In order to obtain power, control and dominance, the motivation behind all abusers (including psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists and some borderlines), you must be "judged" in terms of whether you are a good bet for their power and control, and also "defined" on that basis, and put into a role and hierarchical status based upon how much of a sycophant you can be.
Since this blog primarily focuses on narcissists (and sometimes on alcoholics), I will be focusing primarily on narcissists (including the grandiose brand of narcissists, as well as the vulnerable and malignant brands of narcissists) for this post.
I have talked about the roles narcissists give their children in this post about narcissists and children, so I would suggest going to that post if you are the child of a narcissist. There is also a post about sociopaths and children too for the more severe abusers.
This is just an overall review of why narcissists choose to put people into roles with some videos at the end and some more reading to explore on the topic.
ROLES EXIST TO SERVE THE NARCISSIST(S)
In the post on narcissists and children, you will notice that the roles that narcissists put their children in include "the golden child role", "the scapegoat role", "the mascot role" and the "the lost child role".
This can happen in society as well as in businesses or social groups. It is not just relegated to families and family members.
But first, toxic environments (in families, in businesses, in society and in social groups) involve disenfranchisement and victimization to some extent. Usually where you find disenfranchisement and victimization (someone or a group being blamed disproportionately compared to other members), you also find an unwillingness to resolve issues. Toxic issues are bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault, scapegoating, attempted murder, theft, battery, threats, verbal abuse and insults (hate speech), trying to isolate a person or group or race from the main social group, invalidation and perspecticide, gaslighting and triangulation (gossiping about a person or people in a disparaging way so as to "build a hierarchy" of people who enjoy greater privilege than other people).
Narcissists like toxic environments to a large extent because it is where their need for power, control and domination can be best expressed and realized.
Toxic environments also use shaming techniques including not assigning jobs or work where a person might have a specialty. If a talent is threatening to the narcissists or social group in the work environment where it might change their ranking in a hierarchy, they are afraid that they may lose the privileges and awards that go with that hierarchy.
People deemed to be in a minority of a toxic family, group or society are often left out of meetings and decisions, financial rewards, purposely kept in a sublimated position, while the lead narcissist(s) try to render these victims' perspectives and need for inclusion and equality as irrelevant.
In work places this manifests as talent being wasted because a boss or co-worker feels threatened by the talent of a person working in the business, and does not want to see them succeed or to become more important than they are. In society this can manifest as racism, gerrymandering, voter suppression, ghetto-izing, and sexism, for instance. In social clubs this can manifest as members who have formed a clique disenfranchising others who are not part of the clique or who do not have the same beliefs or perspectives or dress in the same way as the clique.
In order to keep the environment toxic enough for narcissists, where such issues as bullying, threats or sexual harassment are swept under the rug, victims must be ignored. In order to normalize ignoring victims to other members, there has to be agreement among the group.
And most of all, there has to be a hierarchy of who is important and who is not important to the agendas of the group. Who is to be blamed and who is not to be blamed when things go wrong in the toxic environment or in terms of the public? How can blame-shifting be implemented? Who will keep the secrets, and who will let out that victimization and disenfranchisement is happening? Who is to be kept in the group and who is to be let go to keep the victimization going?
This requires roles and fixed opinions of who is who in terms of their willingness to overlook victimization.
Narcissists will want to be the leaders of that hierarchy, telling people what to do, what to believe about someone who is complaining, deciding what the self esteem of individuals who complain should be, how to treat that person including telling other people how to treat the person, playing triangulation games (rewarding people who agree with them, and giving the cold shoulder or threats to those who don't), insulting or criticizing those they deem to be a threat to their authority, and generally forcing their hand to have submissive people "join their club" and have the un-submissive people ostracized.
Such a nasty choice, right?
In order to get the power and control narcissists want in these environments, they have to be starting a lot of false gossip, making assumptions about people and building on the assumptions (i.e. vilifying: it is how prejudice starts), and preaching to someone or a group of people about "who" is not up to snuff in terms of being "a real member" of the group. They want a group of people always forcing someone out, even if subtly. The people that they tend to want to force out are people who they find to be a threat to their agenda and need for power, control, dominance and image. The more submissive people are, the more narcissists like it.
The "with me" people will be like the "golden child" (like in the Bowen family systems): they will be flattered, they will be valued, they will be brought in close, they will be sought after for skills and opinions, they will be included in on decision-making, they will be sought after in terms of forming a bond, they will be expected to help scapegoat and disenfranchise people who are upsetting their need for dominance. In essence, they will be "treated like gold". They will also be sought after for "absolute loyalty" where criticism of procedures, how the narcissist(s) treat others, will be supported. They hope that what they believe will never be challenged by anything that can take them down or shame them. If it is challenged, they see to it quickly that people are relegated to a more "outsider" role and status of the central clique, an increasingly insignificant "place" in the narcissist's heart and mind.
In order to get all of this underway, they have to be talking and gossiping about other people a lot. Too much. And this is one way to tell who the narcissists are in any given group of people. They are laser focused on what other people are "about", what they are doing wrong, and on "mistakes" they make and any old little mistake will do. They criticize others, and are very much focused on the faults of others. They can also be critical of how someone looks, and laughing about other people.
In work places, narcissists work "smarter rather than harder" by triangulating other people, a devious little game where they divide and conquer, spread gossip, false rumors and smear campaigns. They also want to see how much vilification they can get away "safely" without being derided themselves. They need people being suspicious of each other so that they can take charge of the dialogue and the work environment.
You will know toxic environments because people in them are allowed to be mean, invalidating, disregarding and bullying without comment. Many people describe toxic environments as like "mean girls from junior high" or "ruthless guys who have no morals or principles." - and that is really how it is.
In order to make themselves appear infallible and their "popular clique" appear infallible, narcissists have to be putting fault somewhere else. Where the "fault" ends up is to some poor soul in the group, usually someone they see as a threat to their authority, who is disagreeing somewhat, who is isolated or alone, and without support. This would be the scapegoat of the group.
Scapegoats tend to have certain characteristics: they tend to be autonomous, ethical and moral (a lot more than people of the center clique of the toxic environment), they like it when people get along and co-operate, they like justice, they like peace, and all of it is a direct threat to narcissistic agendas. They also like it when everyone's talents are considered and represented, which is yet another threat to the narcissistic ego. Scapegoats tend to be a lot more talented than narcissists because they aren't spending their time triangulating, gossiping and trying to lead people. I have already talked about why talent is a big threat to the narcissist in other posts.
The more depraved narcissists pick on people with disabilities, who are abuse victims, or war victims, or people who have been deeply traumatized, people with PTSD, people who endured sexual abuse as children, people without supportive families, without opportunities (in education, social services, etc), who are in financial straits, who have extremely poor self esteem, who are underage or elderly, who are feeble, or some other mishap. In order to pick on these individuals, the narcissist also has to have a depraved clique too, and many people find it too politically incorrect, so picking on someone with talents, abilities, strength of character, justice-seeking and of moral character is "safer" in terms of avoiding social derision by most groups (however, this is not always the case: Jeffrey Epstein and his circle would be one case where sadism and hurting minors who were traumatized as children and financially disadvantaged was accepted).
