Hey Obladi,
Thankyou for this thread. So rich and so good to read your recovery. Have been away from SR for awhile and come back recently - so was not aware of what had happened for you this year.
I am just so glad , so grateful you are here.
A similar thing happened to a very close friend with over a decade sobriety about a month ago. She also made it back, thankfully. this disease really is no joke.
Your relationship with your brother sounds somewhat familiar to me. Recently , my brother - who also was the source of some of my childhood trauma , has been very mentally unwell.
My first response to this news when my mother rang me to insist I help him , because she didn’t know what to do , was a quiet , internal - “good”. About time he suffered. (Then guilt , of course for having such an ugly thought.😂
But that gave way quickly to empathy for the little boy who I know suffered plenty of trauma too , right by my side - even though he has dedicated a lifetime to denying it had any effect on him .
and maybe also a duty of care thing. I mean how could I - a person who literally works in a field where I talk to suicidal people most days, refuse to help my own brother .
But as I attempted to help him, I was shocked at how quickly the wheels fell
off for me . How difficult it was
for me to do this. How the old dominant patterns of childhood - where it was my responsibility to “fix it” was just so very triggering to act out . Because if he was unwell, if he was suffering, that would mean one thing for little me - punishment . he would take it out on me. He would use me to fix himself . As he did back then.
And even though we are just two adults talking on the phone from 1000 miles away in different damn continents , my inner kid could not feel safe.
So for weeks I tried to talk to him, mostly by chat as he wasn’t taking calls . When I did speak with my suicidal brother , it was with a base level of terror - not just about him potentially completing suicide- but “old” terror deep in my veins . It triggered flashbacks, a total emotional shutdown that went on for weeks and all kinds of fun trauma stuff for me.
And all this happened after years of therapy on trauma for me. 😂😂
Can totally understand why facing this kind of stuff is generally just a bad idea for us lot unless we really have no choice.
My former psychiatrist once told me that if people manage to get through most of their life without facing their trauma she would never suggest they do any of that kind of work.
Let the dogs sleep.