Caregiving has brought to the surface the true personalities of siblings and tons of conflict to the point where things feel estranged. Ending all contact is not an option due to caregiving. Hurtful comments have created an emotionally toxic environment. How do you navigate toxic family dynamics while being forced to interact with toxicity daily due to caregiving? How do you find space to deal with the energy drain and also cope with grieving a parent with dementia and their decline? Sometimes it seem like too much to weight to carry and the same people you would normally turn too aren't emotionally safe people to go to for help.
For me I made a promise to myself, that if A,B OR C happens I will walk.
Like if this starts to effect me to much mentally again for a length of time I will walk.
I will not bring mom to doctors in a wheelchair again, that is going to be my brothers job, just for examples.
Promising myself, and knowing I will follow though , gives me the power.
Our situation was a bit different. We had 4 people caring for my narcissist FIL and we still couldn't keep up with his needs. It was starting to impact my marriage, it was taking copious amounts of time not only from our own nuclear family, but also prevented me from helping my own family of origin because FIL's needs would almost certainly explode if he knew that someone else needed help.
We had done the hospital>rehab>home cycle a number of times in the past. And I knew the drill. He ALWAYS came home because SIL and BIL lived with him and needed his financial support. He went into the hospital>rehab>home cycle a couple of years ago and did absolutely nothing to help himself. They would discharge home and he would be in worse shape than he left.
After we did this twice in immediate succession - I looked at my DH and said "I'm done. I love you and I want to help, But as long as anyone agrees to bring him back home when he can clearly no longer manage to help himself at all, and we can no longer manage his care at home...then I'm going to do the only thing I have left to me. I'm going to walk away. I know you don't want to bring him home again either, but I can't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. But I'm done." He said he understood and that he agreed. He was going to back off as well.
We told SIL and BIL that we were going to have to pull back and weren't going to be able to help if they agreed to bring him home. They agreed with us that he couldn't come back home. But I didn't have much hope that they would stand united/strong given their own precarious position.
They brought him home again. The home health nurse came the very next day to evaluate him and he couldn't even get himself out of the bed to stand up. (300lb man over 6 ft tall)She took one look at him and pulled out her phone and called an ambulance and sent him back to rehab and looked at my SIL and said "I'm sending him back. It isn't safe for him or anyone else for him to continue to live here, You need specialty tools to get him out of the bed and the house is just not set up for his care at this point."
Back to rehab he went. And SIL and BIL finally agreed that we ALL had to be done. We all had to stand together and tell him that we weren't taking care of him anymore. And that if he wanted to come home he had to hire 24/7 care. Otherwise, he had to be moved to a SNF.
The end result was that because we all stood together and agreed to walk away - he didn't have any choice but to look at other options that he had refused to consider.
As long as you are the solution, nothing will change. They will never consider any other option.
Sometimes walking away is the option .
You do have options. It's not going to get any better.
Bullying and manipulation is spot on. This literally happens by people I call my own siblings. It is just so odd. I am just so surprised that they could treat me and talk to me like this as if I was some distant person that never grew up with them. It is sad, but I am emotionally moving on towards acceptance that families can be like this and maybe they will just not be in my future life's journey in the same way I thought they once would be.
I am the "target". The dynamic is very bad, but I can't back out because without me (the person they always have something negative and hurtful to say about) we could not continue to care for Mom at home and a facility is not an option for our situation. It feels like I am losing Mom and family at once. It is a lot to accept. Thanks for your advice.