Hi @Hopeless
So glad you have had @pip walking along with you, It is Important that you know you are not alone. Others will be reading your posts as well, but most people won't want to step forward if they are inexperienced with this sort of battle and don't really know what to say. That doesn't mean they are not empathising with you.
Our private battle is with my husband and an eating disorder. We have a few simple parallels - his mother is enabling him, he is disguising the ed behaviours so well as to not appear unwell, and make my accusations appear to be just that - accusations, and he becomes emotionally aggressive when any of us (we have five adult children, 2 married) go near the boundaries he has set in place. As long as we all play nicely along with his set-up, we have peace enough in our home to function, but meantime he is deteriorating behind the screen.
Last year his behaviour had broken bounds and we were trying to get him to help. While he only touched on throwing things and slamming drawers etc, he was becoming delusional, and very emotionally erratic and emotionally abusive to try to control us into submission to his will. Rather than going further along those descriptions, I will say tthat we eventually backed down. Our doctor had supported my hubby in his weight loss, and refused to accept anything was wrong, taking intervention against me when I tried to flag them not only to his problem, but to our family distress. The law protects all of them, and not us ....
Part of his illness is OCD type behaviours, and a focus on security. We are living with tracked phones and cameras set up inside and outside of the home.
Our passive acceptance of the ed has made our home-life liveable. I have contact d support services around him, who have agreed ther is nothing more we can do except hold this status quo as long as we are able to, while he either declines to the point of health collapse, or begins to wake up to the fact that he is ill and in peril. It's a heart-breaking game of charades ....
The point I want to make is that we have had to learn to pull back on our compassion .... at least reserve a whole lot of it for ourselves .... our welfare is as paramount as his. You need to self-care and find ways to disengage from the immediate problems while you have the support of medicos and hospital facilities because all of this will be draining on your body systems. You need to heal and restore yourselves .... and accept that there are some things you can't make a difference with through constant worry. That has been my hardest lesson to learn. I wasn't a highly anxious person, but I have a high level of natural compassion which means that in an anxiety-producing circumstance, I am in that hyper-vigilant state of turning things over in my mind, searching for solutions and trying to keep it all contained. I am hearing the same in you.
It's certainly not easy, but you need to learn to manage your compassionate responses, to allow self-compassion a greater voice, and withdraw some of the compassion you spend in your brother's direction so you don't burn out by living his experiences vicariously. I feel so much for my husband, but this has been going on for around six years for us now, and I have learned to engage enough to feel for him, but disengage enough that I don't crumble under the weight of living his emotions for him.
I have no idea how our situation will pan out. In your descriptions I can see possibilities of what is ahead for us if / when my husband is finally diagnosed .... if he is admitted to hospital in denial he will be a nightmare to try to treat or contain. He is very intelligent and manipulative. We have had a taste of the emotional abuse he is capable of. Your experiences and @pip's responses are helping to prepare me I think. I can't thank you enough for being here and being prepared to talk about your feelings this way. Eventually you will be the "pip" helping to guide others forward through the turmoil .... but in this moment, please be careful to care as much for yourself as you are for everybody else. Find ways to take time out from this problem that can otherwise take up your whole life and your whole view.
Walking along with you ...
🌷💜 F&H
