Family Difficulties

Kindness and forgiveness is the greatest gift if you can do try it

I get that! I am glad you found a solution somehow. I guess I feel the same pain as my family is similar.   Just know that you're not alone with this feeling and no matter what you're doing to protect yourself, you have every right to do so and it never makes you a bad person :) 

Hello Lythia,

thank you so much as you have really understood my pain. Yes, it is more about my wishes being ignored. This is something I have put up with for decade now and it has left me with deep insecurities and a lack of confidence. I have tried to explain but this is rejected. I do not regret not having contact with my mother and wish I had taken this step years ago as it has been liberating. 

Hmm, families can be more complicated. My mother is abusive to all 4 kids. I did 10 years of therapy, and my therapist said it was one of the worst cases of emotional abuse she'd encountered in 30 years. But my mother does lots of repair gestures like cards, presents, etc, only to then abuse at the first opportunity. It is sad when families don't work, I'd love to have a mother I could relate to, but I'd be deluding myself and the best thing is to keep my guard and boundaries.

I get that for others cutting off might be the best even safest thing to do.

Hello! 
As I understand it the problem is more the fact that your wishes keep getting ignored and you don't want that anymore right? 

I am in a similar situation with my family (them giving me presents I don't want and need and expect me to be grateful) and I am still working on that. 
My wishes and needs are only respected if I escalate which I don't recommend. 
My strategy now is that I get really serious and ask them if I could talk to them about something that makes me feel really bad. 
I tell them to please listen closely and let me talk till I finish. 
Then I tell them the EXACT problem. Some sentences can look like this: "... bothers me, because ..." ; "I appreciate ... , but..."
or  "this might seem like something small to you but to me it is not, so please please do/don't ..." 
and then tell them the consequences if they don't respect your needs. 
For me this would be "Respect my needs or otherwise I don't want to see you anymore because it causes me too much distress." 

I will repeat often what I want. And I will do the consequences to show how serious this is. I think really showing that their actions have consequences makes them realize that they need to change their behaviour. 

I hope this is helpful in some way! I know how draining it is if someone is just not listening. 

Hello Aidie, thank you. It is a hard thing to deal with but being ignored when expressing my wishes is hard to take. I am not close to my brother as I do not see him often as he is busy working and we live far apart. I have my local support bubbles via a local help group.

Well my take on this is it is sad when families break up and wonderful when they try to rebuild relationships. Both your parents and your brother are trying to do this as they know how much anguish it is causing all of you, but you alone are not allowing anything to improve.

You will always have your family and rebuilding relationships is always possible if you just allow something to happen, but constant rejection like this will make it worse for all of you.

In my autistic analytical way, I would look to develop a plan eg,

1.allowing some very brief communication eg a Christmas card

2. looking to build on this maybe meeting with a third party neutral person

3. surely you can develop an improvement

but NOT "I will never speak or receive anything from them ever again"

yes i agree with NicheMarket. The presents are just material items dont let them damage your relationship with your brother, he is sorta in a difficult position. Make his life easy  and you will gain in the long run.

Yeah, if you want to see your brother then it seems the easiest strategy is to take the gifts, stick them in a bag, and pass them on without looking at them.

If you're worried there may be a note in there apologising, then ask a trusted person to open them, read any note, and only relay information if it's super important. I did this once and it worked for me.

My mother is abusive, and always has been, and it's really difficult as siblings to manage it all. Often the easiest thing for one of us is to do what she wants in order to avoid the psychosis. You're brother's probably trying to manage it as best he can, even if it's not ideal.

I hope you can enjoy time with your brother. The most important thing is to limit how your parents abuse impacts your relationship with your brother.

take the presents straight to the Salvation Army where someone will be only to happy to receive them.