How should I handle my dysfunctional sister?

Then she can learn to call her therapist.
Not her backup.

Don’t take her calls if it becomes an unnecessary burden to you. It’s not fair and she should know better. She’s abusing the relationship, she knows she can and until it stops paying off, she’ll keep on doing it.

If it means you miss out on some things, so be it.

You should try going to counseling with her, addressing these situations with a trained mediator. She should know how you feel about the situation, but in a constructive way that won’t make her feel like you don’t care. If you are concerned about the safety of the child, don’t be afraid to take matters in your own hands. You can always call in professionals for help.

You have to set your boundaries. Have you told her how you feel about her actions? Have you given her the chance to change her behavior and consider your feelings? If not, maybe you should do so. If you have and her behavior still hasn’t changes, it’s time for you to make some decisions about what type of relationship you want to maintain with her. Just don’t make any decisions that will end up hurting you. How much can you sit back and watch while your sister is in pain and in need of help? Only you can answer these questions.

She sounds bipolar, but that’s an armchair diagnosis.

Do you understand her condition and how it affects her behavior and thinking? You should educate yourself and then consider yourself one of those al-anon type enablers/participants and get help for yourself in terms of coaching/techniques for dealing with her behavior.

I’ll write more later.

Asmonet is right. She is abusing the relationship and will do so until you put a stop to it. Let her call her therapist. And, should she have a meltdown, remember it is not your fault.

Introduce her to my brother. :)

Oh, she sounds a lot like my sister, when she’s in a manic state. She is all over the place, nothing works. Yes, my sister is bipolar and yes, it is easy to say your sister sounds bipolar, but that is where I will stop. like Kevbo, armchair diagnosis should only go so far – you know, far enough to suggest help!

I had to set incredibly clear boundaries. My sister is bipolar and yes, I realize that she cannot always grasp what she is going through, when she is manic. Nor can she grasp when she is very paranoid. The depression, for her, can be crippling. I would move mountains to give my sister normalcy, but I can’t. What i can be is consistent.

I had to seek help, to learn how to help her; and, by helping her, it doesn’t mean to put up with abuse. I have two children and a husband, that were starting to become collateral damage in her ups and downs. I had to learn how to help her, but not enable her.

I know you love her, or you would do the easy thing. You would not be looking for a way to help her, and you. I would suggest therapy and possibly, yes, therapy for you and your sister, together. Learn to help her and set boundaries, learning that you cannot fix her, or be responsible for her emotions is a very hard thing to do.

I really suggest seeking further help, for both of you.

As much as I hate to admit it, my experience has been (in my own case and now in the case of my gf’s sister) that the root problem is usually medical and if you fix the medical problem, the behavior and mood problems even out. I don’t know how applicable that pattern is to bipolar disorder or whatever your sister may have. In my case, it was addressing a underactive dead thyroid. In my gf’s sister’s case, it was stumbling upon a positive side effect of medication for hot flashes, which has kept her remarkably level for the past couple of weeks.

Another tactic for you to practice is to reflect the problems back to her. “Why do you think you are so unhappy?” If she says she doesn’t know, say “yes, you do,” etc. This takes the onus of fixing the problem off your shoulders while allowing you to remain supportive. When your sister senses that she’s not getting rewarded with answers and suggestions and instead is confronted with the work of having to figure out her repeating problems, she will either have an “aha” moment that she needs to figure out her problems or more likely tire of your inability to provide her with stimulus to continue the behavior. The hard part for you will be keeping the discussion and drama at arm’s length so that you’re not getting sucked in to fixing her problem for her. Siblings suck in that regard.

IThe best thing you could do is give her a million dollars and she would be out of you hair for at least a year.

If she is bipolar, and she’s getting psychiatric help, then surely she would have been diagnosed by now? Eventually, if she takes the meds, her behavior should even out.

Although, she may also resiste the diagnosis, and refuse to take the meds, believing it is not a problem, and something she can handle herself.

You could ask her about her psychiatric visits, and see if she tells you anything. If you can get her to tell you what’s going on there, that should be excellent information to figure out how to deal with her.

Otherwise, you will probably be better off setting boundaries, and treating her as you would any normal person who acts like this. If she is bipolar, cak probably has a whole host of stories to tell about what does and what doesn’t work, and what she had to do with respect to her sister.

Make her functional again.

Thanks – yes, she gets various medications, goes off them, they don’t work for her, or they do, and since she feels good – goodbye me. And it’s true, part of the problem is that I am tired of seeing the rest of my family get hurt by her disappearances our of their lives (particularly the children) but even when she’s in our lives – she’s a heap of trouble. Like undermining our parenting, or planting nasty ideas into the children.

I can’t get therapy with her, because she lives too far away.

Okay, I will do more research, because I don’t think it’s just about mental illness (which part of it is, yes) but it is also about the family issues that we try to put behind us.

Thank you for your help.

She has to stay on her meds, even when she feels good. You can emphasize this to her without nagging. You can show her articles that support your position. Another thing that could help is to get her to a support group. If it’s a decent support group, you can go, too, and talk about what it’s like on your side. Google DBSA, and somewhere on there is a list of all the support groups in the country.

It sounds really difficult, though. She appears when she needs help, and disappears when she feels well? WHen she appears, she is disruptive, and the kids believe her? I think you could educate your kids about her illness, too, so they can understand what is going on with her, and why she behaves the way she does, and says the things she says. If they know that her view of the world can be very skewed when she’s sick, they might learn to be wary of what she says.

I think you should talk to a therapist yourself to get help developing an approach that will help both you and your sister. In addition, the right therapist can walk you through how to talk to your children and other family members about what is going on with your sister.

She certainly does sound typically bipolar, but I have known others with diagnoses of schizophrenia or depression who behave similarly. Unfortunately, many folks go off their meds for a variety of reasons, which of course makes everything unstable again.

Good luck. Hopefully she has a husband who steps in to care for the baby when things go haywire. If so, are you in contact with him at all?