Sibling Trauma
When I started working with shame and trauma, I was prepared for almost everything. As an only child, I was unknowingly shielded from one of the most potent sources of trauma - siblings. Yet when I started my therapy practice I was overwhelmed by the amount of clients who reported attachment wounds, bullying, resentment, and even physical and emotional abuse related to their siblings. I could no longer dismiss it as coincidental, so I’ve written this article as I’ve observed and tried to understand the overlooked yet complex nature of sibling-related trauma.
What is Sibling Trauma?
First, not all adverse experiences are trauma. A difficult and antagonistic relationship with a sibling doesn’t mean we were traumatized, but an experience doesn’t have to be traumatic to be deeply wounding. Most material about mental health, especially around the topic of developmental trauma, focuses on the role of the parents - rightly so. At least one parent is usually the primary caregiver which means that a child is dependent on them for survival and wellbeing. However, primary caregivers are not always parents, nor are parents the only figures who occupy an imposed position in a child’s life.
The operative word here is imposed. Siblings are imposed on one another. Generally speaking, parents don’t consult with children before adding to the brood. One might argue that the older a child is when a sibling is introduced, the greater the imposition and the greater the disruption to homeostasis. I would also add, the more likely it is that a child will perceive threats of not-enoughness. One of the most common characteristics of trauma is the nervous system being overwhelmed, meaning, it doesn’t have the resources to cope with what is happening. When we cannot remove or protect ourselves from a source of a threat, trauma is likely to occur. Sometimes, that source of threat is a sibling.
In his book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, Pete Walker observes the following:
“I believe there is an epidemic of sibling abuse that afflicts many dysfunctional families. Siblings in such families can traumatize the scapegoat as severely as the parents, they can in fact be the chief sources of trauma. This is especially true in our culture where emotional neglect of children is rampant and where parents are routinely advised to let the kids ‘work it out themselves.’ But how does a child who has half the strength of his older sibling work it out, and stop him from tormenting her without the the aid of a stronger ally?”
Sources of Sibling Trauma
There are myriad ways siblings can affect each other ranging from occasional inconvenience to unwavering support or even friendship, but they can also be sources of attachment wounds; grief and/or bereavement; abuse; Toxic Shame; bullying; sexual trauma; and abandonment amongst many other Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's), not to mention be the cause of estrangement with parents. Some of these are explored in more detail later, but below is a non-exhaustive list of potential sources of sibling-related trauma:
Siblings are imposed on children. The lack of agency in this life-altering decision can be no less than traumatic.
Older children suddenly having new babies introduced into their lives during a difficult time of hormones, social pressure, and individuation. This can be exacerbated if the new siblings are introduced via a new relationship.
Maladjustments in integration between step-siblings.
Having siblings with disabilities, addictions, or mental health issues.
When a sibling has their own child at a young age forcing multiple people to be parentified.
Parentification of older siblings, either by coercion or necessity (i.e. either a parent forcing an older sibling into a caregiver role or being unable / unavailable to care for their other children so an older sibling has no choice but to step in)
Sexual or physical abuse perpetrated by siblings.
Siblings who do not believe or urge secrecy when one shares that they’ve been abused.
Favoritism.
The death of a sibling (grief can be compounded by feeling that a sibling has lost their parent(s) in their own grief).
Bullying or torment.
In the case of abusive parents / relatives, siblings ‘sacrificing’ each other for self-preservation.
Gender issues, for example parents favoring a boy and not providing equal resources to daughters.
Exposure to age-inappropriate experiences such as sexuality, violence, or substances.
Siblings and Attachment Wounds
Let me begin this section by establishing that I tend not to lean too heavily on Attachment Theory. Of course it’s useful to know what our proclivities are when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but in my opinion the popularity of ascribing attachment wounds to everyone has provided an inaccurate, or at least incomplete, method of pathologizing each other, a trend which I am firmly skeptical of.
