As social media groups continue to grow, and as we continue to find the elect few that are part of our emerging community of sibling estrangement, I’m reminded at which point there still exist some traps and pitfalls towards our sense of general wellness and well-being.
Here’s an illustration of this. A few years ago when I was hosting my bereavement counseling groups, I found that one pivotal moment happened, which favored two possibilities. One, either integration of the loss occurred, followed by the sense of redefining ourselves. Or two, the person remained with the idea of identifying at all cost with the pain they go through, for fear of losing themselves completely in the loss of the family member.
All of us need to walk through that path of gaining a lesson about our sibling relationship. What does it mean? What do I do now? How do I want to define that relationship, if at all? Once we start asking those questions, and living our new truth, then we start to move towards integration of the loss in our own lives.
But for some of us, this loss tends to keep us stuck in place. So much so, that it can crystallize us in the hurt, and keep ourselves in protection mode at all times. Now, granted, boundaries are very important. We need them to stop those power games from happening, of which we’ve spoken about before. But it’s when the tool ceases to be useful, and starts to hinder us, that this can be detrimental to our overall growth. This can cause some people to stay entrenched in this place, and cease to move forward.
If all we see in us is our wound, and if it takes up the central place in our lives, then it will continue to play itself out. And we will likely continue to see it in our environment. I routinely see people who tell me that their own particular situation seems to play itself out in their everyday life over and over again. When this happens, we usually take the time to ask ourselves what is life asking them to look at.
By looking in, we can start to empower ourselves further, and promote that pivotal change that needs to happen, to help us get beyond the loss. Soon, and perhaps through therapeutic help, our negative core belief can cease to have its poisonous effect on us, and on our quality of life. At this pivotal moment, we start to see that we are no longer who we are because of what happened to us, but rather get to be the person we wish to be. Be the change you want to see in the world, Gandhi said. What do you choose for yourself now?
Sibling Estrangement 