Is It Time to Resolve Your Love/Hate Relationship With Your Sibling?

By Audrey Hardin, MS LPC

What are some hurts and losses you experienced in your sibling relationship growing up?

During a demonstration at our most recent Hardwired to Heal workshop, my sister and I revealed some pain in our relationship growing up. After doing so, countless attendees approached us, sharing their own hurt in their sibling relationships that continues to play out today.

Few of us ever do the work to repair our childhood relationship with our brother(s) or sister(s). That was a long time ago, right? We are adults now. Why stir up the past?

I get it. There seems to be enough demanding our time and energy in the present to go backwards and work through the past.

However, when we don’t heal from our past relational hurts, we repeat them in new relationships.

Research reveals that we typically marry a partner similar to the parent or sibling that we have the most unresolved issues with.

Why?

1. OUR BRAINS ARE PATTERN SEEKING AND SURVIVAL ORIENTED

Our brains seek out patterns in order to conserve energy so that when something life-threatening does come along, it will have enough energy to fight back and survive.

Patterns are predictable, therefore require less energy to repeat like following a routine vs. doing something different; this also works in our relationships. We look for familiar dynamics and characteristics in other people in order to conserve energy.

2. WE ARE HARDWIRED TO HEAL

Just like our body knows to heal a wound on our arm when it’s cut, our brain seeks repair in who we attach to.

When we didn’t get what we needed or longed for in our family of origin relationships, we seek someone similar in our adult life to try again with. If and when there is repair in that relationship, it heals the wounds from the present but also the past.

The challenge is that few of us experience the repair in our present, because we never learned how to resolve it in our past. We continue to repeat the same unhealthy relational dynamics and inevitably feel double the hurt, double the loss, double the pain.

We hear a lot about how to work through past pain from our parents and romantic partners, but there’s little information out there on sibling trauma.

Painful Sibling Dynamics

With parents learning how to parent as they go, combined with the fact that each child is different, it’s easy for hurt, misunderstanding, and neglect to happen between siblings in a variety of ways.

In some homes, parents play favorites or elevate one sibling’s achievements or talents as more desirable than another. This creates a divisive, comparison-driven dynamic in the home.

In other homes, parents place expectations on a sibling to take care of the other(s) and “play parent” while the parents are either emotionally or physically unavailable. This can invite resentment and a misunderstanding of roles and responsibilities in adult life.

Children need guidance on how to love and respect each other well. When that is absent or inconsistent, sibling pain can look like being repeatedly rejected, avoided, teased, mocked, betrayed, belittled, forgotten, exploited, humiliated, and misunderstood by one another.

Pain experienced through these dynamics, even when unintentional, directly influences how we see ourselves (our identity) and others (trust of the world).

FOR EXAMPLE:

A lie I believed about myself was that I was either “too much” or “not enough” because my sister did not want to spend time with me to the degree that I wanted to spend time with her.

For my sister, she believed that no one cared to love and respect her in the way she needed as I would continue to push her to spend time with me and allow her to get in trouble for yelling at me after I had repeatedly crossed her boundary. [Yikes, I know.]

As adults, my sister and I have since learned some major differences in personalities led to some big misunderstandings about what actually was true. A deeper look at who we both are/were as kids, as well as what we needed, helped both of us respond with compassion and forgiveness going forward.

Even though we didn’t have the awareness or skills to make healthy repairs back then, we still need to resolve the past hurts today…and it starts with you.

Think for a moment, what hurts and/or losses from your sibling dynamic do you need to acknowledge in order to invite healing and safety within yourself and your relationships?

Now what?

Consider 3 Steps to Resolve the Pain of the Past

1. Ask: How was I different than my brother(s) or sister(s)?

Growing up, we misinterpret a lot about each other because we don’t have a language to understand differences in personality, needs, and boundaries.

Take time to reflect on your personality –how you recharge (introvert/extrovert); what energizes/motivates you; how you feel loved; how you feel respected; what helps you to feel comfortable and safe in a relationship?

Then, consider how you and your siblings are different. It may make sense to you as an adult, but consider how little you interpreted the differences. This can be an easy way to invite conversation about feeling misunderstood and misunderstanding your brother or sister while growing up.

1 Corinthians 12:12-27 reminds us that we are each unique and needed part of the body of Christ but no one/part is more valuable than the other.

2. Ask: What lies from my sibling relationship did I believe about myself or other people that need to be rejected today?

As children, we look at the world through such a small and subjective lens that we easily misinterpret mistreatment (whether intentional or unintentional) as our fault. i.e., either the hurt was because of who I am or that I could do something to fix it/solve it.

Some lies you may have formed from your sibling relationship is that you are unwanted, worthless, less-than, not enough, too much, embarrassing, dumb, slow, needy, a screw up, etc.

You may also need to reject lies you believed about others. For example: people don’t respect my boundaries, no one hears my no, I will always be misunderstood, no one will truly accept me, men/women are not trustworthy, etc.

3. Lastly, invite grieving and forgiveness for closure.

There must be grief and forgiveness to release the power of the pain/sibling has over you that continues to play out in your present.

Invite yourself to grieve the sibling relationship you didn’t have but longed for. Grieve also how you hurt your sibling because of your own sin, blind spots, and struggles.

Allow yourself to feel the pain, grieve the loss, and forgive your sibling and yourself for the pain of your past so you can live a more free and relationally-satisfying life.

Proverbs 18:24

“One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

Just like marriage was originally designed by God to be a model of true love, safety, and intimacy, our sibling relationship, is to be the gold standard of true companionship.

So, repairing our sibling relationship is well worth the work to get there. I encourage you to start today!

Audrey Hardin is a Staff Therapist and Speaker at The Center for Integrative Counseling and Psychology in Dallas, TX.

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