Dear Cali Chica:

I read your post until and including “1)”, where you asked about my thoughts. So I will respond to this part before reading the next part.

You wrote: “One may say that’s on me, my sister is fine and perhaps I am hypersensitive and feeling uneasy… when in reality she’s fine.”

When we are in the  presence of a  family member with whom in the  past  we experienced lots of distress, and that person acts fine now, we are  not experiencing her (or him) as she is here-and-now, as if she is a person new to us.

We experience the person as she was there-and-then, throughout our history with her, during the most distressing  episodes. This is how the brain operates without our choice: distressing experiences  get recorded very effectively.

For that first  hour, you were not triggered, the distress was not there. But with time, you received more input from her: more visuals, more facial expressions on her face, more words she  said, more input and finally, soon enough, all that distress recorded in your brain during years of distressing experiences, all that distress was  triggered and  you experienced it.

You wrote regarding your sister: “Here mere presence makes me anxious and  uneasy… the energy I had was changed instantly when  I  was around  her”- that is the  activation of recorded past experience.

Following that triggering, you reacted automatically, taking on the well established role from before, “uplifting her and  being her support system”.

There is nothing you can do about this and there is  nothing your sister can do about it. The things she told you in the past,  wanting  to kill herself and so forth, those things are well registered, effectively recorded in your brain, glued in those neuropathways with strong  emotion. You cannot remove those pathways any more than she can unsay what she said.

Nothing she says now can take away what she  said then.

For your benefit and for her  benefit, as you continue to heal and as she continues to heal, to make that  progress you mentioned, it is important  to avoid each other’s physical company. I wish it wasn’t like that. I am sure you wish it wasn’t like that, but there is nothing you can do about the way brains work.

You wrote: “I become someone I don’t really like around my sister, someone who  is uneasy and anxious. Someone who  is on edge…when my sister arrived I felt like that old uneasy ball of stress… Almost  like snapping back into old  me.”- this is  the price to spending time  with her. Maybe in the future it will be different, following more healing away from  her and away from other family  members.

Establishing a relationship with your sister  that is congruent with your healing (and hers) will need to be gradual. An hour, then a break, then another hour the day after, a… re-introduction of her into your life,  gradually, in a  planned, cautious way. It may be that you will choose to not have any contact with her at all, or limit the contact to phone only, or to email only… you choose.  Whatever is congruent with your healing is the right choice.

To the next part  of your post: I agree whole mindedly: “I am someone who is still healing.. So I cannot honestly take anyone who may be an energy suck.  Whether that person is doing it on purpose or not, perhaps it doesn’t matter.”

The idea to see your sister seemed at the time  like a good idea but  it was not a good idea because you didn’t take into consideration the  triggering affect, the scientific fact that your experience with her will not be a  product of the here-and-now, this particular weekend, but a product of a lifetime of distressing experience with her, triggered and re-experienced all at once. Learn from this experience and   don’t re-create it.

I like how you and your husband communicated on the matter. He reads like a decent,  reasonable and  loving man.

See to it that the relationship between the two of you is safe, remains safe, mutually supportive. You need this relationship to be  always safe, loving.

I agree with: “it  is not about now slowly assimilating back into normal life”- what was  normal must not be  normal again. Healing is about having  a new life, not a return of the  old one. Nothing about the old life  may be the same again, nor should it be.

“It is not the appropriate time for me to expose myself to other individuals or situations that will drain energy… I do have to be very careful”- I agree, absolutely.

Let  me know if you are satisfied with my reply and if you would like me to elaborate on anything. If there is something in your post that  I didn’t  attend to, let me know.

anita