Hello all -
This is my first post here. Thanks to all who have contributed already, I've reviewed many of you threads/posts. I'm curious your collective thoughts on how to interact with other siblings, if they appear enmeshed with a narcissitic parent, that one's already broken away from.
Here are some details, pardon the length:
I have what appears to be a N mother, a recently deceased alcoholic father, and 3 brothers, one of which has schizophrenia. I've personally been treated for depression for past 13 years, but anxiety-based mental health issues since childhood. An alcoholic parent and a schizophrenic sibling created plenty of emotional issues for me to figure out, but I've been actively slogging through many of them over the past 15 years. It's consumed energy otherwise spent building career/wealth, but have no regrets as I have a strong, stable marriage and avoided the obvious adult pitfalls of this type of childhood.
My father died in Feb2004, after a 2 month bout of cancer, diagnosed too late to do much but help him die. During his final months and the months following his death, observing my mom's actions and the dynamic among other family members (my 2 brothers without mental illness) triggered an unsustainable spike in my depression, distinct from mourning my dad's death. I began getting a dark sinking feeling that there was much more dysfunction within my family, beyond what I already faced/dealt with, but I just couldn't put my finger on what was going on. [Lot's of detail I'm skipping here, but happy to provide if desired.]
Although I had not yet learned of narcissitc personality disorder, I confronted my mother about a lifelong pattern of very harmful, un-motherlike, treatment of her children...in a lenghy, angry but respectful letter, seeking some context to explain her actions but making clear that I wouldn't tolerate certain types of treatment from her in the future. I wrote it partly out of utter confusion...I couldn't make sense of all the hurt I was now aware she was responsible for creating...why would a 'parent' do this? etc.
Waiting for a response, as days turned to weeks, I started dusting off my self-help book collection and took a stroll through that section of the library, found M.Scott Peck's 'People of the Lie'...and the light-bulb went off re: narcissitic personality disorder. And now lots of online research and other books later, I'm fairly sure my mom has NPD, and the pieces have been falling into place to figure out the hard-to-define-but-destructive dysfunction in my family.
Her response to my letter, about 1 month later, was what you'd expect from a narcissist I suppose, only adding more evidence to my suspicions, and it was very much a how-dare-you-express-anger/you-are-the-problem/good-luck-with-rest-of-your-life message from my mother. By the time I read her letter I had already concluded the best outcome of all may be to cut off most/all contact with her, so I responded with a brief, but tactically superficial letter, which I expect to repeat every month or so, to allow my children to know they have a grandmother, but not expose them or me to the web of destructive manipulation.
[btw -- a strange thing happened along the way...my chronic depression, which has been diagnosed as genetic/life-long has lifted considerablly...for the first time in 10 years I'm on a less-than-theraputic dosage of meds, and have been routinely exercising, lost 15 lbs since my compuslive eating habits dissapted.]
This 'enlightened' state has clearly been helpful to me. Though I feel generally heart-broken and sad for the moment, I am also wonderfully free and optimistic. I know I have more work to do, but I feel confident in the certainty of the boundaries I've established with my N-mother.
The question is how to interact with my siblings, and the types of boundaries needed (or not) to shield myself from my mom's meddlings.
The most destructive actions on her part were to divide the family, using innuendo/lies, as a means-to-the-end of convincing everyone what a saintly martyr she was to put up with such 'problems': as sons were were turned against our father. As 'healthy' brothers, we were turned against my brother with schizophrenia. And along the way we were turned again each other. In every case my N-mother acted as a gate-keeper/broker over all the intra-family relationships...the general pattern: we stopped having relationships with each other, instead relying on my mother's intermediation to provide information about how/what each brother/family was doing, craftily framed with some sort of unflattering spin, which in turn merely fed more gossip among the other brothers, and reinforcement of some type of distrust/dislike. The relationships that remained were friendly but tense...none of us 'healthy' brothers had harmed each other, but we were warily distant for no good reason.
Oddly the brother with schizophrenia (call him A.) who was largely ostracized from the rest of the family (I reestablished contact with him about 12 years ago) has a good handle of the family-of-origin issues, including narcissism...but he has plenty of other issues he struggles with and doesn't have relationships with the other siblings, though not of his choosing.
