Our Counselling and Psychotherapy Blog | Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

August 6, 2018 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

What is Sibling Rivalry – Part 2

Over two blogs I have focussed on one area of sibling relationships, namely rivalry. In part 1, I looked at some aspects of sibling rivalry as they can surface in childhood. In part 2, I will suggest how these might impact on ongoing struggles in adult life, before suggesting ways in which problematic issues with rivalry can be helped.

Sibling Rivalry in Adulthood

Feelings of competition and rivalry are perfectly normal and to be expected in adulthood. However, when childhood rivalry has been particularly problematic and unresolved, this can shape and lead to intense struggles later in life. Below are some thoughts about sibling rivalry and adulthood.

An obvious impact is in relationships to competition. Difficulties might particularly arise at work, socially, in educational settings, or any other situation where competitive feelings are heightened. This might lead to over competitiveness at the expense of other experiences – for example friendship, fun, comradeship etc. The rivalrous person may be driven towards success, however, often these feelings just seem to cause paralysis, procrastination, and low-self-esteem, as the individual constantly measures themselves against others.

As siblings are the earliest relationships they become a kind of template for later relationships. If feelings have never really got beyond negative experiences of aggression and dislike, this can make it hard to establish positive, caring and cooperative adult relationships.

Siblings who hold onto intensely rivalrous feelings, may be unable to establish a good adult relationship with each other. They therefore lose out on what these uniquely close alliances can potentially offer.

Sometimes sibling rivalry that’s not overt in childhood later manifests in adulthood. This can often be triggered through a change in the family dynamic. The most common is the serious illness or death of one or both parents. In these circumstances, feelings of rivalry can intensify or, if latent, can suddenly manifest. This is particularly common if there are issues around sharing responsibility or care for the parent, or around inheritance.

Fair shares and mutual concerns

Dennis Brown, a group analyst, wrote a paper entitled ‘Fair shares and mutual concern: The role of sibling relationships’ (1998). He explored how these rivalrous battles with siblings belong to an early stage in the individual’s development and that in healthy childhood psychological growth there is a shift to a more cooperative position towards siblings and therefore later relationships.

Our relationships with our siblings are usually the earliest experiences of grappling with love and hate for our peers. It’s important that aggression, jealousy and rivalry can be countered by experiences of love, companionship, and affection. Achieving this in childhood helps this balance of positive and negative feelings in later relationships.

The potential for change

But if this change hasn’t taken place in childhood can anything be done in adulthood? Below are some suggestions of how to work towards resolving the more crippling preoccupations with ‘fair shares’ towards a greater feeling of ‘mutual concern’ for and with others.

One way forward is to try and develop an adult relationship with your adult sibling. Sometimes family members get stuck in a narrative belonging to the past. We carry the child templates of our siblings inside us without perhaps getting to know the adult version. This is particularly compounded if relationships don’t develop outside of the family environment, for example when siblings only ever see each other in the presence of the rest of the family, particularly parents.

During or after times when you find yourself preoccupied with doing better than others, or having painful feelings of inadequacy or exclusion, it can help to reflect on links between this experience and what you may have felt as a child in your family. This can help you step away and separate from those past dynamics, reminding you that this is no longer the actual situation you find yourself in.

I mentioned earlier that sibling rivalry can worsen or manifest after a major family dynamic change such as brought on by the illness or death of a parent. Sometimes the opposite shift can happen. For example, the loss of one or both parents, or other family events, can suddenly bring problems of historic rivalry between some siblings to a natural end.

The Role of Group Psychotherapy

Group psychotherapy is particularly helpful in working through the difficulties arising from unresolved sibling rivalry.

Being in a therapy group stirs feelings of rivalry for everyone in it. In this way, it tackles rivalry in a way that individual therapy (where you have all the attention to yourself) can’t. Bringing these feelings alive and to the foreground means they can be worked with head on in the safety of a therapeutic environment.

