Am I overreacting for being completely done with my brother’s behavior?
I need outside perspective because everyone around me has moved on and I’m still sitting here feeling like I’m losing my mind.
Some context: I have been the backbone of my family for years. I’ve carried a lot like major death and loss, other family members’ struggles, being the one who holds things together. I’m used to it. But I’m tired.
My brother has a history of serious drug addiction. He has been sober from his drug of choice but has since developed what I can only describe as a serious drinking problem...one he completely denies. He says he can stop whenever he wants.
Over the last several months his behavior has been increasingly difficult. He speaks to me in a degrading tone consistently...it’s not playful, it’s nasty and harsh (for example...shut up you stupid bitch) He also knows I have sensory sensitivities around being touched in a specific way. (like my ears nothing super in appropriate he knows it sets me off) He is aware of how sensory triggers work. And yet when he’s been drinking he will deliberately taunt me with those exact triggers over and over until I react. Then when I do react he points to that as me being the problem.
About five months ago things came to a head at a major family milestone celebration.
He had made promises to multiple people that he wouldn’t drink that night. He was supposed to be responsible for several family members. He got heavily intoxicated anyway. Someone close to him ended up in tears. Family members who have a strained relationship with him were present and could clearly see how drunk he was. All this occurred within the home I just moved into.
When I confronted him he lied to my face before finally admitting he’d had “a few.” We talked the next day and I thought we cleared the air. I later discovered he had gone straight back to drinking after our conversation and continued for days.
Given his history with harder substances and the severity of his behavior I gave him a drug test. He took it and it came back clean. But when I tried to explain why his drinking was still alarming he became belligerent and defensive because he felt we had already moved on.
He sent a group apology to the family. It was a statement, not an apology. He never asked how anyone was feeling. He never reached out individually to the people most directly affected.
This has continued for months and things escalated again recently on his birthday of all days. He was drinking. He was doing the sensory taunting. He was speaking to me disrespectfully. I tried to calmly tell him he crossed my boundary. He flipped it and accused me of crossing his boundary over something lighthearted and playful that has been an inside joke between us for years rooted in genuine closeness and history. However, I honored his request but stood my ground, telling him that he continuously crosses a boundaries
He equated that to him repeatedly speaking to me in a degrading way. I called it out. He then gaslighted me claiming I never communicated my boundaries to him — which is not true.
I tried to end it peacefully because it was his birthday. He was not receptive.
I suggested therapy/ sub abuse programs. He got defensive.
The people around him enable him. Everyone else seems to always move on. I feel like I am the only one who sees what is actually happening.
Am I overreacting? Am I too close to this or am I seeing it clearly?