GCs Taking MY Experience?

[Phoebes]

Is this a thing?

My GCs, who has always said she has "blocked" everything before 18, is now telling stories, MY stories, as if they are hers. I know blocking trauma is a thing. But the way she said it I always thought it's her way of not wanting to deal with or confront the abuse in our home growing up.

Anyway, NOW, she tells me things she remembers, but they are actually MY experiences that I have told her I experienced. As if she experienced them. For example, the whole time, in my young life, that no one was believing me about my GP's molestation, she was saying "he never did that to me." Ok, a. I'm glad, b. that really hurts as a response to my pain c. glad you escaped at least one familial form of abuse.

NOW, she is telling the story to her shrink as if it is her who lived through MY story (she told me.) I said you always told me he didn't do any of that to you and you've blocked everything before 18. But now she needs to have a conversation with her daughter, and is using "her" experience to relate to her. There are also other stories she is now telling as her own, that have always been my stories. It's a little confusing, and maybe I should just blow this one off and let it go. There's becoming more and more reasons to be distant from the only family member I have left.

[dreamriver]

Hi Phoebes - this is definitely weird behavior! But I've experienced shades of it, just a little different.

Despite the differences, I can feel how irksome that would be to you. It's so, so annoying. My GC/uNPD sibling did similar for years ever since we were very very little, and it has always irked me. I never did much about it except vent to other FOO about it which (due to recent FOO blowouts) I realize in hindsight wasn't wise at all....though no real repercussions came from it.

I'd say it's definitely one of those subtle things you can add to the long list of other subtle things that siblings do that require watching and looking out for, and which might entail that distance would be good in a PD family...(the list with my sib is looooooong now)...that is, if things start to ramp up.

My first observation (with you and myself, too) is our siblings, whether directly PD/flying monkeys/have fleas/just around a PD, might take on that PD tendency to see us as extensions of themselves....so of course they'd have a right to your stories and experiences! There's no boundaries so it's automatically theirs, too (especially in enmeshed families). Maybe it's not a PD trait necessarily but something you could try boundaries with to start...

My GC/uNPD sib did this, though mostly not with my own accounts of abuse. She'd say things to others like: if someone laughed at my joke, complimented me, or even when we took in a stray cat when we were kids that I found myself, her story about it/recall would be "remember when I cracked that joke? S*** laughed so hard at that!" Or "remember when so-and-so said those nice things to me?" And then the story about my childhood cat we found as a stray, who loved me and I loved him so much. "You didn't find him. I did. Remember? He loved me and followed me all the way home. By all rights he's mine but I guess you can have him"

However, the more similar thing to your story about the molestation/abuse (and which I'm now questioning as an adult) is that, in the same spirit, my GC/uPD sib always sang the tune of "I was the only one abused (PA/SA/EA) in this family and I got it the worst." But then a year ago I pulled a loose string and her entire tapestry unraveled....to reveal that we all had been abused, she had possibly just stolen a great number of our own stories. I had to completely reconstruct the narrative of my childhood realizing this based on some very vivid memories I didn't ever want to closely examine. She possibly watched what happened to some of her own siblings and due to her PD, couldn't differentiate, and concluded that everything bad that happened in this family happened only to her.

I do believe she got the worst abuse. But she was not the only one. When telling her about my own memories, her response was to say they were untrue, deny them, and then insist what happened actually only happened to her.

I'm NC with this sib, but not based on her story-nabbing: mostly it is based on her inability to validate my own trauma (she thinks I'm jealous and want to be her, that's how she sees it) but also because she's started a smear campaign through my FOO against me, too. So yes, a little similar, but also a little different. And also, I totally empathize with and relate to realizing some things about the last family member you're close with and getting worried ...and realizing they might have fleas, tendencies at the least, or perhaps even a covert uPD that I had never really noticed or considered. It's hard and I'm sorry. 

[Blueberry]

I'm sorry Phoebes I have heard / read of this type of thing happening. In my FOO there are only mild signs of this kind of thing. 

I understand how hard and painful it is to be having thoughts like: I need to further distance myself from only FOO mbr I have left.
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