In recent years I got closer to another brother (call him G.) and his family (all the cousins are girls, enjoy seeing each other), but he lives in same town as my N-mother and has integrated a fair amount of his life with hers (for example, she provides some day-care, while he is working, during his wife's return to grad school, etc, and he does chores around her house, etc).
After my dad's death, G. and I reflected on his alcoholism and some of those effects on our family, and it was the first time anyone else besides A. wanted to talk about those things. It was actually in response to one of G's letters that I really started reflecting on -all- the issues in the family, not just the easy-to-recognize alcoholism/codependence ones. And while my response to him morphed into the letter to my mother (I realized I needed to -tell- her about the anger first, not just complain about it to a sibling), I provided him a copy of it for two reasons: it was on topic for discussing family issues, but also since he was day-to-day close with my mother, I wanted him to have a copy of exactly what I wrote, perhaps as a way to innoculate our relationship -somewhat- from what I expected would be a back-channel back-lash smear campaign from my mother.
I am looking for ideas/advice/comments on how or whether to reengage with G. and his family, in a way that doesn't suck me back into my mother's sphere of influence (and harm), yet doesn't dictate to him how he should live his life. He knows the extent of my anger and initial analysis of my mother's role in our family's dysfunction, but not yet what I've learned re: NPD, and what I think is a more accurate/refined analysis than the one I sent him.
One complicating factor -- in the midst of all this I've been in the process of setting up a Special Needs Trust for A. (btw - the SNT is a way for parents/others to leave inheritance to a disabled child, for limited uses, that would be protected from the gov't from grabbing as compensation for the public disablity benefits paid over the years). My parents decided to leave any inheritance to the 3 'healthy' brothers, and cut A. out...with the vague hope/unwritten plan that the 3 others would give A. his 'share'...the rationale is that if handled otherwise the state would claim its share...though this ignored other legal vehicles, such as SNT. In otherwords, my parents punted and left a sticky situation to their kids -- coming to agreement on an unpopular sibling, ostracized at my parents behest. There is a small amount of life insurance settlement -- 3 of us have A.'s share, but 2 brothers have had nothing to do with A for at least 6 years, so for them to be active co-trustees in a SNT, they'd need to reengage, something both of them have passively indicated they have no desire to do. A SNT would create the vehicle for getting A. this money, but in discussing the concept with other 2 brothers, it has exposed the nasty dark shame of our family's treatment of A, and it alone has caused a huge bubble of underlying tension between the 'healthy' brothers to rise to the surface, as I've been the only one in touch with A. I've since realized that A. has merely been a symbolic and undeserving lightning rod for a lot of anger in our family, a sleight-of-hand diversion by my mother, I now suspect. I'm about 1 week away from getting a basic SNT in place -- based on the angry responses from G. and other brother D., they will not be co-trustees, but its too early to tell whether they will contribute their 'share' into the trust. If they do that, I can tell my extended family (2 aunts, we are their only nephews) that they have an option to remember A. after their deaths (if they want to) that the rest of the family (the 'healthy' brothers) have bought into.
Even the real tension caused by the SNT trust is just a distraction...effective, but real and something that has muddied the waters btwn my brothers...if I were to do it over again, maybe I'd have tried to space the timing of these two issues (confronting N-mother, 'fixing' a long-standing situation re: estranged sibling), but the issue with A. just fueled the angry questions I needed to ask of my N-mother.
But at present I have no idea where G. stands on my confrontation with my N-mother. I suspect, but can't say for sure, that he is subject, and perhaps a participant in, a whole new batch of poisonous mythology from my mother that will make me out to be the very very bad guy. Whether he believes it, he will likely be affected in someway, and I don't expect him to set similar boundaries that I've set in the near-term, much less recognize that there is anything specifically wrong with my mother. In otherwords, I think he is 'infected' with my N-mother's influence, and can forsee/fear continued, very subtle, but effective, attitude from G. and his wife, should I pretend that nothing has changed and try to carry on as before (this assumes he's not completely pissed off at me, which I have less control over). Is such low-grade chronic attitude from them something I can tolerate without confronting? If confronting it, do I risk formally alienating G. if he claims he is doing nothing wrong (do we open the whole can of worms I just opened with my N-mother). Or am I forcing my analysis on him/his family before he's ready. If withdrawing completely without explanation, am I poisoning future relationship with him and our respective kids (cousins).
Anyway...thanks for reading this far. Any ideas, comments will be greatly appreciated...
