I was urged to write a post about this subject, so I did.
This post is for scapegoats of narcissistic parents, or a narcissistic family.
This post discusses whether scapegoats and black sheep of narcissistic parents get an inheritance. Although there is not much research on this phenomenon aside from people like me, and a few therapists in the field (some of whom I discuss in this post), and some attorneys who tell the stories about scapegoat clients and the abuse they've endured by their families, and the lack of rights that they have, you can find what I found in the further reading section below, and also some opportunities for legal action, which may help you to understand what is being discussed.
I also share a little personal story which you may relate to.
From all I have been privy to, the answer is overwhelmingly "no", most scapegoats do not receive an inheritance. Or they receive much less than their siblings, no matter what they do for the parent, and how much end-of-life-care they provide compared to their siblings. I discuss my findings below.
No scientific studies or statistics have been done on it, but from my experiences talking to, or looking through the answers to this question from at least four hundred "scapegoats" (also referred to as estranged child abuse survivors), looking through forums, going to Alanon, CoDA, and ACOA meetings where scapegoats abound, asking questions to groups on-line and off-line, I'd say I've only seen and met a handful of scapegoats get an inheritance that matched their siblings, no matter how much caretaking they did, no matter how much "service" they provided for the family, no matter how available they were, no matter how much they sacrificed other relationships and work to care for family members. There is a reason for all of this, which I get to later in the post.
First of all, make sure you are really a scapegoat of your family before you assume you might not get an inheritance.
Scapegoats are treated with the "Four Horseman of the Apocalypse" (a model by John Gottman). The four horseman you receive are:
criticism: Scapegoats are criticized to the extreme. A parent decides that their hair isn't right, the clothes they wear are either not right or they are attracted to clothes the parent doesn't want them to be seen in, their intelligence isn't right, their interests aren't good enough interests, their mind isn't right ("they're crazy"), their experiences aren't what the parent decides they are, their thoughts aren't what the parent decides they are, their feelings aren't what the parent decides they are, the way they speak is deemed to need constant correction by the parent, the way they are deemed to think has to be constantly corrected too, the way they feel is deemed to need constant correction too. They are deemed to be so incompetent and inept that they need to be told what to do as constantly as possible, with a lot of unsolicited advice, micro-management in the extreme, rage to keep the scapegoat from deviating out of role, because left on their own the scapegoat is told they will screw things up. They are deemed to be too sensitive to criticism (with the constant message from the parent that they need to "learn the parent's lessons" even when they are middle aged and old), they are deemed to be so hierarchically inferior to everyone else the parent knows that the very existence of this child makes them feel embarrassed and inept themselves (and of course, all of that embarrassment and ineptness gets cycled around to the child - that it's the child's fault for making the parent so inept at being a parent) - again, narcissistic parents won't take responsibility or even think about their projections ... and yes, projecting is a very common trait in narcissistic personality disorder because they refuse to self reflect).
In other words, the criticism encompasses every aspect of the child: physically, emotionally, psychologically, and in terms of expression and speech. For a lot of scapegoated children, there is not a single thing that they are and do that isn't criticized and picked apart in the extreme. This would point to contempt too (the next horse of the apocalypse).
Please note that the narcissistic parent who is doing all of this "obliterating criticism" can't even take a hint of criticism themselves without feeling extremely hurt, going into a rage, withdrawing all love and desire to "take care of" the child, and the parent may end the relationship with their child altogether over it.
Any situation of abuse is usually riddled with a lot of hypocrisy, and this is just one instant.
contempt: This doesn't sound much different than what I have written above.
As we know, contempt is a type of hatred where a person is considered beneath consideration, and is deemed to be primarily deserving of scorn.
Dr. Les Carter's video, The Sign That a Narcissist is Beyond Redemption is one of the best videos I have found when it comes to how to tell if a person has a lot of contempt for you (there are others too such as "Should I Stay, or Should I Leave? 8 Signs the Narcissist is Unsafe", which is really about narcissistic contempt too, even if it doesn't have it in the title).
So if we take some of that list above, and we word it this way, this is how contempt is expressed:
(*trigger warning*)
"Your hair doesn't look good. It's always been a rat's nest. I have never liked your hair or the way you do it."
