Family Intervention on Brother-in-law

[mumstheword1x]

Hi,

my brother in law- I cannot pin point his personality, but he’s had problems financially for a while and as a family we can’t see why, it turns out he’s asking for money of of people he’s not seen in a while, and asking for £50 randomly here and there from people.

it’s become a huge red flag - but we cannot pin point the issue

drugs?
alcohol?
gambling?
depression & not working?

we don’t know, he won’t let anyone in.. what can we do as a family? He seems to lie a lot too. It’s hard seeing someone you love go through this and you want to get them help, but you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink right?

what can we do? Has anyone been in a similar situation? Do we need an intervention?

I feel like it’s unreasonable to push him if he doesn’t want help, but HE NEEDS HELP! He’s begging people for money that he hasn’t seen in 6 years we’ve found out this weekend. My parent in laws and husband is stressed, broken and at a loss.

thanks

Why does it have to be a family intervention? That's bound to put someone on the defensive. Can't one of you just meet him and ask if he's having problems and if there's anything they can help with?

You don’t need an intervention. Your husband (his brother?) needs to have a conversation with him to determine what is going on.

This is a broken record, we’ve done this time and time again. I guess intervention is the wrong thing to do maybe? It’s mainly we don’t know the root cause of the issues it’s scripted and he’s telling us all different lies and reasons for things.

Ultimately he’s an adult and if he doesn’t want to talk about it, he doesn’t have to. You can force someone into rehab or to stop gambling, only tell them where support can be found

maybe some of his behaviour is due to family problems? How sure are you on the dynamics here?

Extremely sure. His parents are too soft in my opinion, have thrown money at him for too long to cover up his issues.

the financial enabling has stopped, I’m worried how it’ll turn out.

I just want to get him the correct help, but not sure what the direct issue is to seek the correct help

50 pound a time sounds like cocaine. Unfortunately, if he is addicted to something, whether that's drugs, betting etc you can't change anything if he's denying it and doesn't want the help. You just need to make sure you don't enable it by giving cash. If he needs food, you can buy it. If he needs electricity, can pay for it if you want etc. Just get your husband to let his brother know he's aware there's something going on and he's there if/when he wants to talk.

@mumstheword1x what’s the reason for him not working? And how old is he?

Sounds like addiction. He needs to source help from addiction services. Stop giving him money

You don’t need to pinpoint anything, I presume you are not a psychiatrist so can’t diagnose him. What you can do is stop lending him any money, sadly that’s about it. Does he live with his parents still or does he have his own family?

The only person who can seek help is him, and unfortuately if people have been enabling him for some time and have now stopped his anger will be at them directly.

The unfortunate truth is he needs to reach rock bottom in order to decide to come back from it, he needs to fall and not be held by others.

This is not going to be a comfortable process, and it is precisely that you all don't want him to reach rock bottom that he hasn't.

I'd suggest having a look at al-anon gam-anon or nar-anon. Even if you don't know precisely his problem the coping strategies will help your inlaws and husband.

many people on here know the symptoms of different drugs, and alcohol is usually/sometimes more obvious to see. Evasiveness and small amounts of regular money would point to drugs rather than gambling and alcohol.

Is he thin? fat? gaunt? wired? talking fast /slow? eyes dilated or pinpoint? etc etc.

....but regardless, even knowing what it is he needs leaving to get to his rock bottom before it will resolve or it may not resolve and you have to start being accepting of that.

Someone he trusts needs to say once and for all that they are worried about him, that he needs to get a job and stop asking for money, and that you all will support him to get help, but otherwise you will no longer support him financially and emotionally and then STICK TO EVERY BOUNDARY YOU PUT IN PLACE.

He will keep doing what he’s doing if the softies keep bailing him out. You need to say you all will walk away if he doesn’t sort himself out (bullet point list of exactly what he needs to do that you hand to him). And then if he doesn’t do it, you all need to walk away.

I had a similar situation with my mum (not with asking for money but dysfunctional behaviour). I wrote her a letter, said these are the steps you need to take to sort yourself out and win back my trust, 1, 2, 3, listed them in detail. If you can’t do those or you refuse to try, that’s it, I’m done, you’ll never hear from me again.

She said, I’m not doing that, I don’t care about changing my life. So I walked. I haven’t spoken to or seen her in 4 years. Done. I stuck to what I said. If other family members won’t put boundaries in place with him, you may need to walk away from them as well if it’s what you need to do to protect yourself. You can’t make him change. You can’t make him stop asking Bob who he hasn’t seen in 20 years for 100 quid. You can decide if you’re going to put up with that crap and have him in your life though.