My Brother And Me
I have two sisters and one brother. Of my siblings, I am the oldest. Although all of us grew up within a narcissistic environment, we were each treated differently. This experience would be viewed differently by our parents, but my siblings and me each have a different perspective based on what happened to us individually and it still be true to our personal experiences.
My siblings and I all had a placement within the family. At varying times, we could be viewed as the golden child, the scapegoat, or any other placement our parents deemed necessary for us. I was most frequently the scapegoat. One of my sisters was frequently cast as the invisible child. My brother and baby sister were frequently placed as the golden children.
I think my brother was honored as a golden child because he was the only male child, but that placement didn’t last long for him after I left the household. Yet, my parents coddled him a lot up until they divorced, and even then my brother believed that he had been abandoned by everyone around him. Nevertheless, I believe the coddling he received as a young child only to be rejected when he entered his teens and young adulthood was not only a letdown for him, but it kept him within the position to be an enabler – particularly to our narcissist mother’s control.
Fast forward to the present, and my brother and mother live together under one roof. Originally, my mother moved in with him and his family after she moved from her own home. Her move was by strategic design. She had intended to behave as a houseless person to get herself into my home, but her plans didn’t work out when I adamantly put my foot down and told her “no”. The last thing I wanted to do was enable my mother’s narcissistic behaviors, and I absolutely did not wish for her to live with me for any reason.
My actual response to my mother’s demand to live with me was that “hell would have to freeze over”, and since that’s an impossibility, so is her living with me. My brother was not as adamant with his stance as I was with mine. In fact, he viewed my mother living with him and his family as a chance to have additional income, and since she’d always coddled him since he was a child, he hadn’t seen the worst of her narcissistic behaviors that I had seen most of my life.
To my brother, I was simply an ungrateful daughter for all the things my mother had done for us. Outside of my mother’s sabotaging behaviors, I seriously couldn’t even count the ways in which she actually helped us! Despite there being times that I might have been within the idealize phase (or love bombing) of her narcissistic abuse against me, that phase for me in terms of her behaviors was actually rare. I was almost always cast as the troublemaking scapegoat, and it would be a placement I would never truly escape.
The thing with the golden child is that they rarely see the bad side of the narcissistic parent. They most often remain within the love bombing/idealize stage of the narcissistic parent’s cycle of abuse [on the surface that is]. The rare occasions that they do see the narcissistic parent’s rage usually shocks them back into submission, and they will do almost anything to maintain the narcissistic parent’s validation and admiration.
So it was with my brother and baby sister … In their eyes, our mother could do no wrong even though they were clearly aware of the truth. I could only attest to their unwillingness to admit the truth as them being under a strong delusion. Plus, it was easier for them to continue to cast me in a bad light because that bad light was an expectation that everyone had of me no matter what truth revealed to them. It was always much easier to make me the bad guy.
Now that my brother is an adult living with our mother, he has exclaimed that he feels stuck. He clearly sees the truth about who our mother’s true personality. Yet, at the same time, he won’t leave or ask her to leave. It’s as if she has such a strong hold on him via a strong trauma bond or soul tie that he won’t walk away even if his life and healthiness depends on doing so.
The relationship between my mother and brother has always been a symbiotic dynamic. When we were children, it was obvious that he was our mother’s favorite child. She’d sneak him special gifts and always said yes to him no matter the request. She gave into his whimsical desires for things and often covered for him when he got in trouble at home with our dad.
Even when my mother would initially say “no” to my brother, she’d always give in to whatever he wanted from her. He rarely heard the word “no” from her. So when he heard it from anyone else, he’d throw a tantrum and give the silent treatment so that she would then make way for him to get his way.
When my mother would take me through her devaluation and discard stages of narcissistic abuse, she’d gather my siblings against me too. Despite my attempts to always look out for my siblings, they’d still gang up on me for fear of not pleasing our mother. My brother would snicker and giggle and gladly join in with her in her tirades against me, despite his autistic traits. Whenever he or the golden child sister were angry with me, they seemingly enjoyed my mother’s tirades against me. They’d behave as if I deserved it.
