The Same Storm, Different Boats: Why Siblings Struggle to Connect After Childhood Trauma | Trauma Therapy Oakland
Why Siblings Remember Childhood So Differently
If you grew up in a home shadowed by alcoholism or dysfunction, you might have a haunting question: “How can my sibling and I, who lived in the same house with the same parents, remember things so differently?” Maybe you recall the chaos as unbearable, while your sibling insists it was “mostly fine.” You remember Dad’s rages, and your sibling recalls only your mother’s exhaustion. It can feel confusing, invalidating, and deeply lonely to hold differing realities from your siblings who grew up in the exact same household as you and with the exact same parents. It’s common to see your experience as the “truth”, but really there are many “truths” because each sibling in your family interpreted and experienced your caretaker’s dysfunctional behavior in your own way. You also each adapted in your own ways necessary to survive.
As a trauma therapist in Oakland, I often work with adults who are untangling these early family dynamics and trying to make sense of why their memories—and even their emotional reactions—can feel so different from their siblings’. Trauma doesn’t just fragment memory—it fragments reality. Each sibling’s nervous system developed its own strategy to make sense of the chaos: to appease, to numb, to rebel, to disappear, to fix. Those roles were lifelines back then. But as adults, these ingrained coping styles can collide, leaving you misreading each other’s intentions and questioning each other’s truth.Trauma doesn't just fragment memory—it fragments reality. Each sibling’s nervous system developed its own strategy to make sense of the chaos: to appease, to numb, to rebel, to disappear, to fix. Those roles were lifelines back then. But as adults, these ingrained coping styles can collide, leaving you misreading each other’s intentions and questioning each other’s truth.
Shared Childhood, Different Realities
Imagine a house during a frightful storm. One child is focused on the sound of the shattering window, another on the parent frantically nailing boards, and a third has hidden in a closet, seeing only the darkness. They all lived through the same storm, but their experiences of the storm itself were fundamentally different. Each child likely reacted to what they perceived as the most immediate threat.
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This is what happens in a home impacted by addiction or chronic stress. Children experience a kind of “selective attention,” noticing and remembering what felt most critical to their survival. Siblings often report vastly different levels of family conflict and cohesion, highlighting that a single "family environment" is often experienced as multiple, subjective realities.
One sibling may say, “It wasn’t that bad,” while another may have felt it was “unbearable”. These divergent narratives can create feel like gaslighting or create conflict about who is “right”, but they are more accurately a reflection of different survival states. Difficulty seeing or validating one another’s realities can add to one another’s pain or the feeling that someone is lying about what happened in the past. What is actually more likely is that each sibling in the family is reporting from the unique emotional bunker they built to protect themselves.
Common Coping Styles: Unspoken Agreements and How Family Roles Maintain a Fragile Balance
In any system—a team, an ecosystem, or a family—the members unconsciously organize to keep things stable. This is called homeostasis. In a healthy family, homeostasis might look like shared routines, open communication, and mutual support. But in a family strained by alcoholism or chronic dysfunction, the system is inherently unstable. It's like a wobbly table threatening to collapse.
To keep the table from falling, everyone instinctively finds a way to prop up their corner. The children, with their innate drive to belong and survive, develop specific roles not out of choice, but out of necessity. Together, without a single word of agreement, they create an intricate, unspoken dance that serves one primary purpose: to manage the overwhelming anxiety and chaos and keep the family system from completely falling apart.
Each role serves a distinct, vital function for the system's survival. Here are a few primary roles identified by addiction expert Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse
The Caretaker/Hero - Managing the External World: This child, frequently the oldest, becomes the family's ambassador to the outside world and its internal manager. By achieving good grades, being "responsible," and caring for others, they provide a veneer of normalcy. They prove to the world—and to the family itself—that "everything is fine here." Internally, they absorb anxiety by trying to fix the unfixable, which gives the system a temporary sense of control.
How It Maintains Homeostasis: The Hero's competence allows the parents, particularly the struggling one, to remain in their dysfunction. The system comes to rely on this child to handle the practical and emotional burdens, creating a stable (though inverted) structure where the child acts as the parent.
The Scapegoat/Rebel - Bearing the Unbearable Pain: A family system filled with unspoken shame, fear, and anger, needs a place to go. The Scapegoat unconsciously volunteers as a place for these disowned emotions to go. By acting out, drawing attention to themselves, and becoming the "problem," they give the family a tangible, manageable focus for all its diffuse pain. The family can now say, "You are the problem," pointing at the child, rather than at the alcohol abuse, addiction or the dysfunctional marital dynamic.
How It Maintains Homeostasis: The family unites around a common cause: their disapproval of the Scapegoat's behavior which distracts from the core issue and prevents the system from having to look at the true, more terrifying source of its pain. The scapegoat is the lightning rod for the family's emotional storm.