In a therapy group, members find that each other remind them of their siblings, some more obviously than others. This offers an opportunity for working through difficulties that they may have had growing up with actual siblings. Members can then develop the kind of affection and closeness with rivals that might not have felt possible growing up or since.

Group members often find that the group feels a bit like an alternative family. This gives the opportunity for everyone – including ‘only’ children – to have different kinds of ‘sibling’ experiences than those they grew up with.

Conclusion

Preoccupation with ‘fair shares’ is symptomatic of a world where we feel pitched against each other and encouraged to see ourselves as alone. These feelings can be particularly heightened if the conflicts of our earliest peer relationships have not been resolved. Psychotherapy and counselling give the opportunity to explore and understand these deep rooted and painful experiences and how they may continue to have impact. Psychotherapy groups emphasise our connectivity as human beings. This challenges the notion that we are on our own, offering a direct release from the paralysing grip of rivalrous conflicts, towards greater co-operation, affection, and ‘mutual concern’ in our relationships.

Claire Barnes is an experienced UKCP registered psychotherapist and group analyst offering psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy to individuals and groups at our Hove practice.

July 30, 2018 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

What is Sibling Rivalry? – Part 1

The importance and role of sibling rivalry

Siblings are the longest standing relationships in most of our lives. As we grow older they increasingly serve to keep a connection to our families of origin, reminding us of our parents and our younger selves. Most of us share genetic material and family histories with our siblings. They have a significant place in our origins and narratives and an important role in shaping us. We don’t choose our siblings in the way we do our friends and sexual partners but, in many ways, they are our closest peers.

Over two blogs I have focussed one area of sibling relationships, namely rivalry. In part 1, I will look at some aspects of sibling rivalry as they can surface in childhood. In part 2, I will think about how these might impact on ongoing struggles in adult life, before suggesting ways in which problematic issues with rivalry can be helped.

Sibling rivalry in childhood

Sibling rivalry is part of growing up. Children who have sibling/s share their parent’s love and attention, and feelings of rivalry are naturally going to arise. While squabbling and fighting can disturb the family atmosphere, it is important that we are aware these feelings and struggles are normal. These conflicts around competition are also ways in which young children prepare for managing later peer relationships.

However, feelings of rivalry can become particularly exacerbated for different reasons. For example, if there are unresolved difficulties in the parent’s relationship to competition and rivalry. Fighting between siblings that gets out of control or dominates the family can be often be traced back to some difficulty for one or both parents.

Other family dynamics may also play a part in complicating and exacerbating rivalry. Below are some examples where sibling rivalry might become heightened, and complex.

One example is when a parent is particularly enmeshed with one child. This means all other relationships, including other children, are pushed outside of this unhealthy coupling. This can create huge difficulties for everyone in the family and can heighten and complicate rivalrous feelings between the siblings.
A large age gapmight mitigate rivalry in some ways but not in others. It may be particularly hard for the older sibling to allow or express jealousy or rivalrous feelings towards a much younger sister or brother. This younger sibling may be getting a kind of affection that the older brother or sister has had to relinquish but still misses.
The much younger sibling can feel the older one is closer to the parent/s as they’ve perhaps reached an age where they are being treated on more equal terms. This can also become bound up with the difference in capabilities due to age-difference. So, rivalry can feel linked with feelings of inadequacy.
Children who are born close in age may have had to share their mother’s/main care-giver’s attention and care as babies. Feelings of competition and rivalry may be experienced on a primal level – originating very early in life – and this could make them particularly hard to articulate.
Children who have siblings with a disability or illnessmay feel ashamed and guilty for having negative feelings towards the sibling/s. This dynamic gets further compounded by the extra attention the sick or disabled sibling may well get from parents and others.
Harder still to express, manage, or even feel, is the rivalry and jealousy that might be felt towards a sibling who has died. In the psychotherapy field there is particular concern about children who may have been conceived to ‘replace’ a child who has died, and the very particular – often unconscious – pressures they come under.
Relationships and rivalry between half and step siblings can sometimes be less intense if, for example, they do not live with each other. There will likely be a parent the child can claim as their own who is not shared biologically and emotionally. However, these half/step sibling relationships can also feel complex and painful, as they are often bound up with parents’ separation and families splitting into ‘new’ and ‘old’.
One of the more unconscious ways families often manage rivalry is by assigning different roles and attributes amongst siblings. For example, the ‘clever’, ‘sporty’, ‘artistic’ ‘musical’ one; or ‘quiet’, ‘sociable’, ‘troubled’ etc. These might work to mitigate rivalry some of the time, in some families, and for some individuals. However, they can also stir up further complex feelings of rivalry, imbuing them with restrictive self-expectations and feelings of inadequacy.

