My brother has been living a secret life and almost left us
Big sister asking for advice in regards to my little brother and I hope you guys can maybe help (I'm way out of my depth here).
Tw: mention of suicide attempt.
My little brother, 26, almost attempted suicide a few days ago, but called before doing any physical harm. Emergency professional help was contacted immediately and he is beginning therapy this week. It came as a total shock to the family, everything seemed to be going well and we had just celebrated his master thesis graduation a few days earlier. He was about to start looking for a job after having a great student assistant job while studying, it seemed like he was doing well with friends, housing and finances were good etc.
Except none of that was true at all.
It was all a lie and it seems like it has been for at least a year, possibly multiple years. He never graduated, we don't even know if his bachelor degree is real. The student assistant job probably never existed, he had no money left, the internet had been cut off and he owed months of rent. His old friends had not been able to get ahold of him for months. He had pushed it as far as he could and had now cornered himself completely with no way to keep the lie going and broke down.
And even though all of that sounds like something out of a bad movie, that's not actually the key issue.
When I got to him he said that he had never been able to form close connections with anyone no matter where he went. When he started uni he hoped for a fresh chance and broke when it turned out to be the same as previous places (we never knew this was an issue at all, he seemed to be part of multiple friend groups while living at home). He had always felt like something was wrong with him and all failed relationship attempts were his fault because he couldn't figure out how to closely bond with someone.
It seems like this is what caused him to self isolate and cope with gaming, completely avoiding real life.
So here we are now, as a family trying to do emergency mental health care. No one has blamed him and we can get everything practical sorted together. Worst case he moves in with me.
But I can't "teach" him how to connect with people and I think a lot of the reason why it has gotten this far is because he is a guy. Looking back there has been plenty of asocial behaviors that would have been clocked as problematic (and attempted to be corrected) if he had been a girl, but were excused away as "just a boy" things.
I don't know how much of his problem is inherent, if any at all, but I suspect that a part is that he simply wasn't taught some of the socialization skills that are required for long term friendships. Our parents are complicated and certainly don't make for good examples, it's possible that trauma from them has also contributed to the whole mess (my dad, bless him, has the emotional intelligence of a plastic tea spoon, so no good male role model there).
By the time my brother was an adult he had become extremely adept at hiding that anything was wrong. I only saw him cry on the night were I was the first to arrive at his messy apartment with the knife still in the bathroom. Not a tear since and he acts like normal and as if we can quickly fix everything.
As a sister I just don't have the male perspective, hence why I'm reaching out here. Where do we even start? How do I get him out of the virtual world and back in real life? How do we nudge him in a healthy direction? Find him somewhere that he can actually find peers to talk to? Get him to talk about his feelings?
I'm hoping that therapy will help some, but I think he may also need to be handheld a bit to participate in something where he can meet other people and get a new chance to connect. I've considered suggesting a weekly walk'n'talk group for young men nearby once we are past the initial emergency stage, but other than that I'm drawing a blank. It seems pretty limited what you can realistically suggest to someone who is obviously depressed.
Thank you if you followed along this far, I know it's a bit all over the place. To be frank I'm running on very little sleep these days.