Description
Sibling relationships can carry some of the oldest and most enduring imprints in our nervous systems. Before we had language for ourselves, our siblings may have already been part of the field in which we learned who we were allowed to be. We learned from them how much space we could take up, what kind of love was available, and whether connection meant competition, comparison, humiliation, or betrayal.
For many people, sibling relationships are not simple. They can hold love, humor, shared history, and deep recognition — and they can also hold rivalry, invisibility, resentment, and guilt. Other experiences can include comparison, grief, triangulation, and the ache of never being truly known or loved. A sibling may have been our first friend, our first enemy, or our first experience of being displaced.
Because our brains track the difficult events of our past and connect them with particular people, places, roles, and family configurations, we are often living two lives in relation to our siblings. One part of us is trying to meet the sibling in front of us now, while another part is still trying to survive the childhood field where we had to compete for attention. If we were lucky, that was all, not to mention managing a parent’s moods, protecting someone, resenting them, outperforming, disappearing, or carrying a role no child should have had to carry.
For all of these reasons, our unconscious contracts can be incredibly activated in the sibling field. These contracts may include:
- I have to be smaller so they don’t feel bad.
- I have to stay superior so I don’t collapse.
- I have to take care of them.
- I can never need anything.
- I have to prove I’m different.
- I have to keep the peace.
- I have to stay loyal to the family story.
- I have to be the bad one so everyone else can belong.
These internalized roles and beliefs bind us to how others have seen us, or how we once had to be in order to survive. Our Broken Fields are made of the haunting imprint of someone else’s negative image of us, internalized so deeply that we live in constant reaction to it. In the Broken Sibling Field, this can mean being trapped in double binds — unable to succeed without guilt, rest without comparison, tell the truth without betrayal, set boundaries without fear, or feel love without also feeling grief.
What human brains need more than anything else during difficult experiences is accompaniment with resonance – the sense that someone else “gets them”. And we change difficult experiences into the possibility of something better when we release the contracts that keep us trapped inside these old sibling roles.
This class offers an experience of resonance, connection, accompaniment, and the release of unconscious contracts in the Broken Sibling Field. We will explore the negative images, family roles, comparison patterns, loyalty binds, and hidden grief that can live inside sibling relationships. We’ll learn how to recognize the contracts that keep us locked in old patterns, interrupt dead-end family dynamics, and return to a more truthful relationship with ourselves.
Participation in this class will provide a counterweight of accompaniment and shared understanding while we explore a kind of wound that is often minimized, joked about, or treated as “just sibling stuff.” Together, we will make space for the complexity of sibling relationships: the love and the resentment, the comedy and the heartbreak, the ancient competition and the longing to finally be free.
Where?
The course will meet via Zoom. We welcome participants from all time zones who wish to learn asynchronously for some or all of the sessions. Recordings and visuals will be made available to those who are registered for the live program.
When?
Mondays | 1:30 – 2:55 PM Pacific Time
August 31 – October 5, 2026
Click Here to convert to your time zone
What To Expect
In this class, we’ll explore the Broken Sibling Field through teaching, resonance, guided reflection, contract work, and shared accompaniment. Each week will focus on a different layer of sibling wounding and repair, including family roles, comparison, competition, loyalty, resentment, grief, and the possibility of new choices. You can expect a space that is honest, emotionally attuned, compassionate, sometimes heartbreaking and occasionally very funny — because sibling material can be some of the most tender and absurd material we carry.
What You'll Learn
August 31, Week 1: The Broken Sibling Field
Self-image, family roles, and the sibling gaze.
September 7, Week 2: Comparison, Competition, and Collapse
How sibling rivalry becomes an unconscious contract.
September 14, Week 3: The “Good One,” the “Bad One,” and the Invisible One
Contracts about identity, belonging, and being seen.
September 21, Week 4: Parentification, Protection, and Resentment
Contracts about caretaking, loyalty, and responsibility.
September 28, Week 5: Envy, Success, and the Fear of Outgrowing the Family
Contracts about achievement, guilt, and taking up space.
October 5, Week 6: Sibling Rivalry and the Parent’s Grief
Resentment and rivalry as the ghosts of a parent’s grief.
Who is This Course For?
This course is for anyone who feels confused, grief-stricken, or unfinished in relation to a sibling. It is for people who are close with their siblings, estranged from them, caring for them, grieving them, comparing themselves to them, or still trying to separate their own self-image from the role they were assigned in the family.
Anyone from total beginners to experienced resonance practitioners are welcome. This course is for anyone interested in seeing how to minimize the influence of the Broken Sibling Field during daily life and in dyadic session work, to practice and receive support as supportive practitioners, and to have solid ground when trauma arises.
In addition to those seeking to heal from sibling wounds, this course supports spaceholders and people who are interested in therapeutic and emotional session-work, including resonance partners, empathy buddies, therapists and social workers. Together, we’ll create space for humor, compassion, resonance, nervous system repair, and meaningful change. Join and begin to loosen the old sibling contracts, and recover more of your full self.
This Course Includes Resonant Assistant Support
Assistant support is available during classes. There are three ways this happens:
- In groups of three with one assistant and two participants, so that participants can practice the breakout exercises with support.
- In small groups, with 1 assistant and 3+ participants, with work with one participant occurring by lottery, and the remaining participants observing.
- Depending on assistant availability, the third option is 1-1 support to receive resonant processes like time travel and unconscious contracts for material that comes up during class.
Cost
$270 Early Bird
$300 Regular Price
Scholarship Information
Partial scholarships may be available for this course. For more information, please write to help@sarahpeyton.com after August 24, 2026.
Please Note:
- Your tuition payment is non-refundable (but it is transferable).
- This course will be recorded for those who want to learn asynchronously for some or all sessions.
- This work is not therapy and is not a substitute for therapy. If you have a sense that you would be destabilized by yourself or others speaking about difficult events, then this course may not be for you. While we hope that the processes and information that we share can be of use in your journey, we do not have the resources to support extreme psychological difficulties.