Once people have been established as either "golden" or "scapegoat", then the opinions of members start to get fixed too, to mirror the feelings of the narcissist. I have found that many people are very, very susceptible to brainwashing, especially people who do not research or ask victims their side of the story, and who have previously never been exposed to narcissists in their lives. The fixing of opinions within the membership is how the narcissist takes on more and more control, and makes the decisions for the group, including who to hate, blame, who to be suspicious of and who to point fingers at when something goes wrong.
Typically scapegoats try any of the following: fawn with the group, fight with the group, avoid the group, and finally leave the group usually in that order. The group prefers "the fighting" and defending because it is how they can continue to deride the scapegoat to keep fault from sticking to the narcissist or to themselves. Most human beings, when they are provoked enough, will fight. We also know from human behavior that people who fight in toxic environments are branded as "crazy".
The reason the "crazy" labels are used is to keep ignoring and promoting the bullying, to keep the toxic environment intact where the narcissist feels most comfortable in terms of how much domination they can wield, and to establish in as much stone that the person they are deriding is "crazy" (i.e. "always crazy", to get a fixed opinion going about their victim).
So we have the crazy scapegoat who is continually being marginalized from the group, and the golden people who are rewarded by being in the narcissist's clique. Those are two roles fulfilled.
But to create more confusion about the intentions of other people, and degrees of marginalization, the narcissist needs to put people into more roles. Someone who has a lot of talent but stays quiet about all of the manipulation the narcissist is doing can be put in the "lost member" category. The lost member is neither derided or rewarded. He is often overlooked or forgotten about. They can use his talent to make themselves look better, but that is about it.
It might look this way:
In a racist society, for instance, a toxic organization might want one person of the race represented in their organization, so that the organization can say they are non-racist. So the person of race represents a role, but not necessarily a scapegoat role, and not necessarily a golden role. Representation in this case is about "representing an image" only. The act of scapegoating would be kept in check to keep peace with other people of that race, and if the organization wants to use this person as an example of "why they are not racist", they choose someone quiet and humble who will keep quiet and in the background. Because they are so quiet, and they aren't serving any triangulation purposes, they are forgotten in terms of the group's other triangulation games.
So then that role is fulfilled. If their "lost person" fights for a right or privilege, then he will be scapegoated and let go. Assuming he can stay "in role", he is part of the group, if somewhat marginalized. He is rewarded for "staying quiet."
When the narcissist has a complete cast of characters in roles, their domination can become more entrenched, and even accepted by the group, but victimizing does have its downfalls. Societies, businesses, social groups and families who victimize members usually go out of business, lose members, divide, become open to attack from outside. The reasons are multi-faceted: there is always leaking of information, something is usually visible, more people come forward and complain about how they are treated, the general society does not like to see victimization, there are usually quite a few members who get scapegoated during its history (because scapegoating does not have to do with the scapegoat; it has to do with scapegoating - especially since scapegoating always is transferred to someone else after the original scapegoats have left).
Countries with civil wars are not strong countries. Businesses with disenfranchised and scapegoated workers are not strong businesses. Societies where leaders are fighting for dominance tend not to be as strong as countries who can compromise and work together. Societies with a lot of narcissists usually fall because there are too many people vying for power and control in underhanded ways.
Since victimization escalates, dissolution tends to happen sooner rather than later.
The reason why victimization escalates has to do with the narcissist(s) never feeling as though they are dominating people enough. It is an insatiable desire in them that is never quite met or sated, so they seek ever more power and control. This in turn creates ever more victimization.
You can't get more and more power and control of a person or people without harming them and abusing them. Usually it starts with verbal abuse first, then trying to trash their self esteem after that, and escalates to emotional and psychological abuse afterwards. Physical abuse can happen when emotional and psychological abuse goes unchecked.
The worse kinds of domination and power are acts of slavery, acts of torture (whether psychologically, physically or emotionally), and acts of provoked war (like taking over the territories of other countries in order to dominate them or destroy their populations).
Scapegoating is often just another form of collective narcissism where a group "loves" members within the group, but hates and is suspicious of people "outside" the group. They are also arrogant (thinking that their group is better).
HOW DO NARCISSISTS GET THIS WAY?
WHY DOES IT MATTER TO THEM THAT THEY DOMINATE OTHERS
TO THE POINT THAT THEY HURT OTHERS?
Researchers have found that narcissists primarily come from abusive, authoritarian families. Psychologist, Ross Rosenberg believes narcissists had attachment trauma as young children which they suppress, and when a perceived narcissistic injury comes up where they feel some shame, they become highly emotionally dysregulated (rageful, punishing, rejecting, abandoning and vindictive). Dr. Todd Grande remarks that they come from families with "terrible parents". Dr. Judy Rosenberg remarks that they start out as children who are "narcissistically injured" mostly because of caregivers wounding them, where their parents passed down some generational wounds to them (what she terms as a psycho-virus passed from one generation to the next), Dr. Ramani Durvasula remarks that they have a form of PTSD from inconsistent parenting which manifests as a need for power and control of others. Dr. Les Carter remarks that narcissism passes from one generation to the next, and is, to some degree about inherited responses. All of these doctors are experts on narcissism, and they all agree that it starts in childhood under the adverse nurturing of caregivers.
So, just imagine a childhood with over-the-top authoritarian parents. They micro-manage what you do when you are around them. Nearly everything is micromanaged: how you eat your soup, how you cut a pie, how you mow the lawn, how you look, how you go to the bathroom (and not kidding), and it doesn't end in childhood. It follows you for the rest of your adult life. They make it clear that you must do what they tell you to do, at the time they tell you to it, and do it in a way that will please them. Perhaps you failed at following their orders to exacting standards (for instance: you spill milk and they yell at you, perhaps even hit you over it, shame you for a few minutes, and then lecture you about how to keep from spilling milk for at least 20 minutes more).
In fact, children who are expected to be perfect and micro-managed to this extent, are also punished for mistakes, accidents, verbal slips, perhaps even facial expressions the parent doesn't like, or the way the child washes the dishes and deviating from the constant commands of the parent.
Also, when the parent perceives the child is not grateful, or if they are perceived to be inflicting a narcissistic injury on their parent (perceived as not idealizing the parent, in other words), the parent becomes rageful, punishing, vindictive and abandoning. Nothing the child says will be considered by the parent either.
Not only that, but they have to know every little detail of your thoughts, feelings and activities (enmeshment). When you tell them what your thoughts, feelings and activities are, they pick them apart and put labels and judgements on them.
They know they can't completely control you unless they have control of all of these aspects about you. You are even supposed to reveal confidences that other people have told you to keep to yourself. Everything you do and say and feel is scrutinized and there are lectures, unsolicited advice and commands over all of it. If you don't tell them the information that they expect from you, you are punished for resisting.
The natural childhood progression toward autonomy of thought and action is continually thwarted by the parents.
And there may be a lot of abuses too. Narcissists, as a whole, don't really care if their children are hurt or being victimized, and if they do, they tend to make things worse. Sexual abuse, bullying by peers or siblings, inappropriate touching, incest, threats and criminal acts against their children are often ignored, condoned or denied.
Narcissists who aren't too high on the narcissism scale will make these kinds of experiences about themselves instead: that the adverse experiences their child has endured has made their lives miserable. If you wonder why some parents discard their own children, this could be why.
