Episode 132: The Grief No One Talks About Enough. Losing A Sibling To Suicide

We speak directly to sibling suicide loss and why it can feel uniquely lonely, misunderstood, and identity-shaking. We name the guilt, anger, fear, and family shifts that often follow, and we offer grounded ways to keep living while carrying the grief. 
• why sibling grief can be overlooked and minimized 
• how losing shared history can destabilize identity and belonging 
• family system changes after suicide and why siblings drift or bond 
• survivor guilt and the “I should have” loop as a search for control 
• comparison grief and the pressure to rank pain 
• what unspoken grief can look like: anxiety, numbness, perfectionism, isolation 
• anger after suicide and releasing guilt about feeling it 
• complicated sibling relationships and unfinished business without rewriting the past 
• the “strong one” role and why suppression leads to a crash 
• chronic fear after suicide loss and the role of nervous system regulation 
• honoring your sibling by living fully with grief and joy together 
If this episode resonated with you because you are a sibling, share it with another sibling. Share it with your own sibling. Because another sibling may need to hear that they're just not alone in this journey. 
If you like this podcast, please share with your friends and write a review to help this podcast grow.

As always, thanks for listening!

We are a community dedicated to empower survivors of suicide loss along their grief journey. We invite you to check out our website to sign up for our weekly newsletter, along with other free materials."

Website: https://www.survived-to-thrive.com/

Email: amy@survived-to-thrive.com

Transcript

Welcome To Survived To Thrive

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You are listening to the Survived to Thrive podcast with Amy Miller, a podcast for survivors of suicide loss. In this weekly podcast, you will learn more about your unique experiences and gain insights on your brain and how it processes grief and loss due to a loved one's suicide. While suicide grief comes in all shapes and sizes, Amy shows you that you still can have a life full of joy and fulfillment, even though your loved one died. You don't have to just survive anymore. You can thrive.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Losing

Sibling Suicide Loss Deserves Attention

SPEAKER_01 0:48

a sibling to suicide. This podcast topic is very near and dear to me, simply because I am a survivor, a sibling survivor specifically. I lost my sister back in 2017. And for whatever reason, throughout the few years I've had this podcast, I have never felt that I could give this particular topic enough justice. And so I avoided it. I think maybe it was partially because it's so personal to my own personal experience. And I think also because I feel like sibling loss is such a misunderstood, minimized, and overlooked grief that is often forgotten about and is often just not really acknowledged. And, you know, I have been feeling for quite some time that I feel like this particular grief really needs to be spoken about. It needs to be acknowledged, it needs to be validated because this is a very real thing. There are so many sibling survivors out there who are left navigating this loss, this devastating loss of losing a brother or a sister. And if you have personally lost a brother or a sister to suicide, you probably have felt like the world pretty much forgot that your grief is important. They probably forgot that you are also dealing with a loss because many times the world will focus mostly on the parents that are grieving, or the spouses that are grieving, or the children that are grieving. And somewhere in the middle all of all of that, right, there is the siblings, the ones that were raised with the person that died. And it really carries its own unique heartbreak. Because the truth is your sibling wasn't just family. They were your history, your witness, your built-in companion to childhood, right? They were the person that knew your parents the way you did, the one who remembered the inside jokes, the holidays, the chaos, the shared wounds, the shared dreams, the person that was there when all of the hardships came and went, the person that was there through turmoil, through trauma, through experiences families go through sometimes in lives, right? Sometimes your sibling was there through a divorce. Sometimes they were there when parents, you know, had really great memories that were shared or family memories, right? So I feel like, you know, when they die by suicide, it can feel like a part of your own identity disappears too. So today we're going to talk about why sibling loss is uniquely painful. We're going to speak to the hidden emotions that many siblings carry. We're also going to be talking about a topic that I feel like siblings deal with on a very regular basis as a survivor of suicide loss is survivor's guilt and comparison grief. Okay. I feel like with any relationship for a survivor, a sibling relationship really carries survivor's guilt and comparison grief. We're also going to be talking about changes in family dynamics, right? And also anger and abandonment and unfinished business, because you know, sometimes these siblings that we've lost, you know, they we had challenges with them in some of our situations. And so, you know, this brings up anger sometimes and a lot of unfinished words that were unsaid and a lot of conflicts that were left unresolved. So we're going to be talking about this unfinished business. We're also going to speak to how to keep living while carrying this loss because the truth is a lot of siblings really struggle with this. They really struggle with just moving forward in a lot of aspects in their lives, right? So we're going to be talking about how to keep living while carrying this loss. We're also going to be talking about how healing is possible even when the grief feels like it's taking forever. Okay. So wherever you are listening from today, I'm just so glad you're here. All right.

