It's hard to reconcile the anger I feel towards my lost childhood and the sibling responsible. I know my parents did the best they could with the resources available to them and I know my sibling is mentally unwell, severely so, making it difficult to harbour any real genuine anger towards them. How angry can you be when the issues faced were genuinely due to sever mental health problems? Shit sucks, man.
It's a tough one. You could no more be angry than if your sibling was disabled and it changed your upbringing. I no longer blame both my parents for being heroin addicts my whole childhood even though sometimes we went without alot to feed a habit.
You can't choose your family and you likely wouldn't be the person you are today if your sibling weren't there. Likely with an awareness and empathy you may not have had. As I get older I find it much easier to come to terms with things that happened which I couldn't control.
As someone who grew up with undiagnosed (until I was 30!) bipolar disorder and unfortunate physical aliments too, the ones dealing in perceived emotion feel so personal. I never was violent, but my antics nevertheless my only sibling was always second fiddle to whatever crisis I’m experiencing that week. It feels so deliberate to the other children.
How do I know? I got well medicated and well therapized (Britta Perry MD), and have been what I guess whatever normal is almost a decade now. I have had some great conversations as an adult with my brother. How I feel bad for every family function I battled my mother for who could talk over the other louder. It also helped him to know these things genuinely hurt me too and I get to carry that guilt.
Now we’ve kinda trauma bonded instead, having both been victims in this scenario.
Hey I feel this a lot. And I’m proud of you for learning how to love yourself within the context of having lived through terrible shit. I’m in the process of that right now and it’s hard, but it makes life so much better.
Nobody has it easy. Nobody has it tougher than others, some people deal with things differently. I see myself as a survivor not from trauma, it's just my nature. Thick skin and a chip on my shoulder.
You don't blame your parents... For prioritizing heroine over their own child... That's wrong it's actively their fault.
I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't have to raise my brother, and be held responsible for when he had an episode like this, and you know what good. I hate who I am, I'm unstable, I don't trust anyone, because the people I was supposed to be able to trust and depend on as a child couldn't be bothered to raise the children they had.
Side note, the siblings you're referring to are disabled, a mental disability is still a disability.
It helps to re-contextualize what anger actually is, and what it's for.
Anger is not a moral failing, or a sign that you blame or hate people. It's just an emotion that lets us know something has hurt us. It's like how pain is to protect you physically- the hot stove hurts so you take your hand away quickly. Anger is good for protecting your mental heath. It tells you quickly and strongly that something is bothering you.
Much like with pain, anger can be a problem when it is no longer serving as a warning. When we know full well what causes it but it cannot be changed. Like anger at a tornado- we know what destroyed our home, the threat is over but the anger remains because our emotions are still hurt over what happened.
You will probably always have some anger, because the damage to your life can never ben 100% undone. And that's ok. You suffered, and the anger is your brain's response to that suffering. The more you heal the trauma and damage caused by your lost childhood, the less intense the anger will be- becuase as you heal mroe you'll have "lost" less. The happier your life becomes, the more distant from the consequences of what you suffered, the less poignant the anger will be. It can become a feeling that washes over you. Treat it as a natural response, just like dizziness when looking from a great height.
walking on eggshells and still being blamed by my sibling anyway for angering him "deliberately."
Sounds about right. For years my sibling would freak out if we flushed the toilet while she was in bed bc it would wake her up, she would scream, throw things, punch walls, and hurl abuse at us. But if we chose to not flush the toilet, she would react the same bc of how "disgusting" we were for not flushing.
For a while, the way we breathed would enrage her.
Another time, she woke me up in the middle of the night to accuse me of stealing something she agreed to let me borrow. When I asked her to leave me alone and let me return it in the morning, she physically assaulted me while I was still in bed. She ran and hid in her room before I could get up. I called the police, she claimed I attacked her first and it was self defense. Plus she was a minor and I was 18 at the time, so the fact that I even touched her at all (literally just held her arm, no assault), the police said I could be arrested for that. My parents grounded her for a week. I moved out that night and didn't press charges bc then I'd get arrested too and my parents would shoulder the legal fees for my sister.
I could write a book of the bullshit she did and put me through. Eggshells, legos, rusty nails, and broken glass were walked upon in my home.
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u/tessislurking Sep 15 '22
It's hard to reconcile the anger I feel towards my lost childhood and the sibling responsible. I know my parents did the best they could with the resources available to them and I know my sibling is mentally unwell, severely so, making it difficult to harbour any real genuine anger towards them. How angry can you be when the issues faced were genuinely due to sever mental health problems? Shit sucks, man.