The Lost Child -Reducing the Emotional Volume: The Lost Child provides the gift of silence and absence in a chaotic and loud environment. The filler of this role reduces the number of demands on overwhelmed parents by being quiet, self-sufficient, and not making demands in an attempt to lower the overall emotional temperature of the household.
How It Maintains Homeostasis: The Lost child makes themselves small by not adding any more "problems" to the system. This makes the chaos feel more manageable for everyone else. The louder dramas play out without overwhelming the entire system due to the quiet, stabilizing force of the lost child’s absence.
The Mascot/Peacemaker - Diffusing the Tension: This child is the family's emergency responder for quelling rising anxiety. They may use charm, humor, and silliness to break the tension after a fight, to distract a drunken parent, or to make a crying sibling laugh. They are the living, breathing reminder that joy is still possible, however fleeting.
How It Maintains Homeostasis: The Mascot or “Clown” prevents the system from becoming completely saturated with negativity. They stop conflicts from escalating to a breaking point by lightening the mood and providing momentary relief, which allows the family to continue enduring the unbearable without actually addressing it.
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The Interlocking System
No single role can do this alone. The system needs each one to perform its function to maintain its fragile equilibrium.This is why these roles become so fixed. They work together in a delicate, interlocking balance. For example when the Rebel has an outburst, the Hero or may take on more responsibility and the Mascot enters the scene to offer distraction through humor. The Lost Child's silence creates more space for the Caretake or “Enabler” to fill with activity.
A child stepping out of their role—for example, the Lost Child suddenly demanding attention, or the Hero deciding to stop being perfect—can send shockwaves through the entire family, as the wobbly table loses one of its crucial props.
Understanding this shifts the perspective from blame ("My sibling was the difficult one") to systems theory ("We were all parts of a survival machine"). No one was the villain, and no one was the saint. You were all just children overwhelmed by your caretaker’s unhealthy relationship to each other or addictions. Each sibling used their unique strengths and vulnerabilities in an attempt to build a life raft for a family that was, itself, lost at sea. In therapy, we learn to honor the child who played that role, while gently giving the adult you are today permission to finally, safely, step out of it.
The Impact on Adult Sibling Relationships
Every siblings different way of surviving the same storm can make it incredibly hard to find your way back to each other once the storm has passed. The differences between siblings and how they experienced and responded to the past, and how childhood trauma continues to impact each of you, can cause strain in your adult relationship with your sibling(s). Unhealed trauma may surface as:
Misaligned Narratives: “You’re rewriting history!” vs. “You’re minimizing what happened!”
Competing Pain: A silent, exhausting Olympics of who suffered more or who sacrificed more for the family.
Perceived Betrayal: When one sibling stays close to a parent another has chosen to distance from.
Resentment: When one sibling’s coping style (like avoidance) is felt by another as a lack of support or love.
This disconnection is a natural, though painful, outcome and differences in how you and your siblings view your childhood trauma often leads to poorer adult sibling relationships. It’s important to know and remind yourself that you living with the after effects of growing up in an unhealthy family system rather than believing that you are somehow failing at being a family.
How Trauma Therapy in Oakland Can Help Rebuild Understanding
Healing begins with gaining understanding and compassion for yourself and your loved ones. In my Oakland trauma therapy practice, we work to create a space where you can honor your own subjective truth without demanding that your sibling agree with it and vice versa. We will work to understand and accept one another’s realities without the need to justify or defend it. We can explore your and your sibling’s coping styles as a your best effort to adapting to a chaotic and even frightening home environment in the hopes of increasing understanding and reducing conflict.
We may do this by using techniques like:
Naming the Roles: Identifying which roles you and your siblings took on, and appreciating the survival function they served.
Exploring Grief: Processing the sadness for the childhood and the supportive sibling relationship you missed.
Setting New Boundaries: Learning to interact in ways that protect your own healing, without needing to change your sibling.
Practicing Compassion Across Difference: Cultivating empathy for your sibling’s journey, even if it looks nothing like your own.
When Reconnection Is Possible (and When It’s Not)
Sometimes, gaining this new perspective can open the door to repair. A conversation where you both listen to understand, rather than to defend, can be profoundly healing. You might find a new, authentic connection built on who you are now, not the roles you were forced into as children.
And sometimes, for your own well-being, the healthiest outcome is respectful distance. Healing can mean finding inner peace and no longer needing your sibling’s validation to trust your own reality. It means learning to trust yourself, releasing the hope for a different past and demand for a specific future.
Lara Clayman, LCSW, is a trauma therapist in Oakland, California who offers inclusive, client-centered therapy for multicultural adults—including BIPOC, multiracial individuals, and male survivors of childhood abuse who have broken the cycle of violence. Her approach offers practical tools, empathy and compassion, working to get to the root of things and helping clients honor their emotions, life experience and begin healing.
Trauma Therapist Oakland
Learn more about her work with Anxiety Therapy, trauma therapy and culturally sensitive therapy and online therapy in California.