"Why do you want to look like that? You just look bad. You should wear _____________."
"You've always been stupid. You always have been and always will be. You can't do anything right without me, so help me God."
"Why would you be interested in that? You should do this instead."
"It's too bad you are so insane. If you actually could think right, you'd know I was a model parent."
"You didn't experience that! I know a liar when I see one!"
And so on.
Contempt is also a sign that the narcissistic parent won't change, or treat you any better than they did when you were a child. In fact, contempt tends to get worse, less cognitively driven, and more automatic with deeply ingrained prejudices which I started to write about HERE a bit, just as abuse usually escalates.
defensiveness: For a narcissistic parent, defensiveness is usually expressed as rage and blame-shifting. It can also be expressed as DARVO. And as we know, rages can get dangerous for a child. Rage and child rearing and teaching children do not go together. So the child will react to the rage by retreating. Even small children know that rage is not good parenting, or about child safety, or consideration for their child, or about empathy for their child's feelings and emotional well-being.
When you are a scapegoat, not only are you subjected to the parent's rage much more than your siblings are, but you are practically used to dump rage onto for the entire family, or any family member who wants you to be "the fall guy" for what they do wrong, or can't admit to the parent, or neglect to do.
In order to blame you so constantly, a lot of false narratives have to be told about you. If you are a scapegoat, most of you will also have a bully sibling, who takes credit for work you do, who lies about you to get favor from the parent, who tells you that you did something they are potentially in trouble for, and so on. As a grown up, you may think this sibling has gone past the bullying stage, but then you find out he has not, and may even have all of the narcissistic traits your parent has. At least half of you will have a sibling who treats you with disdain and contempt, and will verbally make sure you know that they see you that way. Siblings who have mirrored your parent can be quite a bit worse, and even dangerous than your parent, because the bond isn't as strong, and in narcissistic families, competitiveness is emphasized over co-operation to the point where sibling bullying and sibling estrangement is not only extremely common, but in a lot of cases likely (especially if one or two of these horseman are present - and if all four are evident, there is no hope, and sibling abuse and contempt can get dangerous).
Scapegoats are blamed for a lot of these false narratives by the parent. Narcissistic parents, with their black and white thinking ( i.e. the thought that they have one "all good child" and one "all bad child"), and their need for a scapegoat to take the blame off of themselves to "keep up appearances" in society, they won't care or look into false narratives.
And if that wasn't bad enough, they also accuse their child of doing things they aren't doing, thinking things they aren't thinking, feeling feelings they aren't feeling, and it gets so bad that their scapegoats are continually called liars even when they aren't.
And to make things unbearable, if the child doesn't go along with all of these false narratives and admit to these false versions, the parent withdraws their love, punishes and neglects the child, until the child gives in. When the child gives in, it is all the more reason to fault them for everything that goes wrong in the family. These days if there is good mandated reporting, and good child protective services, scapegoats are removed from the home and put with a relative or foster care.
If you are an adult child and still being scapegoated, I would bet that you will be either "very low contact" or fully estranged from your parent or entire family eventually, sooner or later, forever, or for some long period of time. As I've said before, abuse escalates and it is impossible to stay in a scapegoat role for your family for so many reasons (and those reasons will eventually take over the blog). For most scapegoats, the bullying reaches unbearable levels eventually.
In terms of defending yourself, scapegoats do try to defend themselves, but because they are outnumbered and over-powered, and there are too many adverse repercussions and punishments for telling the truth, those defenses are usually ripped down when a scapegoat is a child. The parent still tries to rip them down even when the scapegoat is an adult by trying to get the whole family to go against the scapegoat, but it is not nearly as effective as when they were children for the very reason that the scapegoat is an adult.
One of the ways they try to rip down a scapegoat's defenses is by punishing them and threatening them about the Will, which is what this post is about. There are so many reasons why this will always continue to be a threat, and why you probably won't get anything from the Will regardless of how much you get back into your old scapegoat role. Which is to say that most narcissistic parents will always want that. I hope I'll make that clear further in the post.