Alcoholism is also either ignored or denied, or is used for attention-seeking by the narcissist. Either way, there will at least be some sort of neglect.
A member who is physically disabled or mentally disabled is also dealt with by neglect, or by ignoring or denying the disability (and if the narcissism is particularly severe, they will be victimizing the child because disabled children are a lot harder to control because of their disability; they are more isolated; and they require attention that some narcissistic parents do not want to deal with: they want the most able-bodied children to take care of parental needs and desires).
So, the children are walking on eggshells with parents like this. It is extremely unhealthy for children to live in environments like this.
And what happens is that all of the wounding and abandoning the parent is doing to children is creating an environment where abandonment becomes normalized.
So what happens in these situations is that children who are victimized and whose spirits are squashed will want to escape.
Other children who are too afraid to flee, or feel they can't flee (trauma bonded to the parent), where they feel they have very few choices of survival, can push for the victimization of another member (usually a sibling) to keep the abuse from happening to them (deflecting by tattling, false narratives, erroneous blaming and blame-shifting). It often works with narcissists because they teach deflecting responsibility themselves, are are too self involved to look into allegations, and they are also particularly inept at being able to decipher the truth and really don't care what is true and untrue (they aren't exactly truth-tellers or researchers themselves).
These soon-to-be-narcissists primarily fawn with their parent to become a golden child (sometimes children in other roles become narcissists, but narcissism tends overwhelmingly to be adopted by the golden child). These golden children repeat their parent's false narratives. They are like mirror puppets. They try to give the narcissist everything that is asked of them. This is, of course, unhealthy too, and keeps them stuck in a submissive subservient role.
Most children who get PTSD from growing up in an abusive authoritarian family become triggered (experience high anxiety and sleeplessness) from authoritarianism in general. They have trouble believing in the sincerity of others (because they grew up with parents who are insincere, even about attachment to their child), in trusting others (abusive parents are typically very untrustworthy and promises are taken away as much as they are given), and in people who tell them what to do, how to behave, and how to feel. Authoritarian bosses can trigger someone high on the scale of PTSD. The way most PTSD sufferers deal with it is to quit. Self employment, living without a family, moving to get away from a group is how victims of authoritarianism usually respond. Except the budding narcissists ...
With budding narcissists, they are also triggered, starting in childhood, but they decide that if they are going to avoid abusive authoritarian people, they have to become abusive and authoritarian themselves. Some of the more very rare enlightened narcissists eventually know that this is wrong (it is super hypocritical after all: they can't take being controlled and dominated the way they control and dominate).
Most narcissists normalize abuse and authoritarianism in their minds, and practice it on their children and anyone they are close to. And when they go to work as adults, they erroneously blame, gossip, spread false narratives or bully colleagues and try to get rewards for doing so by "fawning with the boss" just as most of them did in childhood with their parent.
Typically narcissists have great ambitions to be head of something, to mirror the authoritarianism they saw in their parents. They attempt to micro-manage people in the workplace to avoid being told what to do themselves. In order to be ahead of their colleagues, they have to be triangulating, gossiping and falsely accusing because hard work does not necessarily get rewards with authoritarian types of people, especially if the authoritarian is a narcissist.
This is true if someone tries to take the credit for the work you did (narcissistic parents also model this unfortunate behavior).
But back to the parents or caregiver of the narcissist ...
One of the caregivers will typically be abusive or neglectful. "Inconsistent parenting" (and particularly "splitting", the psychology term for it) tend to be the fuse that sets off a stubborn, entrenched kind of narcissism in these children, starting in early childhood and continuing throughout their entire lives. They never reach "the age of accountability", which for most of us, starts around the age of ten. So they tend to put the blame for their own mistakes on others, just as they learned to do in childhood (trying to get their siblings in trouble).
They held on to their narcissism as a survival strategy in childhood as a way to deal with their inconsistent caregivers, and then when they become full adults, they are still using this survival tool. Instead of shielding them from abuse, it will, instead, wreak destruction in other people's lives, and often in their own lives, but most of them don't realize it until they are old and the sources for narcissistic supply have dried up for good.
Many narcissists tend to have short-lived relationships and many of them don't understand why. The answer is that the huge majority of people aren't wired to take what narcissists dish out (except for sociopaths and psychopaths and other narcissists). Their need for power, control and domination becomes relentless, and sometimes ruthless, and cements by the time they become a full adult, around the age of eighteen. Their narcissism becomes worse as they age because they gauge everyone and everything in terms of how much power, control and domination they can have with each individual, and how much they can manipulate ever more coercive control out of each of them to get even more power and control.
Obviously by the time they are old folks, it is going to be intolerable for most people to be in a close personal relationship with them (for any healthy adult). They are also going to be losing some control, so in response, they try to gain more of it, which makes them more toxic to the people around them. As their social circle shrinks, their power trips will be taken out on their family, particularly their children, or at least one child, instead of spread out among many others as it had been for earlier periods of their lives. In other words, it becomes concentrated. Adult children often complain about how the narcissism of their parent is "off the charts" in a way that it wasn't before, and how much worse the abuse is too. This would be why.
Narcissism, as I have said before, is also multi-generational, so where you find one narcissist in a family, you find others, particularly going from parent to child to grandchild, and each time it makes the step from one generation to another, the newest budding narcissist is learning lessons on how to bully and control and scoff at other people, and also on how to refine it so that they don't make the same mistakes their elders did in losing power and control or any narcissistic supply. So, the narcissism tends to get more and more unsatisfactory generation after generation. To make matters worse, a narcissistic parent will accept and even condone narcissism in a child because they take it as a form of flattery ("Oh, my child is just like me! How wonderful!").
In narcissistic families, parents "use" their children in one way or another. The scapegoat is used for blame and family rage, and the golden child is used for boasting: to make the parent look good to others outside the family. As in the roles above, the golden child gets the "good stuff" and the scapegoat "gets the dregs". The narcissistic child will normalize the narcissism he sees in himself and in his parent.
The problem is: when all of this continues, the next generation is again being forced to normalize narcissism too, and, in many ways, narcissism that is worse than the previous generation often means a criminal family in the end (i.e. families with criminals in them, families who perpetrate crimes, families with incarcerated individuals).
Narcissists aren't particularly aware of any downfalls to pressuring others to let them take domination and control. They show their displeasure towards people who are not willing to be dominated and controlled by either rejecting them or scapegoating them.
Narcissists also do not feel "safe" unless they are in a dominant position. They fear others will dominate them instead, which is why they reject strong people. For them it is a "dominate or be dominated" kind of dog-eat-dog world, and strong people who can take a narcissist's rejection and can reach a point where they don't care what the narcissist's opinions are (the hypocrisies of narcissists can make it easier to not care what their opinions are), you are likely to live a far better life than they are living. Your autonomy will seem extremely threatening to them, of course, but they are most likely to treat the threat as a reason to give you the silent treatment, which helps you to become autonomous from them.
Will you grieve? Sure you will if you are close to them. Most survivors of narcissistic abuse who find the situation they are in with the narcissist to be intolerable realize there is no going back.