Why Sibling Grief Hits Differently

SPEAKER_01 5:58

So let's talk about why sibling loss is different than the other losses. Okay. Sibling relationships are unlike any other relationship, right? Unlike parents, siblings grow up alongside us, right? You experience life at the same level together. You're growing, you're developing, you're learning lessons, you survived some of the same challenges, you survived the same household, you learn the same family culture, you carry the same memories. And sometimes your sibling is one of your best friends. Sometimes your sibling's relationship with yourself is very complicated. Sometimes siblings are estranged from us, and sometimes they're rivals, and sometimes they're protectors. But even when the relationship wasn't perfect, there is usually this invisible thread connecting siblings that never fully go away. And when suicide enters the story, people often expect siblings to just bounce back or and move faster, move on faster than the parents or the spouses. But the truth is what people don't realize is losing a sibling can destabilize your entire sense of self. And I think that's the thing that is the most missing, right? Because you may suddenly wonder who am I without them, right? Why them and not me? What happens to our family now? And why didn't I see this? And could I have stopped it? Or will I ever feel normal again? And this thought of will I ever feel normal again is really such a uh an incredible thing that I feel like a lot of siblings are holding on to, right? Because when they're holding on to this thought of wondering if they're ever gonna feel normal again, it really keeps them stuck in a lot of ways.

Shared History And Family Upheaval

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So sibling grief often becomes silent grief, right? Because again, like I was saying, it's pretty overlooked, it's ignored a lot of times, right? It's not one that people really tend to focus on because there's a lot of reasons for this, right? Because a lot of times your identity and your role changes in the family dynamic. Suddenly you become the strong one, or you become the helper or the caretaker of everyone else's emotions. But at the same time, your own grief goes underground. And underground grief doesn't disappear, right? It festers, it waits, right? It grows. So it's really important that we understand what happens when a sibling loses a loved one, especially to suicide. And one of the deepest pains in sibling loss is losing your shared history, right? Here's the thing in that childhood connection that you two shared, right, your sibling knew versions of you that nobody else ever will, right? They knew your childhood home, they knew your teenage years, they knew your family's secrets, they knew your drama, they knew your weaknesses, they knew your strengths, they knew your parents when they were younger, they knew the funny stories nobody else remembers. And then when they die, it can feel like the entire chapters of your life disappear with them. And you may think, now there's no one left who remembers that, and that really can create an incredible loneliness, especially if your family dynamics are difficult or fractured after the loss, right? So many sibling survivors say, I lost my sibling and then I lost my family too. This is a very common scenario because suicide changes family systems, and sometimes parents become consumed by the grief. And a lot of times the other siblings that are left, they don't have the same parent anymore, right? Because the parent is going through so much grief and pain and turmoil that they are not there for you like they used to be or like they once were. Sometimes blame enters the family, right? And sometimes everyone grieves differently and conflict grows. I found that in my own personal family that I noticed how some of my siblings grieved completely differently than I did. And I grieved completely differently than some of my other siblings. And, you know, it's just interesting because, you know, I had found myself as I was going through my own grief experience, how, you know, when I would share my own grief experience with one of my siblings, it really opened them up to share their own grief experience. And they would share that with me. And it actually brought a little strengthen, strengthening of our connection. But sometimes siblings will go through things in their grief that have them change in a way, or it might activate something in them that causes behaviors that maybe other the other siblings don't agree with, and that can conflict cause conflict and contention. And it's really common. I see this very often in suicide loss survivors. And, you know, and so it can cause this drifting apart between siblings when things like that are occurring. So all of this can leave you as a sibling feeling very emotionally homeless, right? And so I think it's really important to recognize if this is you, if you are feeling like you are either drawing closer to siblings or drifting apart. That's very common in different family and sibling dynamics. And if you are feeling emotional, emotionally homeless, don't worry. This is completely normal. Okay.