Do only children have it easier?

Based on the accounts above we could think that the only child is the most fortunate. Certainly, ‘only’ children do not usually have to compete with early peer relationships for their parents’ love and attention and therefore avoid some of these more painful and destructive experiences of sibling rivalry. However, those who have grown up as only children often report a pervasive feeling of loneliness and isolation. Being the sole focus of parents’ love (and often therefore need) can feel very burdensome as a child and an adult. It is also no coincidence that only children often describe particularly acute difficulties starting nursery or school where they suddenly encounter the rough and tumble of peer relationships and rivalry.

The jostling and competing for space and attention that siblings engage with, prepares them for later experiences. However, it is important that children are also able to develop feelings of concern and companionship towards their siblings. In this way the intense and more hateful feelings of rivalry can be moderated and managed. While feelings of sibling rivalry never fully go away they need to be resolved enough to establish healthy relationships with peers in adulthood.

In part 2, I will the potential impact of unresolved sibling rivalry in adulthood and look at ways of helping.

Claire Barnes is an experienced UKCP registered psychotherapist and group analyst offering psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy to individuals and groups at our Hove practice.

July 23, 2018 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

What is a Psychotherapy Group?

Most of us, at one time or another, have avoided groups. Whether it was not attending a party, preferring to stay at home and watch TV after a long week or finding a reason not to go to that meeting at work because it always makes us feel uncomfortable.

When I suggest to a client that group psychotherapy might be helpful, the impression I am often initially left with is it raises anxieties for them. These are usually based on concerns about talking to strangers about personal and intimate aspects of our lives.

Worries about confidentiality, sharing space with others and getting needs met with others competing for attention can also dominate. All of these are perfectly reasonable objections and reassuring people that they will not encounter such experiences is not the purpose of the work before joining a group.

What can group psychotherapy offer?

A group offers the opportunity to tackle competitiveness, dealing with rivalry and finding a voice in a group. What you will be gaining is a sense of your self through the eyes of the group, giving you a perspective on yourself from each member. A mirror for reflection, through the process of sharing with others and learning from them. The relationships in the group offer a place to play out fears in a safe and contained space.

What can you expect if you want to join a group?

The type of group I have described above is called “A Slow Open Group”. It consists of a Group Analyst or Conductor, from 5-8 members, meets weekly for 1.5 hours for 42 weeks a year. You will join the group for a minimum period of 6 to 12 months.

This seems like a big commitment, are you a member of a gym with 12 months membership, which is usually rolled over; this is like a gym workout for the mind with the added advantage of a team of players to work with.

If you are joining a new group you will have seen your group conductor sometime before the group starts, he or she will have spent time with you getting to know you, finding out whether there are any boundary issues with other members. This is a “stranger group” knowing someone beforehand, a friend, family member, however distant, is not conducive to developing a safe and confidential space for open and free discussions.

The group provides a relational field or matrix for exploring and understanding our emotional lives. Your needs may be in your relationships within the family /partnerships/ friends or at work managing others, handling team rivalries or even in the area of sport where managing morale is essential. Isn’t it in every aspect of our communal lives?

Dorothea Beech is a UKCP-registered Group Analyst, full member of the Institute of Group Analysis and a Training Group Analyst. She will be starting a slow open group in October running weekly from our Hove practice.

