Silent Siblings: When Your Siblings Choose the Dysfunction Over You
- Natalie Frank
- Jul 4
- 2 min read
The quiet heartbreak of sibling betrayal, family scapegoating, and what it means when those who once stood beside you turn their backs to protect the dysfunction
Natalie C. Frank, Ph.D July 4, 2025
There’s a particular type of heartbreak that doesn’t get talked about enough. It’s not a breakup, not losing a job, a friend, or even a parent. It’s that moment you realize your sibling, your built-in best friend, has chosen the family disfunction over you. Not just once, like some panicked mistake, but over and over again. Quietly, maybe even with a little smile. That’s when silence turns into betrayal.
You look at the people you grew up with, those who know exactly what your family is really like, and see that they’ve decided it’s easier to pretend you’re the problem than to admit the truth about your messed-up family system. You thought for all those years they had your back.
The Built-In Childhood Bond - Siblings as Co-Survivors
When you’re growing up in a family full of dysfunction, whether it’s narcissism, control issues, emotional abuse, or long-standing trauma, your siblings are often your first team. You go through the same house, feel the same tense energy, share the same cryptic silences and explosive fights. You sneak looks during arguments, hide together when things get really bad, and find little ways to laugh when everything else feels heavy.
You get what the other’s feeling without words, decoding every shift in tone or flicker of a facial expression because you’ve both learned how to survive on that emotional battlefield. These bonds are built on whispers, body language, knowing how to distract an unpredictable parent, comforting each other after cruel words, sharing tiny joys in a place where happiness is pretty much not allowed.