The only real defenses you have with a scapegoating parent is making it clear you don't want or need a close personal relationship from them, that it doesn't matter how many family members they talk into false narratives about you (because it is unethical and you don't respect them enough to trust them again), and getting police involved in some way, reporting incidents to police, and talking to lawyers, and I'm not kidding.
The last thing a parent like this will respect is boundaries, "protection", healing, etc., from a scapegoat. You can look to the prejudiced mind to know how scapegoats in society are treated (based on race, sex, creed, religion, culture, etc). A lot of the prejudice going towards an individual scapegoat of a family, is for the same reasons.
stonewalling (particularly the silent treatment): The overwhelming number of scapegoats experience stonewalling from their parent in the form of the silent treatment. When narcissists aren't getting their way, or when they want quick fixes to a problem, they give the silent treatment to their child.
For some adult children, they can be given the silent treatment for decades.
For underage children, as I've said before, the parent withdraws love and affection. The child is treated like they don't matter including their feelings. They are usually neglected socially, emotionally, psychologically and sometimes "punished" by absurdly long "groundings" or isolation. They are treated as outcasts. Or their needs are ignored. In more severe cases, they are ignored medically, or they aren't allowed to eat.
Narcissistic parents have very little empathy, so they don't really care what their child is going through, how much damage and hurt it is creating.
You can see why this would be extremely damaging for an underage child.
The way that "relationship physics" works is that when a parent stonewalls, turns away, gives the silent treatment, doesn't care, the child will turn away too.
The child is also likely to turn away because of the criticisms, contempt, and unreasonable, cruel and unethical defensiveness (the parent's misuse of a scapegoat as their way of defending their own crazy-making honor). The parent has turned away from the child in terms of care, empathy, and ethics, and instead replaced it with scapegoating (which is just criticism and contempt on steroids, and it is especially so when the scapegoating started when their child was a toddler, which is when narcissistic parents usually start).
If your parent hasn't used these Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, you may not be a scapegoat (or a full scapegoat). If you weren't used as a family trash can for blame when you were a child, teenager and young adult (especially when you weren't at fault), you are probably not a scapegoat either.
If you can identify with how the parent used these four horsemen, the rest of this post may be helpful:
Narcissists don't love the way most of us love, with constancy and empathy (they lack both of these). So their love is without much, if any, empathy, and without constancy (they end a lot of relationships abruptly and without much thought, reflection, or self reflection put into it, even with their own children, and a spouse, or two, or three). Narcissistic love is expressed as "love of utility only" or "utilitarian love" by psychologists who study narcissism. What this means is that as long as you are providing some use or utility to them, they love you in their own "I love you because you do what I want" sort of way, but when you aren't doing what they want, even if it is a small matter, you are of no use to them and they discard you. The relationship with narcissists is always tentative. This is especially true with scapegoats. Most scapegoats experience their parent's affection as a very tentative experience, inconstant, not reliable, and in the more severe cases as anxiety-producing, nerve wracking in a "walking on eggshells" kind of way, because they know affection can be taken away. And if they are true narcissists, they will be taking affection away a lot (and also attention to your feelings).
If you are not experiencing tentative affection, and you are wondering how tentative your parent's affection for you is, you can always test them: say "no" to something they want from you, and watch the snippy-ness or rage or withdrawal come out. They will even do this if they are meddling in your personal life (like if you say, "No. I'm not going that way with my career. I appreciate your input. It may be a great bit of advice, but I'm not going to be going that way. I'm taking a different approach."). You can be as nice about saying "no" as you want to, but they will still rage or get snippy or withdraw affection ... unless they aren't full blown narcissists.
For the rest of us, one way to understand their love for you is quite a lot like Miss Daisy's initial relationship with her chauffer in the movie, Driving Miss Daisy. In the movie, the chauffer, a black man in the south during a dangerous Jim Crowe Period, stops the car on a country road to empty his bladder, but Miss Daisy objects, tells him he can wait, and treats him like one of her students. He tells her that he's not "just some back of the head, that he's a sixty some year old man, and I know when my bladder is full." - in other words, he reminds her of his humanity.
