Until your sister acknowledges the harm she's caused and the lack of emotional awareness she's mixing into your relationship, taking some space is absolutely fine. Cutting off a family member with these toxic traits is justified, but you might consider leaving the door open to reconciliation later on down the road.
“Criticism, looking down on you, bullying, invalidating or gaslighting, and physical intimidation or abuse – all of it happens in toxic sibling relationships.” The same goes for toxic siblings. Being unfair or hurtful is one thing. It can even happen unintentionally.
A toxic sibling relationship is a relationship that is unbalanced in its power dynamic and may involve sibling abuse and dysfunctional sibling rivalry. Sibling estrangement can be caused by parental favoritism, having immature parents, parental or sibling abuse, and psychopathy.
The Physical Effects of Sibling Abuse
Some of the effects that survivors report later in life are physical in nature — GI issues, headaches, or chronic pain. In addition to physical effects, many people who experience abuse will report feeling unlovable, invisible, too much, and also not enough.
Sibling alienation occurs when one adult sibling wants to push aside another. While sibling alienation can occur at any point, one sibling may be especially tempted to alienate another in order to gain control of care-taking or inheritance outcomes with aging parents.
Sibling rivalry is a predictable, normal and healthy response to the birth of a new brother or sister. In most families it demonstrates that the older child is appropriately attached to the parents and is responsive to a perceived threat to the parent-child relationship.
Emotional abuse between siblings is common but difficult to research. The impact of emotional abuse in any form should never be underestimated. Name-calling, belittling, teasing, shaming, threats, intimidation, false accusations, provocation, and destroying a sibling's belongings are all forms of emotional abuse.
Not only can it cause PTSD (or CPTSD), but it can lead to a range of other mental health symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, lowered self-esteem, and difficulty in future relationships. You don't have to go through this alone.
It could be time to cut the person off if you or your child start to dread visiting that family member, especially if they only interact in negative ways with those around them. "Recognize that spending time apart from them is important to one's own mental health," adds Dr. Halpern.
When the relationship creates so much stress that it affects the important areas of your life at work, home or both. When your emotions are totally caught up in defending yourself and wanting to explain yourself and the chaos of your relationships with these people is all you talk about, it is time to let go.
If bad behavior is repeated or intensified or there is any violence present, it might be time to walk away. Ask yourself if this is the behavior you would accept from a close friend or anyone else in the family.
The mental health effects of sibling estrangement
Research has found that if you experienced estrangement within your family, you are more likely to struggle with mental health issues related to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, low self-esteem, substance abuse, sleep disorders and suicidal ideation.
Estrangement is a relatively new term describing cut-off and alienation from a family member. At least 27% of the U.S. population admit to having this condition. Interestingly, so many are ashamed that they are less likely to accept being estranged.
The number of Americans who are completely estranged from a sibling is relatively small—probably less than 5 percent, says Karl Pillemer, a Cornell University professor.
In 1989, Deborah Gold developed five typologies of adult sibling relations based on “… patterns of psychological involvement, closeness, acceptance/ approval, emotional support, instrumen- tal support, contact, envy and resent- ment” (Cicirelli, 1995, 49).
She has similar opinions about your career goals, friends and pretty much everything else. If you've articulated that you're happy with your life and the people in it and she still won't stay out of your business, then your relationship with your sister could be verging on (if not already) toxic.
Brothers and sisters separated from each other in foster care experience trauma, anger, and an extreme sense of loss. Research suggests that separating siblings may make it difficult for them to begin a healing process, make attachments, and develop a healthy self-image (McNamara, 1990).