Sibling Rivalry

It sounds idyllic - and I'm sure, in some families, harmony between siblings is the norm. What prompted this question was some reading I had completed recently, referring to the tendency of authoritarian parents to promote an aggressive, competitive atmosphere and pit siblings against one another. Obviously, that is the extreme of the spectrum, but it made me wonder just how much those of us with siblings consciously and unconsciously compete on some level with our siblings, and the extent to which it informs our own self-concept - particularly how much we use our siblings abilities and accomplishments as a base scale. Myself, I've never been particularly competitive with my sister - if there was competition, it was friendly, and in the cause of self-improvement, egging one another on to greater heights. But upon doing that reading, I began contemplating the way I view myself in relation to my sister; I have always thought of her as the 'beautiful' one, the 'bubbly' one, the 'chatty' one; neither negative or positive, exactly, just how she was in comparison to me. I found it revelatory because when I really consider it, I am not ugly, reclusive or quiet; I simply think of myself in terms of that familial relationship, on certain levels. It's part of my concept of self. Did you ever find yourself doing that with your own siblings? You said that you each had different areas in which you excelled; did you think of yourself as the 'smart' one, and your sister or brother as the 'funny' one, or something of that nature?

I never really thought of myself as being the "smart" one or anything like that. I was just me and they were them. Like I said, we knew what we were good at and out parents did to, so they didn't expect us to do what the other one did because that wasn't us. Now that I sit here and think about it, if I had to classify myself and something I can say that I was the "smart" one and the "creative" one and I was definitely more outgoing than the others but like I said, that pressure was never placed on us to be in a particular category. We just did what came natural to us and we were supported for that.