I am a 40-year-old woman who has been talked down to and patronised by my older brother my entire life. He often speaks to me as though he assumes I don’t understand simple things, and when I try to communicate to him that I do understand, he doesn’t seem to listen. I looked up to him when I was a child, so there’s this loud voice inside my head that says: “He’s speaking to you like you are an idiot, therefore you must be an idiot,” and my self-confidence is dented more every time.
This makes no sense because I have a good life. But I’m forever beating myself up. He seems to have the power to make me feel worthless.
Very occasionally, he can be lots of fun, and we have a nice time hanging out with our families. I love these moments, which is why I haven’t shut him out of my life. We’ve been through some tough times together: our parents divorced when we were kids, and our mum died suddenly when we were adults. This didn’t make us closer – quite the opposite.
I wonder if he feels resentful about our dad leaving; he was often lumbered with babysitting me. Also, our father left us to be with another family, which I’m sure will have left mental scars. I’ve accepted I cannot change him – but can I change me, and the way that I respond to his behaviour? I want to be able to laugh it off.
When things hit a deep emotional nerve, we tend to clam up or reply defensively, and neither response leaves us feeling master of a situation.
I have previously talked about a hook – something that renders us unable to completely leave a situation that makes us feel bad. And in your case there are two: you occasionally have a good time with him (so you live in hope) and you looked up to him – and probably still do to an extent. So he has some power over you because you want his approval. It might be worth looking at why it’s so easy for him to make you feel like an idiot, when the evidence is clearly that you are not.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapist Susanna Abse (bpc.org.uk) thought “the most significant thing you said is that your father left you for another family, not another woman. That for me was really important.” The significance is in how it left you and your brother feeling: “Who does it feel your dad left, and why?” Abse asked. Remember, young children often blame themselves for things that are not their fault.
Abse felt that, possibly, your brother was left feeling that he wasn’t good enough, and unlovable, and is now projecting that hurt and shame on to you. Older siblings often outsource bad feelings about themselves to younger siblings.
Abse also wondered what happened when you were born and how that was handled. Was your brother made to feel included? Did the affair happen around the time of your birth? Not because any of this is your fault, but family narratives around a new baby being born can explain a lot of what happens further down the line between siblings.
The reason the patronising behaviour affects you so much, Abse explained, “is because your brother is able to locate in you the ‘idiot’ child you once felt. This is why you can’t laugh it off, because a bit of you still feels like that, and your brother is able to stimulate that in you.”
Abse recommended you try to do some work – on your own, with a good friend or a therapist, to untangle what your feelings are about your dad leaving and why you are so easily made to feel stupid. And what are your brother’s feelings? Not that – as you correctly surmise – you can do anything about his, but it might help you separate them. An exercise she suggested is to imagine past scenarios between the two of you and to “float above” each one. This can help you see heated situations for what they were, what buttons were pushed, and why.
In time, Abse suggested you might feel able to say to him: “I wonder why you need to make me feel like an idiot, when you know I’m not. It’s sad when we can have such a nice time together.”
This is a gentle but assertive way of shining a light on his behaviour. It’s not laughing it off: why should you laugh at something that hurts you? But it is acknowledging something unspoken between you. And I think that needs doing.
• Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a family related problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa on a family matter, please send your problem to ask.annalisa@theguardian.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions: see gu.com/letters-terms.
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