Dear Cali Chica:

I feel comfortable. I wrote to you earlier that the details of what she shared with me here and in private email is confidential, I will not tell you what she told me. But what I learned about her, that is my private property, to share as I see fit. And my purpose of sharing it with you is for your “own best interest” which is what you stated right above. (As well as for her own best interest! I am still interested in her best interest and wish her well).

I never thought about this issue though, how you can possibly practice strong boundaries with her, so let’s figure this out together. I’ll think as I type: let’s say you have a puppy who is as cute as can be, delightful! You have a wonderful time with this puppy, but every once in a while the puppy bites you and your husband. You don’t know when it’s coming, and often when it happens, you don’t even know you were bitten. You feel confused, it hurts, but no imprint of teeth where you were bitten, you are not sure. What boundaries to you set with this puppy?

You can put one of these things over its face, so it can never bite you. But you can’t do  that with  your sister, make her incapable of talking to you or behaving any which way, you can’t restrain her. So back to the puppy, restraining its mouth is not an option. What do you do?

You can do what a lot  of people do: limit the time with the puppy/ with people who figuratively bite. So you are bitten less often. It doesn’t prevent biting, only make it so that you are bitten less often. A lot  of people try something else, to not feel the pain, to be less sensitive. It would be something like when you are with the puppy, you were thick gloves that cover your hands and arms, maybe you can wear an armor, so  that the bites don’t hurt. But it is quite clumsy, to  play with a puppy while wearing protection. It restrains you! Problem is there is no such thing as an emotional armor. You can numb yourself for a short time  only, at best, while let’s say taking particular numbing drugs, tranquilizers, or narcotics, or let’s say you take a very hot bath and for the first five minutes you are not anxious about when you will be bitten next.

What if you scare the puppy, when it bites you, you scream at  it, or hit it, or place it in a cage, isolated, as punishment. Maybe the puppy will learn its lesson and no longer bite you-

– I think I am getting somewhere here. Not that you should hit your sister of  course. But let her suffer a consequence when she does bite you. But to do that, you have to  identify the time you were just bitten. This is the difficult part because you don’t know! Sometimes you may think you got it, but you are not sure, you may ask her, she won’t tell you and at times you have no  idea.

Unlike the puppy imagery, there are no teeth imprint or blood to make it clear to you that you were indeed bitten.

Take it from here, will you?

anita