My sister wrote a letter about me to the guardian.....

[FergusSingsTheBlues]

It got published. It was full of wild accusations and assumptions and was really unfair.

I only just found out.

She's pretty much permanently depressed so I cant really go mad, but I'm so hurt I really don't want much to do with her. I'm had a go at her yesterday, shouted at her for the first time ever, then ended up consoling her over a cup of tea. I always suck up this sort of thing. And we've always been really close....I thought.

To make things worse, she told my best friend who couldn't face telling me so it's double humiliation. For some reason that's made me much more upset.

I'm mortified because anybody who knows me will have read it as all my friends read the guardian....

What do I do now?

Actually springydaffs I take exception to being lumped in with my "family" as jointly responsibly for dumping shit on my scapegoated sister. No, I didn't. I have never taken part in ganging up on her with my parents and I have never said "oh it's just so-and-so, going on again" and all that. Instead, I have spent much of my life trying to deal with my own crap from my family and prop her up. I have tried and tried and tried to help. Ultimately, yes I have rejected her, after I couldn't stand the crappy way she treated me. Because you know, whatever the reasons behind it, there is not a law that says I have to take a load of abuse and controlling nastiness just because she's unhappy.

A seriously dysfunctional family is complicated, and they're not all the same. And as diddl says, in OP's case she was getting scapegoated too herself.

Unless you want that to become a reality you're just going to have to work a bit harder on her.

Cottage that's really a terrible thing to say. You're holding OP responsible for preventing her sister possibly committing suicide. Can't you see this is the problem - that OP already been shouldering that massive responsibility, inappropriately and to no avail?

It is not OP's responsibility.

I think springydaffs was describing the pattern of behaviour in these families. You are not consciously participating but participating by default. It's not your fault either LadyJingly.

Perhaps OP's sister should read this thread, there are some very astute comments from both sides of the fence.

No LadyJingly, it's everyone's responsibility if someone commits suicide.

Really cottage how much responsibility do you think that Op should have for her sister?

"Unless you want that to become a reality you're just going to have to work a bit harder on her."

That is just a fucking awful thing to say imo.

That isn't true at all, it is one person and that person only. Really that person, or the person they are usually, isn't even responsible.

I can see that point, yes in a more general sense, people who are feeling suicidal need everyone's support, and everyone has a role in watching out for others.

That is not the same as being emotionally blackmailed into being used as a punchbag by someone who refuses to get the professional help they need, and then being made to feel individually responsible.

There are a lot of threads on here where cheating male partners threaten to commit suicide if their ex doesn't take them back, and similar. Those posters get told in no uncertain terms they aren't responsible for what he does. What do you think of those situations cottage?

I don't think cottage meant to blame in that way - at least, I didn't read it like that, but rather as saying: look, she may be really unwell and need help desperately, so please do everything you possibly can right now because the stakes may be really very high indeed. (This doesn't make it the OP's fault or responsibility if the tragic worst were to happen).

A school friend of mine sadly committed suicide a few days after contacting me out of the blue after years of no contact. Our conversation was just the very cliched, superficial exchange of emails you have with someone you haven't seen for a long time. I'm not normally someone who interacts like that, and I have often wished that I'd been more authentic and opened more of a space for him to talk properly. I don't think it's my fault it happened, but I wish I had recognised what was going on and been more thoughtful.

Well if OP does step back there is a father & other siblings I believe?

It sounds as though the OP may be the scapegoat for them too, though.

I don't think you can pass your personal responsibility for someone else onto other people. I think we all have a kind of infinite moral responsibility to each other, that can't simply be assuaged by saying 'Oh, X will deal with this instead'.

gosh, this thread is making me cry and cry! NOT emotional blackmail but just such a devastating reality in many families.

Thank you, cottage: no, I wasn't blaming you, Jingly. It just is a system that is very powerful and which family members conform to without realising. How can siblings not, it has always been the family reality. Your relationship with your scapegoat sister, OP's too, is different to my family situation, in that my situation is b&w: I am still derided as the tiresome/useless/hopeless one who spoils everything; my family are unkind, bullying, spiteful, endlessly shame. You and OP are in that halfway house of loving and supporting your troubled sibling. I wish you were my sisters! ie willing to be kind and fair. Understanding the family system that allots a scapegoat in the first place would make a huge difference, however. It would be grasping the nettle, very painful and destabilising, and most families are not prepared to do it.

