I try and keep strong boundaries with my mum (dad died last year) and my brother, golden child with long term problems. They have a weird, narcissist relationship, which works for them.
Occasionally my mum will try to drag me in, with a 'would you message your brother, I haven't heard from him and he has a cold'.
I only hear from my brother when he has a problem or wants to offload. He's not and never has brought any positivity to my life for many decades. So I stick to minimal contact, standard platitudes.
This time I snapped back. I'm tired of being right about his alcoholism, his attention seeking, his laziness. I'm also tired of hearing my mum encouraging unhelpful behaviour, stoking unpleasantness with neighbours, drinking to relax.
I tackle normal life with weekly phone contact with mum, minimal.information about my life, respond in my own time to comments about the weather & inane local news.
Still I just find after any contact out of the ordinary, they take up too much head space, how do I minimise that?