Survivor Guilt And The Shoulds

SPEAKER_01 12:08

The next thing I want to touch on today is this hidden guilt siblings carry, right? And sibling survivors, I think probably, I mean, I think every survivor carries guilt, but siblings carry this massive guilt. And it usually sounds like things like I should have known, or I should have answered the phone, or I should have recognized that they were having a hard time, or I should have checked on them, or I should have been closer to them, or I should have said more, or I should have done something, I should have called more, I should have visited more, right? I should have, I should have, I should have. And, you know, I've spoken to this idea of the should haves and the shoulds, right? And I've always said that should is really code word for judging myself, right? Because the truth is the brain is desperately searching for control, right? It's searching for a way to control the situation that we find ourselves in, a way to control the outcome, right? Because if we convince ourselves we could have prevented it, then maybe the world feels a little bit less terrifying and a little bit more controllable. But here's the truth, okay? You are not more powerful than another person's mental illness, okay? You are not more powerful than another person's pain, you are not more powerful than another person's trauma, addiction, or despair, and you are not responsible for carrying the weight of another human being's survival. Okay. I feel like I have to shout that out from the rooftops because it is such a truth that I think we really need to digest. We really need to feel this in us through and through. Because the truth is, many survivors, sibling survivors, especially, often replay every memory trying to find the moment, right? The missed clue, the missed text, the missed opportunity. But the truth is this hindsight is cruel. And after loss, the brain rewrites memories through the lens of tragedy, and things suddenly seem obvious that never felt obvious before. Okay. But here's the thing: this does not mean you failed, it means you are a human being, okay. We don't always know the whole picture of everything that's going on, okay. There's gonna be things that we've missed. We're missing things today, okay. If you think about the things that we miss that is going on around us, right? We can't be responsible for all those things that we've missed. Yet somehow we find ourselves feeling so much responsibility for what we miss as it relates to the death of our loved one who died by suicide. Okay.

Comparison Grief And Silent Suffering

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Another thing I want to talk about is this comparison grief. Okay, this one is huge for siblings, right? They often feel like their grief is ranked lower than everyone else's. Did you ever find yourself doing this? I used to think it all the time. I just used to think that while I was going through my own grief that it wasn't as bad as what my mom was going through. Okay. You might think things like that, like my parents lost a child, or you might think my sibling's spouse lost their partner. And for some reason, that just feels like it should be in the hierarchy of pain. Okay. Right? And so you minimize your own pain. But grief is not a competition, my friends. Your grief matters because your relationship mattered. You do not have to prove devastation to deserve support. And sometimes siblings feel overlooked at funerals, during anniversaries, or in family conversations. And people ask how the parents are doing and how the spouse is doing, while meanwhile, nobody's asking how the sibling is doing or how you are doing. Okay. And the truth is that silence hurts. And over time, many siblings suppress their grief because they feel like they don't have the permission to fully express it. Okay. But unspoken grief has consequences, right? It shows up as anxiety sometimes, it shows up as depression, emotional numbness, overworking, isolation. Does that ring true for you? I know that rang true for me. Irritability is another one, panic, perfectionism. This one is huge. I feel like, you know, because my sister, ever since my sister died by suicide, this perfectionism that was already kind of ingrained in me came out in full force. I felt like I had to be the perfect sibling for my other siblings. I had to be the perfect daughter for my mom. I had to be the perfect spouse for my husband. I had to be the perfect parent to my kids. I don't know. Right. Because I felt like that if I was perfect, that that would somehow control that my other loved ones wouldn't die in this way. I don't know what. And it's so interesting as a coach, and I look back at that and I think how incredibly ridiculous that was. But that was how I felt, right? It felt like if I could do anything and try to, you know, be better, show up more, do more, that that would somehow prevent future incidences or future suicides. It's just interesting how your brain goes, but very common for siblings. Another one is feeling emotionally frozen. Sometimes it happens for years for siblings. But I think one of the things that I want you to understand is that your grief deserves space. Okay. It deserves to have a place to express it, a person to share it with. Okay. I think it's so, so important because that is the way that we get it through our system is by unloading it. One of my favorite, favorite, favorite things I learned as I was learning my grief when I took my grief course. One of the my favorite things that the instructor David Kessler shared with us is that grief needs to be witnessed. That is part of the healing process. It needs to be witnessed. So your grief deserves space too.