Your sister, OP, is not only the scapegoat but is also still behaving in learnt dysfunctional/toxic ways: double whammy. She is doing it in learnt ways to get her needs met - only it pushes what she needs further away because her behaviour is so poor. Perhaps she has decided that getting her needs met, even if she knew what that meant, is too impossible and she has checked out (eg buying a car instead of investing in therapy). I agree she sounds like someone who has checked out and may check out entirely.

Painful stuff!

I'm very sorry about this situation. My mother is in a similar bind, although her sister was not a scapegoat (it was a different kind of family dysfunction). At one point, her sister threatened suicide if my mother basically didn't, fill up her (the sister's) life with "activities" so that she wouldn't feel so lonely, if she didn't put up with her complaints, etc. etc.

It came to a point in which my mother, after trying to help her in as many ways as she could - and which her sister refused systematically - had to say "Look, go ahead and kill yourself if you want to. I'll go to your funeral and cry for you. But I can't do anything more. I can help you, but ultimately it's up to you to sort out your life".

OP, as you say, you can use this as a lever to persuade your sister to look for help. But if she refuses, then you need to take a step back. No need to disrupt her relationship with your son if you don't want to (although I would be wary in case this all seeps into it), but don't get involved, and refuse to be her crutch, because it's exhausting and futile. And you'll have to use some very strong words at some point and tell her that she doesn't really want to change things, and on some level she enjoys the drama.

Good luck.

Shovetheholly said My sister is the golden child of the family, and my parents just can't do enough for her. I get almost no practical or emotional support........ Additionally, my grandmother is very needy and quite exhausting to be around

So it appears history is repeating itself. Yr DM is the child of the unloved one (DGM). So your DM is recreating a beloved child, why? in a reaction to her DM's sad life??

If you can see why someone is unloved (ie due to DP recreating a past family setup) and that it isn't you but rather pure chance/ the DP's childhoods, perhaps it is easier to come to terms with.

Moniker - spot on. My DM is the golden child of the scapegoat DGM. (DGM was a truly awful parent in every way and makes my DM look positively brilliant by comparison).

Understanding how my DM is herself a victim of a family cycle really helped me to come to terms with the situation and forgive my DPs (which I have done). I'm not saying I don't still hurt at times, but those times are very few and far between now and are not associated with self-hatred and self-harming behaviour.

However, it was a big battle to get there and recognising the cycle and that there were other people who were suffering was only a tiny part of it. I had to fight every inch of the way for it, and I had a massive amount of luck as well in the shape of getting the right therapist at the right time, meeting DH, and generally getting enough positive breaks from the difficult stuff and from financial pressures that I was able to take time to look after my mental health and get into better patterns of thinking. Had I not had a great deal of good fortune, I doubt whether I'd be coping.

What I'm trying to say is that I would hate for anyone to think that it's as simple as just seeing the pattern across the generations and - bazinga - you are cured! I know that's not what you were suggesting, Moniker, so this isn't addressed to you, it's more just in case someone misinterprets your post. One of the strangest things for many scapegoats I suspect (not just me!) is that you are on the receiving end of literally decades and decades of a kind of gaslighting. Your perspective, your opinions are literally questioned right to the core and it is easy for you to start mistrusting not just your judgement but your ability and right to hold any opinion at all - and even to start wondering whether you are paranoid. So an issue like forgiveness of others, or even recognition of an inter-generational aspect to the problem, has to come from the right place of a really deep and comfortable understanding based on a sense of self-worth, which often doesn't come instantly at the start of the therapeutic healing process. Without that, the idea that there is a replicating pattern can feel like someone yet again saying that your take on things doesn't matter, that your pain doesn't count, that you're 'wrong' for feeling what you feel etc. etc. etc.

It is absolutely NOT my responsibility if my sister ends up committing suicide. It might be if I'd been involved in ganging up, running her down or ridiculing her, but I never have been. And I defy anybody to find anything I should have done, that I havent. I do everything to help aside from physically carrying her into a shrinks office. I live half a mile from her and am always on hand.

I'm not responsible for raising her, her refusal to get help or causing her to feel low about herself. I'm always trying to build her up, in fact.

I don't get the impression at all the OP is scapegoating her sister, and she herself was scapegoated by her father and her mother when she married. It is way more complicated here than simply identifying one scapegoat and everyone pouring their shit onto them! This may happen in some families, but I don't see that dynamic here- it seems to be more parental shit being poured downwards in a dysfunctional manner depending who has done 'wrong' at any one time (strange metaphor but you know what I mean!)

