The Jesus Hilario Show
I’m Jesus Hernandez, sharing real thoughts on faith, life, and personal growth. Each episode is a reflection from the heart — honest, unfiltered, and grounded in perspective. Whether it’s about culture, relationships, or spiritual insight, my goal is to spark thought and inspire truth.
The Jesus Hilario Show
EP121: Healing from Narcissistic Triangulation: How I Reclaimed My Sibling Relationships
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In this video, I’m responding to a viewer’s question about a painful but common tactic in narcissistic families: the isolation of siblings to maintain control.
Drawing from my own life, I share how my mother used "triangulation" to position herself as the middleman between my brothers and me. For years, we didn't go to each other; we went to her. I discuss the regret of lost time, the reality of being the "golden child," and the difficult but necessary decision I made at 35 to go no contact.
Healing is a process of unlearning. Even at 43, I’m still identifying those inherited tendencies to ensure they don’t touch my marriage or my children. If you’ve felt pitted against your own family, know that you can bridge those gaps and build something authentic on your own terms.
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Okay, so I I so I've got a comment from somebody asking me to talk more about um the narcissistic and isolation of siblings to maintain control. The question says, Can you please talk about this more? I would like to know about this, especially if you have life experiences from this. Thank you in advance. Yes, I do have experience with this. Uh I had a I'm I'm a surviving from narcissistic abuse from a mother, narcissistic mother. I have with that mother, I have three siblings, an older brother and a younger brother. My older brother has the same dad. My younger brother has the my older brother has the same dad and mom, right? Narcissisti mother, and my younger brother has the same mom, different dad. So we all share the same mother, the narcissistic mother that I'm talking about. And my experience is that I remember there was a lot of triangulate triangulation, which triangulation is the narcissist parent wanting to be the position of power, they were the middleman between me and my brother, and I would always hear things about my brother from my mother, and vice versa. He would hear things about me from my mother, and we were always going to the middleman, we were always going to the mother, brother A, brother B, we were always going to the mother instead of going to each other, instead of banding together, because a healthy family system would be two brothers growing with each other instead of with each other with no parental influence, right? They would go directly to each other and talk to each other. In my case, we wouldn't go to each other as siblings, we would go to our mother first about the sibling, which is backwards because in that case, my mother wanted to make be the center of it for her ego for her control, and my relationships with my brothers deteriorated, and this was prior to me having a family, me going to college, like we're talking like 16 to age 25. My younger brother is I say about eight years younger than I. Um my older brother is a year older than me. My older brother, he was more actually okay. So I grew up with my older brother on my with my dad. My dad is he's not narcissistic. My mother, my stepmother is not narcissistic. They actually grew us up in a good way. The reason why I went to Garchist start going to live with my mother was because she would let us do whatever we want. She would let us party, smoke, drink, whatever. Right? Dad didn't fly at my dad's house, and my mom was like, Yeah, come on, like with open arms, like I'm the good parent, I'm the one, this is me. You know what I mean? And I feel like she strategically positions herself as that, so that we would pick her over my dad. Um, which I I there's a thinking about it now, emotionally, I want to think back in regret. Like, I feel like I wasted a lot of time living for my mother, living for the way she wanted me to live, which was for her, right? And in the meantime, my relationship with my brothers was deteriorating, it was falling by the wayside because we were always pitted against each other. Like, I would go tell my brother, oh mom said this about you, she thinks you're the best, whatever. And my brother would come to me like, oh, mom saying this about you, she thinks you're the best, whatever. And so we wouldn't really physically fight, but there would be tension in the household, and we would be separate, we'd both be in our different rooms, rarely ever like collabing with each other. Um now, after eight years of going no contact with my mother, I've learned a lot about myself. I've changed a lot about myself because I picked up a lot of her tendencies, and now I wish I had a better relationship with my brother back then, so that way now it could be even stronger than what it is now. Because I feel like like I've reconciled a lot with my younger brother, especially, because I feel like he was like I could tell he was really emotional when he was in high school when I moved to my mother's house, and my younger brother was the only child at that point between him my mother and his father, and two older brothers come to live at the house. My younger brothers, like for at first, I think felt like he was like like cool. I have older brothers, awesome. But then throwing in that family dynamic that narcissistic, I feel like he resented us because she thought that we were the golden children, and he was just like the you know, the I don't know what you call it, like the the scapegoat or whatever. I'm not sure, but I could tell I remember him specifically like getting emotional and like wanting to leave the household because of the way my mother would frame things, you know what I mean? And I didn't understand because I was like all of like gung-ho, yeah, mom, mom this, mom that, mom everything. Like I was the golden child, like mom, mom, this, my