Part of why there is no going back is that most narcissists want to hurt their former victims. If you have grown up with a narcissistic parent, you know this is how it is: you see them trying to do all kinds of cruel things to former victims. They want to sabotage them. They want to make them out to be abusive monsters. They want to drag their names in the mud. They want to act on every revenge fantasy they have. They insult them and laugh at them. It enrages them that their power and control games did not work. They want to "win" the game of dominance and control by trying to make sure that you suffer and are disabled by them. Hint: this is the reason why you never want to share much of anything with a narcissist other than the weather. Narcissists will always use what ever kind of information they get for triangulation games, reasons to vilify, reasons for permanent prejudice.
The reason why they want you in a role (with fixed opinions about you) is also because they feel safer that way.
Let us say that they were bitten by a snake as a young child. And after that experience, they saw a salamander that scared them because it looked a little like a snake. So they deem salamanders to be as dangerous as all snakes. Obviously we know that most salamanders are harmless, and that some snakes are harmless too. But in order not to be bitten, all snakes are lumped in together with salamanders as being all bad, something that is both scary and undesirable. They feel they have to see all creatures that look or act like them and the parent they grew up with as all bad. The all bad perceptions aren't real, but they believe it keeps them from getting bitten again. When they grow up, let's say they club to death all snakes and salamanders they come across so as to extricate from their environment all snakes and all salamanders. In essence, this is the way narcissists think about people who they can't control enough to their liking. They can be educated as to what is dangerous and not dangerous, but chances are they won't listen.
If you are a person who cannot be swayed by false narratives, who is extremely multi-dimensional, successful, can change, learn from mistakes, grow, be happy, be intelligent, is referred to as a beacon of light to others, who radiates beauty or charisma, earns a lot of money, goes to college and earns scholarships, goes on wonderful trips, marries someone who is extremely supportive and kind to you, they don't like it. They feel threatened. The higher they are on the narcissism scale, the more threatened they feel. They might use your success to aggrandize themselves, but otherwise they feel incredibly uncomfortable.
They feel like the only safe world they can exist in in terms of their closeness to others, is a world with people who are "predictably submissive", who "predictably" believe in false narratives about other people, who "predictably cry" when they are cruel to them, and who won't put up a fuss about the role the narcissist has assigned them. You can see they miss out on a lot of joy, especially on true intimacy and true knowledge with these attitudes and games. The sad thing about stuffing people into roles and "fixed opinions" is that it is a form of prejudice in the end. Also when opinions that are based on false narratives and how submissive the other person is, it is a black and white world, not one with an array of colors, multi-dimensions, truth. It is no wonder that narcissists are so full of envy, jealousy and paranoia, and why they see people in black and white terms (again, called splitting).
Which is to say that they also feel safest when they can put people in black and white categories. The black category would be: 100 percent bad, 100 percent at fault. The white category would be: 100 percent good, 100 percent agrees with me, 100 percent right.
If you are privy to seeing the beliefs of left wing and right wing radicals on Facebook, you know that this happens in their feeds with regularity. They continually focus on "negative talk" daily, even multiple times a day, with what is wrong with right wing leaders if they are left wing, and what is wrong with left wing leaders if they are right wing. Extreme party radicals rarely focus on anything else. Most of them don't even put up pictures of their kids. Not only that, but the posts tend to be particularly nasty and vilifying. Unless you are totally radical too, you find it pretty awful. It is even beyond judgmental; it is prejudiced. Typically everyone, and I mean everyone, from the hated opposite party are continually blamed and vilified for why the country is in terrible shape. It is "hate rhetoric" that I have also seen go into "violence talk" enough to be alarming.
Narcissists are also like this to a large extent. Their hatred, negativity and resentment is expressed continually about people in their sphere whom they feel they cannot control and dominate.
It all contributes to seeing some people as "golden", i.e. infallible, on the right side of all issues, and some people as a scapegoat, i.e. totally and completely at fault for the state of the country, and on the wrong side of all issues. It is black and white thinking on a national scale, and it is also a narcissistic trait.
When other people are agreeing with these right wing and left wing radicals (especially the vilifications) on their "Facebook feeds", it also helps to establish them as leaders for hate speech. And there is a lot of hate speech on Facebook. It is amazing how biased, crazy and untrue perspectives get after an audience is established. In some instances most of what is said is totally made up conspiracies, something else that narcissists love to indulge in about other people.
Black and white thinking is something that small children do. So this is another thing that narcissists never grow out of. Children do it to establish who is dangerous (a monster), and who is nice (the little girl or boy who out-wits the monster). One of the pitfalls of having inconsistent parenting, parents you can't count on to be emotionally regulated and kind, and who are overboard when they are nice, and overboard when they are cruel, with no rhyme or reason, is that a child has to decide what is safest to believe about the parent. "My parent is nice and then goes cruel in an instant": interpreted as "goes from white to black in an instant."
Eventually most children who have the propensity to have black and white thinking as an adult, and who grows up with a parent who "is nice and then goes cruel in an instant" will eventually judge their parent as "all bad". The parent, in response, may also judge their child as "all bad" too, so it will be mutual, but why this happens is for another post.
The reason why narcissists become enraged and rejecting when they perceive criticism from you is because they think that you are like them, or their parent, that the criticism means that you think of them as "100 percent bad, 100 percent at fault" and want to put them in a damning role. Apologizing, or saying that you didn't mean to infer that, won't help if they are high on the narcissism scale. They will want to get rid of you no matter what, at least via the silent treatment.
The reason why perceived criticisms bother them so much is they are so harshly critical of others themselves, and as one of their parents or caretakers were too. They don't realize that for most people, black and white thinking is not part of their makeup (it is not part of a truly adult make-up). Also, since they vilify, bully, and lie about people they criticize, they think that you are doing that to them too, or that you will be doing that shortly.
When they criticize others, they put them in a scapegoat role. So they assume that you are putting them into a scapegoat role too if you criticize them, a role that will make them constantly and never-endingly at fault. We know that normal adults don't act this way, but try to convince a narcissist - it won't work.
If they are retaliatory, vindictive narcissists, they will see you as dangerous to them if you are not controlled by them. That is because they are dangerous to you. At this point, it makes little sense to defend yourself as a "non-dangerous person" because their accusation means that you have to protect yourself from them (you have to train yourself to hear what they have to say about people they are in close personal relationships with as projection).
When they grow up and become parents, they take this kind of black and white thinking into child rearing. Typically the golden child can do no wrong, what he says is deemed to be 100 percent the truth, he is idealized and put on a pedestal. He gets the bulk of the family resources, love, attention and is enmeshed with the parent, sometimes to the point of emotional incest. He gets either the bulk of the inheritance, or all of the inheritance. The scapegoat is starved of family resources, love, and attention, and what they have to say is ignored. They tend to be rejected, lied about, and used for family rage and violence. They are most often left out of family get-togethers and family resources (except in times where they serve as a "temporary golden child" when the "real golden child" is not acting grateful and enmeshed enough for the narcissistic supply needs of the parent).
Scapegoats are also left out of wills and trusts (even if they are the main caretakers and have been trying to please the parent their whole lives - it has to do with the role and not with them).