Anger After Suicide And Self-Blame

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All right. Another thing I wanted to touch on today is anger after sibling suicide. Okay, this one. All right, it's a hard one to talk about, but it's real, right? Sometimes sibling survivors feel enormous anger, right? And it can show up in so many different ways. It might be that anger comes up because your sibling left, or you feel anger because they didn't ask for help, or you feel anger that they created this pain. You may also feel anger that they abandoned you, or that they happen to leave you with dealing with all this aftermath, or you might feel anger about what happened to your whole family afterward, or what happened to your mom, or what happened to your siblings, or whatever, or their kids, or whoever, you know, there's so many ways that this anger can show up. And oftentimes what happens is as you're feeling this anger inside of you, suddenly the guilt creeps in for feeling angry, right? But I always feel like I have to emphasize with my sibling survivors, especially that anger is a normal grief emotion. Okay, it's normal. I'm not saying everybody that goes through grief has to experience anger. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying that anger is a very normal emotion to feel when you're going through an experience like grief. So if this is you, I want you to normalize it for you. Okay, because it is such a normal space to be in. I remember in my own grief experience, and I think I've touched on this before in one of my previous podcast episodes, but you know, I remember I was feeling some intense anger towards somebody who I felt like let my sister down. Okay. I wasn't so much feeling so much anger towards my sister as I was towards who I felt let her down. Okay. And I remember feeling it and then feeling so much guilt because I felt like I shouldn't be focused on feeling anger towards this other person, that I really wanted to save all my emotional energy so that I could just feel the sadness that I felt like I should have for my sister. Right. And somebody told me, they just told me while I was in the midst of feeling all that guilt that anger is okay. There's nothing wrong with anger, anger is part of it. Anger is part of being a human being. Okay? Anger is not a problem. I was making anger a problem, but anger is not a problem. It only becomes a problem if we act in anger. But it's never a problem to feel anger. And I just remember feeling the truth in that statement, feeling the validity in that statement. And it really helped me to recognize and let go of all of the guilt that came along with me feeling so anger, so much anger.

Unfinished Business In Complex Bonds

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Okay, the next thing I wanted to touch on is how sibling relationships are often layered, right? And sometimes they're very complicated. You know, and when we lose a sibling to suicide loss, we might feel that there was a lot of unresolved conflicts, right? There's words left unsaid, old wounds, right? And many times when that comes up for us, we might feel like we didn't get that chance. And that can also bring up some anger because we do not do well when we feel like things are unresolved. And it feels like when our sibling dies by suicide and we are in that space where we had unresolved conflicts, it becomes tingled with all this regret, and it really feels unsettling. But one of the things I always want to say to survivors who were in this space where you had a lot of unresolved conflicts or words left unsaid or something that wasn't resolved, or there was just something that is really, really bugging you about what wasn't done prior to their loss. I want you to understand that healing does not require pretending your relationship was perfect. Okay. I want you to really feel that inside of you because you can deeply love someone and still acknowledge pain in the relationship. Your relationship didn't have to end with everything perfect, with all the words said, with the relationship to be very loving and wonderful. Okay. A lot of times with siblings who die by suicide, there was a lot of conflict you were dealing with. There was a lot of illness you were dealing with. There was a lot of things that probably was paired up with it. I find with a lot of siblings there was addiction issues involved. There was, you know, arguments, there were heated discussions, there were a lot of things that came up. But you can still love a person and have all of those things. Okay. They don't have to be separate. You don't have to have everything resolved to feel love for the person that you lost, nor does that person need all of that resolved to feel love and to feel regret for dying by suicide and all that as well. Okay. Both can exist at the same time. Okay. So remember, you can deeply love someone and still acknowledge pain in the relationship. It didn't have to be perfect. Okay. Another

