Sibling relationships, every story is of course different, and sometimes it may be best not to try to make up at least for now – until we heal ourselves – to keep ourselves safe and protected from the destructive dynamics of our childhood relationships…
On the other hand, if we feel we might like to make amends – to connect, to become friends and where we feel we also contributed a fair share to the rift remaining between us…. Providing that our sibling(s) feels this way too, in this instance, I believe it might be helpful to consider whether we can put how we are feeling into a wider community historic context… Trying to see issues in the wider context – takes the pressure off our immediate pain which otherwise we may feel unable to make peace with in ourselves and which only seems to get exacerbated when we meet / talk to an estranged sibling…
Especially if we also note that there had been a discord in the family line – an ongoing similar situation with our parents’ siblings and grandparents’ relationship with their siblings, too… On and on, starting now from our level with our sibling(s) to sort this out – may make us truly lost in the fog, even if we make some good inroads towards what this might have been about in our own close family unit.
How historically…?
What I find can help a great deal here is to reflect on the historical events that affected our community – the upheaval – either political strife or natural disasters – and ask how did our ancestors feel about those – how was it for them and their family to live through those, how did it affect them. The answer usually is – there was such inner pressure they could not bear it whatsoever while they went on with the business of living and procreating, really. So what did they do – having seemingly no other choice if they wanted to go on, and for the sake of that very family they created – they also used the family to impact them with their own inner unbearability – for they felt it simply had to go somewhere…, if they are to keep providing and supporting the very life of them…For example in times of conflicts on a larger scale, one common strategy is ‘Divide et Impera’ (divide and rule), forcing people of the same family to take opposing sides in their fight for survival, and in turn causing terrible upset for the whole family, causing them such inner discomfort and inner pressure, which in order to get some release from it, they could have played by recreating different versions of the original upset down the family tree to today’s family unit…. Perhaps even after a century or more had passed, since that terrible time in history, for example… As always there is no blame – for blame does not solve anything… only a new and deeper, wider, more encompassing understanding of our own feelings – does. The change is only achieved when we manage to understand something which maybe had bothered us for generations and in our own life since we can remember, but which we saw no way to make a proper, full sense of. This is how we heal – we heal when we fully understand….
The semi-unconscious parents may be acting out an unease in themselves passed on down the earlier generation after the generation… For when we don’t know what to do about an inner uncomfortable pressure, we would be forced by it as well to look at where to act it out. Our children – such an easy ‘playground’ for it, while we, at first, may make ourselves believe we will make it up to them, as long as we are now helped with that inner pressure for a bit… Of course this never works, only gets worse after that – following the wrong decision, wrong choice to act it out…
The only way to solve an inner pressure is to make sense of it – to understand it ourselves – to make as full sense as we can of what we are feeling in ourselves – via observing those unbearable sensations – sitting with them – putting them into words, a description or an image to start with… Once we do this, the feelings may flare up for a bit – but they will also help us to make sense of what we had in ourselves for all that time, without knowing how to work it out, and that will in turn free us from it.
Working out our historical, community context of our families would then enable us to align our own sibling-conflict childhood experiences within that larger and somewhat repetitive scale , which would in turn give us more empathy as well as space to view ourselves as part of the life of our family, of our genetic line for generations and generations… This may offer us some much needed context and help us to resolve the pain we are trying to communicate to each other. As well as to help us make some sense of it in our own healing process – and thus start releasing ourselves and in turn down the line our offspring, the future generations of our family, a little bit more from it, too and towards the fuller and fuller freedom from it. We can change the tide…
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I love this advice. Thankfully my brother and I seem to recognize we are similar souls, even though there is a sort of unspoken tension. But compared to my parents, my brother and I get close to communicating emotionally and I do feel we know deep down that we love each other the best we can.
Us both connecting to God/spirituality in the last couple years I believe has helped. It turned both our values and efforts toward Love, which was not the culture we were raised in. Fear/anxiety was too present in my family of origin for love to get much focus. But our understanding of that home culture has helped us – it makes it easier for me to show him grace when he does treat me a bit coldly. And from the way he speaks about my parents and how their past influences them, I hope he feels that same grace towards me. I know I need it!
That focus on the past you shared here, I think helps us ironically focus on the future we are trying to build but with an understanding the past will still pop up. No need to panic, just keep working on that (hopefully shared) vision of what sort of family culture you are trying to build. ❤️
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that sounds really lovely. I am glad that you are focused in such a way… and that you seem to have a good way of negotiating with your brother how to behave lol (for lack of better words)
What I thought of writing about in this article, but I did it too fast, as I am busy with other things at the moment, and have not said it very well, is that for example events such as famine in Ireland, for example when parents know they can only feed one child at best but they have two or three – what do they do – and whatever choice for the best, they try to do it – affects generations and generations down the line…
As you are American, and most Americans came from somewhere else, where there was some near, similar etc.. history in their history… that would be showing itself until we become fully, fully as humanly possible, fully conscious of it…, however many generations or centuries it’s got to take… Conscious of what decision we made and what it did to us emotionally…
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My Mother is very interested in family research. I have often wondered how my ancestors felt as they left home and came to America and had to adapt to a new life. Also, closer in my family history some people have lost their fathers young and then had to step up as the oldest son, only to feel replaced and threatened by a step dad later.
I can see how different choices and experiences would carry down their effects through a family. Strange also to think we might see some effects yet not know the story behind what caused them generations back.
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So if there is a pattern as you describe, there would be some fear of helplessness against a much stronger opponent, and how does one deal with that, i.e. avoids it, hides it, hits someone else… No judgement, only to understand, experience the fear and the feelings of betrayal, for example…, difficult feelings as they show up – for they are only terrifying until we choose to understand them…
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