That said, it is true that unless we form and maintain secure attachment bonds early in life, we are likely to develop forms of insecure / anxious attachment which creates friction in relationships later in life. It’s worth highlighting that not all attachment wounds are necessarily attachment trauma, which for example may include parental abandonment or death; cycling in and out of foster care; or legal intervention which may result in the removal of child custody.
I won’t go into depth here about attachment wounding because what is important to know for the purposes of understanding sibling relationships is that the break in the bond with an older sibling has the potential to create as strong an attachment wound as that which may occur between a parent and child. Likewise, and because all sibling trauma also represents a break in the bond with a parent, when parents don’t intervene, or when they consistently land on the side of one sibling, it can create severe abandonment and attachment wounds which will inevitably have adverse effects on adult relationships.
The Injustice of Being a Parentified Sibling
When it comes to siblings, just as it comes to couples, it’s very tempting to focus on all the ways in which we believe they’ve wronged us. It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge where we may be guilty of provocation, defensiveness, or avoidance. In the case of siblings who have caused us harm, it can be exceptionally difficult to extend empathy, even when our tormentors are victims of parentification.
Simply, parentification occurs when parents are unable, for any number of reasons, to care for their children, and the responsibility to provide care is transferred onto a child in a serious role-reversal. Parentification can occur when a parent experiences addiction, disability, mental illness, or emotional immaturity and they look to their child to support them, or it can occur when parents look to older children to care for or discipline younger children. It can also happen when a parent dies while their children are still small. Parentification can be, but of course is not always, a form of emotional abuse, but it is almost always traumatic. In some situations, such as the ones in which a parent becomes incapacitated or dies, the process of parentification is tragic in addition to traumatic.
The emotional impact that parentification can have on a child is indelible. One might rightly ask, ‘how could being deprived of a full childhood not cause a child to become bitter, angry, or resentful?’ This is not to say that all children who take on the role of caregiver do so with bitterness - absolutely not. Some do so with such adeptness that their siblings develop wonderfully secure attachment and go on to live rich, meaningful lives. For others, this isn’t always the case. I don’t know many people who would disagree that one of the greatest perversions in society occurs when children are robbed of their innocence. When a child - at any age - is burdened with an age-inappropriate level of responsibility, this is precisely what happens.
Unfortunately, sometimes the result is that the parentified child takes out their pain on the perceived source of it - younger siblings. This is what can only be called a lose-lose situation.
“Emotional parentification is a chronic role reversal based on the parent’s inability to manage their own emotions and sufficiently care for their child[ren].”
-Parentification, Psychology Today
Emotionally Immature Siblings
As I mentioned at the beginning, not all adverse sibling relationships are traumatic - but that doesn’t mean they’re not sources of deep distress in both childhood and adulthood. There is a grey area. One of the books that I recommend to most of my clients is Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson. In it, Gibson expands her discussion of parents to include emotionally immature siblings due to the intense influence that sibling relationships can have on one’s overall wellbeing.
Emotionally immature siblings, according to the author, fall into one of two categories: externalizing siblings who want their problems resolved by others and throw tantrums in order to gain sympathy or attention, and internalizing siblings who process their issues inwards and look to resolve them through adaptation. Internalizing siblings stay quiet whereas externalizing siblings are expressive. To an internalizer, it can feel like the externalizer gets away with everything if the parents are also emotionally immature because such individuals cannot deal with their own emotions so they placate distress in others simply to make it go away. Contrarily, to an externalizer, it can feel like internalizers are looking for conflict or are manipulative because their complexity can feel threatening to emotionally immature parents so externalizers regularly witness their parents criticizing or punishing the internalizers.
What I find most notable about Gibson’s take is that parents play a critical role in the relationships that exist between their children. If parents are emotionally immature or are otherwise incapable of creating a safe environment where children are raised in ways that are tailored to their own unique needs and personalities, there is virtually zero chance of relationships being harmonious. In fact, the less regulated and healthy the parents are and the more they try to raise children in the exact same way, the more dysfunctional the sibling relationships tend to be.
