Dear Lola:

Congratulations for getting married! I am sorry that you received such a terrible “gift” from your brother the night before your wedding. I understand your emotional reaction, it’s quite  natural in the face of such a confession.

First thing that comes to my mind to tell you is this: the confession you heard does not indicate anything about you any more than it indicates anything about me (not being related to, and never having met your brother). His confession has nothing to do with you regardless of your relation to him.

“I used to be very close with my brother (he generally isn’t open or close with anyone)“- it could be that he was upset that you were getting married, upset about your new husband and/ or future kids taking away from him the closeness he had with you, and upset and drunk, he … gave you this terrible gift for your wedding.

Some things that people say, and you hear- they can’t unsay it and you can’t forget that you heard it. It is done, the terrible thing has been said. Hopefully, in 10 years since the incident, he has done nothing like that again, allowing- or worse- causing a person to die so to enjoy a feeling of power. I would suggest to you to be careful regarding your brother ever being alone with your future kids, if you have any, and otherwise, be cautious. Also, maybe you can consult with a professional, a clinical psychologist, a forensic psychologist Perhaps (a psychologist that works for or with the legal system)- in regard to what, if anything, you should do about what your brother told you.

As far as your relationship with your brother, if he shows signs of wanting to resume it, make it a condition that you and him get together in a psychotherapist’s (or a counselor’s) office to discuss his confession and if/ how to move forward.

anita

Dear Lola:

You are very welcome. “I feel bad for even telling my husband because now he is also burdened with it” – I think that you did the right thing telling him, because it was necessary. If for no other reason than for his need to know, as the future father of your children, so that he can protect his- your children.

“I find the idea that he may have wanted to spoil my wedding… I’m struggling to get my head around it” – I wasn’t thinking that he had planned to spoil your wedding, that he had such a cold-hearted intent and a plan, but rather that disinhibited, under the influence of alcohol, he did what he did.

“I don’t intend to be alone with him and wouldn’t intend to have him in any future children’s lives“- good thing.

“I can’t let them find out why I need space from him. I think it would break their hearts. So I feel like I have to carry this burden forever“- you shared your burden with your husband and you shared it here. So you don’t have to carry this burden alone. You can post here anytime you need to express yourself.

There are serial killers whose motivation in killing has been to enjoy having power over their victims, a similar sentiment to what your brother expressed. I still think that it’s a good idea for you to somehow consult with a forensic psychologist, that is, a psychologist who works with or for the criminal system. Maybe the forensic psychologist will have some important input or advice for you.

anita

Dear Lola:

You are welcome, Lola.

“It just disturbs me because he is such a peaceful creature. I hate to have brought this into his life“- you couldn’t help it, you had to bring this information into your husband’s life. But you can promote his peaceful nature in other ways, every day.

“I’m feeling pretty conflicted in myself because it’s as if all and any love I had for my brother has been suddenly switched off. I’ve lost my belief in unconditional love and I’m ashamed of myself for it“- your brother is responsible for letting a man die and for letting your love for him die when he told you about what he did. The shame belongs with him, not with you.

In yet other words, your love having switched off is not a consequence of your inadequacy as a loving and loyal sister; it is a consequence of his severe wrongdoing and having told you about it, burdening you with this very disturbing information.

“I expressed the idea of talking to forensic specialist to my counsellor and he said he’s certain it would be fruitless. Where this happened, wasn’t even on the same continent, let alone the same legal jurisdiction“- I didn’t suggest seeing a forensic psychologist so to take legal action against your brother regarding the incident 10 years ago. I suggested it for the purpose of understanding better and finding out if there is anything at all that you can do toward preventing people from getting harmed by your brother.

In your original post you mentioned “Lots more awful details” to what he told you that night. A forensic psychologist may be able to put those details together into a better understanding of your brother and what a danger he poses to other people. And he may suggest what, if anything, you can do about it.

“I feel conflicted also in that I sometimes wonder if his girlfriend, for example, has the right to know. They have 2 year old son who I’ve never met“- this is a conflict that a forensic psychologist (one that specializes in the psychology behind criminal behavior) can help you with. I hope that his son and girlfriend are okay!

“I was awake very early this morning as I was having nightmares about him“- a consequence of what he told you.

Back to your original post: “10 years ago he’d let a man die. He said he was choking on his vomit and he could have just rolled him over but he really wanted to see a man die. He said he enjoyed it and it made him feel powerful“- to understand better, I will be doing a little study. It may help you understand better as well:

– Recently, in October 2021, a 37  year old former male nurse in Texas was convicted and sentenced to death for killing multiple patients back in 2017 and 2018 by injecting them with air “for fun”. One of his prosecutors in closing arguments said: “He enjoyed going into the rooms and injecting them with air. If you watch the video… he sat at the end of the hall and he watched those monitors and he waited. That’s because he liked it“.

