Prisca grew up feeling controlled and intimidated by her older brother and distanced herself from him as an adult. But her Nicaraguan parents never saw anything wrong with the dynamic. And Diane Orozco, a psychotherapist who helps first-gens heal from trauma and abuse, speaks with Juleyka about how to navigate estranged relationships within our families.
Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez is the author of For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color and the founder of Latina Rebels. You can learn more about Prisca here.
Featured Expert:
Diane Orozco is a Marriage and Family Terapist currently working in private practice at Alvarado Therapy. Diane’s experience includes parent training, school based services, and outpatient community mental health. She has experience working with youth, adults and families struggling with trauma, complex trauma, anxiety, depression, grief and life transitions. She received a Master’s of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy with a specialization in Trauma Studies from Pacific Oaks College. She is an alumni of the AAMFT (American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists) Minority Fellowship Program and a member of CAMFT (California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists). Learn more about her work here.
If you loved this episode, be sure to listen to Telling them I'm Moving in with My Boyfriend and When Familism Hurts.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody. Today I'm speaking with Prisca. Prisca grew up under the watchful eye of her older brother, whom she says closely monitored her behavior and was emotionally abusive. As an adult, she has distanced herself from him, but addressing this issue with her family continues to be a big challenge. Let's get into it.
Prisca: My name is Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez. I am the author of For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts: A Love Letter to Women of Color. And in my home we call my parents Mamí y Papí. In my house growing up, my dad was the only person who worked, who had a job. My dad's a pastor. I have an older brother and a younger sister. It's a very traditional house in that women have certain roles. Men have certain roles. We weren't really encouraged to do anything but be part of our church. My relationship with my brother has always been a little weird. He's only two years older than me, but he was given a lot more power, so it felt like many more than just two years. El hombre de la casa was thrown around since my brother was like nine years old. When my dad would travel for work and stuff it was very understood that he was the watchful eye of my dad.
And he was given that responsibility, "Keep an eye on everything. Tell me what your mom does." All that stuff. The first time I got in trouble for speaking back to him, he had told me to shut up or something and in our household, that was a bad word. And I had slapped him and then I got hit. My mom said, "You don't hit boys." He was almost allowed to do certain things, but I wasn't allowed to defend myself or say that that wasn't okay. Because mi mamí always would say, "Well, my brother was worse than your brother. Your brother's great compared to mine." And he was very much a mama's boy. He was almost untouchable.
There was a big shift in our relationship and the ways that he interacted with me when I became "a woman", when I joined the youth group and started to hang out with older kids. That's when I started to notice that this wasn't just a normal brother and sister thing because he would police a lot of my behavior. He would tell my dad if I was annoying him, if I was talking too much, if I hugged someone, if I was in a corner with a boy or something. If I was just interacting in ways that reflected poorly on my purity or something, he took it upon himself to monitor that. I was in band at one point and he had heard, because he had been in band when he was in high school too, so he heard through his band mates that I had a boyfriend. I wasn't allowed to have boyfriends. I have secret boyfriends. And he would show up to band practice and just drive slowly just to catch me. My sister was there and she was always the one to warn me.
Prisca: She would call me and be like, "We're headed to school. Don't be holding anyone's hands," because we started to have each other's backs. Nobody tasked him directly to do this, but he was given so much authority over us that he took it upon himself to then monitor and regulate my behavior even when I wasn't home. I never thought to mention it to my parents because he was told that that was his role in one way or another. And again, the response was always going to be, "If you're not doing anything wrong, then there shouldn't be an issue."
The scariest part has been his temper. He could be really, really great and we're having a good time. And then he just snaps and says the most horrendous things about your body, your intelligence. He would really lean into, "You're ugly. You're fat," all these like ways to insult you. It was like there was nothing off limits. You were just the ugliest, most unworthy, most whatever person he could think of, and he would just spew it out. And then he always felt terrible, crying, being, "I love you so much. I'm so sorry I did that. I can't believe I did that to you." And then again it would just explode out of nowhere. I told my mom, "It feels like being in a roller coaster being in a relationship with him." And so at 15 I decided to get off it. I just stopped talking to him. I stopped engaging him. I stopped trying. And then I got married really young because I wanted to leave this household. I just hated that no matter what I did, there was nothing I could do right. And there was this man who was also there watching everything.