In families with narcissists, a male child is most often relegated to the golden child role (from both male and female narc parents) because the society is still by-and-large sexist. A lot of golden children end up being narcissists themselves. This would account for why three quarters of narcissists are males, and one quarter are females.
But scapegoating for narcissists is not just a family matter, as you will see ...
WHY WOULD THEY WANT TO SCAPEGOAT SOMEONE?
WHY IS ANYONE GIVEN A SCAPEGOAT ROLE?
WHY IS SCAPEGOATING SOMEONE SO IMPORTANT TO THEM?
Narcissists believe they have a lot to gain by scapegoating:
They get to blame-shift all of the faults they possess on to you (blame-shifting).
They get to vilify you when they feel insecure.
They get to terrorize you when they feel you might get critical of them. They use scapegoating as a way to say, "Don't you dare criticize me, or else -". They are heavily invested in their image, and if they get the idea that you might be trying to question that image, or you are not so sure that image "is really them", they try scapegoating as a way to get you to back off on looking at them other than as "perfect".
They somehow feel better when they can see people in absolute ways and in roles. If they are jealous of you, seeing you as all bad and all unattractive and repeating it to others can make them feel better, that they are above you in some manner.
For malignant narcissists:
A lot of the scapegoating in society is done by narcissists too: people who feel they are "better" than the minority (arrogance), telling demeaning and derisive jokes about that minority, bullying and displays of domination, feeling entitled to "get the best" of society while insisting that the scapegoated minority get the dregs.
The big difference is that societal reactions to scapegoating a minority are often disgust and dismay, and should match reactions to scapegoating a child. In some ways, there should be more outrage about scapegoating children, primarily because they are the most vulnerable and helpless members of society. We describe people who pick on minorities as cowards. But people who pick on children are even more cowardly.
The most common one:
* The bully gets a promotion, or is coddled or excused in some way.
- happens in the workplace
- happens in the family
- happens among friends and in community organizations
- happens in society.
* In the workplace: what we see most often in these situations is that the "promoted bully" somehow is in charge of hiring and firing, and fires people with great frequency. They make themselves indispensable to the boss, and if the boss likes a worker, it is all the more reason for the bully to get rid of the worker. Then they try to take over the business for themselves, pushing the concerns of the boss aside. The boss becomes isolated with his bully.
* In the family: the promoted bully has free rein to bully, and isolates other family members from the one family member he has the most to gain from. He sees some family members more of a competitor than less of one, and isolates the family members he sees as the competitors. Because people usually can't withstand bullying (except malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths), the bully is the only one left remaining calling the shots. The family member who excused or condoned the bullying becomes isolated with the bully.
* Repeat the same play for friends and community members
* Repeat the same play for society
With so many drawbacks to the promotion of bullies, one wonders why people take this road:
- It is a good way to ruin a business, and does in most cases. I know of one business that is going in this direction, and is going more and more towards automation in order to avoid issues with hiring and firing workers. Fear rules the day with this particular boss because he is now beyond dependent on this bully, and it will be interesting to see what happens with his business. One wonders why bosses and workplaces take this route when it puts the business at such a high risk.
In some instances, private equity firms can be like inviting the bullies in. They sell products super cheap, reap the rewards, gut the business for the greatest reward for themselves, and force them to go under. Some businesses get so desperate that they are willing to invite these bullies in, and take super high risks that it will not all be liquidated.
Bullying is increasingly becoming a hazard to smaller businesses too. They have to spend time and resources on bullying because bullied workers have access to cameras and videos, and they use them in the workplace when the business leaders are insensitive to the bullying. They can take them to a lawyer and to court.
- It is a good way to ruin a family too. I never understood why a narcissistic family member would promote the bullying of another narcissistic family member. Families with bullying have a lot to lose: often half of their family members (the trend, unless the narcissists and predatory members greatly out-number the folks with a normal constitution, or if the narcissists have an iron-clad grip in terms of brainwashing others or invoking fear).
At any rate, loss of at least some members will usually take place. I never understood why anyone would want this, or even want a scapegoat. What are the upsides of having a scapegoated family member other than to erroneously blame to keep your image intact? Even then, aren't you still in danger of having your image tarnished - if only because the scapegoat knows who you are and keeping family secrets from leaking isn't full-proof? You lose the family member because they can never trust you; they know that your intentions are to hurt them; they know that being close to you carries too much risk for them; you lose the closeness you once had, and even some of the power and control you used to have with them, and even in terms of narcissistic supply, the attention-seeking you get does not work in your favor. And then you become isolated with the bully to boot. Frankly, it has always seemed to me that scapegoating has no upsides.
And then one day I had an epiphany: narcissists fawned when they were a child. Since narcissists think that everyone is like them, they believe everyone will fawn with them (or at least want to: walk on eggshells to keep them from hurting you or breaking out into a rage). This is where they lack insight. The high majority of people are nothing like them. Healthy people usually have high "flight responses" in toxic environments where bullying is going on, or at the very least, have the smarts to broadcast the bullying to someone who will listen, perhaps to put pressure on the family member(s) that way, with professional help (Child Protective Services, or Domestic Violence Services, or police involved), just as workers do in workplaces. This is especially true today.
Usually, most narcissists eventually hoover (i.e. try to get their victim back). But if they are trying to hoover a child who they have victimized (or let others victimize), and that child was given the scapegoat role, the hoovering is most likely about trying to get their child (or adult child) back into the scapegoat role again. In other words, it is about reinstating the role, period.
When you are a child abuse survivor, and go to domestic violence therapy, you sometimes meet a lot of scapegoats. They are there partly to warn newcomers of what you experience when you go back.
The reason why scapegoating a child is so entrenched in narcissists who become parents has to do with the nature of narcissism itself: anyone who does not resemble or idealize the narcissist is "flawed". This makes narcissists extremely critical of others and very prejudiced. All narc parents tell others that their scapegoat child is crazy, without exception. Since they bully a child that they deem as crazy it would point to the fact that they are prejudiced against children (and adults) who have a mental illness. However, we know that many child abuse survivors are not crazy, and the crazy label was only put on the child so that the child would not be believed about abuse or anything else happening within the family. It's the way the narc parent gets a free pass to do what is cruel, immoral, and sometimes illegal: they just slap the responsibility for it all on their "crazy", non-crazy, see-it-like-it-is, traumatized child. However, I would still bet that most narcs are prejudiced against anyone with a mental illness.
But the prejudice does not end there.
Besides being prejudiced against anyone with a possible mental illness, they are also all prejudiced against non-sycophants (especially when it comes to their children and adult children), and sometimes brothers and sisters as well.
And unless the narc parent displays some traits of communal narcissism, most of them also seem to be prejudiced against empathetic members of their family, as well as empathetic people in the greater society.
But the prejudice still doesn't end there.
It seems to encompass everything we associate with prejudiced perspectives: sexism (the child who is a girl or woman is the one to be scapegoated), race (one of their children has lighter or darker skin, or hair color that does not match the narcissist, so is sidelined for that reason), weight (one of the members is deemed too heavy or too thin to be totally accepted), sexual orientation (one of their children isn't acting mainstream enough in this regard), political affiliation (narcissists seem to be practically joined at the hip to their political party of choice, and are cruel to those who don't follow the party line, including their own children), religious persuasion (religious bigotry), economic status (prejudiced against people, especially their children, who have higher or lower economic status, unless they can directly benefit from it), xenophobia (not accepting of inlaws from different countries and who have their own traditions that differ from the narcissist's, especially in how children are raised), looks (they are deemed either more attractive or less attractive than the narcissist), and eating habits (vegetarians being the most likely scapegoats). Some narcissists take it even further and are prejudiced against the child who gets married (in a family of unmarried adult children).