When Siblings are Abusers
Sadly, when working with trauma survivors it’s not uncommon to hear stories of clients who were not just emotionally targeted but were sexually or physically abused by older siblings. Other times it may have been the partners or friends of these siblings who perpetrated the abuse, sometimes with the sibling’s full knowledge. These kinds of violations result in complex wounds that are both internal and relational in nature. The magnitude of betrayal and shame that survivors are left with in these instances is devastating.
Sometimes parents are unaware of what’s happening, other times they’re fully aware or at least have suspicions. I once heard Dr. Peter Levine talk about sibling abuse and the compounded trauma that occurs when parents witness the abuse or are informed of it but fail to effectively intervene. The child doesn’t feel safe anywhere in these cases, they can trust no one. It’s in these types of situations where both Acute and Complex Trauma become compounded, meaning the immediate threat to safety (i.e. the moment of abuse) which causes Acute Trauma gets layered with the Complex Trauma that is caused by the ongoing dysfunction of secrecy and / or denial.
For anyone who finds it unfathomable how a sibling could become an abuser, I invite them to consider the following scenarios which under certain circumstances are perceived as ‘normal’ yet are highly dysfunctional. For example, older siblings introducing younger ones to pornography, nudity, or sexual topics earlier than what their level of development can comprehend or allowing their friends to do so; incestual activities such as kissing or touching siblings; physically beating or attacking a sibling; locking siblings in confined spaces; exposing siblings to objects of fear such as insects or rodents (which is a common source of phobia later in life); severe bullying in the form of emotional torment; setting up siblings to be blamed or punished by parents; pressuring siblings to use substances, and so forth. In situations where one or both parents are abusive, it’s also a common form of self-protection to somehow sacrifice a sibling to the abuser in the hope of sparing themselves.
One cannot underestimate the legacy of Toxic Shame that ensues from sibling abuse, especially if secrecy played a role. Any time a core attachment bond is broken, a child develops the belief that if only they could be different / better / worthier, than they would finally be safe.
Boundaries with Siblings
When we have an emotionally strained relationship with siblings, boundaries are necessary. But it’s also important not to overlook the requirements for boundaries with parents too, as the issues are usually intertwined.
Boundaries can be as simple as minimizing the number of times one sees their siblings or only seeing them in the neutral company of others, or as prohibitive as deciding that communication must be limited to shared issues such as parents. Sibling boundaries can also mean not discussing one sibling with a parent or another sibling (a particularly nasty form of dysfunction called triangulation). Remember that no one is required to respect or adhere to our boundaries - no one has to agree. Whenever a relationship is fraught, all parties will have their own side of the story so we always want to be mindful about how we’re contributing to the strain - even if this just means allowing it to persist.
Boundaries are not always sufficient when it comes to dysfunctional relationships. Estrangement can feel like the nuclear option, but in many cases, removing oneself entirely from dysfunction is the only way to end it. Sometimes it’s too difficult to estrange oneself from parents without also estranging from siblings, and often the reverse is true. Parents rarely accept an adult child’s decision to estrange themself from a sibling. This can trigger profound shame in a parent, often because on some level they know somewhere they failed to maintain a healthy and safe environment for their children, but sometimes for fear of what others in their culture / social group / extended family might think.
Regardless of the guilt this may cause, it’s crucial to keep ourselves safe whether that means strong boundaries or estrangement. Establishing supportive resources is essential to navigating this course of action, without resorting to triangulation. In other words, leaning on other siblings or parents for support when managing dysfunctional family relationships rarely has a healthy result. It can put people in an unfairly difficult position at best, and at worst can amplify said dysfunction. Instead, consider calling upon the family-you-choose, especially individuals familiar with the precarious nature of sibling relationships. Engaging the support of a therapist can make the process significantly easier, particularly when there are attachment wounds or trauma to be processed.
Next Steps
If you recognize your own experience in these words and would like to discuss how we can work together to process and release sibling-related trauma or shame, feel free to explore the Yew Tree Integrated Healing website to learn more or book a free 20-minute Discovery Session.