First responder sibling losing their mind

[Anonymous]

The pandemic has made my sister lose her marbles, and although I am normally close to this sibling, sibling got super pissed when I asked for social distancing (wear a mask) to see me or my mother (who is immunosurpressed, then sibling showed up at my house to see my newborn without a mask). You all won’t believe it, but they are a doctor, who sees covid patients every day. Very brave but clearly due to the stress sibling has lost their damn mind. So when I put down the hard line of please wear a mask, they texted me a bunch of nasty stuff about 4 days postpartum (texts along the lines of: you’re not the first person to have a baby, shut up and stop complaining) then cut off all communication. I feel abandoned from any support - even just emotional- postpartum.

Writing this I can see how effed up this is. Obviously this isn’t the first time it’s happened. The sad thing is that we have a great relationship when things are good, but then as soon as sibling is stressed, I get lashed out at and it’s like we didn’t even have such a close relationship. I guess it hurts more now because I’m postpartum and am quarantined. Normally I just ignore it and get on with my busy life. However, this sibling is an expert at kicking while I’m down.

Any word of advice for dealing with a sibling you are close with, who can be both kind but also incredibly volatile and cruel? It doesn’t seem right to let this relationship go, but maybe it’s time. Or should I just chalk it up to the pandemic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The pandemic has made my sister lose her marbles, and although I am normally close to this sibling, sibling got super pissed when I asked for social distancing (wear a mask) to see me or my mother (who is immunosurpressed, then sibling showed up at my house to see my newborn without a mask). You all won’t believe it, but they are a doctor, who sees covid patients every day. Very brave but clearly due to the stress sibling has lost their damn mind. So when I put down the hard line of please wear a mask, they texted me a bunch of nasty stuff about 4 days postpartum (texts along the lines of: you’re not the first person to have a baby, shut up and stop complaining) then cut off all communication. I feel abandoned from any support - even just emotional- postpartum.

Writing this I can see how effed up this is. Obviously this isn’t the first time it’s happened. The sad thing is that we have a great relationship when things are good, but then as soon as sibling is stressed, I get lashed out at and it’s like we didn’t even have such a close relationship. I guess it hurts more now because I’m postpartum and am quarantined. Normally I just ignore it and get on with my busy life. However, this sibling is an expert at kicking while I’m down.

Any word of advice for dealing with a sibling you are close with, who can be both kind but also incredibly volatile and cruel? It doesn’t seem right to let this relationship go, but maybe it’s time. Or should I just chalk it up to the pandemic?

Let them stay away for now and hope they regain reason. There's no chance I would allow someone who sees COVID patients anywhere near my newborn even with a mask.

[Anonymous]

I'm responding because you're down. I have a similar relationship with my sister. As much as I would like it to be more even keeled it is not. I love it when it's good, and attempt to deal with the stress when it's not. Some people wouldn't put up with it. But I love my sister, and I know she loves me.

I wouldn't make any decisions about keeping or jettisoning your sister now. You are postpartum and she's dealing with PTSD over COVID. Neither of you are in a balanced place.

Also, my guess is she has to believe she isn't infected or won't get infected so she can go to work everyday.

[Anonymous]

I’m sorry you have such a mean sibling, OP.

My husband can be similarly cruel on occasion, when he’s anxious (he’s a doctor too).

I always calmly say that such behavior is unacceptable, and give him an example of how he could have responded appropriately.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm responding because you're down. I have a similar relationship with my sister. As much as I would like it to be more even keeled it is not. I love it when it's good, and attempt to deal with the stress when it's not. Some people wouldn't put up with it. But I love my sister, and I know she loves me.

I wouldn't make any decisions about keeping or jettisoning your sister now. You are postpartum and she's dealing with PTSD over COVID. Neither of you are in a balanced place.

Also, my guess is she has to believe she isn't infected or won't get infected so she can go to work everyday.

Absolutely. She may not be a "first responder" (that's EMS, firefighters, etc), but she is on the frontline.

That doesn't mean you are wrong in having your feelings, and it isn't an excuse for not being careful or kind to you. You definitely should be managing your time, energy, and focus on making your environment what you need to stay healthy mentally and physically, and to take care of you and your baby. There will be time to revisit the big picture when things are not so overwhelming for everyone involved.

[Anonymous]

Thank you PP’s. This guidance really helped. I’ll just focus on the new baby and recovery for now and let this lie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm responding because you're down. I have a similar relationship with my sister. As much as I would like it to be more even keeled it is not. I love it when it's good, and attempt to deal with the stress when it's not. Some people wouldn't put up with it. But I love my sister, and I know she loves me.

I wouldn't make any decisions about keeping or jettisoning your sister now. You are postpartum and she's dealing with PTSD over COVID. Neither of you are in a balanced place.

Also, my guess is she has to believe she isn't infected or won't get infected so she can go to work everyday.

Absolutely. She may not be a "first responder" (that's EMS, firefighters, etc), but she is on the frontline.

That doesn't mean you are wrong in having your feelings, and it isn't an excuse for not being careful or kind to you. You definitely should be managing your time, energy, and focus on making your environment what you need to stay healthy mentally and physically, and to take care of you and your baby. There will be time to revisit the big picture when things are not so overwhelming for everyone involved.

