Do victims have egos?

[yessirnosirthreebagsfull]

My sister - at age 35 -believes herself to be a victim of everything.

There is not one thing that anyone can do or say, that she does not take personally. Even things that are not about her at all.

One example of many: She was round at mine and DH's house in November and we were all chatting about Christmas and new year. DH and I mentioned that we had decided to spend new year in France, and she broke down in tears, sobbing. We couldn't understand, and then she got angry and asked me why I hadn't told her and why I'd kept it from her and why I had not invited her (it was a decision DH and I had made a couple of hours before seeing her and we never thought we had to ask her permission.)

She covets things that she perceives other people have - holidays, meals out, clothes etc - often very normal, not expensive or flashy things, but she believes herself to be the victim of not having them - if you see what I mean? She believes she is entitled to whatever anyone else has and she experiences actual anger at not having them.

She is on social media a lot looking at other people's lives and feeling angry that her life is not like that.

When I have talked to her about it and reminded her not to take things personally and not to compare other's "highlights" to her normal life, she has simply reminded me of her victim status: how she has nothing, is unloved, no money, has had a hard life, how her ego is very very small and that she needs to be protected and looked after and given things.

She is always trying to do some self improvement, and it is mostly quite navel gazing things, like astrology or tarot cards, or life coaches who tell her that she needs to build her ego and "shine." She believes that it is other people who "dampen" her light and that she is way overdue an opportunity to overcome other people's abuse and persecution of her.

She recently sent an email to me and about ten other people asking us to list her best qualities, her worst qualities, what job we think she should do, what we think of when we think about her. Apparently it was something her life coach asked her to do.

She insists she has no ego, but I see a lot of ego in the things she does. Am I wrong?

I read something one here a few days ago about people with bug egos but low self esteem. They crave love and admiration but lack the means to generate it. It was in relation to someone suffering from alcoholism but rings a bell here too.

Thank you for all your responses. Some of them have been very enlightening to me.

And the ones who sympathise with her - yes I do too. I have spent most of my life thinking that everything I have I should give to her. Because I have grown up with a sense that she is the one entitled to everything. Even on my wedding day I let her dictate much of what happened, make a speech (which was mostly about her etc.) I have given her upward of £20k in the course of my life, because she has asked for it and reaffirmed that she is a victim.

I am forever in this trap of feeling sorry for her (like she wants me to) and then feeling very angry with her when she has drained me of everything I have. I swing between the two.

It even affects my relationships with other people. She says very provocative things to my friends (aggressively provocative like things she's heard about them.) she gets a bad reaction from them and frozen out, and then I get her crying to me and calling me and asking why so and so doesn't like her.

Tell her why they dont like her.

You cant change her behaviour. Only you own. Dont give her money, pay for holidays etc.

She thinks the world revolves arounf her because yours does.

She does the navel gazing, career coach etc because she expects just turning up to this stuff will change her life. She doesnt want to put effort in. She wants someone to tell her how special she is and that she is right. Everyones world should revolve around her.

Stop letting her do this to you.

No, no, don't tell her why they don't like her.

What you describe about circling round feeling sorry for her, giving her what she demands, feeling drained and getting angry makes me think even more this is narcissistic behaviour.

You can't make her realise. There is literally nothing you can do to make her realise. You need to take yourself out of this cycle of being damaged.

I've been reading narcsite.com re my last BF, it is scary how much I recognise him now and how much things make sense. That cycle^ is exactly what my relationship with him was like and I was spending average £400 per month on him during our relationship (4 years) even though I am a LP with 4 kids and he earns £26k, because he kept saying he was poor.

(For three years he was living with his parents who cooked, cleaned, washed things, gave him a car etc and charged him minimal keep)

The only thing you can do is go NC (or LC but with super strong boundaries).

I'm sorry to say that your sister sounds so extreme in her self absorbed behaviour that she probably is a narcissist.

At the moment she is spreading her misery, contaminating you and your life. If she won't seek proper help (and a narcissist won't) you shouldn't have to sacrifice your own mental wellbeing. As you've said yourself, all the things you've done for her and it still isn't enough to make her happy. You are trying to fill a bottomless void.

Save yourself and either learn to ignore it or go no contact.

Is it just her or do you have other family? The France thing sounds like she was relying on you/DH to spend Christmas with. She sounds lonely and lonely people can often end up a bit self-absorbed because they spend so much time dwelling on their own lives, they expect others to too!

I suppose the question here is do you like her? If not then I'd just reduce the amount of contact you have so that it's easy to ignore the histrionics. If you do, then I think you need to sit her down and tell her what's what (kindly or else she'll flip out). Perpetually allowing her to behave like this will mean she will get the attention she craves and negatively reinforce the bad behaviour.