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Challenging behaviour in a middle aged adult

This discussion was created from comments split from: Well, it depends... life as a Behavioural Specialist.
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The family has been deeply damaged by this over the decades but there seems no way to get the problem investigated and remedied.
If the impact is on the family as a whole, then the family could enter into some from of group counselling/therapy and try and draw this individual into that process. But other than that, without more info I can't say. I'm sure that you have tried to bring the impact of this person's actions to their attention, but as you hint at, there are lots of different reasons that a person may struggle to understand the impact of their behavior or have the empathy to appreciate this.
Ultimately in any situation where an individual impacts on others there will come a point where efforts to support and help them must be balanced against the need to maintain one's own well being and the well-being of family. Difficulties within families are never that clear cut - how can you cut yourself of from family after all - but there's no way I know of to force this individual to acknowledge their behavior if they cannot appreciate the impact it's having.
It sounds like kids involved are now over 18, so it's not a Social Services issue..
Will points out they're unaware that their behaviour is socially unacceptable - so I'd expect telling them it is will lead to a hostile denial, and reinforce the barrier rather than taking it down.
Close friends who listen sympathetically, and the mutual support of the rest of the family, are good responses for the pains and frustrations of being in such a relationship.
Family therapy was repeatedly proposed, to no avail. Both he and his mother (who behaved very similarly) were adamantly opposed to involvement in any such process and indignant at the implication that they might be other than perfect. Even proposing therapy increased the hostility level.
Other family members were fearful of being targeted in their turn and, in their efforts to curry favour with him, eventually rendered the scapegoat suicidal. That led to further attacks, leaving no option but to cut free of them all - and then be universally blamed for 'abandoning' the mother.
Psychotherapy has helped, while developing friendships and remoter cousins have provided something of an alternative family, but the rift seems painfully irreversible - not least because the perpetrator is determined that it should stay that way. His own now adolescent children have lost out, but they have their other aunts and uncles and may not miss the lost sheep.