July 16, 2018 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

What does Integration mean in Psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy is many things, but on a fundamental level it is about the integration of split-off parts of ourselves.

This cannot be achieved without the integration of psyche and soma (body), which is the function of the mind. We need the mind of another to grow a mind and this is what happens in the relationship children have with their parents, if all goes well. Emotional and psychological integration cannot happen outside of the context of a secure object relationship and it is this that is the function of psychotherapy.

Far too many ‘modalities’ of psychotherapy operate in ‘silos’, possibly reflecting the medical approach to the body and mind. This makes them limiting and we end up with ‘infighting’ around “my modality is better than yours”, or “this modality is NICE approved whereas that one isn’t”…. All of this in unhelpful to clients and to the profession. Without an integrated approach to helping clients to grow and use their minds to form a relationship with their whole being, little change is likely.

Going back to psychoanalysis

The old analysts, from Freud through Winnicott, understood integration and Winnicott wrote extensively about the ‘Mind Object’: where a mind becomes an external ‘object relationship’ for the patient/client, to compensate for a lack of secure primary object, but then persecutes the individual for having an emotional world (as it cannot process and contain emotion).

In the absence of a ‘good enough’ parent, the child projects his or her mind out of the body and uses it to navigate the world, however, this is a precocious mind that cannot help the client process emotion and attacks the client for their emotions.

The function of a mind is to make sense of the psyche and soma and be an ally to the individual. Integration in psychotherapy involves the client/patient growing a mind; learning to navigate their feelings and making sense of their thoughts, all whilst accepting reality and being in relationship to others. To do this requires and integration of approaches, not least Object Relations (psychoanalysis), Attachment Theory, Neuroscience, Embodiment and Existential Givens, all held within a relational therapeutic context.

Integration vs eclecticism

Being a potent psychotherapist means therefore being able to adapt our language and thoughts processes to those of the client in order to help them grow their mind and discover how they become integrated. It relies on the ability to move between languages (therapeutic, class, gender, culture, religious/spiritual) as well as being able to move between the client’s experience and our own. This is the true meaning of integration and the difference between integration and eclecticism.

Mark Vahrmeyer is a UKCP-registered integrative psychotherapist working in private practice in Hove and Lewes. He is integrates psychotherapeutic approaches with neuroscience and the body in his work.

July 16, 2018 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

On rushing towards answers

Take the following situation: a client seeks psychotherapy to deal with anxiety and other related physical symptoms such as heart palpitations, ABS, stomach pains, etc.

They are used to a solution-focused approach and can want quick answers from me.

I feel rushed and pulled to meet them in their anxious place – to offer solutions, set goals, etc. I can easily see the how therapy session could quickly turn into a business meeting.

I take a breath, check in with myself and see how I am feeling (pushed, rushed, slightly anxious to give solutions).

I pause and offer the following:

“It seems you want me to give you more work in addition to what you already have. This seems to be exactly what is stressing you out. What would it be like for us to slow down and focus on your experience right now?”

We both look at one another for a moment and there is a sense of confusion: “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to DO.”

The DO bit is of importance here. Everything seems to be about doing in this person’s life. I imagine most of us can relate to this way of being.

This is because many of us have not learnt to pay attention to our experience. As children we are taught to do well, achieve, win, etc. in order to be loved and recognized. However, real recognition comes from validation of experience. This means paying attention to feelings, thoughts and responses,

Through a focus on doing and achieving, we loose connection to our bodies and our feelings. This means we end up a little bit like performance machines, ticking lists and meeting deadlines. In this process we tend to forget who we are, why we do what we do and how we feel about it.

One of the goals of therapy is to facilitate this process of coming back to oneself and understanding what drives us for good or bad. We then look at what behaviours and ways of being serve you and which really don’t.

Sam Jahara is a Relational Transactional Analysis psychotherapist and superviser, working in Hove and Lewes. Sam is also one of the founding partners of Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy.