Hi. I've been keeping up with this and trying to decide whether to air out the family laundry. There just isn't enough room or time!
I've spent many hours thinking and talking about my family and I've read some self-help books, too. The problem with self-help books is that they may help the reader reach his or her potential inspite of their family's and/or significant people's opinions and/or limitations, but they really don't reveal how to get along with the family who caused the problems to begin with, or how to understand them, individually and as a group.
Few people actually know themselves clearly and even those who do will likely not always reveal themselves honestly to others. The same goes for members of families. Sometimes there's lots of secrets and unknowable thought patterns.
People can be and think very differently from each other. It can be very difficult to get into someone else's head and figure them out when all you use to do that is your very own perspective.
I found some answers by studying the DSM-IV on personality disorders. I believe that at one time or another, perhaps under stress, we all exhibit some tendency toward one or the other of these types of behaviors. Not to the extreme perhaps as what is listed under the different personality types, yet, the behaviors and perspectives perhaps do represent the gamut of what people feel and do and why they do it.
I now understand my mother. And I no longer blame her for not being what I needed her to be. All relationships have or should have some boundaries, perhaps even the relationship we have with our own selves. Understanding these boundaries that we impose for our own needs or that others impose on us for their own needs is important to having a healthy relationship.
I can't trust my mother in several areas, and that's OK.
My mom's a histrionic narcissist. . . . So what. My dad was obsessive-compulsive. . . . So what.
My sister's a narcissist (of the sexual-based type). I did not feed my sister's narcissistic supply by agreeing to worship her, so she turned on me and in conversations with my mother cast doubt on every decision I ever made, and on my worth as a human being. My sister drove a wedge between my mother and I so that she could get all her narcissistic supply (adoration, etc.) from my mother.
I finally had to reveal to my mother a list of my sister's faults. I really didn't want to devalue her, but when one is accused, one does have a right to evaluate the worthiness of the judge, I think.
I now have a terrific relationship--such as it can be with someone like her--with my mother.
Although no one ever told me my sister was doing this, actually had been doing this for years, I figured it out by reading about personality disorders and I was able to expose it to my mother and make my sister ineffective at driving us apart.
I could be angry with my family for many reasons, and even angry at other people for being less than what I know they could be, or treating me less kindly that what I think I deserve.
I just try to take a Twainian attidute toward all the foibles we all do to each other.
I will say that it helps to actually understand what that range of foibles might entail.
As I said, I found the answers through the DSM-IV, since people rarely honestly reveal themselves.
http://www.mftsource.com/Treatment.personalitydis.htm
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:gI6qurhmZ9YC:www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/MSL2excerpts.rtf+%22narcissist%22+%22sibling%22+rivalry&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