Most narcissists don't see the humanity behind us. A child is looked at as supplying a certain thing, and a role, for the parent. It's almost like they hire you for the role they want in their life. Aside from that, you aren't important to them.
If you are given the role of golden child, you are supposed to uphold the image of the parent as being a faultless superior-to-everyone parent, and of upholding the image of the family as "superior" as well. The parent gives a great deal of money to the golden child usually in order to get that child to advance, succeed, and make the parent look good by telling everyone that he, the golden child, got great success, became superior in his field, because of the parent.
But narcissistic parents aren't all that they want to portray. So the golden child has to be complicit in hiding the unethical deeds narcissistic parents do, and a lot of them are, and some of them aren't. About 75 percent of narcissists cheat in their marriages, lie about their partners or lovers, lie about their children to portray themselves as a certain kind of parent, or to get others prejudiced against their scapegoat, or they are trying to hide a gambling addiction, alcoholism, stalking women, or a number of petty thefts, it can be anything. It is rare for narcissists not to be hiding something dubious, dark and that would bring them shame. And that's where you, the scapegoat, come in.
Many narcissists know they aren't the best citizens either, so they must blame-shift it all on to a scapegoat to make sure no one suspects them. They must portray the scapegoat as being a liar, as being disloyal, as getting the parent into legal or social trouble, what ever the narcissist is. It is about projecting all the "bad things" they do, and are, and how they plan their deeds, on to you. It is also about blame-shifting it on to you too, so that they remain, in society's eyes, to be the faultless, loving parent that their friends assume they are. "It was my child who did all of that instead!" - and they get other family members to scapegoat their scapegoat too.
Scapegoats get rewarded for submitting to the role. The way that they are rewarded is to be tentatively accepted into the group ... until the next time that someone in the family wants to blame and burden the scapegoat child again.
In my research on it, scapegoats do not tend to get rewarded with money unless the golden child is being punished at the same time. This is to say that they hope that by giving money to the scapegoat, the golden child will fight to be on the parent's good side again, and submit to the control and demands of the parent once again. Once the golden child submits, the money stops going to the scapegoat and goes back to the golden child.
Because children are likely to admit to faults they don't have under pressure, or to just go silent when blamed, even when they don't want to, and when it goes against their ethics, it mostly is to get the torture, the neglect, the rejection and abuse to stop. Because there is torture or abuse involved in scapegoating, it is much as the founders of America found: that torture doesn't get anyone to confess the truth; it gets them to confess to anything that stops the torture. It is why we no longer draw and quarter a person into four pieces with horses, or use the rack and the screw, disembowelment weapons, or remove criminals' fingernails, teeth and eyes without anesthesia, that the Europeans used to do during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Small children are most traumatized and threatened by cruel sudden abandonments, neglect, long periods of withdrawal of affection, and smear campaigns by their parents, which is why these types of personality-disordered parents use abuse so much with their scapegoated children. The parent, who uses this, means to hurt them where the child will hurt the most, to get a child to submit to being the scapegoat that the rest of the family can blame. If you were hurt by your parent where they wounded you in a deep way, the most traumatic and destructive way that they could, then you are a scapegoat. It also shows a gross abuse of power.
Most narcissists and sociopathic parents have scapegoats (it's part of the territory of their disorders, and I'd bet the majority of those scapegoats in their families are girls and women, or the disabled). It's unfortunate when we are chosen, and especially when we cannot do anything about it. Studies have found that changing personalities, reactions, emotions, going quiet, doing more for abusive personalities does not work, and if anything, makes them more abusive (aggressively demanding and excusing their abuses with ineffective pushback tells them what they can get away with and it ensures in their mind that you will take more abuse, or come back after you have left).
Overwhelmingly if you ask them to stop scapegoating you, they won't stop. They feel they have a right to treat you any way they want, and that they have too much to gain by giving it up. If you are a true scapegoat, the scapegoating is never-ending, unless the golden child slips up.
Narcissists and sociopaths will always interpret things the way they want events to sound like (to keep up appearances), and the way they want other people to view their scapegoat (in other words, false narratives about the scapegoat usually abound). They do this so that events will unfold the way they want them to unfold, and again, to keep up appearances. A true scapegoat is lied about life long unless the parent isn't taking time to get to know you beyond the role. Both are possible. However, if you try to tell your narcissistic or sociopathic parent what is really happening inside you, they usually don't listen (they feel they have a right to attribute thoughts, emotions and experiences to you that you don't have, and they rarely ask you how you feel, or what you are thinking about, or what you are experiencing, and if they do, they often don't want to believe it ... there is a reason why they are like this, and I hope to touch on this soon).
Sometimes scapegoating is done to get everyone else in line. In other words, you have no idea why you were banished and rejected from the family and are told in a seething kind of way, "You know what you did!" This is gaslighting, of course, but it is also done in a "human sacrifice" kind of way: that if your siblings aren't submitting and pleasing your parent at all times, they too will end up like the scapegoat.
The tragedy in these cases is that once you are out of the family, another sibling is usually scapegoated. And because they aren't used to it and have few coping strategies, they can be saddled with tremendous guilt for having gone along in scapegoating you. They are much more liable to run away, even when too young to be out on their own, or to commit suicide.
If you were "let go" without an adequate reason, it is still scapegoating, but with the caveat that it was most likely done to get your sibling(s) submitting and being more subservient to the parent than they used to.
Another thing I'd like to mention is that Rebecca C. Mandeville, LMFT, is doing a lot of research on scapegoating. I can't find the link I'm looking for (I'll put the link in as soon as I can), but one of the issues that came up was "How many of you went 'no contact' with your parent?" The answer came out to around 90 percent. Some went "no contact" after an incident, some went "no contact" after being given the silent treatment by the parent, some went "no contact" slowly, and so on. So, sometimes the initial rejection was done by the parent, and the scapegoat decided not to go back or contact the parent afterward. In many of those cases, the parent told everyone that their child abandoned them instead of the truth (even though it was the parent who started the abandonment with a long silent treatment).
Anyway, 90 percent is pretty significant, and it shows that most human beings cannot live in a scapegoat role.
The high majority in that 90 percent realized they were giving up on an inheritance too, so it shows that human beings who are being abused will not continue to be abused even with the possibility of money or an inheritance dangling in front of them ... and if they read forums, they'll find out that scapegoats rarely get an inheritance even when they are caretakers.
Narcissists, however, (from getting some answers from a few of them), believe that if they were in the same situation with their parent, that they would submit, even with their own obligations to children and spouse and career, even if they are making more consistent reliable money on their own, in order to be considered for an inheritance. I somehow really doubt they would be willing to be scapegoated for an inheritance (?), but what is important is that they think they would be willing to be scapegoated just to be considered for an inheritance, which is why they set up a competition in the first place. They do tend to place winning "possible money" much higher on their agendas than most people do (and many of them marry for money, and cheat on their spouses with monied people), and believe most people are like them in that regard.
No, we are not.
But it tells why they make inheritances about "winning a prize".
When they were left out of the Will, the phrase, "and __(insert members name here)__________ knows why they were left out" was the most common phrase used when it was read.
But what about the adult children who did not go "no contact" with their parent, many of whom were long suffering, or disabled in some way, and who did the bulk of the caretaking (because their narcissistic siblings just don't want to do it except to delegate it). Were they left out of the Will? Yes, my findings revealed that they were also predominantly left out of the Will, if slightly less so. But why?
Here are some reasons I was told:
- The parent said the caretaking wasn't good enough (even when their siblings were out of the picture). Scapegoats are often told that their efforts aren't good enough no matter what they do. In a forum I saw, some scapegoats were asking, "My golden child sibling got a B in biology his sophomore year, and was praised up and down for it, and my parent's friends were notified of his grade. I get a B a year later with the same teacher, and my parent shouts at me that I could have done a lot better. Have any of the rest of you experienced this?" - and the answer was overwhelmingly yes. The same went for caretaking. A golden child takes the parent to a doctor and he's thanked many times for it, and a scapegoat takes the parent to the same doctor, and the scapegoat is admonished and complained about. It's the way all scapegoats are treated apparently. I would say it is part of "the criticism" aspect of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse that I wrote about as part of this post.
