I’ve always supported my dysfunctional siblings, but I’ve had enough. How can I divorce myself? | Annalisa Barbieri

I’m a 66-year-old widow and the middle of three siblings. They are struggling with mental health, financial issues, or both. I’m the only one who is doing well in both areas. I’m the only one who graduated high school and college; the only one who hasn’t spent time in jail; the only one who had a successful career and has a comfortable retirement. I help them when asked and appropriate, and do my best to be supportive, even when they continue to make bad decisions.

Recently, my older sister mistakenly texted me intimate pictures meant for the new man in her life. It’s one more disturbing thing in a very long line of disturbing things she’s said and done over the years and I’ve had enough. My world is so different from my siblings’ – it always has been.

I feel as if I’m carrying this family, but don’t feel a part of it. I never have, because my choices have always been different, even when we were children. Our parents are deceased, and I’ve become the de facto and very reluctant mother, I’m the responsible one. How can I divorce myself from them and not feel guilty? How can I shield myself from their dysfunction, and protect my own sense of peace? I know they will never change.

When one sibling seems to have a “better” life than the others, that can bring up guilt, and guilt is a strong tether to behaviours we’d rather not demonstrate. If you could get to the bottom of why you feel it’s your job to carry the family, it may help you start to unshackle yourself.

The guilt was the first thing psychoanalytic psychotherapist Susanna Abse picked up on. “Your letter,” she said, “made me think about survivor guilt, which people can feel when they’ve been through something like a very big trauma. [You gave no indication that you had been through trauma, but it might have been useful to know more about your childhood.] I can see you are struggling with rage at being misused by your siblings, and being made to feel responsible.”

Abse said that sometimes, when one sibling has a better life than the others, it can feel that something they did caused the others to have that sub-optimal life. I stress we are not saying you did, but often this is the narrative: either their birth took attention away from an older sibling or maybe they got more attention, or more something, at the expense of the others. It’s important to realise that if this was the case it is neither your fault nor your responsibility.

The reality, said Abse, is that “if we do better it’s usually because we’ve got a good dollop of competitiveness and we direct it effectively. Particularly for women, when they direct their energy and ambition and succeed, they can sometimes feel quite ashamed. They don’t want to boast about it.

“You can’t help your siblings,” said Abse. “Their situation is very sad, but there’s something a bit omnipotent about your feeling that you can make them better. You have to mourn the fact that you’ve had your own losses. You need to step back and accept your own limitations. We tend to go on trying to rescue others when we don’t accept our own limitations. If you keep doing this you’ll end up feeling more resentful and misused, and it will poison any loving feelings left. Love them for who they are.”

Your most successful shield is to let go. Help them – but not to your own detriment. It’s not easy, but it gets easier with practice. Your resentment is a useful feeling: it reminds you that you are doing too much. When you feel resentful, stop, look and learn from what just happened and try not to repeat it. I don’t think divorce from family members is possible or easy unless you have no other relatives at all who will “loop you in”, in some way.

Who was there for you when you were widowed? Refocus your energies on to those people. You deserve to be looked after. And repeat regularly: “I am not responsible for my siblings.”

Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to ask.annalisa@theguardian.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions. The latest series of Annalisa’s podcast is available here.