Crisis

[melodyfire]

Hello Everyone.

I really need to explain a situation in which I am involved - I had hoped I would not have to come here because this will most likely be the longest post I have ever written. For an hour or more, I searched the Internet for some answers that might help make sense of a real mess - but I could find nothing that could help me. So I need your advice as this is indeed a dark crisis for me, for my husband, for his sister and her husband.

First, let me explain how everything about the crisis revolves around my husband's sister. I'll call her Marla. I've been married to her brother for 27 years, so I have come to know her very well. Here is an honest description of Marla (there is some compare/contrast regarding the two of us included):

She has had my husband (her brother), fix, repair, rebuild, install ... so many things over the years and has always demanded the "sister rate". He never minded as he is a good man with a giving heart.
However, when we bought a new home and needed a place for a few weeks, she charged us rent and told me the first hour we were there that it was costing her money for us to be there because she paid for her own pizza after we had pizza delivered for everyone. She told us on our second night that our TV was too loud and that one of us was snoring. This home they had built one year prior and was set on the side of a mountain - similar to a 3-story luxury cabin with thick wood floors.

As a housewarming gift, I painted her a beautiful painting that I would normally have sold for a few hundred dollars. She hung it in her laundry room.
As a housewarming gift to us, she gave us a small flag for the mailbox.

It isn't monetary value that matters - it is being honestly engaged with the people you say you love and who love you. Her lack of caring for someone who needs her the way she needed them is heartbreaking.

When their mother was dying of cancer, she said she could not come and help care for her because she hated her sister (where mom was living). I took her place and cared for her mother until she died.

When I was recovering at home from having been on life support with a massive infection where I almost died, she came to my home and tossed a pie on my table because she was asked to bring me one, and then she said, "Well, I hope you feel better.", and she left.

When she began to suffer from depression, I would go by her home and take care of her family's laundry and anything else I could do for her to take some of the pressure off of her. I am not tooting my own horn - I am simply making a case for this crisis, and I am a servant at heart and I don't mind that at all. I will continue to be that whenever and wherever God will allow me.

The massive infection left me with a diagnosis of ME, and ME caused me to have 9 major surgeries in the last 10 years. Marla has never once offered to come over and visit with me or help me.


She has recently become completely consumed with anxiety and depression to the point that she spends days in bed. She has been given meds by doctors to treat her symptoms, but she researches all the side effects and finds a reason to only be on the meds for a couple of weeks, then she is coming off them and on to other meds only to repeat the cycle. She became addicted to a couple of meds and ended up in rehab 4 times - each time she refused to go any place that was not expensive and plush - and each time she left after only 2 weeks.

We all have tried over and over to comfort her; to validate her; to motivate her; to help her... even finding a state of the art therapist for her. She cancelled her first appointment and just claims she wants to die because of her anxiety.

She has a housekeeper so she never does house work even though it's just the two of them. She talks about her woes and how others are responsible; but if I were to try to tell her anything - if my story is longer than three sentences, she loses interest, looks away, and speaks to someone else.

My husband and his sister had two brothers that killed themselves 3 years apart. We were all devastated. Now she says she wants to die. She keeps her husband in a state of worry and concern and even fear that if he upsets her, she may go over the edge. So he is her loyal servant and allows her to decide everything - every little thing. My husband agrees she should be handled with kid gloves so as to not push her over the edge with something one of them might say.

I disagree with them and this is why:

Marla was perfectly healthy mentally and physically - we ran a trail together twice a week. They raised 3 kids while both working for the government as investigators. She went to college on and off for years until she could get her Master's degree. They have always had a full life in these regards.

When they became empty-nesters, Marla was no longer the one controlling every aspect of a number of lives. She was left with herself, and we have watched her in a slow spiral of unexplainable anxiety.

I personally see this whole situation different from our husbands. I see a woman who has called all the shots and had a very obedient husband as long as I've known them. She is judgmental of others, self-righteous, and manipulative. She has made every decision regarding her own rehab, and has left rehab just when she detoxed at the two week point - when Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was scheduled to begin. Her husband obediently drove or flew to retrieve her each time she called. She begs for help. She asks us to help her; to pray for her; and she cannot understand why she doesn't feel any different when she is not changing a single thing, and she finds a way to sabotage every opportunity to receive professional help that involves work while she never misses the appointments for meds.

I think she needs someone to stand up to her and tell her, "No! You will not break this appointment. Get yourself in the car, because you aren't going down on my watch." I am the only one who has ever stood up to her, and she respects me for that.

