Reply to First responder sibling losing their mind

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=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.

[b]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. [/b]

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

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. [/quote]

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.         [/quote]

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