Caretaker Mode And Chronic Fear

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thing I wanted to touch on is this idea of becoming the quote-unquote strong one, right? Many sibling survivors step into this caretaker mode after the death. A lot of times it ends up happening because you find yourself really worried about your parents and you feel like you have to support them in a different way. You also feel like you probably have to take on more obligations and more logistics. Maybe you have to handle things that, you know, that your other sibling did, or you are handling the logistics of all of the fallout from the you from your sibling dying, right? And you feel like you have this responsibility to help protect everyone emotionally. But eventually your nervous system starts keeping score. And many survivors crash. Okay. Months later, sometimes, sometimes it's years, because the truth is you spend so much time trying to take care of everyone else and making sure that everybody else is okay, that you didn't even get to process your own trauma. And strength is not emotional suppression, strength is allowing truth. And real healing often begins when you stop saying things like, I should be over this, right? That I should shouldn't be grieving as much because it's harder, you know, for my parents, or it's harder for my brother's wife, or it's harder for my sister's kids, right? Real healing begins when you say, This changed me. Because it did. Suicide loss changes people. Not because you're what weak, but because trauma changes the nervous system. And sibling loss often reshapes things, it reshapes your identity, your family roles, your future dreams, your holidays, your traditions, and your sense of safety in the world. Okay. So I want you to really take that to heart. Next, I want to touch on the fear that comes. Okay. After losing a sibling to suicide, many survivors live with chronic fear. Okay. This one comes up so often that this fear that you're going to lose another sibling, that you're or another family member, maybe. A lot of sibling survivors have this fear that their tri children will struggle mentally or that they're they themselves will fall apart. Okay. Or maybe there's this fear that happiness will be taken away again, especially if you start to feel some happiness, then you start to wonder, oh, what if this is taken away from me suddenly again? You know, because what happens after you lose your sibling to suicide is that your brain learned that life can change overnight. And that realization can make the world feel unsafe, right? And some people become hyper-vigilant. Some people become emotionally avoidant. Some struggle to trust joy. And this is why healing is not just emotional, it's nervous system work too. So your body may still feel like the trauma is happening now, which is why things like therapy and movement and exercise and grief support and coaching and journaling and breath work and sleep and nervous system regulation and you know attending church and you know, having faith and having connections and safe relations, relationships matter so much. Not because they erase the grief, but because they help your body learn survival again. Okay, last thing I wanted to touch on. Well,

When You Are The Only Sibling

SPEAKER_01 29:16

two things. The first one is when you become the only sibling left, I want to speak to you. Okay, because there's some of you out there who are the only sibling left. And suddenly you feel like you know that you're an only child now, right? And it carries this enormous emotional weight, right? Because you may suddenly feel pressure to hold the family together, pressure to succeed, like you're the only one left, right? You feel like you have this pressure to survive for your parents, and you have this pressure that you're the one left to take care of your grieving parents by yourself. And you also at the same time may feel guilty for being alive. You may feel all of this survivor's guilt, right? You may even struggle to celebrate your own life milestones because your sibling isn't there to experience theirs. This is more common than people realize. And this survivor's guilt often whispers things like you don't deserve joy when they're no longer here, right? You don't deserve to be happy when they can't have it. But your healing does not dishonor your sibling. Your life is not a betrayal. In fact, one of the most meaningful ways to honor someone you lost is actually to fully live. Okay. I'm not saying to live perfectly or without grief, but fully. Okay. So one of the hardest truths about siblings' life is this you may never just get over it. And honestly, I don't think healing means forgetting. I think healing means learning to how to carry and love and grief together. Because here's the thing your sibling mattered, their life mattered, your relationship mattered, and your grief reflects that. And over time, healing may look like talking about them, but allowing joy back into your life, creating new traditions. Maybe it's setting boundaries with unhealthy family dynamics or releasing guilt. Maybe it's telling their story differently. Sometimes we hold on to this story about losing our loved one to suicide, and we talk about all of the hard things and the sad things. Maybe it's time to tell their story differently. Maybe focus on their contributions, the things they did right, the things they did good, the impressions they made in people's lives. Okay. You know, changing that story and telling it differently really helps. Healing might mean finding meaning again, right? Finding a reason for this life that really brings about an excitement about the future and about moving forward and moving on in life, right? Maybe it's reconnecting with yourself, right? Not because the loss gets smaller, but because your capacity grows around it. So,

Permission To Heal And Live Fully

SPEAKER_01 32:13

with all of that said, if you're listening today as someone who lost a sibling to suicide, I want you to hear this clearly. Your grief is real. Even if others overlook it, even if your family never talks about it, even if years have passed, even if your relationship was complicated, you are allowed to miss them. You're allowed to be angry, you're allowed to laugh again, you're allowed to heal. And you do not have to carry this alone. There are so many siblings that are survivors walking around silently holding this same pain. And sometimes healing begins when someone finally says, I'm a sibling of a survivor too. So, with all that said, I just want to say thank you for being here today, my fellow sibling survivor. If this episode resonated with you because you are a sibling, share it with another sibling. Share it with your own sibling. Because another sibling may need to hear that they're just not alone in this journey. And if no one has told you this lately, your grief matters, your healing matters, and your life still matters too. I appreciate you listening. Thank you so much for joining me today. Until I see you next time. Bye-bye.

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SPEAKER_00 33:39

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