A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

My name is Andrea and this is Adult Child.

Welcome back to Adult Child where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family.

And today we are diving into siblings, the unique experiences of siblings growing up in a dysfunctional family.

Now, siblings can have vastly different experiences of growing up in the same dysfunctional household.

The effect it has on them, the impact it has on them in adulthood.

So on Instagram today, I put up a poll and I asked, do you and your siblings have a different perception of your dysfunctional upbringing?

And 85% of y'all said yes.

Now, one thing that has been so cool to hear is that this podcast is having a positive impact amongst siblings that you and your siblings are listening to the podcast together

and that it is served as a catalyst to have some meaningful and healing conversations about the topics discussed.

Now, as y'all know, I am an only child and I think I've said before that the disease of alcoholism is the closest thing that I have to a sibling.

And I've tried to discuss it with him some and he's not interested.

I'm sure that some of y'all have had that experience as well when you've tried to share the podcast with your siblings.

So I found myself three sisters who have been listening to the pod, who have been talking about the pod, three sisters from North Dakota with fabulous North Dakota accents get pumped for that, who are going to share about their own experience of growing up in the same family and how this is impacted their lives as adults, this is a great conversation.

Now, I've been thinking some about my experience of being an adult child and the role that that played both good and bad.

So I meant to say there my experience of being an only child, not an adult child, but by the time I caught this, I didn't want to have to re-record the whole thing.

So I meant only child.

And perhaps the grass is always greener, but I have always felt that having a sibling would have provided some sort of comfort.

I may be wrong, some of you are probably saying that your sibling was just another source of pain, but it was tough growing through that experience alone, not having anyone else that understood what I was going through, not having anyone to talk to about it, not having anyone to share the load with, having to carry it all myself.

And it also made me the default identified patient since there wasn't any other options.

But the one positive of being an only child was that I did not have to fight for my parents love and attention in a dysfunctional family where love is scarce or absent, children often end up in a competition with their siblings for that love and attention.

And in a family where one parent is a narcissist, it's very common for that parent to have a favorite and then the rest of the siblings feel ignored.

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