Caretaking is the other effort that roughly 10 percent of scapegoats put out. What they find is that the parent will compare the scapegoat's caretaking to the golden child's caretaking, and the scapegoat will always come up short, even when the golden child is not there, or comes around intermittently when they feel like it.
So, you can see what the scapegoat is up against.
This can be one reason they are left out of the Will.
I knew 3 people in my own personal life who went through this too. I briefly tell their stories here:
Person #1 moved back home to take care of a dying parent for 2 years. He was left without anything, and lived in a homeless shelter for the next few years. I don't know where he is now. I used to see him a lot, and now I don't. His sister sold the house, and used some of it to buy a Mercedes Benz.
Person #2 I have written about before was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and had to leave her mother in a nursing home while she sought treatment. She was also left out of the Will.
Person #3 has a sibling who lived with his mother, and got her to sign over her house to him before she died. He kicked his mother out of the house, and she was stranded outside on the porch for hours in cold weather while her daughter made the hours-long trip to get her. She took her mother into her own house, and did the bulk of the caretaking (a sister contributed once in awhile too). After she died, neither sister got any part of the inheritance. It was all left to the brother. I actually know a similar story to this one from a couple who ran a BNB we stayed at where the elderly parents were kicked out. The repercussions were worse because all of their children threw the parents out, leaving them to fend for themselves without a home or money.
- "Compete with siblings!"
Narcissistic and sociopathic parents expect their scapegoats to compete with their siblings, and especially the golden child, for an inheritance. In other words, an inheritance is treated as "winning a prize", much like the King Lear play by Shakespeare where giving a parent narcissistic supply determines how much inheritance you get. And Shakespeare was intelligent enough to know how it would work out (lots of threats and murders, and King Lear thrown out of his own castle to live in the wild, and its weather elements, much like getting kicked out of your house by your own children - things haven't changed much since those days).
Because the narcissistic parent has so much contempt for the scapegoat, they are going to make sure the golden child wins, or any child other than scapegoat win. It's just another chance for them to humiliate and hurt the scapegoat, and it is partly why they do it. Seeing a scapegoat lose the dirty head games again and again is very much narcissistic supply for them (especially if they can get reactions out of the scapegoat).
If you have a narcissistic or sociopathic sibling, they are going to do what ever they can to get you disinherited (lots of threats, and using flying monkeys to get them what they want). They will constantly be running to the parent as they always have, to tell their parent false narratives about you, and getting them so suspicious of your intentions, that you are no longer considered. The parent is used to believing this sibling, and it is common for the parent to think of the scapegoat as "at fault, all of the time, no matter what", so they do manage to get the parent to reject the scapegoat out of heresy.
In one case, the sibling inherited a few million dollars while the scapegoat got nothing (one wonders why a parent would do this, with that much money, unless they were threatened by the same child that threatened their sibling).
I know someone else who started to write a book about how this very common "disinheritance via a sibling" played out, but was told to make the book about his father (whom he greatly loved and admired, and who did a lot of compassionate acts for his community, and for other people who fell on hard times) and include the story of the disinheritance and the end of his father's business that the father wanted to pass down the generations.
The parent feels they have been abandoned by everyone except the narcissistic or sociopathic child, and can hand over the inheritance on that basis too.
For most narcissists, everyone is in competition, and everyone is on a hierarchy, whether that is adverse for the parent or not.
- The "You aren't doing this for good reasons":
How this goes:
"I was somehow roped into caretaking our parent full time by my siblings who all seem to have silly excuses as to why they can't be there, and my parent thinks that the only reason I'm there is to get his (or her) money when they die."
Scapegoats are attributed the worse qualities of human-kind: liars, fakers, takers, criminals, addicts, prostitutes, violent schizophrenics, stalkers, only out for money. The stuff that is made up about scapegoats always seem to run along these lines. Some of the things narcissistic parents believe about their scapegoats would be absolutely dumbfounding or hilarious if the results for the parent and the family weren't so tragic. Again, the scapegoat role blocks out any knowledge of who the scapegoat is beyond the role. Therapist Jay Reid, who treats scapegoats and studies scapegoating, said in a number of videos and writings, that in most cases, people outside the family know the scapegoat much more than anyone inside the family. That shouldn't surprise any scapegoat, even though it might surprise a lot of outsiders.