One of the main topics of conversation among scapegoats is how awful it is to sit around with parents who are so hyper critical of all kinds of people, and how uncomfortable all of the sneering and jokes about other people makes them feel. It is no wonder that narcissists are so super-sensitive to the criticism of others when they act this way themselves. One of the great reliefs of not making narcissists the center of your world is living in a less prejudiced and hyper-critical world.
- It is also a good way to ruin society. Countries who have a civil war usually are weak countries. Housing, food, water and other basics are often interupted because fighting takes precedence over these other things. This means their economies are often in ruins. Also, they tend to be vulnerable to attack by other countries.
The USA is almost there in terms of Democrats (often insulted as "snowflakes", "libtards" and "Communists" by Republicans) and Republicans (often insulted as "obstructionists", "racists", "Nazis" and "fascists" by Democrats). Remember: abuse starts with name calling. Emotional abuse comes after that, and our country is there. A record number of family estrangements came about over politics in 2020. Race issues (scapegoating) have again become the center of attention in the USA.
If you are branded as a Republican or a Democrat, you will be expected to fulfill a "loyal role" or risk censure-ship and ostracizing measures from your political party. That can turn into scapegoating (risks of scapegoating always happen where roles are expected).
The most common examples with narcissistic mothers:
1. They insist on making all of the decisions about the wedding: the guest list, where it will be, what dress you will wear, who will do the catering. If you resist and insist you have the right to plan your own wedding, they don't show up.
2. They show up and make a scene. Some of the scenes include trying to make all of the attention go to them (rather than the bride and groom), getting ridiculously drunk, wearing white, making disparaging remarks about their daughter during a toast, telling the guests that they arranged the entire wedding and how they did it (in great detail), making passes at their new son-in-law.
3. They don't show up and tell the rest of the family not to show up.
If she is a golden child she has been groomed to put her mother first, and the son-in-law is a constant reminder as to how much attention she might be losing from her daughter. The son-in-law might come first and the mother is terribly angry about that. Also, he may not be as willing to be controlled as her daughter and could also rebel against the mother's control too.
If the daughter is a scapegoat instead, the Mom has tried to ruin the self esteem of her daughter to get her under control, and can't stand the fact that a son-in-law might actually love, respect and cherish her derided scapegoat. It makes her feel ashamed, and one thing narcissists can't stand to feel is wrong or shamed that someone is showing real love and consideration to someone she doesn't want anyone to love or respect. Perhaps she won't be able to get power and control over the scapegoat as much as she thought she might through the usual self esteem crushing activities, so in order to rebel against the happiness of their union, she has to hurt her daughter by not showing up at her daughter's wedding.
Scapegoats are only so good if you can ruin their happiness and make them suffer in some way.
Whether the daughter is a golden child or a scapegoat, the mother's jealousy and pain of losing control over her daughter is in full evidence on the daughter's wedding day.
*Narcissistic fathers yanking college away:
The most common examples with narcissistic fathers (of the grandiose variety):
The narcissistic father has paid for college. But because so many narcissistic fathers are extremely attention-seeking, and demand praise for everything they do for their children, anything that deviates from this can send them into a retaliatory rage. They often demand constant accolades for sending their kid to college, both from the adult child and from other family, colleagues and friends. If any of these situations happen, the narc father stops tuition payments, book payments, or dorm room payment:
- The son or daughter comes home from college on break and spends some of the break with old highschool friends
- The son or daughter decides to spend break with one of the friends they have made from college instead of making a long trip home
- The father is divorced from the mother and the son or daughter spends slightly more time with the mother, or sometimes only calls the mother up. Narcissistic dads can feel very punishing towards an ex-spouse, and demand that because he is sending his son or daughter to college, the adult child must put all of his or her attention on the dad, and praising the dad.
- The father disagrees with something a college professor is saying, and decides, based on that, that his son or daughter no longer should go to that particular college because "Dad knows more than any stupid college professor!" He tells his son (or daughter) that he is taking them out of college and that they have to transfer to another college of his choice
- The father yanks the kid out of college because they aren't calling home twice a day and revealing absolutely everything about what they are doing at college, or getting straight "A"s in absolutely every subject. Dad has to micromanage them at college, and he spends hours lecturing on the phone when they should be in the classroom instead.
When narcissistic dads feel they can't control and dominate their child, and come first in their lives, they often go into a rage and take college away. It is a retaliatory measure for not putting them first. The child often hears this father, all through his or her childhood, promising to send them to college, and making it sound like an incredible experience. The child looks forward to going there for years. When they finally get to go, the fact that Dad needs constant attention, to be more right than the college professors, in charge of their schedules and what they are learning, and demanding they give up class time to be on the phone more than any of their friends have to be on the phone with their parent, and forsake their other parent just to go to college (called coercive control and parental alienation, increasingly becoming more illegal), when the child goes out of role of putting the dad first, or forgetting to praise the dad, or rebels against this much control, then college is taken away.
Some fathers yank college away, then give it back the next year, then take it away again, like a yo-yo. Some of these students decide to get away from their dad's grip altogether and get student loans instead, but since narcissistic dads can never forgive their adult child for this kind of autonomous decision, the retaliation over their adult child making that kind of decision means that the child will not have a father to go home to.
IDEAS ON HOW TO RELATE TO PEOPLE
WHO WANT TO PUT YOU IN A ROLE AND A FIXED OPINION
AND GOSSIP ABOUT THEIR FIXED OPINIONS TO OTHERS
You aren't going to be able to make them less prejudiced. You know this from talking to other prejudiced people: racists, sexists, xenophobes, radical right wing or left wing extremists, etc. They tend to gather in groups with people who believe in their perspectives and want to take those perspectives further (policies, threats, intimidation, violence, etc).
Deeply prejudiced people don't change their minds because of something called confirmation bias.
The same thing happens to a scapegoat of a family or a workplace or a nation.
In families that scapegoat, the family develops confirmation bias against one individual. This is especially an unchanging belief system when you have narcissists and sociopaths in the family because they are always desperate to shove off the things that they think make them look bad on to one of their children.
In the workplace when a toxic situation exists like bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault, they will often bully the person or people reporting it. That is because the narcissists in the group are more invested in the image of the business rather than in fixing the toxicity of the business.
Dealing with narcissists is a troubling experience. They might have effected your self esteem, your "usual" happy-go-lucky nature, caused you to be depressed over an injustice, even caused depression and PTSD. And let's say you are at a place where you realize that you don't want a relationship with the narcissist because all they want is power, domination and control, and they keep punishing you when you want something other than that for yourself and/or your loved ones.
Being around people with delusional disordered negative fixed opinions about other people is not healthy, not enlightening, not loving, not expansive, is not intellectually or morally nurturing. It's deadly.
