Sibling Estrangement: 6 Losses People Don’t Understand

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Hi friends, welcome to the scapegoat club. My name's Chess and in today's video I want to talk about a different side of arangement that I haven't done a whole lot of videos on and that is when we are cut off from our siblings.

[00:00:14]This is actually way more common than we think and it can actually affect us in ways that might be surprising. So, having listened to your comments on this channel, from my clinical work as a psychotherapist, and from research and reading I've done around this subject, I'm going to talk about six of the hardest things that people talk about when we're cut off from siblings. And stick with me because at the end I'm going to talk about one of these really common myths around estrangement which is that once the cut off has happened we just walk off into the sunset and we live this life of peace and harmony when actually the reality is when we say that final goodbye often we're opening the door to a new chapter of more emotional work more emotional labor.

[00:01:06]One of the hardest things about being cut off from a sibling is that we can lose our first, our initial, one of our earliest playmates. And that connection has such a primal and such a unique part of our being, our emotional and mental psyche that losing it is such a deep cut. Often our siblings are people that we spend a huge amount of time with and often a lot of time in that very very early stage up to about the age of five when our minds and our personalities are really developing. Whether we're playing together in the nursery or in the playroom or in the schoolyard or in our backyard, whether it's spending time together if mom or dad is at work or even if we have a sibling who's looking after us, maybe we're sharing stories, perhaps we even talking about our first crushes or or gossip around school. The relationships with our siblings are just so fundamental that a researcher in this area Judy Dunn has talked about just the depth of the emotional connection that we have with siblings is p is so unique.

[00:02:19]The emotionality of the relationship is incredibly strong. And that means that when it breaks, when we no longer have that connection, it can hit us on deep levels that other relationships might not ever meet.

[00:02:42]So, another really hard thing about being estranged from a sibling is related to the first one that we have such a deep connection to our siblings is that they know us on such a primal level. It's almost like they know our deepest selves. If we knew them from infancy, they knew us before our personalities even really fully developed. They knew us whilst our brains were wiring, whilst we were learning to interact with the world, whilst we were figuring out everything about ourselves, our environments.

[00:03:17]They knew us at a uniquely innocent time in our lives. And so when we grow up, if we are betrayed or we're cut off or a sibling really treats us badly or or wants to continue to relate to us in ways that are that are no longer valid, they're treating us like we're still in school or we're still 14 years old or we we did that naughty thing that we shouldn't have done or they just want to hold us to want to hold us to family roles that we no longer want to be a part of. When it's a sibling, it's almost like they have a window into our soul. And so when that person betrays us or cuts us down or ignores who we are, it it's a very unique kind of loss.

[00:04:09]It's something that cuts us right to the core and it's a very difficult thing to get our heads around. how someone who would know us on such a deep level, on such a basic human level would still treat us that way.

[00:04:29]It's such a hard thing to try and get our heads around.

[00:04:39]The third thing that's so hard about being cut off from a sibling is that it can feel like we're losing that connection to our families. And this can feel, I think, even harder as we age and as our parents or siblings or other family members die or pass away. We rely on our siblings to reminisce. We rely on them to give color and different perspective to all those memories.

[00:05:04]Whether we're looking through the photo album and we're trying to remember the name of the dog or the neighbor or we're just talking about the the journey to school or some of the people in the neighborhood. Having a peer, a sibling, someone who is around and experience those events alongside us or near us, it allows us also to keep those memories alive. So when we lose a connection with a sibling, not only are we losing access to some of these memories and almost like having a a corroborating witness to tell us what things were like or what they saw, what they remembered. It's also like losing a part of our identity cuz we identify not only with with just who we are as ourselves, but we we identify with how we relate to other people. And so when we lose that relationship, when we lose that, it can really shake our identity and our thoughts around who we really are and how we sit in the world. Sometimes we can feel unanchored, untethered, almost as if who am I now? Who am I without that? And that grounding piece that brings us back to some level of belonging when we were younger. Even if we had difficult childhoods, we still belonged somewhere. And that is worth something. Good or bad, that is still an important part of who we are.

