Sibling appropriating my childhood traumas

[Noiseneverstops]

My brother has appropriated my childhood traumas and has been telling everyone what an awful childhood he had growing up using stories of my experiences to perpetuate his victim status. I asked him to stop but he now claims all these things happened to him. I’m not sure it’s directly gaslighting but it’s certainly appropriation.

For background - we have a narcissistic mother (mid70s now), who herself had a difficult mother. She treated us very differently growing up. I was the older odd scapegoat child and he was the golden child who could perform and behave exactly as she expected. He was paraded about as her very sociable pride and joy and I was quite literally the shameful child who was expected to do all the housework and be quiet and invisible. They’d joke I was Cinderella. My mum was slap happy and would resort to her fists quickly with me but my brother escaped the worst of this with his charm. His survival technique was to side with my mum, so I got the brunt of his crap too which meant school wasn’t really an escape. He did apologise to me when his first child was born for not understanding.

I’m not denying he will have suffered at the hands of our mother growing up, she could be awful to us both and sun shone out her arse for everyone else on the planet. With his past two relationships his partners have spoke to me about how awful his childhood must have been recalling these quite specific events that didn’t actually happen to him but did happen to me. My brother is now publicly recounting these stories of things our mother did to me, as if it happened to him and he’s adopted the perfect victim stance complete with this weird fawning sympathy from those who hear his stories. He’s thinking of writing a book or screenplay of these experiences.

My mum would always play the victim too for sympathy (often around what an awful unbearable child & teen I was which led to her friends telling me to be a better child and to be more like my brother).

I just want to get on with my life and move away from the trauma and crap as an adult. I’m not a victim and having these stories brought up at family events or have his friends/partners approach me to tell me how awful he must have had it keeps bringing back the past I try to escape.

Before anyone suggests NC/LC that is not practical for a number of reasons as long as our parents are still alive. We live in a really small town that I cannot afford to leave so are in similar social circles, same small pub etc.

I don’t want to belittle his own traumas at the hands of my mother but I also don’t want to hear him recounting my experiences as his own. What does he even get from that?

Maybe you just remember it differently to him. It’s not uncommon for young children to not see other points of view.

I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss it as appropriation. It’s perfectly possible he had a differently awful childhood to you in ways you just didn’t see. Or his guilt about having been less obviously the target of your mother’s behaviour left him very conflicted and ashamed, so he’s giving his partners a more ‘acceptable’ version of an unhappy childhood, not saying ‘I feel bad because I benefited from my mother’s treatment of my sibling, and I didn’t stand up for her’?

And this. I have four siblings. We have entirely different, mutually-conflicting versions of our childhood, despite growing up in the same household with the same parents.

I suspect he feels guilty for what he did to you. It’s inappropriate guilt, because he was a child, trying to survive, but I’d call him out, every time. For your own sake, you need to advocate for yourself and for what you know happened. Maybe talk to him alone once, and then after that, contradict every person who relays a story to you. Even if you do it lightly: “Isn’t memory strange, because that happened to me, not him! I’ll tell him when I see him.”

I quite explicitly said he will have had is own awful experiences of my mum. He is appropriating specific instances of mine, not his, retelling verbatim placing himself in my role. That is not me or himremembering differently, that’s appropriating my life story for his own purposes.

These things happened well into my 20s when I left home so it’s not a small child’s memory lapse either.

Thank you for understanding.

I am trying to be empathetic because i know he was not immune to her behaviour but i feel like this is just him becoming her in some ways. Like an extension of the crap I went through at their hands. Taking away my experience for their own gain (sympathy).

he probably has plenty of how own stories but mine are “worse” so ripe for gaining more sympathy.

Maybe he has a sort of Survivor's Guilt? He can't face he was the Golden Child so has chosen to share your pain..

There is nothing you can do. Its just a different form of your mother’s disease, really. He craves the limelight—she raised him that way—and being “the victim” is sometimes a great way of getting the attention one craves.

Just shrug and say “I’m pretty sure that happened to me, not him. But he can always try bringing it up to our parents and complain to them. As I recall he was the golden child to my scapegoat and this is just a continuation of that syndrome now that mother’s love isn’t enough for him. I look forward to the dramatization and the musical.”

I'm sorry OP and I believe you.

I think narcissism can be learned behaviour. BIL hated their mother because she was a professional victim/narc. Guess what he is now. DH was very unwell a few years ago so he pretended he might have cancer.
It just always has to be about them.

My sibling appropriates my memories too, I’ve often wondered if it’s because they drink a lot and their memories have become muddled?

@Noiseneverstops make sure you extend your empathy to yourself. You’ve been raised in a situation where you had to put others’ feelings first and discount your own, and, if this way of visualising it is helpful, you effectively have a little Noiseneverstops inside you, screaming that this is unfair and begging adult you to stand up for her. And when you do, you will feel more peaceful, despite any social awkwardness that may happen.

Honestly even with the small town as you describe it will be better to forget the pub etc and go NC or just avoid them as much as you possibly can - otherwise is just a toxic cycle that you’re feeding.