u/Cutie2882

My therapist gave me an incredible metaphor and visualization for what my family dynamic is doing to me and it really stuck so I thought I would share.

For context I’m 28F and was the scapegoat or invisible child in my family. I’ve been no contact with my narc dad before but my golden child/problem child brother recently committed suicide so I’ve been talking to my dad more often to help him through. I sometimes think my mom has BPD, but I don’t think she’s a narc.

I was talking to my therapist about how I felt like every year something happens with my family that sucks me back in to the chaos I though I had escaped as an adult with a good job, a healthy relationship, solid friends, and completely independent finances. But I still feel like I get knocked back by toxicity by one or two major events every year: my parents messy divorce, a medical emergency and having zero support, blow out screaming matches, etc etc. I’ve consistently felt like I had an autoimmune disease, I’m always exhausted, I’ve gotten more anti social with age, and I always feel like I’m recovering from some life event.

My therapist said this: it’s like my family is out at sea, flailing and screaming for help. I throw them a lift jacket, but they toss them aside and say “we don’t want life jackets”. So I take a moment to think and then I get them a life raft, they toss it aside and say “we don’t want a raft”. Because what they want is for me to get in the water and drown with them.

This kind of blew my mind and has really stuck with me. It’s made me realize how imperitive the boundaries I set for the rest of my life are, and that if I don’t set firmer ones I am going to feel exhausted by life forever.

Edit: thank you for all the support yall ❤️ maintaining boundaries with my parents has been hard, so I really appreciate all the support (except for the one loser in the comments making fun of me for talking to my dad after my brothers suicide, you suck)

I’m curious how folks doing OE handle getting laid off, or the awkwardness during the 2 week notice period.

In the past when I either wanted to leave a job, knew I was going to get fired, or had another job lined up, going through the professional bs dance of pretending were all sad I’m leaving the team when actually none of this matters and I don’t want to fill out a detailed hand off plan. I found it hard to keep a straight face at times or know what to say because I was so mentally checked out by then.

How do OE people who are leaving one J maintain any professionalism during that 2 week window? When I’m assuming you’re not all that upset leaving a job.

Hi! My brother recently passed away by taking his own life. It has made dig back into what was going on in our childhood that would have stuck with him into adult him, and resulted in his life never really taking off.

It is my belief that my father is a Narc, and mom has BPD, but cluster 2 personality disorders are so similar and I am not a psychologist. I'm starting to think my parents had different Golden Children, me vs my brother. We were twins and we have no other siblings so it was just us 4. Did anyone else have this experience?

I'll share more and please feel free to let me know what you think! For a long time in my family I was the scapegoat, I was the truth-sayer, I called my narc dad on his bs as young as 8 years old. At 11 I accidentally spent money on my dads amazon acct on cheap makeup (during beauty youtuber phase) I wasn't supposed to, and he basically didn't speak to me for 2 years, acted like I betrayed him, like I hated him, like I did it to him on purpose. I was 11.

My brother was troublesome, would scream and fight and break things. He struggled in school, and my parents tended to walk on egg shells around him. I always resented all the attention, care, gentleness he got, while I was held to much much much higher standards. I was expected to basically parent myself.

However, as my dad started to turn my mom into the scapegoat over the years, my mom shifted from enabling my dad to playing into this us vs them dynamic. She let my dad fixate on my brother and she took more interest in me. As a kid I saw this as her giving me what my dad should have, doing 200% parenting to fill the gap of my dad who didn't care about me. My dad would often threaten to leave and say things like my mom can take "her daughter" and that he would take my brother, as if he stopped seeing me as his responsibility. My mom accepted that my brother was less interested in a close relationship with her, most teenage boys are pretty mean to their moms, and I think she kinda gave up on him and just focused on being super close with me, which as an adult has become very uncomfortable for me. She will kiss or hug me forcibly, ask for hugs when she's sad, and then run away and avoid me if I try to talk about my own feelings. Now that in adulthood my mom continues to show signs of BPD, I wonder if this was actually her turning me into her golden child, and playing into the triangulating happening in our house.

I'm honestly open to any opinions, now that my brother is gone, I don't have anyone to bounce these ideas off of. But obviously narc abuse is so confusing so its really hard to sift through the past and try to understand how my brother might have saw this stuff vs how I saw it. Thanks!!