So the advice from most therapists when you are in a scapegoat role is to get away from the people scapegoating you. Most scapegoats don't need to be convinced of that anyway after awhile. Scapegoating gets worse, and puts you in an evermore toxic environment. It can get highly, highly hostile, and dangerous too (just as it can for any minority where prejudiced perspectives are allowed to flourish and grow).
In politics these days, if you are a Democrat, you don't want to be hanging out with Republicans, and if you are a Republican, you don't want to be around Democrats. That is because the political environment has become exceptionally hostile. You WILL be scapegoated.
So what do you do? You leave and join the folks who are "friendly" and kind to you, and reasonable about their judgements.
By the time you leave the hostile group, you might have been ganged up on, so your anxiety levels will be exceptionally high if you are prone to sensitivity. Your self esteem and self assurance might have taken a good beating too. However, instead of conforming to their way of thinking, you probably became both frightened and in shock with their harsh style of judging you or others. That is because prejudiced perspectives often take on a life of their own: they make use of more and more false narratives to keep the confirmation bias going and unmovable. It's a type of group insanity.
When you are "different" from the group, whether that be the family, a political party, part of a minority group, you are going to feel exceptionally alone and lonely when they turn hostile on you. But their hostility is about trying to get you to conform to their way of thinking. The pressure to conform to get you to believe in some extremist point of view is not do-able for a lot of people.
Jerry Wise in the video below, talks about this in terms of how alcoholic families whose members are mostly inebriated and acting immoral and foolish want everyone conforming to that dysfunction. Non-conformity to lifestyles and toxic beliefs almost always brings about scapegoating, but it also brings about depression, and feelings of having your spirit and good nature crushed. He makes it clear that they need to crush your self esteem in order to justify being drunk, being addicted, being in a stupor, and continuing to drink, and be addicted. They want to stay in their dysfunctional system without comments from others who find it awful.
People who want other people to conform to them, people who want to justify hate or an unhealthy or a hurtful lifestyle, people who want to justify criminal behavior or abuse, people who want to justify drunken rages and assault, and people who clearly hate and vilify other people are usually always going to be scapegoating.
When you see these kinds of people and environments, before you get hurt, you can always leave at the get-go.
If they are not empathetic, if they always want to debate what you have gone through, if they are prone to lying and gossiping about other people, if they always want to justify unkindness and insensitivity, then this is another sign they will probably scapegoat you at some point too. It becomes an added excuse to leave.
The other way you can decipher people who want to put other people into roles at the "get go" (including the scapegoat role) is that they will idealize you in the beginning of your relationship. It will sound over the top: "You are great just the way you are; never change because you are perfect; you are one hundred percent right; you are all I have been dreaming about for my entire life; you could never disappoint me; you are all I have ever wanted; you and are soul mates (or soul twins); you are the most perfect endearing person I have ever met; you are always beautiful in everything you do ..." They are setting you up for a "golden person" idealized role. In most cases, people who are idealized are devalued at some point. And of course, they take the role away of you being "golden" if they perceive that you criticize them, or have a flaw or two, or look at them as less than ideal.
Normal people will have some trepidation and reserve when they meet you. They won't be all over you with flattery and pressures. They won't be giving you unsolicited advice over everything you say. They won't be trying to convince you that you are some kind of soul-mate or soul-twin except years down the road after you have gone through a lot of challenges and arguments, and yes, even criticism of one another. Over-doing the flattery is generally a bad sign, the sign of the narcissist, the sociopath and the psychopath.
Narcissists and sociopaths typically practice flattery without empathy, a deadly combination. And both of them ask way too many personal questions to decipher what your weaknesses are.
When they are done with relating to you (the discard phase), they will be doing the opposite of flattery. They will be trying to crush your self esteem and trash your character to anyone who will listen. They will be making it clear to people you both know that they have to totally side with them ("You are either for us or against us"). It will be clear that they don't want you to have any shred of self esteem or social standing. That is when you have become a scapegoat to them (a garbage can for their criticism, rage, name calling and what ever abuse they think they can get away with).
One of the best ways to get over a crushed self esteem is to realize that the narcissist needs you to have a crushed self esteem because that is the only way that they feel secure and safe. Safety to them means wielding power in their relationship with you. In other words, this about them and their need for domination, not about you.
The other way to look at this is that scapegoating is always a form of bigotry, sexism, racism, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, what ever prejudice you find is what it is most likely about. The type of prejudice they adopt is usually within their family of origin, and often something the extended family has adopted ... extended families tend to adopt prejudiced points of view that are multi-generational. What is happening to women and girls in the family? What is happening to people of different races in the family? What is happening to the sensitives in the family? What is happening to non-Christians in the family? - this is the place to look.
If you focus on it as the generational prejudice they adopted from their family of origin, and not take it personally (like refrain from thinking "these people hate me and want me to suffer and die" and instead think "These people are so prejudiced!"), then you can also get over it a lot more easily too. You can also get over it because it is most likely the truth. The anxiety goes away because it is no different than a racist tearing apart people of another race, or men tearing down the self esteem of women, or mothers tearing down the self esteem of their daughters in order to make them drudges instead of attractive successful women, or one political leader tearing apart another political leader so that he and his party might dominate the nation.
Any abuse, including the abuse of scapegoating someone else, is always, always about power, control, domination and hate-think (which is like hate-speech, except it can happen through their internal dialogue).
The more egregiously they try to punish you, the more powerful they see you. That's why they attempt to crush you so much. If you think about it, people whose personal power is not a threat to them, are treated with way more politeness, kindness, dignity and respect than you are. Narcissists really can't deal with people who have reserves of self-respect, self esteem, talent, and personal power (in spite of the progress they make in tearing you down, and even when they have so many flying monkeys who want to tear you down too). It is because they think the power should only go to them. And people who believe that self respect and power should only go to them tend to be exceptionally prejudiced too, and yes, the scapegoating breed of narcissists.
Being prejudiced also goes hand-in-hand with hypocrisy. Some instances:
* A camp counselor says he is for children's rights, that children deserve to be heard, that they are often abused more than adults, that they should be treated with more respect than the society treats them. On the side he is sexually molesting the little boys. We know that this happens - and it is indicative of narcissism.
* A politician tries to make policies about sexual harassment and seems to be empathetic about the Women's movement and the #MeToo movement. But he has a long history of sexual harassment himself. He doesn't seem to be able to grasp that #MeToo means #him too.
* In families you can have sexism as much as you can in politics or in the greater society, even by women perpetrators. In this scene, a family abuses and rejects the women but coddles the men. They expect girls and young women to be subservient to all the other family members, to be insulted without comment, to be threatened and bullied without comment, to not have dreams or ambitions of their own, and to serve their mothers. To the outside world, these women are known for being staunch supporters of Women's Liberation (and cover up detection of perpetrating sexism and child abuse of girls by being involved in this movement).
* A professor at a college tells his women students to be self sufficient, strong, and go for their dreams. When he is at home he hits his wife.
These all come from real situations, or personal experience, by the way. None of them are made up.