+1

Recognize that neither of you are in a good place right now. Recognize that she is under a tremendous amount of stress, and is constantly dealing with people under tremendous stress -- people who are dying or seriously ill, people who are alone and terrified, people who are scared for their family members, co-workers who are stressed and scared and busy -- and you have no idea how your expression of what you thought of as reasonable concern came across. She's likely reacting to the fact that she knows she's a risk to the people around her, including a brand-new baby, and that has to be a terrible feeling. And her own fears about getting sick, which she has to deal with, and may be doing that by telling herself that she's certainly not infected, and your comments threatened to puncture that protective illusion.

And it's quite possible that you thought you sounded completely reasonable, but your tone or wording were harsher than you thought, and came across as an accusation of not caring about you or your baby, or just hit that sore place of her own fear and stress.

Just cut everyone involved a lot a slack, and ignore the stuff. It's not really personal, and you really have no idea what she's going through right now. I have read some things written by doctors and nurses dealing with the pandemic, and it's just unprecedented for them. Someone going through that is simply not someone you can reasonably expect to provide a lot of support, emotional or otherwise. I'd imagine she just has no excess bandwidth right now.

[Anonymous]

I'm so sorry this is happening to you op. Can you reach out to anyone else you know irl for support? Can you find a mom's group? I know there are moms groups meeting online. I can't imagine why your sibling, who should know better, is so cavalier about your family's safety. I would give that sibling space but reach out to them once you have adequate support from somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

Hey OP - Congrats on your baby! Enjoy the snuggles. You can worry about your relationship with her later.

[Anonymous]

Believe it or not, over the years your sister has also cared for patients with influenza, HIV, RSV, and every other communicable disease out there. And she will continue to do so after the media firestorm that has made everyone an epidemiologist dies down.

I agree that this is probably not the best time to visit the baby - because she should respect what you are comfortable with. She will always be working with communicable diseases, you can't ban her for life from your family or demand she bathe in Purell prior to being in your presence. The two of you need to figure out how you can sanely be in each other's presence because your both being a bit inflexible.

[Anonymous]

My sister is a med-surge nurse handling Covid patients daily since March. She has developed severe service anxiety, gotten an online therapist, gotten on medication, and took a short leave of absence from her job (but was threatened by the hospital to be fired if she didn't come back so she's back working). She's ultra paranoid about covid but not being rational in her actions to coincide with that paranoia (sometimes wants to see my parents who are very old, getting upset if people are wearing masks in public and then getting upset when they're not, disinfecting groceries but going to get take out, making her own wipes because she doesn't trust factories, making her kids take off their clothes in the yard and hosing them down when coming back from a park, etc). She also complains that people in her neighborhood treat her like she is wearing a scarlet letter and purposefully avoid her and her children when they're out of walks or riding bikes because of where she works (a kid told them that was why they had to cross the street, because his mom said they had bad germs from the hospital).

I am treating my sister with grace and patience. She's literally trying to keep her head together, keep her job, keep her family safe, pay her bills, etc. Perhaps your sister is deal with incredible stress on all levels from all directions. Take a pause, take a breath, imagine being in her situation, hug your baby. Hopefully this will pass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My sister is a med-surge nurse handling Covid patients daily since March. She has developed severe service anxiety, gotten an online therapist, gotten on medication, and took a short leave of absence from her job (but was threatened by the hospital to be fired if she didn't come back so she's back working). She's ultra paranoid about covid but not being rational in her actions to coincide with that paranoia (sometimes wants to see my parents who are very old, getting upset if people are wearing masks in public and then getting upset when they're not, disinfecting groceries but going to get take out, making her own wipes because she doesn't trust factories, making her kids take off their clothes in the yard and hosing them down when coming back from a park, etc). She also complains that people in her neighborhood treat her like she is wearing a scarlet letter and purposefully avoid her and her children when they're out of walks or riding bikes because of where she works (a kid told them that was why they had to cross the street, because his mom said they had bad germs from the hospital).

I am treating my sister with grace and patience. She's literally trying to keep her head together, keep her job, keep her family safe, pay her bills, etc. Perhaps your sister is deal with incredible stress on all levels from all directions. Take a pause, take a breath, imagine being in her situation, hug your baby. Hopefully this will pass.

+1

It is great that you are extending compassion to your sister. It sounds impossibly hard, and I suspect that many, many, many front-line workers are experiencing stress, fear, isolation, and anger, and are just overwhelmed emotionally. I can't even imagine.

[Anonymous]

That’s awful, OP. My youngest is an EMT. He is in college as well. It’s an incredibly stressful time for our first responders. I can tell he is anxious and exhausted. But that doesn’t excuse bad behavior.

[Anonymous]

My family on the front lines is acting irrationally at times too. I let it wash over me as much as possible. The emotional toll is enormous.

[Anonymous]

I would treat it like a widow losing her cool at a funeral-she gets a pass! chalk it up to extremely trying circumstances and in a while reach out about something non-controversial.