mom was worse, she was the world, she was everything because everything she said was law, everything was this and that, and then it that mind shit my mind shift changed for me. Not then, which I wish it did then because my relationship with my brothers are like we're sour at that point, man, and you know, and now now I go to my brother I can go to my brothers directly without having the mother my mother as the middleman because I've got no contact with her, like I don't want to have anything to do with her because of how she is, and I don't see any sign of her changing that. And best I I mean we now instead of talking to my mother about my brother, I talk to my my brother about my mother. I talk to my brother about our mother, like hey bro, like the way it should be is that okay, and I was reading about this too, is that in the family with a narcissistic parent, narcissistic mother, the mother doesn't want the three children conversing and getting strong together because they can see the flaws in in the parent and say to each other, hey bro, mom's tripping on this, mom's tripping on that. Yeah, I know I see this too, which is how it should be. Because in a family system, a child shouldn't be afraid to go and tell their parent, hey mom, this, this, and this, and that, whatever, whatever. Or, or all three of the children should be able to tell them. So nowadays, like I'm having that relate, feel like I'm having that relationship with my brother that I should have had back then. I'm and I'm 43 years old. And in my what it was eight years ago is is like what 34 years old, 35 years old from now. Uh 3, 2, 1, 0, 9, 8. 35 years old. I'm I barely figured it out. My younger brother's about maybe six to eight years younger than me. I don't know how old he is. But like now, like, dude, I love him to death, and I wish I would have had that relationship with him when I first started to get to know him. Because I didn't know him when he was born. I didn't know him until he was in in early middle school, late elementary school. That's when I first met him. Like, I was and I didn't even know I had a brother. I was like, oh, I got a brother? What mom had a brother? Because my mom, she was nowhere in sight when me and my older brother were growing up with my dad. Like she was gone. Like, I I remember being like, Where's my mom at? And then my dad started dating women, and I remember asking my stepmother, like, my mom, and my stepmother would tell me that she was like, You would ask, like, Will you be are you gonna be our mom? You know what I mean? Because my my narcissistic mother was nowhere in sight, she was gone. She was just like, I guess I don't have her mother, you know what I mean? So there's a whole bunch of emotional trauma that that has gone on in my life, uh, regarding having a narcissistic and having siblings in that uh family dynamic can be uh can be emotionally taxing on the brain, on the mind, on the on the heart over the years, and I don't wish it upon anybody. I don't I don't wish that upon upon anybody. Like if you've got sorry, I didn't realize how bright that light was. If you got um family measure members, and it's difficult too because when you grow like when you grow up with that nar when you have that narcissistic in your life for years, going no contact is is difficult because you've always been pressing basically joined at the hip with that parent. And when you decide to go no contact and tell them, look, I don't want you in my life anymore because I know how you are now. It takes a certain amount of courage to do it because once you make that decision, there's no going back. There's no going back after after going, no, you decide to go no car, there's no going back. And at 35 years old, I was slowly again discovering myself, discovering who I was. Sorry, I realized that when I put my hand here, the light gets bright. Sorry, sidetracked, yeah. Just I at 35 years of age, going no contact with the mother, I had to do a lot of finding myself, and I was married at this point with with the child, so I had to learn my who I was in the middle of a marriage with having a a two-year-old, three-year-old daughter. It's it was difficult, and I'm still learning stuff about myself, and I'm constantly like having to remind myself and stop myself. Wait a minute, that's a narcissistic tendency that your mother used to do to you. Don't do that to your daughter or your son or your kids or your or your wife. I got a whole thing going about my mother trying to get in between me and my wife, in between in our marriage. Like the narcissistic, they want to be at the center of everything. If you're married, they want to be at the center of your marriage. If you have kids, they want to be at the center between your kids, between you and your wife, between you and your husband. It's very toxic, man, and it's it's sad to think that a parent can be a narcissist. And that the child can pick up those narcissistic and continue to go uh live with those tendencies. So uh thanks for asking this question. I hope this answers your question. I hope it helps out. If there's anybody else going through this type of stuff, uh share your your thoughts in the comments. Um yeah, like it looking back now, I try not to regret because I I I sometimes I used to tend to want to be like, I wasted all that time. I could have done this, I could have done that, I could have a relationship like this with my my my brothers, coulda, shoulda, woulda. Like that's not gonna get me anywhere. And it's like um I have to continue to move forward where I'm at. And I've got kids to think about, I've got a marriage to think about. I can continue to work on my relationship with my brother, my brothers, um, and in the process. Uh so yeah, if that helps you out, thanks a lot. Like, comment, share. If you want to donate, uh, I've got a Cash App uh dollar sign Jesus Hilario H, which is J E S U S H I L A R I O H on Cash App. Uh Otherwise, you subscribe, like, share, all that stuff. Thanks a lot, you guys. Have a good one. Bye.
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