Anyone have a "bad apple" in the family that is not only self destructing, but also dangerous to the family as a whole? Like someone who clearly needs professional help, but would turn violent if you even suggested something is wrong with them?
My uncle is like that (when drunk, which is often) and he has been living with his parents after a failed relationship (has a kid, but they were never married) some 20 years ago. My grandpa died this year and he was the glue that held this status quo relatively benign. This is going to unravel slowly over the next decade or so.
However, my wife's brother is even worse than my uncle (although not alcoholic). And his uncle was the glue that kept him from doing anything stupid and he died of a stroke yesterday in front of him. This shit is probably going to unravel very fast in the next months and it is going to be an incredible psychological burden on his whole family, my wife included. Not to mention that his hyper-sensitivity to perceived provocations has been keeping everyone on edge for years now and that they're all already at their limits.
Yeah, I can relate to this, although I feel like my family situation is only in the very beginnings of showing this sort of issue. My brother seems to have completely detached from society and while I'm not sure he could become violent towards others I really wonder if he could cause some harm to himself.
He was already headed in this direction, as he feels he's a failure in his career and life in general (he is not, he just happened to begin a career in a difficult industry at the wrong moment in history) and he had a very bad breakup about 10 years ago or so that my father is convinced he never recovered from. My mother was always the one that held our family together. Unfortunately she died about 2 years ago and since then (in addition to COVID) my brother has just fallen deeper and deeper into whatever black hole he was going into. My father is and has always been a horrible support for our family, and he has just about given up on my brother. I live on the other side of the ocean from both of them so I'm unfortunately not able to asses the situation properly. If I listen to my apathetic father, I hear that my brother has given up on life and, in turn, my father has given up on my brother. Whenever I try to talk to my brother (maybe twice a year if we're lucky) he breaks down in tears and just keeps saying how he feels like a failure.
He refuses to go to therapy. I think this is left over from my mother who thought therapy was for weak people. My brother is still trying please her, even after her death. I've talked honestly with my father about it but neither of us are able to have any real conversation with my bro. Other people who spend time with my brother say he's a normal-seeming person, not this depressed monster that we describe. It's a pretty tricky situation. My father is coming to visit in December, but before that, him and my brother will be having a family thanksgiving with my father's new girlfriend, so hopefully that won't be a disaster.
I've considered inviting my bro to live with me for a while, but I don't have the time or energy to be the caretaker of a middle-aged man who doesn't know what to do with his life, it makes me feel like an asshole, but I have plenty of my own problems to deal with.
Family is tough.