just being around my family triggers shame

because the old feelings come up, the ones I'm not supposed to talk about, like this giant iceberg inside me that clanks around and bashes against my insides. But when I'm with my family I have to pretend that the iceberg isn't there, that it isn't this massive obstacle/burden/handicap that I'm dragging around everywhere I go.

My brother said, I love you.
He also said, I'm not your therapist.
He also said, I don't want to have to listen to your shit any more.
He said, is it any wonder that nobody wants to be around you (meaning him and my SIL)
He said, You're always playing the victim. You have such a chip on your shoulder.
He said, I think you need to be on medication.
He did NOT say, more gently, less judgmentally, Have you considered taking something to help you deal with this?

Can you imagine the pain of having to listen to all this? The "I love you" opens you up, disarms you; and then they come in with the knives: Stab, stab. And you're lying there bleeding from a hundred places, in pain and shock, and they can't even see it. Maybe it's my own fault; maybe I became so guarded as a child that now, as an adult, I fail to have the 'normal' reaction that someone 'should' have, that lets someone know they've gone too far, namely - what? Tears? Anger? Rage? Throwing the son-of-a-bitch out of the house? I think that's part of the problem: I don't even know what a 'normal' reaction to abusive language would look like. (Though I suppose I've seen it in the shocked, hurt or angry reactions of my nieces, who haven't had their natural resistance beaten out of them yet [and hopefully never will - I like to think I've had some influence there, as I've said before].) And half the time, even if I managed to have a 'normal' reaction, I'd instantly feel guilty, worrying that I'd been too harsh, to unkind, too unfair. I'd instantly relent, not wanting to to damage the relationship. Now if only I'd ever seen them worry about hurting my feelings...

Much of the time I'm so shocked by their behavior that I can't think how to react until the moment is long past. Just learning to be able to speak up at all in the face of what I see as shocking cruelty has been such a huge struggle. And now I feel that they only want me around if I agree to be silent. As if I were one of the children - powerless and required to submit to their need to dominate, to have power and control. Well, I will not. I will not be silent; I will not submit. Not going to happen. Even if it means being shut out by the family - that's a price I'm willing to pay.

I sometimes think that they just simply don't know how to be kind. Not truly, not genuinely. If I spell out exactly what I need, down to the last eyelash of detail, and do it in an absolutely calm, cool, rational, unemotional way, making sure not to trigger any of his buttons, then he'll sometimes do what I ask. But it's so exhausting - it feels, always, like a one-way street, where I'm being the patient parent, showing him the way, talking/walking him through it. If I don't follow this procedure, if I just simply express what I feel, all communication shuts down, comes to a screeching halt. And if I don't do all the work, the communication never happens. It's simply expected that, once enough time has passed, it will be all better. It will somehow just magically go away with no one having to say a word, make an apology, mend a bridge. Magical thinking.

It's finally getting through to me that his definition of love is: Don't burden me with your messy and inconvenient feelings. Which is the exact same message I grew up with from the parents.

This message is cruel and unkind: It says, I will love you as long as you don't bother me with your problems. A very conditional kind of love. I might even go so far as to say that it doesn't feel like love to me AT ALL.

I've made all the excuses for them that there are, in the desperate need to believe that they care about me - they haven't thought about this like I have; they don't know what they're saying; they really don't believe that what they're saying/doing is hurtful.

Grasshopper, none of that matters.

What matters is that you protect yourself.

At this point what that means is: Stay strictly away from them. All of them. Even the nieces, since you can't be around them without being around their parents.

Do NOT re-traumatize yourself. You are healing. You cannot heal when you continually expose yourself to the same shit that caused the damage in the first place.

As long as you feel like there's a gigantic bandage over your mouth, a big sticky piece of duct tape telling you to shut the fuck up, there will BE no healing in the presence of the so-called family. In order to heal you need to be only around people to whom you can speak your truth. Which means being able to express all your feelings, even the messy, ugly, painful ones that nobody wants to hear.

So for the sake of your sanity and physical and mental health: Stay the hell away from them.