IME it’s more helpful to view this kind of family dynamic as a pinball machine.
Many balls may be bouncing around in play. Two may seem to travel together at certainty points when bouncing around. But with the sheer number of of obstacles as some other point they’ll clash. One will probably bounce into another of the balls, one will shoot off in another direction and one will eventually end up shunting a ball they previously seemed to be in line with into the loser’s pocket.
How the balls align and travel is a case of external forces, gravity, obstacles, reactions and chance. The more balls there are the more moments there will be when some of the balls appear to be moving in tandem. Until they are not. It’s usually less conspiracy and more coincidental same direction of travel, until the next obstacle is hit.
The only way not to play is to refuse to enter the table as a ball.
I don’t believe in 360° free will. But there is always an angle of opportunity where you can choose to go low or go high, as far as the angle allows. So rise above as far as you can. Even when your angle feels unfairly acute while some other fucker has a massively obtuse one. Accept you cannot control your origins, your genes, the environment you were raised in. But also recognise you can grab your locus of control and drag it (kicking and screaming if necessary) as internally as you possibly can. Learn the difference between what you can control and what you cannot. Preferably coming to the conclusion that YOU are the only sure thing you can control. Including your ability to choose silence even when it stings so deeply not to defend yourself.
Keep a sense of perspective about other people’s family flaws, because you know on your own skin just how flawed things can get. Be grateful for what you have when it is more than you need. Be grateful for your current problems because they could be so much worse. Focus on ensuring anybody you create who may inherit genetic traits from you has the most stable and shock free environment to grow up in. So those traits aren’t activated into a known wrong direction. Model non-destructive behaviours those traits can be directed into. Make your North Star being the last in the line of that specific kind of plural generational dysfunction.
That’s the far from easy, not necessarily obvious, but available way to NOT be a ball bouncing on the table of tit for tat and how very dare you. You might “win” if you play. Especially is you’re a bigger, better, more powerful ball. But you and those close to you will still get bounced around and badly bruised in the process of “winning”.