She needs to hear someone (and I would gladly) say, "Marla, you take but you do not give. You pray but then you lay down and wonder why God isn't making you feel happy. You have never given to anyone without expecting something in return. You are disrespectful to your husband when you should show reverence and respect for the man who attends your every whim."

I offered to be the one to speak to her but so far the guys are afraid of hurting her feelings because she might do what their brothers did. Scared it is some kind of genetic thing.

I see a woman who loves being a victim - but here is our victim: she grew up in a home with an alcoholic father and a mother that worked and provided for all of them and was never very physical with her love. That's it in a nutshell. I've heard the family stories for over two decades.
In contrast; I grew up in a home so filled with violence and rage that I was in fear for my life more than once. I was thrown across rooms and into walls. I was hit, beat, and whipped.

From what I see, Marla is like the patient running the asylum. I told my husband that in no way should Marla be making all the decisions about her care. She is indulging in self-pity and being enabled by both her husband and mine, because they are scared to upset her. This woman doesn't want to hurt herself. She uses emotional blackmail to get others to be too scared to push her toward doing the work it will take to become Christ-like. She is taking it to a level of intense crisis because she does not want to face change - change in herself through a lot of behavioral therapy. She knows she faces changes in how she treats others and how she treats herself. She goes to bed and stays there, and she is coddled at every turn.

Please tell me if there is something I am missing here. Marla was never one to display any obvious signs of mental illness - she always had a little depression from time to time as many of us. But she looks for the perfect pill and yet, cancels therapy. Why does her husband not make her get in the car and tell her that because he loves her, he can no longer let her just have her way and that he is making this decision?

Last item and then I am done:
My husband and I have been blessed to see Marla and her husband coming to church. Recently, Marla asked me if she and I could do a Bible study together. Of course we could. I put together two binders with a great Bible study for us. She came the first day and seemed to really enjoy herself. She cancelled the next week and has been in bed claiming she wants to die ever since. The Bible study was about the condition of the heart.

Your advice is much appreciated. Sorry this post is practically a novel.

 

 

[Who me]

59 minutes ago, melodyfire said:

Your advice is much appreciated

I think you will have to take a stand and tell her brother's that you are going to talk to her.

First thing you must Not mention how she has acted with her mother, your illness etc, that will be seen by her as sour grapes.

What has to be said is how her behaviour makes you and others feel.

That her selfish behaviour devalued the rest of the family. That her attitude shows that the family is not valued by her.

 

I would not expect anything to change, the history you've recounted shows that.

 

Do stress that you care and love her.

 

That you are willing to help, but that you expect to see consistent effort on her part to change how she behaves.

 

[BK1110]

A few thoughts:

1. My father showed zero signs of mental illness his entire life. A little over a year ago, in the midst of cancer destroying his body, he had a total breakdown; hallucinations, crippling depression, etc. He's currently at an appointment for it as I type. I would simply say that to caution that you can't say what's going on with her is fake because she seemed normal for so long prior to it.

2. With that said I think you are right. They are both enabling her. My dad did not want treatment. Even now it's a struggle to get him to go to appointments, take meds, or even just move around. He would have literally died from just sitting and wasting away at this point if not for us pushing him along to seek treatment. The husbands are NOT doing her any good by bending to her whims. If her mental illness is real, then she is NOT capable of making fully rational decisions about her own health and may never be. Depression, real clinical depression, is not just "being depressed" from time to time. It is a serious condition that WILL NOT go away on it's own without serious, consistent treatment. And even then it almost never FULLY goes away, but can only be mitigated. If her condition is real, she will NOT get better without help. Period.

So then you all need to ask yourselves hard questions. If they really want her to get better, they must stop pandering and enabling. They MUST. This is from someone who is going through it with a family member and has been for a year. It will NOT go away on it's own or with half measures. Things are far from perfect, but dad is relatively normal for large chunks of the day now. In contrast to total apathy, weeping, suicidal tendencies and thoughts, and a general complete lack of ability to function on all levels. Yes, there are side affects and difficulties, but he is significantly improved through his meds and ECT treatments. If we did not push him through that over the last year, he would still be a complete shell of himself.

Above all, of course, pray for her daily. And at the end, you have to ask yourself what God's will is. If God is wanting you to intervene, then maybe that's what you must do, even if other family members do not agree.

[Riverwalker]

Most of the time, you cannot choose your family, but in this case you did

Your service, generosity and giving is all commendable, as is your desire to see her well.

She is never going to be the person you are, and if I may say, you are the wrong person to help her, because in you she sees everything she is not. The very best thing YOU can do is pray.  Pray for her, pray that someone who can reach her will come across her path Pray.

And then encourage your husband to get involved, because she will listen to him