Big Brother Is Watching
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 31, 2009
The concept of being one’s “brother’s keeper” has never been a very good one; from the Bible to the Clinton boys, older siblings taking responsibility for their youngers has rarely had good results. In these two cases, older siblings feel obliged to get their little brother/sister back on track, but being related to someone by blood doesn’t make them any easier to control. You can’t “keep” your siblings, but you can keep trying to do the right thing.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m one of seven kids, standard big Irish family, fairly standard/normal childhood, everybody seems to get along. My youngest brother, however, has always been a quiet kid (and I’m the oldest, so he’s much younger than me), and while he’s not the black sheep exactly, he’s always been a little bit different and maybe something of a misfit in general. One of my uncles died recently, and at the wake, my brother took me and all of our siblings aside to tell us that he’s been going to therapy and has recently recovered memories of being molested by our late father. Now, I’d never describe my dad as being a warm or lovable guy, but he wasn’t a monster– never raised a hand to me or anyone else in the house that I saw, and certainly never tried to touch me in a sexual way (or any of the other kids as far as I know). And, like I said, I’m not that close with my younger brother because I was in high school when he was born, so basically, to put it nicely, I just don’t think he’s remembering things right. None of the other siblings do, either, but ever since he made his little announcement, he’s been pushing us to support him and getting angry when we try to calm him down/kindly and tell him he should back off. Since I’m the oldest, my other brothers and sisters are looking to me to handle the situation, but I really have no idea what I can say to make this go away. My goal is to figure out what the hell is going on and get him to stop.
You might not know your brother that well, but I’ve dealt with his type many times: certain people go through life feeling different, cut off, ultra-sensitive, and constantly unhappy. They are troubled as much by not knowing why they’re suffering as by the suffering itself.
In their isolation and misery, they are constantly wondering what went wrong, if they did it to themselves, and what they should be doing about it. If they can believe that someone bad did something horrible to mess up their minds, whether it happened or not, it makes sense of their suffering and gives them something concrete to do about it.
Sure, something bad may have happened to them, or their reaction to constant suffering may have exposed them to additional harm at the hands of people they would otherwise have stayed away from. The sad thing is that no one has a solution to their suffering: not friends, not therapists, not older brothers.
As such, these people are fucked. They feel fucked, they believe they were fucked, and, to be frank, sometimes they were, literally. Certainly they’ve been fucked by life, and they don’t deserve to feel the way they do, but, in expecting to find a reason for their misery, they, and we, often make things worse.
You feel like you should be able to “figure out what the hell is going on,” and so does he, but neither of you can have your wish, particularly in the sense of giving him relief or bringing the family together. The harder you try, the more harm it can cause, so now’s a good time to give up.
Accept the fact that he’s unhappy, sees the world differently, believes he was abused and feels betrayed by those of his family who don’t believe him. He may always believe that your father, whom you love, was a monster, and he may need to spread the word. As much as it hurts, there’s nothing you can do about it and, ironic as it is to say, this situation happens to good families with innocent fathers and good families with fathers who were seriously flawed, particularly when drunk, and otherwise not so bad.
Your goal isn’t to settle things, or render a verdict, or protect your father’s reputation, because those are goals you have no control over. Your goal is to make the best of this mess. And you do that by putting your negative feelings aside, as well as your wish for a final truth and common understanding.
STATEMENT:
Compose a statement that proposes a positive course. “I respect you, my brother, and I’m sorry to hear you’ve suffered greatly during your life and have recovered such negative memories of our father. I’m glad you could speak frankly with me and I’ve reviewed closely what I and others recall about our childhood. In the end, I can’t be certain what happened. Now, I think you would do better to put those memories aside and, regardless of your pain, focus on making the most of life in the present and continue to share it with all of us, including those who don’t share your memories of our father. I believe it would be best for you and all of us if we let this matter drop, not that it’s been properly considered, and move on.”
My baby sister has always been a weird-but-sweet kid, and for the past few years, she’s been dating a weird-but-sweet guy she met in college, and they’re basically socially inept with everyone except each other so they really don’t bother hanging out with anyone else. My sister’s always been a little bit of a pothead, and this guy certainly shares her taste in substances, so that also isolates them a bit, but again, I at first thought that at least these two awkward potheads would be a good pair. The problem is that every time they show up to a family event—my law school graduation, my cousin’s wedding, our uncle’s 60th birthday—they both get unbelievably drunk, and her boyfriend often embarrasses himself by throwing up or passing out in public. At first, we just figured it was their (stupid) way of dealing with social gatherings/overcoming their intense awkwardness, because they’ve stopped getting wasted if it’s a smaller family affair, but after the last debacle at another cousin’s wedding where her drunk boyfriend yelled at my father in front of everyone for taking his keys so he couldn’t drive, we’ve reached a breaking point. My mother thinks she should talk to my sister about the boyfriend’s behavior, but she doesn’t know what to say, and neither do I, but I’m hoping you do.
First and foremost, unless you own a dungeon or know magic, you can’t control anyone else’s drinking. If your goal is to get a drunk to stop drinking or to get your sister to acknowledge the problem, your conversation is likely to become nasty and prompt conflict that will lead to, you guessed it, more drinking. Probably for all of you.
Empathy usually interferes with talks about drinking because people think that understanding why someone drinks, and showing that you understand, will give them a tool for stopping it and soften the potential humiliation. The trouble is, whatever gets people to drink is usually much stronger than their understanding about the reason why.
In turn, knowing why does little but raise false expectations, yours and theirs, about how things will be better next time. The whole point of your discussion is to acknowledge that things are what they are and that you need to take protective steps assuming that this is so. You hope things will get better, but you doubt that insight will make a difference.
Therapists like to think that talking and insight make a difference in controlling drinking and it took us a long time to admit that nothing was happening and that our efforts were actually hurting our patients by preventing them from recognizing what they were up against: that talking wasn’t helping and that they needed to do their best, simply, to control behavior that was often very, very hard to control.
What makes a difference, in my experience, is that someone recognizes that they have a problem, they feel strongly that they want to change it, they put a lot of time and effort into trying to change it, they don’t let shame stop them from being open about their problem, and they assume that they are never out of the woods. You hope your sister’s boyfriend comes to that conclusion, but you don’t know when or if that will happen and, in the meantime, you need to do what you have to do.
Don’t worry too much about hurting anyone’s feelings. You’ve got to call things the way you see them and, as long as you aren’t pressuring anyone to change, you should be able to avoid an unpleasant or intrusive struggle. If you hesitate to call the problem what it is, you’ll be ineffective and fail in your responsibility as a caring family member and owner of the booze. For the right tone, take your cue from nice, professional bartenders.
STATEMENT:
Compose a direct statement that is positive and discharges your responsibility. “I’m glad to see that you’ve found a satisfying relationship and that you enjoy bringing your friend to large family gatherings. And I can understand that large gatherings are stressful and that drinking helps to make everyone more comfortable. But I’ve become concerned that your boyfriend’s drinking on such occasions puts both of you in danger, as it did at our last party, and it creates a ruckus that will just make both of you more anxious about the next party and thus prompt more drinking, and that’s not good for you, him or anyone.
So I’ve got to ask him to stay away from large family events until he feels he’s got a better handle on his drinking. If he feels he does, he’s very welcome, and I’ll be glad to see him, but I’ll have to insist that he gives his car keys to someone else when he arrives, at least until time has shown that he’s got his control back. I’ll be happy to tell him myself, because I don’t want you or him to think I’m angry, disrespectful, or less than welcoming, aside from my insistence on what I regard as a safety rule. Let me know what you think, and then we don’t have to discuss it.”
