Dear Cali Chica:

Good Wednesday Morning!

Let’s settle this dust:

1. “My sister has played the victim role”, so did your mother.

2. “The funny thing is, I didn’t think she was playing the victim role, I thought that she truly was the victim”, she here applies to your sister and to your mother, you can place either in this sentence and it is still a true sentence.

3. “In many instances, this cut me from feeling that I was a victim, and feeling that I had to do everything to save her, the true victim”. Again, this sentence is true if she is your sister or your mother.

4. “we’ve had many fun conversations.. it’s not difficult to have fun. Just like it was with my mother, so many laughs, so much humor…. It’s a weird combination of having a ton of fun with her but also feeling frenzied from her”- her stands for your sister and your mother.

5. “She has a lot of anger and resentment about why her life is the way it is”- true to your sister, true to your mother.

6. “If she was here on this thread .. she would say, well you’re the same. Think about how much you were complaining about S this summer! .. She constantly compares the way I act with people with her, in a way kind of saying that it’s not like I’m much better!”- you wrote this about your sister. But I remember that you shared with me long ago that when you tried to help your mother, suggesting at one time (I don’t remember the exact details)  that she sees a professional, a psychiatrist perhaps, for her depression,  your mother’s response was: you are the one who is depressed! You are the one that needs help, look at you.. you can’t sleep, you are .. all messed up (paraphrased).

..So you try to help her, to lift her up and her response is to drag you down. (her, here applies to both).

You wrote about your sister: “She thinks we are alike- or that my behaviors are bad too”- not exactly, what she is doing is dragging you down, telling you: don’t try to fix me, you are broken yourself! Same message as your mother’s.

5. “We are both victims from the same mother… I too am a victim”.

What an interesting turn of (cognitive) events, and I never thought of this myself until this very morning, as I type this (and the thought is bamboozling to me, never have occurred to me before): you may very well be your sister’s victim.

“I noticed that the anger, the rudeness, and the lack of respect is new behavior.. it feels especially ugly. Because it is ugly.. In fact, during my birthday, I felt so frenzied, and looking back it was probably because her presence incites frenzy in me. It’s a weird combination of having a ton of fun with her but also feeling frenzied from her”-

– I remember your birthday, from my communication with your sister at the time. It was a few days after she cut contact with your parents. This here is an opportunity to understand better. Why don’t you tell  me all that you remember about what she said and did, how she behaved that day/ evening and  I will let you what I clearly remember to be her state of mind that day.

anita