Another nurse, a female nurse, worked as a nurse from around 1885 to 1902. She injected patients with a mixture of drugs and enjoyed watching them die, getting a sexual thrill out of it, “she got a powerful erotic charge“. She admitted that she aspired “to have killed more people — helpless people — than any other man or woman who ever lived”.

There were other nurses who enjoyed watching their patients die.  learning mind. com: ” some angels of death simply kill for power or as a mode of stimulation. Normal life has lost its meaning for them… While most of the patients killed..  were elderly, there have been a handful of cases where children were involved…  it’s safe to say, know your medical professionals before you put your life in their hands”.

Psychology today: “some people enter healthcare professions not to help others but to gain power, control, or attention. If they decide to harm or kill, victims and methods are readily available… A study published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences in November 2006 examined 90 cases from twenty countries of criminal prosecutions between 1970 and 2006… the number of suspicious deaths attributed to the confirmed killers in the study totaled over 2,000. Often they work alone… Several professionals who study these cases worldwide have listed traits and behaviors that should be taken seriously. While none is in itself sufficient to place someone under suspicion, a number of them occurring together is reason to pay attention. In retrospect, we know that nurses who turned out to be serial killers…. * were secretive * had a persistently difficult time with personal relationships…. * had been involved in other types of criminal activities. * had a substance abuse problem”.

You wrote that your brother in your original post that he  “generally isn’t open or close with anyone“, which is one of the traits and behaviors listed above.  I hope that he doesn’t work in a hospital because for people who enjoy watching people die, it’s the perfect place because the people to kill are readily available, their deaths is often not suspicious because they are sick, and the drugs and equipment to cause them to die are readily available.

I did this little study because for me, the more I understand, the saner I am. How do you feel about it?

anita

Dear Lola:

You are welcome. If I can help just a bit in some way, that’s good enough for me.

“At the time he made this confession, he also proceeded to joke about killing one of our guests and to let him know if there is anyone I wouldn’t miss. He then proceeded to list the people that he wouldn’t let die… He was always quite obsessed with (American Psycho) and it was him who gave it to me to read“- reads to me that he is fascinating with thoughts and images of killing people and/ or watching people die. I guess he fantasizes a lot about it. I wonder if he is in the habit of watching violent movies that depict people dying. I also wonder how he treats animals, if he ever hurt animals and watched them die.

“Moving forward with the rest of my family, I’m not sure what to do…. The family core has always felt very much like me, him and our parents and the other two brothers are outliers…. She thinks we will get over it and go back to the way we were but I don’t know how to explain that that isn’t possible“- it just occurred to me to ask, what is his relationships with his/ your parents, any anger that he has toward them, or had as a child, feelings of powerlessness growing up?

anita

Dear Lola:

This is the most important part of your recent post: “I have had some very serious struggles with my mental health and I feel like I can’t look after myself if I keep accepting other people’s burdens…  I want to get myself to a really mentally healthy place before I start my own family. My husband and I both have demanding careers and there’s really only so much space I have in my head for stressors… I’ve just reached a point where I want to resolve and disengage from sources of trauma and not carry that forward to my own children“.

Looking after your mental health, disengaging from other people’s burdens (your brother’s and parents’ included), minimizing your stressors, focusing on your new family and on your demanding career, resolving and disengaging from sources of trauma and not carrying that forward to your children- these are the best goals I can think of, admirable goals and I say: they should be in the forefront of your mind as you choose your attitudes and behaviors every single day.

For the sake of your mental health, you will need to abandon your childhood-and-onward role in your family of origin, you will need to reverse the role reversal that took place.  I’ve been studying your thread for over 4 hours and I think that I am getting a feel for what has been happening, this is my best understanding at this point, my theory, you can call it:

“I told my mother that he really upset me but I can’t explain the extent of it without breaking her gentle heart“- I think that growing up, neither of your parents was a strong figure in the family. I think that your mother was child-like, not mature/ not emotionally resourceful, and therefore unable to effectively mother her children. The results: two of your adult brothers are not involved with the family, being “outliers” as you put it,  the brother we are discussing is significantly disturbed and you are the anxious “mother” of the remaining three members of the family: your parents and brother.

I think that since an early age, you viewed your mother as a child with a gentle-child-heart, a heart that can easily break. Therefore you took on the role of the adult in your family who’s job is to protect your mother and keep the family together.

“My mother always loved him… She knows that he’s an oddball and frequently just smiles and says ‘your brother really is a strange fish‘”- she always loved your brother not as a mother who is engaged with her son. She loved him from a removed- detached position, as if indeed she was watching a fish in an aquarium, pondering how strange the fish is.

