Mayhem In The Middle

Posted by fxckfeelings on July 8, 2021

Just as it is with Oreos and interneting, selflessness is best enjoyed in moderation. Too little, and you’re mean, selfish and approaching asshole territory; too much and you’re mean, guilty, and in need of a shrink. That’s because trying to help people, especially the ones you love is often impossible. It can drain you, open you to exploitation, and make you angry, which then makes you feel guilty and like you need to be even nicer, and on it goes down the toilet. It’s worth examining ways of helping those you love, but only if you can find a middle ground; your goal isn’t to solve their problems but to see if, with your encouragement, they can do better at making things better themselves.
-Dr. Lastname

My tween, much-younger sister is acting out, causing my (widowed) mother a great deal of stress and impacting her ability to make a living. I’m in my late 20s, living with my partner, and at a loss as to how to help manage my sister’s behavior going forward. When I have her stay with me she is polite, understanding, rational, and accepting of consequences. My love of routine seems to have a lot to do with this. As soon as she returns home, however, she falls back into negative patterns of behavior. I often have to leave work in order to negotiate their disagreements or to give my mother a “break,” which isn’t easy to do. Throw into the mix my current emotional state—questioning my life/career choices while trying to plan for the future—and I am feeling incredibly overwhelmed and completely out of my depth! My goal is to feel less overwhelmed and ultimately give my sister the best possible care and guidance. 

F*ck Love: One Shrink’s Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship

When it comes to helping and protecting others, our powers are infuriatingly limited. That’s why, even when the people you want to help are the most important to you, your input and involvement has to be of the lowest priority.  

You have other, more important priorities, including managing your own life, where your efforts will actually pay off. So your goal isn’t to step in and stop their fighting and suffering. It’s to do what you can to help while respecting your limited resources and trying very hard to hand responsibility back where it belongs.

Begin by creating a crisis plan that never requires you to leave work. I’m assuming both your mother and sister are physically safe, either from assaulting one another or self-harm, so your plan doesn’t require that they or you call the police, school, or state child protective services. If that’s not true, then those are the authorities that should be called because they’re better equipped to manage responsibility for abuse or dangerous mental illness than you are.

I also assume that your mother and sister have counseling resources available to them, either from your sister’s school or through health insurance, so that they can discuss the issues which spark their conflicts in an office setting with a trained professional without your being in any way responsible.

Then you should ask yourself under what circumstances it should be your job to negotiate their disagreements or give your mother a “break.” Clearly, it’s their job to learn to manage the relationship, and doing so would make one or both of them stronger. Irritatingly, your availability may actually tempt one or both of them to escalate conflicts just to pull you in as support, an ear to vent to you about the other, and an escape hatch from having to live together and work out their problems themselves.

So, as much as you don’t want to see them suffer, their temperaments and possibly other issues make some suffering unavoidable. What’s most important is that one or both of them gains the strength to manage their conflicts more effectively, and that’s unlikely to happen if you’re always there to step in and relieve their pain.

Ask whether your willingness to accept responsibility for other people’s unhappiness has made you overly vulnerable to emotional blackmail in other relationships, either at work or in your personal life. Get a coach for yourself, if you need one, to help you acknowledge your limits and prioritize yourself better. 

And stop believing the voice that tells you they need your protection. If they do need you it’s to help them take responsibility for managing their own problems while respecting your boundaries as an independent, loving, and understandably powerless member of the family.

STATEMENT:

“I hate to see my mother and sister tear into one another, and my feelings tell me I’m the only one whom they trust and the only one who can relieve their conflict. But I believe that each of them has good options for managing their feelings, whatever their issues, and that I will do them (and myself) more good by requiring them to take responsibility for their own problems, knowing that professional help is available if either wishes to use it.”