I do think that my brother does have mental health stuff because I have mental health stuff around the way that we were parented. I also think my mom might too. We all have it. I just, he's not one who's seeking help for sure. In my household, because the gender roles are so prescriptive, I haven't been able to talk about directly, name, "You need to go to therapy or you need to do this." There's not a lot of power that I'm granted in terms of conversations. And compared to my family, I am hyper-educated. And so I try to not weaponize my accolades by not speaking down to them a lot. So what I do is just mirror, like I'll tell my mom, "This is what I'm doing. This is what I'm experiencing. Hopefully that opens your mind in times where you might be experiencing something similar."
Lantigua: For anyone in Prisca's situation, it can be difficult to realize that some of the family dynamics we grew up around were not only outside of the norm but were downright harmful. How can we talk about things like emotional trauma and sibling abuse with our families when it seems we are the only ones to even recognize or acknowledge them. To help us figure it out, I did what I always do. I called in an expert.
Diane Orozco:
My name is Diane Orozco. I'm a psychotherapist based in the east side of Los Angeles. I have experience in working in school-based settings and also community mental health. And I currently work in private practice with Alvarado Therapy, where we specialize in providing EMDR therapy to Latinx, first-gen folks in California.
Lantigua: So you heard Prisca's story. What did you hear as you listened?
Orozco: Yes. I heard Prisca's story. And when I hear her
story, I hear the story of someone who wants to be free. Someone who wants her mamí to be free, right? And we hear kind of these gender expectations and roles that are assigned in her family and in doing so, I mean, that caused harm to Prisca as well.
Lantigua: Prisca is immensely thoughtful and also has gone to therapy and has a really great understanding of what she endured. And so she's able to use language that defines her relationship with her brother as abuse and as an unhealthy power dynamic. So can you talk to us a little bit about what sibling abuse looks like, how it develops, how it shapes us?
Orozco: So in this case, I'm hearing that it came from the parents, really, with the expectation for the brother to... He was given this higher role of protector, right? And this is likely something that the mother and father also experienced, right? Something that they were taught. It's really a means of survival. And the parents might have not seen this as abuse, right? But through Prisca's journey and healing, she learned it as such. The fear and the hyper-vigilance that she experienced, the name calling, although we may not see them in a lot of our families as abuse, they cause harm to a person.
Lantigua: So how does a family member who might be experiencing this or who might be witnessing someone experience this, how do we point it out in a way that can be helpful?
Orozco: Yeah. I also heard too with Prisca, she didn't want to come in from this place of like I know better. So with Prisca's story and I think with other families too and other individuals, it's important to come from a place of love and compassion and understanding what it is that you experienced, and then also being courageous and being able to tell that story. "These things happened to me, this is how it made me feel, and this is how we can continue to move forward as a family," right? "This is what I need from you. And this is what I can provide." And Prisca's already doing this in terms of talking about the things that are working for her, right?
Orozco: That she's going to therapy, that these are things that have helped her. But it is also identifying what's not working well in the family and doing so from a place of like, "This is what I experienced. I'm seeing that my brother is hurting and I'm also hurting because of my brother." And that's coming from a place of compassion too, right, where she's wanting and seeing that her brother is hurting and wanting him to get help, right, regardless of the harm that was done to her. From a place of humanity, right, not from a place of like, "Oh, I learned about abuse and intergenerational trauma, and I'm an expert and you all are wrong and hurt me." Right? That's not going to help.
Lantigua: There's that adage of hurt people hurt people. And you just said that the way that Prisca's parents set up her brother to have this imbalanced authority over his sisters was probably something that they experienced. So how can a first-gen like Prisca look for signs in her relationships, professional, personal, social, that might be indicating that she's falling into similar patterns so that she can avoid those patterns?
