Can I get a reality check please?
I work with my family, in a family business. Get on fine with everyone, good team, but my brother - the boss - is a real problem and I believe what is going on is a sustained pattern of narcissistic abuse - but half of me also thinks I am mad and imagining it.
He presents as charming, a bit vulnerable and generous to the outside world and in his own mind. If any of you met him, you'd probably think he was sweet.
Things he does to everyone:
- He consistently minimises and rewrites contributions while taking credit for results others deliver.
- He chooses favourite people / people in his life and hires them, massively overpays them / involves them in things way beyond their role and expertise because they admire him.
- He creates business chaos by not listening to what people say, then expects them to absorb the fallout with overtime and so on.
- He seems to have a women-problem and tends to exclude them from relevant work conversations.
- He manipulates everyone, all the time, to get what he wants and will just change tactics if needed. Nothing gets in his way!
Things he seems to specifically do to me:
- He makes promises in writing and breaks them repeatedly.
- He financially exploits me, hugely underpaying me vs others and implying I should be grateful.
- He gaslights - denying documented events and rewriting history to suit his narrative.
- He uses other family members to apply guilt or pressure to me.
- He alternates between warmth and cruelty in a way that has made me physically ill because I feel like I am chasing approval.
- He exploits loyalty and feels entitled to it but gives none back.
If I attempt to confront him or push back...
- He attacks, deflects and positions himself as the victim.
- He diminishes me and tells me I am nothing / not really a good person or not good at my job
- He talks behind my back to colleagues or family to make me look crazy or defensive.
- He blames me for things he himself did.
- He threatens me with various things (like losing my job)
And through all this, he sort of plays the innocent with the rest of the family and gets away with it, because I absorb it quietly.
Recently I decided I had had enough and walked out. Since then he has done everything possible to hurt me.
- He denies he did anything at all wrong and has positioned me as having a tantrum.
- He has used other family members to beg me to come back with various offers.
- He has contacted me to tell me the company will go out of business and implying it is my fault.
We have another brother, and he completely agrees with me on everything, but he's trying also to persuade me to come back because I did a lot of the work! We have parents involved who know what my brother is like, but also sort of minimise it and guilt trip me if I don't absorb it.
I feel like I am going mad.
I left because he told me I was not very good at my job (constantly), because he made it difficult to do my job (because he created chaos or understaffed me), was underpaying me (nobody else was being underpaid), overworking me (to point of physical illness), embarrassing me in front of colleagues (by minimising me, going over my head), saying things about me which were professionally humiliating (and simply not true), and because I had asked him lots of times to stop this behavior and he refused.
I am now being positioned as a "bad sister" and "disgusting person" and as much as my head knows this is just not true, I do feel like I am constantly questioning my own reality.
Am I? Is this normal sibling stuff and I am being a baby? It doesn't feel normal to me :(