What if the bully is your own brother?

We talk a lot about bullies in the playground, at work or online. But I was bullied at home by a brother who made me feel like an outsider in my own family, and the impact has lasted a lifetime.

We talk a lot about bullying.

Cyber bullying, bullying in the playground.

Schools have developed policies, workplaces have started talking about office culture.

But there’s one place we’re not talking about bullies that needs attention, and that’s bullying in our homes.

Professor Marilyn Campbell, from the education faculty at Queensland University of Technology, has researched sibling bullying.

She says that 30 per cent of siblings report being bullied. “The perpetration of bullying in the home is higher because with peers there’s about 10 per cent of kids who say that they bully others. There are more siblings who try out bullying behaviour in the home than they do at school.”

My brother was a bully.

When I was in high school most of my friends didn’t know I had a brother.

It wasn’t because he was embarrassing. He was one of the cool kids, talented at anything he put his hand to. The kind of older brother you’d boast about to impress your friends.

There is a growing awareness of the effects of bullying in schools but what if the perpetrator is in your own house. Picture: iStock

But I couldn’t boast about my brother, because he hated me.

At least that’s how it felt.

The details are hazy now. I remember being in the car once and he and his friend pretending to spit in my hair. He put me down constantly, and I was always walking on egg shells around him.

Parents often can’t tell the difference between fighting and bullying.

When things got to a breaking point (as they often did) there were repeated refrains from my parents: “You’re more alike than you know”, or “You’re just as bad as each other.”

I was hurt by their insistence that we were the same. My sister often agreed with my parents. Couldn’t they see he was the aggressor? That he was the one picking on me all the time?

Campbell says that this is common, as parents often can’t tell the difference between sibling rivalry and sibling bullying, but she says the distinction is important.

“If two kids are fighting then you probably give the same consequences to both of them.

“However if one is bullying the other, they’re intending to harm them. They do it repeatedly and there’s an imbalance of power where the person who is being victimised can’t get it to stop. In that case you don’t give them the same consequences because that would mean the child who is being victimised is actually then having a consequence from an adult as well as being bullied themselves.”

There is a difference between sibling fights and bullying. Picture: iStock

My brother’s bullying has made me feel an outsider in my own family.

I used to think I had the perfect family. We weren’t dysfunctional. My parents are generous, warm and loving. But time has given me a better perspective.

Every family has its flaws.

I thought we were open and communicative, but we don’t talk about our feelings. I’ve tried a few times, and it hasn’t worked out for me. My words are met with defensiveness or dismissal.

Which has made me feel wrong, like the black sheep. I see my family regularly — we all have children of our own now, but I rarely feel comfortable around them.

On the surface we all get along. But the truth is I don’t like my brother, and do my best to avoid him.

The impact of being bullied by a sibling lasts a lifetime.

Campbell says the difference between being bullied in the schoolyard and being bullied by a sibling is that in the home a bully can feel more protected. They can predict the kind of response they will get from their parents. They can hide it more.

A bully within a family could be protected because they know the likely response from parents. Picture: iStock

“Any child who is victimised develops lots of anxiety which can lead to depression. When children are victimised whether it’s by their siblings but also by their peers that they feel it’s their fault,” she says.

I can definitely relate to that. I still feel like the broken relationship with my brother is my fault. That I just don’t have enough heart to try harder.

His bullying, and my parents’ response to it, has meant a lifetime of struggling with an embedded sense of guilt. In any conflict I automatically assume I am wrong. I feel out of place in my own family.

I didn’t know it was bullying when it was happening, but I know it now.

My brother and I were not alike. He was four years older than me, bigger and more aggressive. He was relentless in the way he put me down and humiliated me.

It was bullying, pure and simple.

There’s something empowering in acknowledging that now.

Maybe if my parents knew then what we know today about bullying and its effects, things would have been different.

Maybe not. But the important thing for me is knowing that it wasn’t my fault then.

And it’s not my fault now.