[00:06:37]Another really hard part about estranging from a sibling is how it affects our current relationships and the collateral damage it can have. We rarely just lose the connection with one person. We're likely to lose connection with our in-laws, with our nieces or our nephews. We don't always know where the ripple effects are going to end. And this can add a whole other layer of anxiety. If we see really difficult or harmful or toxic behavior in our siblings, we can really be concerned about the welfare of of our nieces and nephews and in-laws. If we know that something's wrong, but we have no access to them, it can really play on our minds and on our hearts. and feeling powerless knowing that we can't help or potentially if we went in there we might be stirring the pot or seem to be making things worse. It's just a very difficult place to land. And then there's that moral guilt that some of us can feel if our kids no longer have cousins and we don't have a clear explanation why because understandably we don't want to bring everybody into all the details of our our conflict.

[00:07:46]It leaves us in a really difficult place. We can feel like we look like the guilty parties when actually the facts went the other way. We can worry about whether we're hurting our kids by what we're doing or or their kids. It's by having less contact. It's almost like we have to wrestle between loyalty and self-preservation.

[00:08:06]And that guilt layer complicates everything.

[00:08:15]I think a lot of us have also experienced that when we have a very difficult relationship with a sibling, it has ripple effects and affects our relationships with our parents. There's often a pressure to reconcile. Why can't you just make this work? Parents often want harmony rather than truth. And if we're no longer willing to keep going with the status quo, then it could look like we're the ones that are causing trouble and disrupting things. And then we end up taking responsibility of other people's bad behavior on our own shoulders. Some of us have been asked to minimize harm or why can't you just ignore them? It can't have been that bad or or can't you just get on just for just for this situation, just for this event? Can't you just do it just for us?

[00:09:00]But when we look at it, we're actually being asked to tolerate mistreatment for the greater good of everybody else. And it makes no sense. We're being asked to betray ourselves for the sake of the family stability, but the family is not willing to stabilize and support us in return. And there can also be the triangulation piece where we're talked about behind closed doors or messages are passed between parents and siblings and then back to us. And it all gets really complicated. When this happens, often old family dynamics and old family narratives and roles can come into play and it intensifies and exacerbates the problems. And honestly, if we're the ones on the outside now and they're starting to close ranks against us, it just makes us even more of the problem.

[00:09:58]And I think the last piece, which is actually for me one of the biggest pieces around how hard it is to arrange from siblings, is the ongoing work that it requires. And there's some really great research come out from Ashley Barnwell on this where she talks about just the work, the hidden labor there is behind being estranged. So, it's not just the cut off itself. It's the reinforcement of boundaries. It's it's understanding what boundaries will might finally look like now we're no longer in these relationships or we're not speaking or we it's very very difficult to be in the same space as some of our family members. How do we navigate holidays, birthdays, weddings? What do we do about funerals? the the strategizing and trying to understand how to navigate all of these events has a huge emotional toll on it. Sometimes it requires a lot of logistics.

[00:11:02]But the the myth I think that people just cut off, walk away and then live their best life. I think that myth is often perpetrated by the people who've been left behind and are hurting. and they want to perpetuate this idea that the person left was selfish and didn't care. But actually that's so far from the truth where people who have estrange just talk about how much work it is how much emotional energy they put in to trying to navigate their life moving forwards without without some fundamental these huge fundamental building blocks of relationships that they've had their whole lives that are now no longer there.

[00:11:51]Friends, being estranged from anybody, from any family member, is incredibly hard. So, whichever side you're on, whether you have been cut off, whether you had to cut off for your own well-being, I'm with you. I understand. And I hope this video was helpful. If this is something that you're navigating, a difficult relationship with a sibling and you're not really finding a lot of support out there. It is a really hard thing to navigate. But also just in closing, my experience and my belief is that because it's so hard because estranging from family members is so difficult. I truly believe that if we aren't estranging for for necessity, if we don't absolutely have to estrange, we wouldn't do it because it hurts so much.

[00:12:40]So when it is that hard, but we keep deciding day after day that we have to keep going with it. That tells me that we know deep down that that it was the only feasible option we had to move forwards.

[00:12:53]Friends, thanks so much for being here.

[00:12:55]Please let me know what you think in the comments. If I've missed something, let me know. If you have a different experience, please jot it down. As always, I love to hear from you. And I will talk to you soon. Take care. Bye for now.