Dear Annie: I have always looked up to my older sisters. They are twins and six years older than me. We all had difficult childhoods because our father was an abuser. He isolated my sisters by calling them special and putting me and my other siblings down.

As an adult, I have gone through a long process of healing and finding love and support through a close group of friends. I feel more loved and understood than I ever have before. I always felt so isolated as a child because my father was not afraid to make it clear how much he disliked me, in addition to the other abuse my sisters and I suffered. My friendships have really allowed me to open up and find joy and trust in the world.

However, my relationship with my sisters at times feels stagnant. Each time I see them, they seem to have a fixed view of who I am. I try to be open and vulnerable with them, too, but am very used to being mocked or shut down or simply having the subject changed back to their lives, which often dominates all conversations with them. Not only do I feel like I am fighting for them to take me seriously as a grown late-20s adult, but I also feel like I am still fighting against the ideas my father had of me that still exist in their heads.

Rather than taking time to get to know the adult I have become, my sisters continually tell me I am a cold, closed-off person, no matter how open and vulnerable I try to be. I know I still am clearly more comfortable around my friends. One of my sisters criticizes me for putting my friendships on a pedestal. Even the most fun and lighthearted moments with my sisters are quickly overshadowed by a comment like, “You don’t feel emotions as deeply as we do,” which cut particularly deep because I really, really do feel deep emotions and don’t enjoy being dismissed and dehumanized through these comments. I feel like they are repeating old narratives and not putting effort into learning how I have changed and how I have tried to be compassionate and open to their developments and growth.

Annie, how can I salvage my relationship with my sisters, which is so precious to me, and try to get them to see me as I am now? I am frankly exhausted, and any conversation I try to have about it with them devolves into their snapping at me and twisting my words into something I am absolutely not saying, and our conversation becomes more about them and their trauma than my current experiences with them. I don’t want to give up, but I worry there’s no way forward from here that doesn’t leave me feeling more and more alienated from my family. — Not Feeling Seen

Dear Not Feeling Seen: You are a survivor who is now thriving. Don’t let anyone take that away from you or give away your power. Feeling seen, truly seen by another human being, is one of the most joyous human experiences we can have with one another. Like seeing the other as pure love and light.

It is terrible that you had to endure all of that pain and abuse from your father, but it’s wonderful that you healed yourself with great support networks and friends. The behavior that your sisters exhibit toward you sounds similar to what they experienced with your father. Without good therapy, children of abusers sometimes become abusers themselves, and it seems as if that is what your sisters are doing to you.

Take a step back, and look at the bigger picture. They are hurting and have not done the work to feel and heal all of the pain they suffered, so they are taking it out on you. If you can try to, just be a witness to it, and if they start to be mean, hang up the phone or walk away. You will be better off. We can’t control other people, but we can control how we react to them.

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