How to deal with my mentally ill adult sibling

Hi op, I'm so sorry you are going through this. I know how hard it can be as I have been in an almost identical situation. I haven't been in touch with my brother for over a year now and the feeling of relief has been immense. I know where he lives and that he is alive, but that's all. I spent over 10 years trying to help him, and then realised that the outcome was that I was broken, and he was still the same. It affected my health and my marriage and my ability to parent. I've decided that perhaps when my children have left home and don't need me as much, then I might reach out to him, but currently I'm looking after myself more and focusing on my own children. I remember playing with them when they were little, but not being 'there' at all, as I was waiting for a phone call (the phone ringing still fills me with terror) from my poor mum about his behaviour, or from him to blame me for everything that was wrong in his life. I missed so much of my boys growing up in that sense. I would recommend stepping right back, or perhaps blocking contact for some time. I did try phrases like 'you are behaving abusively to me, I'm going to hang up on you now. Please call back if you can be polite to me... etc' and trying to stay super calm during difficult conversations, but in the end even that was too hard as there was always the fear and anxiety of him calling me at any time of day/night. 💐

But there's a big difference between "I've been thinking about harming myself" and "I'm going to kill myself and then you'll be sorry". Everything OP has told us, despite her clear desire to be fair to her brother, is painting a picture of the latter.

My DB was in poor mental health most of his life and I understand it's draining. If your DB will get some help you'd feel better too but if he won't engage there's so little you can do. If it's a a few months you can cope but when it just goes on for years it becomes too much. Could you point out, gently, that you suffered too and you find it hard to be constantly reminded?

Blimey what a drain
Tell him you need some fun, laughter and banter in your life not all his crap.

Think of yourself.

Go no contact, he's abusive and toxic.

He will drag you down, let him find someone else to abuse and put on.
Think of your own mental health.

*doesn't like it

Sounds very difficult
You'd be right to set very clear boundaries
Put your phone on silent when you need to sleep
Let him know he can call 999/crisis team if he needs to
You might be feeling stuck/all over the place because this is how he feels but can't contain it so gives it to you
Consider getting your own therapist too
Unfortunately he needs to take responsibility which is clearly very difficult for him but it's not up to you to enable him in this unreasonable behaviour
All you can do is be very clear with him what's reasonable/unreasonable and if he does like it, he can go and vent to his therapist and perhaps take some time to understand himself

No, but it could make her life easier

OP, please step away from him.
You cannot fix him and your health is clearly suffering. Who will support you? It certainly will not be him. It is sad but please listen to posts who write that you should never set yourself on fire to keep another warm.
He is extremely manipulative and is using you as his emotional punching bag.
You cannot save him, save yourself.

Unfortunately you're dancing to his tune and I feel this gives him some power over you. You need to set boundaries, turn your phone off in the evening, don't be so available to him. You both had a dreadful time growing up but it wasn't your fault and you can't now make your brother better.The only person who can help him is himself, maybe he likes the drama he creates and how you react to it. If you keep dancing to his tune nothing is ever going to change. I wish you well going forward but put yourself first for a change.

Oh OP you sound lovely please take a step back he is not your responsibility and you can't fix him I tried for years helping my dysfunctional family to no avail 🥹look after yourself first and foremost 💐

I feel very sorry for both of you. I totally understand how this is dragging you down and causing you a huge amount of stress. But at the same time, you can’t really phone him and tell him not to express how awful he is feeling because it sounds like he hasn’t got anything else to tell you at the moment. I think some professional counselling for you (maybe through your employee assistance program at work if you have one) would help you talk through how to handle this. My daughter is mentally unwell and it helped me. One thing I was told was that she wasn’t expecting me to ‘fix’ everything when she calls me in distress. He might just want someone to acknowledge how hard that particular moment was for him. Just telling him how sorry you are that he is struggling or how scared he must have felt is comforting but it isn’t your job to make him better. When you take that pressure off yourself it becomes less painful.

He's abusing you.

You need to put boundaries in place. How much are you prepared to help? How often do you want to see him/speak to him?

Work out what's manageable for you and do that. You can support your brother but you also need to support your self.

