How to handle a tough conversation when you feel invalidated but also you can’t validate the other persons feelings?

[Anonymous]

I have been having a tough time getting my relationship with my sister, Kate, back on track. I believe she has been holding a grudge against me that she just buries because I don’t know how to validate her feelings without invalidating my own. I tried a few times to talk things out with her but each time we talked I felt attacked. I’m not saying that her intention was to tear me down, but I felt like her accusations of my character were inaccurate and slandering. I also felt that she was ungrateful and unable to acknowledging the good person that I am and could only find faults in me and everyone around her-leading me to see her as someone with a victim mentality. Whenever she talked about her feelings, I wanted to hear her point of view and hoped that her perspective might resonate with me and convince me that we could mend our relationship. But in my opinion her point of view was always that her feelings deserved to be validated while mine didn't. The things that made her angry left “deep emotional wounds” but the same has been done to me. The difference between us is that I have never tried to make it someone else’s responsibility to heal my pain-including her for the times she has hurt me too. I know I sound harsh but I do love my sister and I want to resolve things but I don’t feel guilty in the way she wants me to I feel like her feelings were hurt as a side effect to me enforcing my boundaries. She claims that she felt like a black sheep because I was no-nonsense when it came to her compared to my youngest sister. But in my eyes I wasn’t as lenient because I had higher expectations out of her than I did my youngest sister due to simple age difference, but she took my leniency on my youngest sister as favoritism. Kate is a good person and a good sister in many ways. But when we argue she plays victim in my opinion, and it just drives a wedge between us because she wants me to validate her while I want her to snap out of her victim mentality

[Vanidal]

Ask a third neutral person to tell her your view and what you did, and what she didn't do as expected. You can't force her to change. Only her can do that, if she's willing.

[Anonymous]

Id learn how to express myself in a more serious way.