough to laugh at this behaviour. But it irks me and is a constant reminder of the pain of the past.
What to do?
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Relationships
Cuckoo syndrome - are you a fellow sufferer? (child abuse)
34 replies
cuckoosyndrome · 16/06/2015 09:04
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