Do you remember the girl in Love actually where she likes the guy at work but her brother keeps calling her? That was really awful because you saw that she wasn't allowed to have a life.

Don't be that person.

You had a tough childhood and you deserve a good adulthood. I would really strictly limit all conversation to half an hour a week, to be followed by an activity with someone else that makes you feel happy. the thing is that what you are doing now isn't working. It isn't making him any happier. He is very very manipulative and is using you as a punch bag. To be honest if I could move far away from him I would.

You both had the same horrible childhood with abuse and pain … you are still being manipulated just by your brother now. Gently I hope you are having therapy to deal with your childhood and manipulation from your brother.

You genuinely can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.

You are not his therapist, you have done more than most people. I would start to call the police to do welfare checks and advise your brother of charities he can call and speak to people. You deserve to be happy too , you only get one life

Do you have IRL support? A friend who knows what is going on, or a therapist of your own? Let us know if you need some ideas on how to find this support.

The current situation is not sustainable for you. A better way of handling your relationship with your brother needs to be found. You can’t change your brother but you can change your mindset and actions about the situation.

I think some therapy for you is in order, not him!
You need to learn how to process all this. As this is a lot and simply awful.

You could just not phone him?

@Niegenug This is not helpful or fair to the OP.
I'm trying to explain what would've been helpful to me when I was in a similar situation to her brother and saying the same sort of things. If OP doesn't want to know how best to help then she just needs to go NC.

She also needs to stop calling him all the time if she doesn't like what he has to say. Yes he called her once because he had a panic attack and he was scared. I would want to call family in that situation. I've only ever had a mild panic attack and I did momentarily think I was dying. I calmed down and was ok, but it can be worse and mimic a heart attack etc. if it's his first one I can see why he was scared. Obviously if it's a regular occurrence that's different.

He's already said they should go their separate ways and he left her alone, then she called him again. To tell him how he's making her feel. He needs her to listen to HIM right now if she's trying to help not turn it around to be about how much he upsets her. That's just piling on the guilt and will make him feel even worse.

I rang him this morning and I said "it's my only holiday all year, can you not talk about death and dying for once.

And he said "well don't ask me how I am then" and hung up on me.

He's being honest, if you don't want an honest answer don't ask. So much for all the campaigns to raise awareness about MH and get people asking their friends and family how they are. Not just "are you ok" but "are you really ok" but it's all a sham designed purely so that the person asking can just pat themselves on the back job done. The depressed person is still supposed to lie and say they're fine, that's their job. We can't have them actually opening up and talking about wanting to die and being manipulative now-god no that's not the idea!

No wonder so many keep their feelings a secret, they just can't win. Only the other week was a family on TV campaigning to try and get a Swiss assisted dying clinic to let family know their loved one intends to die because the man in question hadn't told his family. They also wondered why he did it all alone, without telling them he was travelling to Switzerland for an assisted death. Well this is exactly why, because talking about suicide is always seen as manipulative and family don't want to hear it. Always after the fact it's "why didn't they tell me how they were feeling?"

OP I know you are trying to do all you can, I'm not trying to have a go. But he just needs to vent his feelings to you right now, without being shut down. Just be as empathetic as you can, it's not easy dealing with someone who has suicidal ideation. If you can't handle him being honest and it's affecting your own mental health then take his advice and step away from the relationship.

This is not helpful or fair to the OP.

They have described how they have tried to help their brother but they will not engage with others who can help.

The OP is entitled to have enough sleep to be able to function at work and to have a break from her brother. The panic attacks and ambulance call outs may be a frequent occurrence hence her decision that her sleep is of more importance.

The only thing she did 'wrong' was to still care about her brother while on holiday and call him to make sure he was okay.

As others have said OP, you need to lessen contact and when you do meet tell him that if he talls about wanting to die all the time, that you'll end the conversation/meeting. That you cannot and won't deal with his negativity all the time. If he wants to maintain the relationship, he will try to change. If he won't change then you have to walk away from him and leave him to the professionals. If that happens you are not a bad person. You are saving yourself from having a mental breakdown in the future.