We know that people who engage in a lot of prejudiced narratives and hypocrisy, feel threatened in some way: they don't want your kind mixed in with their kind. They don't want you to have influence. They don't want you to have a voice. They will be telling people not to listen to you. They definitely don't want you to be sane, intelligent or attractive, or to appear to be sane, intelligent and attractive to others (ever notice that narcissists try to portray their victims as not smart, not particularly desirable enough for love or respect, and crazy too?). They want to suppress you. They want to isolate you. They want to make up lies about you. They want to convince others that you aren't as intelligent as they are, and therefore should be disenfranchised from a family or a group or from society. If they have a violent streak, they hope you suffer and die too. This is no different whether it comes from a partner or a family or a racist.
And what does all of the prejudiced talk sound like? It sounds like overt bullying, doesn't it?
The way you get their prejudiced view-points out of your head is to start talking back to them in your head: "Look at you! Such a hypocrite!", "I understand you like crushing my self esteem! I'm sorry that it isn't working for you", "I know you hate me. I'm sorry your heart is so full of hate and so focused on what you find negative in others. Must be miserable to be so focused on the negative while most people are trying to do something positive for humanity", "I'm sorry that you can't enjoy anything but sycophants in your life". All of their put-downs will get out of your head once you start fighting back with your own voice.
Think about this in terms of how people of other races deal with scapegoating. "Black is beautiful. How self serving of you to think only white people are beautiful!", "I understand you like crushing my self esteem. It's too bad it isn't working for you because we are NEVER going back to Jim Crow laws or slavery! Get over your entitled self!", "I know you hate me. I'm so sorry that your heart and mind is so full of hate and so focused on the negative that you can't see anything good about me because of the color of my skin. Skin! Just skin! Talk about superficial perspectives! Must be a terrible life to be so embroiled in hatred over inherited differences!" - do you see how similar this sounds to what I said above?
It helps you to establish boundaries too: you don't want super-hypocrites infecting your life or thoughts again; you have very little tolerance for people who have fixed minds, who are prejudiced and scapegoat others; you don't want people who only want sycophants; you don't want to argue with people who have to win at all costs; you don't want people who feel threatened by your strengths and talents to be close to you; you don't want people who have no empathy to take up room in your head. Their influence becomes dimmer and dimmer that way, and their voice and opinion which used to mean such a great deal to you (and who you wanted to please so badly at one time, and perhaps even made you extremely anxious) fades off into the wild blue yonder.
If you do this with the narcissist in person, they will become enraged, and they can get dangerous ("know your narcissist"), so it is best to do it inside your own head, which establishes that your head space is yours, and that they haven't hijacked it with their opinions.
The best way to get out of role, is not to be in environments that enforce roles, especially scapegoat roles. If you are being scapegoated at work, find ways to record the scapegoating (and keep copies in a number of places) and show the recordings to management. If the management doesn't take steps to stop it, realize it is a toxic environment that won't change. Save the recordings because you may have some legal recourse too.
If you are being scapegoated in a societal way (race, sexism, political party affiliation, etc), you may want to find others who are being scapegoated too. We know that roles are ascribed to minorities and for sexist and racist reasons. We also know that minorities are scapegoated if they try to break out of roles. While it is hard to go up against a sexist and racist society, if there is no escape, and you are deeply oppressed, sometimes giving videos and interviews (secretly, carefully, to people you trust) to countries with a more open press is the way some people go. In any situation where you are being oppressed, suppressed and victimized, and you can carry a cell phone around with video capabilities, this can at least be a record of how people are being treated (but always think of safety first). Many scapegoats organize and rebel for better treatment in society.
The first step in situations where you are being scapegoated is to realize that they often look at you as sub-human. If the scapegoating is severe, it will manifest as abuse. In all situations where you are being scapegoated, never meet with them alone, or in "their territory" and with "their bullies.". Take threats seriously. I think you can see that this makes sense. A Jew should never live among Nazis. A black person should never live within a Ku Klux Klan community. If you are a family scapegoat, you should never be among any of the family members who have scapegoated you, even if they are your parents or a sibling. It is for the same reasons as it is for people dealing with racism.
Scapegoating looks the same whether it is in the community or in a family; they both have the same results: abuse and threats, including the abuse of power.
Lastly, the best thing you can do for yourself and them is not to give them a right-of-way to dominate and control you, or slap roles and cruel labels on you. Figure out what your rights are in the situation and act accordingly.
These are just some ways of dealing with unfair roles. I will be talking more at length about strategies for getting out of demeaning roles set by narcissistic members of society, workplaces and families in another post.
I thought this power wheel was pretty insightful
in terms of who tends to be the golden members of society, workplaces and families
and who gets scapegoated and marginalized
adapted and drawn by Sylvia Duckworth:
by Dr. Ramani Durvasula:
by psychologist, Jerry Wise:
Recommended: The narcissistic family’s scapegoat: Survival and Recovery - by Jay Reid Psychotherapy
excerpt:
A child who is scapegoated by a malignantly narcissistic parent actually has no ‘parent’ in the true sense of the word. He faces an adversary where biology tells him to expect an ally. More insidiously, a child is prone to believe their parent’s cruelty is their fault. So, the child earmarked for scapegoating faces one of the most unfair of fights. He must cope with the loss of an adult to help him bring himself forth and face the searing psychological torment of thinking he’s at fault for the loss. Thus, a malignant narcissist gets to land her ’emotional punches’ on the child with impunity and great effect.
What makes a “good” Scapegoat?
In my personal and professional experience, children selected as scapegoats – like Chet – usually stand out. They possess a presence that is palpable to others. They often have a keen sense of fairness and instinctively protest injustice. They are perceptive and can see bad character when it’s present. They are often very empathic and care about others’ feelings. They are often protective of people they care about. They can be very intelligent. Most of all, they are tough. The malignant narcissist only chooses a child as a scapegoat who can take it. The former wants to see the child suffer but not so much that they cannot keep hurting them habitually.
(My note): My own observations are that the parent feeling enabled to habitual hurt one child does come to an end at some point for the parent. It is simply not true that a family scapegoat can take endless amounts of it. In my experience they escape, especially in present times due to being better educated and more qualified therapists, literature on narcissism, so many forums and social groups for survivors of narcissistic abuse, and new laws addressing things that narcissists love to do to victims including parental alienation, physical violence, false imprisonment, sexual abuse, neglect, and perhaps in the near future coercive control (now being considered in some states).
cont ...
They know that if they defy the malignant narcissist’s claims that the child is the source of unhappiness that they will suffer an even worse fate. Scapegoated children are often threatened with exile from the family – and to great unfortunate effect. Despite how torturous the child is treated in the family, the threat of being exiled can feel even worse. Such children learn to present a compliant and agreeable persona to the family members to avoid their hatred and expulsion. The child must police his impulses, reactions, and perceptions to suppress any expression that would be taken as disagreement.
(My note again): Therapists, especially domestic violence therapists and therapists who specialize in helping survivors of narcissistic abuse, not only try to stop the brainwashing of the malignant narcissist parent, educating clients as to how most parents react as opposed to how parents who are narcissists, introducing ways to escape and adopt a "family of choice". So there are a lot more alternatives than going back to a bullying parent, and many scapegoats take that road especially since narcissists often escalate abuse, and use future faking, i.e. making promises to lure you back in that they have no intention of keeping.
The comments section is also worth looking at to get a sense of what real-life scapegoats go through. Some of them have big safety concerns.
