Wasn’t going to post to this thread, but what the hell, why not.
A close relative is trying to cope with mental illness plus a set of bizarre symptoms that resemble of combination a Tourette’s and parkisonism. She has depression that is being treated with meds and she receives weekly therapy with a psychologist. The Tourette’s/parksonism symptoms has emerged seemingly out of the blue within the last couple of years, although she’s had tics for a while that she has masked.
I sometimes find it really hard to talk to her. Why? Because when we talk about her condition and state of mind, I usually end up feeling worried and drained and unloaded upon. She details her problems, her feelings, her fears, the issues bringing her down. This has been a pattern between us for as long as I’ve known her. From the days when we were in school and she felt stupid when the other kids would make fun of her and I kept having to tell her they were wrong. To the days when she was convinced in her inferiority because of attitudes she perceived from her boss, and I kept having to tell her that he (or her perceptions) was wrong. To the current time when she is telling me about the ins and outs of her thoughts and mind, and none of it seems positive, and I’m left needing to say something and I don’t know what to say or how to say.
Is she venting? Is she looking for advice? Sympathy? There’s no question that I’m sympathetic towards her because I love her, but when all you have to give is sympathy, it makes talking hard. Sympathy doesn’t seem to do very much, anyway, so it leaves me feeling impotent. Encouragement doesn’t seem to do much either, but I keep trying.
It’s like I don’t know, and it’s frustrates me sometimes. I care about her so much that it pains me to know she’s suffering, but it’s hard for me to figure out what to do with the information she’s telling me. When she tells me that she completely is indifferent towards other people’s problems (and I can’t help drawing the conclusion that this includes me), I try to say the right thing, but inside I’m thinking “Why are you telling me this? What should I do with this information?” And then I feel guilty for making it be about me instead of her. She feels it is important that I know this stuff, so I listen and take it in. But it doesn’t make me feel good. I feel guilty for even considering that a problem worth complaining about. But it is how I feel.
She recently told me that she’s been diagnosed with a personality disorder and she detailed all the traits of this disorder and pointed out how she matches up with them. She told me that it has a poor prognosis. Suicidal thoughts accompany this PD. And she wanted me to know this and understand it and accept it. But I can’t say I do. All the traits she ran down to me, she has ascribed to herself before, in various conversations within the last year or so; the only difference is that she didn’t put a name on all of it until then. But to her it was big deal to lay all of that out. Now it’s not that I’m wedded to the notion of her being “normal” and am in denial. A part of me just disputes the idea that parts of her personality are pathological products. To me, all of those things are traits that make her her, and I don’t think see them as indicators of aberration. And I probably never will.
In a way now it seems as though we’ve gone full circle, with her condeming herself as a messed up person (just as she has always done, just in less clinical ways), and me sitting there, wondering why she can’t just accept herself as being fine just different, time to move on with life, time to work on improving what you can and working around that which you can’t, and not dwelling on the limitations. Rather than getting bogged down in critical “What’s wrong me?!” introspection that can prevent one from living a peaceful life.
My frustration bubbled up in that conversation and I wasn’t as receptive as I should have been. Now she feels like she can’t share these things with me. She now feels as if she has to put on a happy face to keep me happy. She feels like she opened up something that she’d been hiding for a while, and like an idiot, I completely blocked her out. Because it’s hard listening to the conclusions of an obsessively introspective, self-critical person. It’s really hard, at least for me.
So my emotional struggle is that I don’t know how to always be there for my sister in the way that she needs.
