Yearning0723, your post touched my heart cause I'm dealing with something somewhat similar.

Me and my younger sister, only two years younger than me. We were both going to college, things were going okay till she developed psychosis and severe depression, became suicidal, was hospitalized for a whole year and then things were never the same. I never had a family member hospitalized before, and never in a psychiatric hospital. That actually traumatized me.

I also developed "survival guilt." You see how you are doing well in school and have a bright future and your brother doesn't? Such a thing might make people feel guilty for having it good. Mine was crushing. I actually stopped going to college. I started failing my courses, I could not continue. It was not just the guilt, I was also traumatized because of the whole ordeal but guilt has been a big thing I have been unable to break through.

Your father does what my mother did, she said good things about me and compared me to my sister who was not doing as well, even before the hospitalization. I supposed there were signs about her struggles, I just did not have the knowledge or motivation to see them. But I have also become super sensitive to any comparison. My sister has been a big disappointment to my whole family. I come from a driven family and successful family (relatively speaking). They wanted the same of us. I don't blame them. I understand where they're coming from.

The guilt is so bad I prefer to be another disappointment to my family than to actually do well and be successful. Every time I see my sister and I look into her eyes, I somehow feel it's my fault. We had fights, we competed, we had different personalities and sometimes I truly hated her. I have become guilty about all those. Like your brother, she had some social skills issues, perhaps something developmentally a bit off about her. So I felt she was being blamed or judged for something she had not control over.

I was so disappointed that my parents were not more loving or more accepting. I had wondered what if I was in her situation? Life is not fair to her. It could as easily have been me in that situation, there is no logic to life in that way. But then again I also compare myself to people who have better lives. Why should I suffer because of my sister anyways? Why my family? What did I do to deserve this? What did she do to deserve this? What did my dad do to deserve such children?

I think what is an "acceptable reason" for a parent to be disappointed in a child depends on the parent and their upbringing and the culture. People have been very disappointed in their children for much less.... A father in a political family I knew was seriously disappointed in his son who had decided not to go into politics. He was crushed. You would think the son's decision to become an engineer was the same as him wanting to become a prostitute or something. They were not on speaking terms for years.

People can be disappointed in their kids for all sorts of reasons (sexual orientation, who they marry, conversion to a new religion, career choice, etc). A beautiful woman was so disappointed her daughter was only average looking. When you have expectations in life, you will face disappointments. I suppose people assume that when you are a parent then you rise above it all, or that the parental perfect unconditional love is a real thing. But it's not. I don't think unconditional love exists or if it does, it's rare or inconsistent. Certainly it's not "natural." It's the kind of thing that you have to constantly struggle to maintain. Because it's human nature to judge, to value something more and something less. Almost everybody wants the best for their kids. They want them to look beautiful, be healthy, be "normal", be successful, enjoy life, make money, etc. There is an internal struggle when people become aware of some "bad" things about their kids. When the "bad" thing is big enough or the people are just in a crappy place or under stress, love may lose the fight, at least temporarily. But they are human, they can't be perfect. But neither can their children. Children too may see their parents as big disappointments. That's how I felt about my parents when they were judging my sister. I think we all struggle with these things.