My little sister (12) has an anger problem. I don’t know specifics, but everything just seems inadequate to her. We live in a very fortunate household, and our parents give us lots of rewards for good behavior, but it’s never enough. She sees everything as a personal attack to her, and she yells at my parents a lot about their ‘horrible parenting’. There’s an argument almost every night. I get caught in the crossfire a lot, and I’m already really sensitive to sound, and being yelled at is worse. I can feel myself getting close to breaking down, and I don’t want to add to the drama. I don’t see this argument ending soon. It doesn’t help that my dad is a pretty filterless guy, and sometimes cracks up at my sister’s straw man arguments. I’ve managed to get up to my room, but I can hear her yelling from downstairs. My chest is hurting pretty bad, which doesn’t help. How can I stop the breakdown before it starts?
Withdraw yourself from the situation. If you know she's going to yell and get loud and you know your going to get caught in the crossover, withdraw yourself and go up to your room. Shut the door, get some headphones and turn up your music until it drowns out the arguing. At least that's what I do.
My basic recommendation is what Winter already said. Put on some headphones, drown out the noise with music or a podcast that you enjoy. Read. Draw. Write. Do something to distract you, something that will wrap you up in your head and help drown out what's going on
She came in and apologized. I appreciate the gesture, but yells a lot, and I have a feeling mom and dad made her apologize. I really, really don’t feel like talking (verbally), but I know my parents will make me if they encounter me, then they’ll raise their voice because I’m not answering them. I know very little ASL, so that’s not much of an option for now. I’ll probably talk again soon, but right now, I don’t want to hear my voice. I wish I had someone to hold me and tell me everything’s gonna be okay. I feel really alone.
If it's any consolation, I'd hold you if I knew you in real life. Consider yourself virtually held? I'm sorry, though. Is there a way you could communicate to your family how difficult this is for you to deal with? Not now, but tomorrow, perhaps, when everyone has had some time to calm down?
I dunno. This doesn’t really involve me, and I’m scared that I’ll come off as selfish. I stay out of the arguments, but a lot of times, I happen to be in the room that they’re in (I almost always stay in the living room, it’s where the Xbox is). I flinch every so often, but I don’t make any comments. I’m afraid that I’ll seem too sensitive if I tell them that it’s hard for me to handle this. The trauma that I do have doesn’t involve yelling.
An update that happened while I was writing this: my mom came into my room. I wrote her a note that said I didn’t feel like talking because things were too loud, and she responded with, “Nothing’s being loud right now,” and made me talk.
Yikes. I don't really know how to help, then. Do you go to therapy at all, and could maybe talk about this with a therapist? If you odn't currently go, is there a chance you could?
