Hi everyone.
My relationship with my younger 18-year-old sister is incredibly unstable. Throughout my life when things went wrong she would reverberate all those faults, from breaking up with a boyfriend to failing one exam out of many. Sometimes she shows me compassion however it is rare and during a time when I was very lonely (all my friends moved away to other cities for university) she would tell her own friends how I have nobody and nobody likes me. When she said that comment, I began to cry silently so when my mother came to say goodnight, I couldn’t reply- I stayed underneath the covers crying. My sister acknowledged that I didn’t reply and said I was a genuinely horrible person and it upset me so much because it feels like my sister hates me through ignorance. I admit there has been times I have shouted at her after she said things like that, and my mum got stressed after so I immediately regretted it. (At this point it feels like I’m only trying to maintain a relationship with my sister to please my mum who hates when we argue).
I found out last year about mindfulness and I’ve been trying to maintain a mindful approach when it comes to communicating with my sister but there are some comments that are too much for me and trigger an immediate response for me to become angry and start crying. No matter how much deep breathing practices I do, in that moment of anger, I just feel hurt and forget a calm mind. I would love to improve my relationship with my sister but no matter how much I try to reach out to her, it feels like we simply won’t be able to. She is not a very affectionate person and refuses to hug or say loving words back to me or my mother. So if we cannot improve our relationship that way, how would I go about improving my attitude in order to accept her comments and actions calmly?
Thank you for taking the time to read this.