Time to derail sister’s controlling behavior

I am the eldest in a family of three sisters. For years, my sisters and I have struggled with how to balance and accept one individually and in our respective family roles. At times, there is a lot of conflict, estrangement and anger when my middle sister dictates the way the rest of the family members should live their lives. My parents recognize my sister has strong opinions but also may have some type of personality disorder so they tread lightly around her so as not to upset her. This frustrates myself and my younger sister. How can we deal with this sister in a healthy manner?

-- D.R.,

Forth Worth, Texas

A bulk of my early professional training was in systemic family therapy. This therapy does not focus on individuals and insight; rather, it focuses on the collective dynamics of the relationships contained in the family. Think of it as a machine. Gears, cogs, flywheels -- no part of the machine can move without in some way moving the other parts. Or think of it as a spider web. No matter where you touch the web, the whole thing vibrates.

Systemic family therapy intervenes by suggesting a behavioral change in one individual that, when deployed, makes it possible for everyone else in the system to behave differently. Sometimes the behavior change is absurdly simple and seemingly innocuous.

As you have presented your story, my prejudice would be to attack the problem systemically. Put simply, rather than urge your middle sister and your parents to examine and change their behavior, I'd push you and your youngest sister to develop a strategy of changes in your response to the current dynamics. The changes would include subtle -- and sometimes not-so-subtle -- ways that both of you disengage yourselves from the problem. I call it derailing the train. The goal is, at once, to make your middle sister's behavior less effective and, hopefully, less necessary.

If I was treating your family, the words that jump out at me are "(your parents) tread lightly so as not to upset her."

A source of endless fascination in my work is how and why one person is afforded the power to hold the family hostage with the threat of his/her getting upset. In my childhood home, for example, there was hardly a more important value than making sure my father didn't get angry. Even on good days, my mother, my sisters and myself were, somewhere inside of ourselves, collectively walking on eggshells. Always navigating a minefield because there was no way to ever really know when the next raging would happen, or to anticipate what would set it off.

One part of the problem was my father's serious anger issues. But, in some ways, the bigger part of the problem was the way the rest of us kept his problem going by living as if it were fundamentally our responsibility to protect him from ever having to look at that in himself.

Again, if your family was in treatment, I'd be exploring the question of how and why, in your family's history and evolution, did your parents adopt the stance of treading lightly around one of three children. And why that one?

I'd encourage you and your sister to stop treading lightly. This does not mean I think you should tread antagonistically or with confrontation. I'm simply encouraging you to tread differently, subtly, as if naive to the historical dynamics.

When your middle sister begins to dictate how you should live, your response is as if to be curious and thoughtful. You listen as if she's very wise. You might even thank her for caring enough to have such strong opinions. You say, "I'll give that some thought."

Then you go on living exactly the way that you think is best to live.

Then, when she becomes critical (pissy, my grandmother called it) because you have dared to eschew her wisdom, you derail the train. You don't fight back. You keep that same energy of curiosity and naivete. You listen, then you say something such as, "If I make a choice for my life that does not heed your advice, guidance and warnings, do you think you'd be able to forgive me?"

This is called making the covert overt. It says out loud -- without having to say it all -- that her behavior is grossly presumptuous and controlling. She would probably say: "It's your life. It's not for me to forgive."

And then you win. And your middle sister never has to know that what she just said is a flat contradiction of the presuppositions of her behavior. But now it will be harder for her to continue the behavior.

Originally published in View News, Jan. 26, 2010.