My siblings have always ment the world to me. When life and the people in it was unfair, we always had each other. While I admit that being a part of different generations sometimes makes it difficult to connect and stay connected, they are important in my life.

In Denmark every third person considers themselves next of kin to someone with a mental health illness. 61% feels the psychological burden.

Bedre Psykiatri, 2018

8-9 years ago, a lavine began that became impossible to stop. What normally would have been considered young people having fun turned out to be self-medication. Self-medication became psychotic incidences. Psychotic incidences developed into memory loss after treatments, suicide attempts, visits to the psychiatric department, even one time where the police was called to ensure hospitalisation.

How many families is it normal to have a record over how many attempts there have been?

It is difficult being the sister nothing new, but still. It seems to me, with mental health illnesses that there’s never really a way out. It’s always there luring under the surface, threatening to come out and break the quiet moments with hurricanes. At one point we can talk as adults and the next I’ve done something wrong and fire comes down.

Standing on the sideline, watching the circles of denial they almost have to walk before realising where the help might actually be, eats me alive if I allow myself to become a part of the circle-walking. Bottom line is, no one can force help down any one’s throat before they want to be helped.

No one can force any one to stop their destructive behaviours before understanding the ruination of it all.

But where does that leave me? When we find ourselves in between a system that has all the professional help but doesn’t seem to listen and a sibling that seems to not see the issues where does that leave me as the sister?

Sometimes it seems that family is left doing the job society have educated professionals for. A job the family is not equipped for professionally or emotionally and it feels like being left behind figuring out what others are spending years to learn at universities.

The thing just is, when you are family, you are already involved. You are already deep in all the dirt that is a family. But when are you so involved that it is okay to step in and overwright the story being told by the people involved? When is it time to step out of the way, recognise that everyone are adults and should get a chance to go their on their own?

In the end, you don’t learn how to cook by being served the finished meal.

Some cheasy quote someone once made up, but quite fitting for the purpose