Interestingly, my brother was both headstrong and gullible at the same time. However, there were a number of abuses that my mother and maternal grandmother had done against my brother regarding his autism and other health problems that made him vulnerable to their schemes. So, when he was a child, I greatly sympathized with him knowing that he was simply a tool used in their manipulative games. This was something I saw very early on even as a young child, despite not necessarily knowing how to articulate this.
Yet, now that my brother and I are adults, my sympathies are no longer with him as much. As it was with me, he needs to mature, change, and grow stronger against our mother. Even though I know getting away from our mother can be quite the challenge because of soul ties or trauma bonds long formed from childhood, as well as the guilt trips that she lords over us to attempt to keep control, I really wish my brother would simply walk away and break free. It’s just not healthy for him to remain in such a toxic situation.
For the most part, my brother’s children are now young adults, but most of their childhoods were affected by living with my mother as well. This means there is a continuation of narcissistic abuses being handed down generationally, whether directly or indirectly. This isn’t to say that stepping away from our mother hasn’t had it repercussions for my other siblings and me, but I do believe that stepping away from her gave us new perspectives on how to follow through on getting free and walking out our own healing.
This also goes for stepping away from my dad in an effort to gain clarity as well. Although he didn’t necessarily coddle my brother when my brother was a teen and young adult, he did so when my brother was much younger. He’d claim not to show favoritism for either of us, but that is not the way it presented to us. In fact, we’d be taken through cycles of narcissistic abuse with him too, often worse than what our mother delved out against us.
Ultimately, I believe there was the hope that my brother would be like my dad’s best friend or something, but my brother has autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and was frequently in trouble as a child. Neither my brother or I boded well as representative faces for the family until I became known as somewhat the child prodigy during my middle school and high school years. Yet, even then, I seemingly left a bad impression upon the community because of my personal problems with trauma. My dad wasn’t there for me, and ultimately, he wasn’t there for my other siblings as well.
Needless to say, the current relationship that my brother and I have with each other is rather tense and estranged, much the like the relationship between my mother and me, except I maintain no-contact with my mother. In addition, now that my mother and brother live together, I am no-contact with my brother too.
Although my title says coddled and neglected in a way that shows my brother was coddled more, he was also neglected too. In the current circumstances of life, I’d say he’s much worse off. He’s still stuck with my malignant narcissist mother. He’s still behaving as if he’s the entitled victim of circumstances he now has the ability to take control over and change at any time. There is no getting away from her unless he physically removes himself from her for good.
Unfortunately, adult children within narcissistic family environments must either decide that going no-contact from the entire family or parts of the family is their only option to becoming free and obtaining healing. It’s sad because I wish for my siblings to break free and walk towards healing, but they are the only ones who can do this for themselves. I cannot do it for them.
It’s been at least three to four years since I last spoke to my brother, and he is sincerely hurt by my stance of no-contact. It’s much better, however, for me to remain distant than to communicate since he lives with my mother. In that particular state of connection, he’s bound to be on my mother’s side. I wish it weren’t so, but that’s just how it is.
The effects of having grown up within a narcissistic family has damaging and long-lasting effects upon everyone within the family dynamic. Healing doesn’t happen if these family dynamics stay in effect. In fact, the abuse only continues and spreads far and wide for generations to come if the dysfunction is not cut off from the root.
The root issue almost always starts with the leading narcissist of the family. If that individual doesn’t make restorative, long lasting change, then it’s inevitable that anyone tied to this person must set themselves free. The longer a person continues within such a toxic dynamic structure, the harder it is to break away.
This is the current place I find myself with my brother. He has not willingly chosen to break away even though he knows the truth about our family structure. He has chosen to maintain a symbiotic, dysfunctional relationship with our mother. I am not so sure of his reasonings aside from the benefits I suppose he gets from a continued connection with her.
Otherwise, my brother and I will remain distant with each other because I will remain no-contact. Yet, so this goes for the rest of my siblings and me as I am no-contact with them too. Thus, these are sadly the long-lasting effects of narcissistic abuse. I can’t judge any of my siblings for choosing the paths they have chosen to take, but when there is not going to be a healthy dynamic between us, I have to choose the healthy path that’s right for me.
In time, I hope there will be change.
My Voice Unchained 