You are trying to fix somebody that you can't fix as its out of your control.
Try focus the conversations on the medical experts. When he says that he can't cope, ask what professional advice he got, or advise to discuss with the support worker as you don't have the medical experience.
This will drag you down, so you need to put on a Teflon hat and redirect the conversations.
Take care of yourself OP xx

He had the same childhood as you. He is obviously mentally ill but you are not a psychiatrist or responsible for his mental health. You can’t fix him. His manipulative behaviour is making you ill. People who constantly threaten suicide almost never carry out their threats, it’s textbook guilt-tripping.

I’m all for helping family but it’s a reciprocal deal not just one way the whole time. He seems to be punishing you for coping with life because he can’t or won’t cope so he is trying to drag you to where he is. He’s an emotional vampire.

Try to distance yourself a bit - if he calls and starts berating you tell him you are not managing emotionally and need to prioritise your own mental health, then end the call. Limit availability. You also need to talk to someone yourself as already suggested, even to give yourself perspective and permission to cut the toxicity (by cutting him loose).

That's a really unfair post. The brother isn't very concerned with how op is feeling. I totally understand the dread of a rare, much needed, and expensive trip being ruined. She's allowed to recharge her own tired battery.

I know threats of suicide are seen as manipulative but I really do wonder when some posters think it's an acceptable time to talk about being suicidal, ever. Literally everyone is encouraged to open up but any hint of "I want to die" and they're a manipulative abusive bully etc. yeah depressed people often know their behaviour is horrible, that's one of the many reasons they think their family will be better off without them. People who are hurting so much are often not the nicest souls, big surprise there. And society pretends to care about these people.

He had a panic attack and called an ambulance. He did not 'nearly die'. He did not 'have a psychotic breakdown'. He was taken to A&E and discharged the next day. As you say, he has never attempted suicide, but even if he did, it wouldn't be your fault. It would be his and his alone.

Panic attacks can be really scary and make you think you're dying, he didn't call an ambulance for shits and giggles did he? At the least it was a cry for help.

No offence OP but a lot of what I'm seeing is how this is making you feel, how upset you are, how it's ruined your holiday and it's the only holiday you get. You decided to call him from that holiday, he had left you alone by the sounds of it. I'll bet he doesn't get to go on holiday at all and then you're calling him from Spain to basically have a go at him again. You are the one that keeps ringing him, and he hung up. Just stop doing it if you can't listen to what he has to say about how he feels.

I don't dispute that he's mentally unwell but he's clearly also very manipulative. Suicide threats and drama around the fear of someone you love suiciding are particularly despicable imo. He had a shoddy childhood but so did you. You and your needs are important too. At the moment he is abusing you and you need to find ways to protect yourself from his behaviour.

I think you need to stop trying to help him. He doesn't want help in any case - if he did, he'd be grateful. What he actually wants is to exercise control over you, which he can best do by maintaining his position of victim, not helping himself and not letting you help him either. He wants to be able to yank your chain, and if you actually succeeded in getting him back on his feet, he'd no longer be able to do that. Likewise all the talk of suicide and death. If he was actually suicidal, he'd be acting on it, not talking about it.

It's hard to avoid getting sucked in when someone knows exactly how to push your buttons. Can you develop some practical strategies? For instance, can you switch off your phone at night or put it on do not disturb between certain hours, so he can't get his fix by calling you out on bogus emergency missions when you need to get up for work the next day? Can you limit your contact with him to, say, a particular day of the week when you call and catch up at a specific time, with a particular time in mind to wrap it up? Can you disable voicemail so he can't leave accustory messages that you then feel obliged to listen to?

Above all, do you have anyone you can talk to about all of this? Someone who can remind you that his needs are not your responibity to fix? Could you organise counselling through work? Have you got friends? If you can find the strength to stop delivering what he wants when he wants it, I think he'll eventually stop wasting his energy trying to get attention that's never going to come, though I think he'll ramp up the demands first.

I feel really sorry for you. You sound as though you're about to go pop. Please don't let it get to that point. Your needs are as important as his, and should be more important to you.

No I don’t think this should be her focus. It’s totally unfair to expect ordinary people, even family members, to try to manage someone’s mental health without any skills or training in the area. He needs to help himself.