“When I told her that he told me something that really upset me, she asked me not to push him away because I’m the only one he ever opens up to. Unfortunately, I… have always tended to fill that role in the family“-

– your mother knows that her son doesn’t ever open up to her,  so she assigned you the role (and/ or you took on the role) early on to be for your brother what his mother was not able to be for him. There has been a Role Reversal happening in your family and you took on the strong adult/ mother role, filling in the gap left by your parents.

“for me to disengage with my brother will be very obvious and cause a huge amount of distress to my parents… I will be the one creating a rift and I fear it will hurt my parents and that they might resent me for ruining the family“- there has been a rift, a gap.. a hole in your family, left by the absence of a single strong parent, and so, your role was to fill that hole, to bridge that gap. Currently, in your 30s, you still identify with that role and you feel guilty about abandoning it, as if your family will be ruined if you do, as if the rift will become too much and the family will break apart completely.

“(husband) said he’d always gotten a dark vibe from my brother… I always explained away my family dynamics as ‘we’re just a weird family but what family isn’t’ etc. I believed this too but the more I think lately, the more I feel it’s all just a bit beyond the realm of acceptably strange“- the darkness, weirdness and strangeness was in the family before your brother was born into it.  He did not invent the darkness etc., he grew up with it.

Let’s review the darkness in your brother’s mind and heart in a chronological order: he was cruel to one of the family’s dogs, abusing the dog, and as a result of the abuse, the dog ran away. He was cruel to other animals as well, “in general he has no concern for what animals feel“, but he loved and never harmed (?) one of the family dogs, the one who was exclusively his own. When he was about 14, he was playing-wrestling with you (7-years-old), his arm around your neck so tight, choking you, that you started to lose your vision. He then let go and said that he had no idea that you were struggling. Ever since you were 10 and chose to be a vegetarian, he made fun of you and accused you of being “a weakling etc.” for not eating meat. He still does more than two decades later.

In his late 20s he watched a man choke on his vomit, could have saved him by rolling him over, but chose not to because “he enjoyed it and it made him feel powerful“. Sometime later, still in his late 20s, he was out one night and saw 2 men beating a third man. He intervened in behalf of the third men and was badly beaten for it to the point of getting hospitalized. During that time, he was in a relationship with a woman (for a total of 16 years), but didn’t bring her to meet his family for 8 years (keeping her a secret), because it would have been “too awkward” to introduce her to the family, he said.

The night before your wedding (he is in his late 30s) , while drunk, he confessed about having enjoyed watching a man die ten years earlier. You asked him if he felt guilty for it and he said that “he has no remorse“. He also joked about killing any one of your wedding guests, asking if there is someone at your wedding that you’d miss. He then proceeded to list the people he wouldn’t let die. On your wedding day, he didn’t say a single word to you or to anyone and wasn’t in any of the family photos. He currently has an office job, a girlfriend and a 2-year-old son. He didn’t introduce you to his son and when you tried to meet his son, he didn’t make it possible for you.

My thoughts regarding your brother’s darkness and strangeness: in general he has no concern for how animals feel because he was not shown concern for how he felt growing up. He grew up lost, and lonely, like a fish alone in an aquarium, eternally swimming in still, silent water.  He felt powerless, a weakling, unable to make waves, and he hated that feeling. He needed to feel powerful, he needed to make waves, so he hit his dog, he choked you, he beat people on the street, and he felt powerful letting a man die.

Perhaps growing up, your brother- alone in the ever still, quiet water, being observed by people on the outside (people he desperately needed to be emotionally engage with him)- felt like he was dying day after day for what felt like eternity. Fast forward, watching the man dying, maybe he felt that this time, he was the one on the outside of the aquarium watching another man die inside. It felt powerful to be on the other side of death.

“I never noticed any abnormal anger towards them- just the usual teenage angst, you know? So with no obvious issues, I will be the one creating a rift“- you never noticed any abnormal anger in your brother toward your parents not because his abnormal (intense, long-term, dangerous) anger does not exist. What if he dissociated from his abnormal anger toward his parents, and has projected it elsewhere. His abnormal anger does exist, so there is an obvious issue. You did not create this issue. And the rift that you are scared of creating: it’s been there all along, it’s not for you to create because it was created before you were born.

When he told you that it would have been too awkward to introduce his (former) girlfriend to his family, maybe he meant that it would have been too awkward to introduce his family… to his girlfriend. Maybe he didn’t want her to see the darkness that’s in his family.

“I’ve just reached a point where I want to resolve and disengage from sources of trauma and not carry that forward to my own children“- a healthy goal: to reverse that Role Reversal, to no longer support the darkness and strangeness, to be kind and wise and … disengage.

anita