Orozco: Prisca says that she wasn't given power or it was taken from her. There was a silencing that happened. So in other areas of your life, where are you also feeling that you don't have a voice? Where can you practice using your voice? And sometimes that happens in our work relationships. It happens in our romantic relationships. It happens in our relationships with our friends, right, where we also become silenced. It's part of recognizing patterns is seeing impairments in your current relationships and what is it in the today that's coming from the past? So the silencing. And going from extremes, right, where sometimes we tend to do this, where we feel like we don't have a voice so we're going to go to the other extreme. We're going to show up with aggression or with violence and then in so doing so, we're trying to find our voice, but are we doing it in a way that's going to help us connect with people?
Orozco: I'm also hearing too in Prisca's story just the name calling that she experienced from her brother. I'm wondering too, if those messages were internalized. Being ugly and fat and dumb, is that something that at her core she's believing? And does that create other impairments in her ability to do the things that she wants to do? Things like imposter syndrome, where you feel like you don't belong here or you're not good enough or something's wrong with you?
Lantigua: One of the ways that Prisca is dealing with this is by distancing herself from her brother. How can Prisca and how can someone in this situation really effectively say, "Mom, you cannot invite him or you have to give me a warning or you have to give me an option not to be around this person," in a way that doesn't alienate her from her mother or the other significant family member?
Orozco: So it's communicating with the mother too that being open and vulnerable to share her experience with her brother and the way that the experiences with her brother caused harm to her to help her mom understand, right? And maybe her mom also experienced this with her brother and it might've been worse, but it might be the same feelings, right? The same experience, the same kind of harm that was done. And the mom might not even know or have the language to express her own experience. So with Prisca telling her own story, she might even empower her mom to understand her mom's story. That's a complicated situation too, right, because I'm imagining as a parent, there's a sense of loss of family when there's two siblings that are estranged, and you want to be able to still support them. So it's providing them with that support by helping them feel seen, listening to what's okay with each child. What are they willing to participate in and at what level?
Lantigua: This is my final question, which is about the continuation of healing. So Prisca is aware of what happened to her. She's getting support in therapy. What are some of the other ways that Prisca and folks in her or similar situations can continue the healing and can continue the growing and can continue on this path so that they can not leave this behind them but put it behind them where it belongs and then continue to thrive?
Orozco: Yeah. And that's a big job, right? To be the person in your family that is taking up this work and to be the only person in your family that's taking up this work, and can be burdensome, a huge task. I would say one of the biggest things is finding time to just be, to find time to live, right, to find those things that bring joy to you. It's about being today, present in the today and now, and then also in her family, I'm wondering too, what are those things that are already providing that life and joy in the family? What traditions or events or activities are happening in the family that can provide for some of that time to just be. With her mami too, right?
I think another big part of this healing work is also embodiment.
Orozco: When we experience attachment, trauma, or abuse, we become disconnected from our bodies, and our bodies have so much information that they can share with us and tell us if we listen. So coming back to your body, and one way to do that is engaging in those physical activities that you enjoy, like yoga, weightlifting, dancing. Those all help to create a relationship with your body. And if we can listen to our bodies more, then we can work on being more connected with ourselves, being more connected with what it is that we need, but also it also helps us to be more connected with others.
Lantigua: Thank you so much.
Orozco: Thank you for having me.
Lantigua: All right. Let's recap what we learned from Diane. Be compassionate. Share your experience and point out what's not working in your family, but do so from a place of love, empathy and concern, not from a place of blame or self righteousness. Come back into your body. Doing physical activities you enjoy helps you create a better relationship with your body, which in turn helps you have a better relationship with yourself and with others. And remember, be here now. As you do the work of healing and looking ahead at the future, find what brings joy to you in the present. Do what makes you feel alive and let yourself just be.
Lantigua: Thank you for listening and for sharing us. How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything is an original production of LWC studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Kojin Tashiro is our mixer. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor. Cedrick Wilson is our lead producer. Jen Chien is our executive editor. Jimmy Gutierrez is our managing editor. I'm the creator and host, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram, we're @talktomamipapi. Please follow us and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Goodpods, or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Bye everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “Talking About a Brother's Emotional Abuse.” How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything, LWC Studios., September 13, 2021. TalkToMamiPapi.com.