How do I approach this?
My relationship with my sister is breaking and I don’t know what do to. I’ve been in a really bad mental place and pretty burnt out the last few months and I think I need some alone time and time to recharge. I thought the summer would let me do that, but I haven’t been able to.
Recently, my sister has been moving into a new apartment, and she has been angry by how little ive been helping her. But I’ve been driving an hour back and forth to drop of things and I assembled her desk and helped move a giant couch and set up her WiFi and helped clean and drove her to get things from the store. And she has been upset that I haven’t taken a more active role in making things happen, rather than just following her directions. And she says I do things too slowly and inefficiency, like arriving 15 minutes late or not picking up my phone for her many texts while I am doing things. I’m barely holding it together myself and I am generally absentminded myself in everything I do in life (like forgetting a bag in the car that we could easily go back to get later) and the fact that I’m not able to be as efficient and fast makes her so angry and feel like I don’t care about helping her. On top of that, she gets mad and says really mean things to me, which makes me more upset and makes it harder for me to do things. She says she would be fine if I did less of the brainless work if I was more mentally there and able to think for her and make decisions because she is the one who has to think for everyone. And she says that I space out a lot everytjme there is any yelling and she hates that. But I feel like I space out a lot because I freeze mentally and things become hard to process and I am just in panic. And she says the help I’m giving is just like the manual labor she could hire. I don’t know what to make of this because I’m doing things the way I know how and it’s normally not at her level of efficiency.
When I moved, she didn’t help me because she was away at school and I had to do most things myself too. And I didn’t really expect anyone to help me.
I want to help her because I know moving is hard and I feel I am doing my best even when all I want to do is sleep or cry. But I also feel that her expectations are too high for what I can reasonably do at the place I am in now when my own life is kind of a mess.
I don’t know. If anyone has honest thoughts or advice, I’d love to hear.
thank you for reading this very long post
@MoonRiver29
I'm sorry you and your sister are not getting along. you are doing the best you can and that should be enough.
@MoonRiver29 It sounds like you are going out of your way to help your sister, and are being subjected to criticism, rage, and ingratitude in return. This is verbal abuse by your sister against you, and it seems to be taking its toll on your mental health, as you've described yourself as feeling burnt out and in a really bad mental place. Everyone makes mistakes, that's part of being human. Your sister has no reason to criticize how you're helping her, when that's more than what she did for you when you moved into your apartment.
I'm hearing that you want to help your sister, but you don't like how she's treating you. You are not responsible for how your sister feels: by trying to control you and by belittling your efforts, she is bringing great unhappiness to herself and to you. Whether you continue to help her is entirely your choice; you have no obligation to do so. It sounds like she already has plans to hire someone if you're not available, so you don't have to worry about the work not being done. Your needs for alone time and recharging are more worthy than her need to yell at you. This resource may be helpful to you: https://www.7cups.com/family-stress/ Feel free to message me anytime if you want to talk more about this. I hope you find peace and joy in your life.
It’s okay to say no hunny, it’s something that im still learning to do but when it comes to your mental, physical, and emotional help you have to put yourself first even when people get mad at you for doing that. Tell her how you really feel and don’t hold anything back cause the more you bottle these feelings inside the more it will affect you in the long run. And if you have to go “no contact” meaning don’t talk to her on any social platform, through text, or calls for a while especially with it sounding like she mentally abuses you, which is never okay to do to anyone, you are more than enough and you are doing you’re best the way you know how to. But the real question is….are you doing your best when it comes to YOU? You can always message me if you just need someone to talk to I’m definitely here and I will only listen until or unless you ask for my advice.