I don't know why the OP needs to be permanently responsible or permanently on call to prevent her sister's mh issues worsening or permanently guilty that she has a reasonably happy everyday life. She thought they were close, she has provided support, and was genuinely upset to be badly thought of and labelled by her sister in that article. Her sister has genuine reason to be distressed as she was very badly parented and this has affected her whole life- but it is not the OP's life or her responsibility to 'solve' this, even if such a thing were possible, which it is clearly not.

The OP does sound very compassionate though and I think they will get over this, however where your sister goes from here OP I don't know, as clearly even writing this letter hasn't really helped. She definitely needs therapy and you would benefit from talking with someone about how all this has affected you as well, I think.

The thing about scapegoats is because they get the raw deal, being blamed, being seen as worthless, they think that the golden child gets all the love.

But the fact is with a raging narcissistic or abusive parent, there is no love. The golden child isn't getting all the love, they're getting put upon in a different way - expected to be perfect and often having to be the emotional fixer not just for the other siblings, but for the parent too.

As has come up previously on this thread, sometimes the reason for being the golden child is not because you are better in any intrinsic way – it's just because you remind the parent of themselves. In my family my mum has even spelt this out clearly to me - I look like her and am her mini-me (she's often told me this is how she felt about me from birth) and expected to agree with her on everything and serve her needs, my sister doesn't and so she's always treated her like an alien. Both of them are awful, and neither of them involve loving your child for who they really are. If you think about it, a parent who can create and maintain a scapegoating attitude to one child probably isn't having the healthiest relationship with their other kids either.

This thread is interesting because we are obviously falling into groups depending on which category we feel we've been put into. But however much we want to vent about how it feels to be where we are, we should remember there wasn't any proper, loving parenting available for anyone in these kinds of families.

Agree with everything you're saying, lady. Plus, if you accidentally fall off said pedestal. It's devastatin in its own way....the fact that my mother effectively dumped me when I got married means that I suddenly felt like my existence had been bit of a lie, and that any closeness we had was artificial. And I fell for it.

Effectively I've lost my mother, which I have long acknowledged. Currently debating no contact and I'm not enjoying her at all any more. The older she gets, the wiser I get, the more outag d I get on behalf of my sister, the more I despise her, it's grief.

I didn't say you are responsible, I said we are collectively responsible to do what we can to prevent someone killing themselves. And I agree that you have been betrayed and let down as much as your sister, if not more so.

The point is that there are things you can do about it to help her, to help your family get through this and you are very much at a crisis point.

Families need to move and evolve, they change shape as new members arrive and old ones move on. Perhaps this is one of those times and there is room for change.

"But the fact is with a raging narcissistic or abusive parent, there is no love. The golden child isn't getting all the love, they're getting put upon in a different way - expected to be perfect and often having to be the emotional fixer not just for the other siblings, but for the parent too."

Absolutely.

Cottage, you saiid: Unless you want that to become a reality you're just going to have to work a bit harder on her.

So don't start backtracking, because was just nasty. And no, there isn't much else I can do about it. My energy is spent.

Lady I found what you said interesting. I agree that in my family neither of us children received any real love. As the scapegoat I had the advantage of knowing this from an earlier age.

Its interesting that instead of trying to understand your sisters perspective/view of the world, you have dismissed it. From her perspective your view of the world differs from hers. Would you be happy with her calling your version lies, distortions and a mental health issue?

The point is that there are things you can do about it to help her, to help your family get through this and you are very much at a crisis point

Errr, what?

A family member died last year, probably 20 years prematurely, from abuse of her body, smoking etc, bitterness. But NOTHING was her fault, it was all everyone else to blame, her exhausted DD, her ex husbands, the social workers - Over her 30 years of illness and depression I think most things will have been tried (admission to mental hospital, anti-depressives, counseling etc etc).

It's a bit glib to say there are things you can do to help her, in these sorts of cases.

Actually, thinking about it, there is nothing in my experience you can do to change someone else, or their way of thinking, or their beliefs.

You can only change yourself and how you react to the person and their behaviour.

So, remembering we are decades down the line with this troubled lady, what are the answers here? For the OP obviously, no point advising that the local health authority does this or that as that is beyond OP's control.