Behvin Member Profile

...See more What is mentally healthy vs. just rationalizing: I can’t be there for my sister emotionally anymore because she is too unstable. I believe that I need to pull back for my own emotional protection, she brings too much turmoil to my life and I already have my own problems. I have the intense desire to tell her this, BUT, I could just not tell her and pull back, maintain distance and keep minimal civil contact without explaining (she prob won’t notice too much anyway, as she’s mired in her own world). The reason I maybe should not tell her my “plan” & why, is because she has severe issues right now and saying “I can’t handle you anymore” (basically) might trigger her into a really bad spiral (thinking I’ve abandoned her or something). Is keeping this to myself what mentally/emotionally healthy people do, even though I feel like I’m bearing a huge burden and I’d rather just say the things on my mind? I ask because I wasn’t raised with parents that modeled healthy behavior, so I don’t really know. My sister is also the only person I talk to, my only friend and is basically my only emotional support, so I’m losing my whole world here and she would normally be the one I would tell. She hasn’t really been “there” for me or reciprocal in help/time/effort etc. in our relationship for a long time (10 years or so) and so, I’m finally letting her go (emotionally speaking). I can’t pretend anymore that maybe she’ll reciprocate in the future “when she’s better”, or that she’ll ever even realize how much I’ve done for her and waited for her to be equally giving of herself etc. Do parents or people in roles of similar responsibility just keep things to themselves even though it’s a huge burden to bear? Do adults eventually always come to the conclusion that ultimately the less you say, the better? I always thought of that as lying/rationalizing, but it could be that this is just the way things are when you become an adult. You close up everything more and more to protect yourself and avoid hurting others and just bear the burden on your own...? What’s real/healthy/normal? I guess at least I can say it here. I guess I want to tell her, because I want her to do something about it, but I know that she absolutely won’t take steps to “fix” the situation with me and she will instead just feel bad about herself and not do anything about it, so it won’t be productive at all and she doesn’t care about me enough to really change things. BTW, she is a parent herself, which is horrifying, because she can’t even “adult” for herself, much less two young kids, and you can already tell that she’s modeling the same unhealthy, selfish, childish behavior for them... yikes :/

Bio

Recent forum posts

Talk to an expert therapist

🌈 Lisa Meighan is a psychotherapist registered with the British...

About Us

Get Started

Online Therapy

Terms

Bio