Dear Lutie:

After reading your recent post I went back and read again everything you wrote in your 2018 thread (I was wrong, it was Jan 2018, more than 3.5 years ago) and your posts in your current thread.

In the original post of this thread, you wrote: “I used to look up to my older sister as the well rounded person who is intelligent, sociable, outgoing and brave“-  it seems to me, from having read all your posts, that it is you, Lutie (screen name), who is the well-rounded person who is intelligent, sociable, outgoing and brave, as well as kind and patient.

You asked: “What can I do to break free from this cycle of aggression?”

As a Start, you will have to live elsewhere, away from your aggressive and abusive sister (or she will have to move out). Problem with the rest of your family is that they have endured and excused her aggression: “my family and I endured whatever she said or did because she was depressed“- she does not have the right to be aggressive toward others because she is depressed. (It doesn’t make sense to stand up to aggression only if the aggressor and abuser is happy!) Aggression and abuse should not be endured or excused.

To stop your sister’s aggression and abuse, the rest of the family needs to be united in refusal to accept it. But your mother maintains the situation of your sister abusing you: “My mom would always ask me to overlook whatever my sister did or try to be empathetic of her situation”. Your mother is wrong: the victim of abuse must NOT overlook abuse and be empathetic to the abuser. When the abused feels empathy for the abuser- the abuse is maintained!

Your sister believes, so it seems, that abusing others is okay when she is angry (“Whenever she is angry, she would accuse me.. blames me for everything..“)- abuse is not excused by anger. (Imagine that abuse is not  okay only if the abuser is calm!) Abuse is not okay no matter what the abuser feels!

“My therapist told me the best way for me to let go is to forgive but I am unable to do so since it pains me how she doesn’t know how much she had hurt me through out the years“- forgiving an abuser, just like feeling empathy for an abuser, is always a bad idea when you still live with the abuser and still abused by her.

Imagine a deer feeling empathy for an approaching mountain lion, thinking something like: “oh, poor  mountain lion, he looks so hungry.. I must let it eat me!”  Imagine the mountain lion biting the deer, and the deer has a chance to escape, but doesn’t because it thinks something like: “I shouldn’t be angry at the mountain lion and run away, or fight him.  I should forgive him!”

Empathy for and forgiving an abuser who did not change his/ her ways is bad advice. It is bad advice when your mother gives it to you, or a therapist!

anita