It makes sense either way. Who inside a family would know "the banished" anyway? Who, inside a family, would know "the ignored", especially when there are pressures on other members to ignore too? Who inside the family would know someone who was either "shut up" or talked over? Who inside the family would believe that a parent doesn't care about their child at all, but many scapegoating parents don't care about their children even medically. Some narcissistic parents never mention their child, unless confronted, and often it's short answers like, "We don't like to discuss that child."
It's what you get when a parent, who teaches children on how to behave by example, and is spouting false narratives and derisive fantasies about other people day in and day out. It's like living in a dungeon of lies where each member (except the ignored scapegoat) is trying to out-lie, and out-do each other with lies and bullying to get rewards and more hierarchy.
Anyway, the parent disinherits the most empathetic, willing child of the bunch because he believes his child to be an addict, or a prostitute, or any of the other things I've talked about.
So a question I am asked is: Why wouldn't a parent do a double-take about all of this? Why wouldn't they say, "I might have gotten this wrong. My other children aren't here, and this child is doing such a good job, and seems to really care about my comfort, and making meals for me, and is putting in a full effort, and is getting me professional help ..."
Again narcissists don't do double-takes because the overwhelming need to have a scapegoat blinds them to who the child is. The role is also fixed for life, as well as the mind that created that role for their child when they were a mere toddler. The fact that a toddler can get a scapegoat role is beyond the pale, but that's when it usually happens. And it can happen earlier than that with a difficult birth: "I knew that you would be difficult, and like a noose around my neck for the rest of my life when you gave me such a difficult birth!" - I saw this being said to a childhood friend when I was a child myself, and yes, that child is also estranged from her parent, and in her case, her entire extended family. And I've seen phrases like it in many forums since then.
I find this is one of the more perplexing aspects of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It isn't just confirmation bias, which would explain the inability to understand other modes of thinking, and thinking styles, and even erases the desire to understand people beyond fixed perspectives. We know this is how the prejudiced mind functions too.
For instance, we find that narcissists have "attitudes" with a lot of people who are different from them: people with pink hair are always deemed to be "flakes", people who are overweight are deemed to be gluttonous, people who live in communes and cults are all deemed to be brainwashed, that black people are mostly deemed to be lazy and on the dole - we're used to prejudiced minds going in these directions, even though those directions are wrong and built on flawed beliefs that encompass a wide range of stereotypes.
But where does the attitude that "I can tell what my toddler is always thinking" come from when the toddler can't even speak yet? At least the prejudiced mind usually targets adults, and lazily labels, categorizes, judges and stereotypes. We know narcissists are not good mind readers (again, what they want out of people comes before knowing who people are).
So my wild guess is that besides confirmation bias and the fixed perspectives that prejudiced minds indulge in, it may have to do with arrogance (thinking they are right when they aren't, thinking they can read minds and ulterior motives when they can't - all of it driven by illusory feelings that they are superior beings compared to other people, which would also explain why they rarely look into, or listen, to others). The feelings of contempt and resentment like "You put me through a difficult birth!" - isn't reasonable, or even slightly scientific, because most people know that it isn't a child's fault; it was probably about how the uterine contractions were going at the time. Most uterine contractions during childbirth are painful, but narcissists can't stand to think that it would be something within their own bodies, because again, they go around with the illusory feeling that they are superior and never at fault, and that other people cause them pain.
I was accused myself of throwing something when I was told about the impending birth of someone when I was two years old, and the person tried to convince me that I hated that person because I threw something. Yesterday, I spent the day with a two year old who was the age I was when I was accused of hating. She was throwing things all day long, and I mean all day. About three quarters of the things were thrown over her shoulder, and the rest were thrown in front of her. The day for her was about picking up toys and throwing them. She'd bend over, look at the object, and throw it. Then she'd either pick up the object, or pick up another object. It's a phase that children go through. It's two year old behavior, and it's fun for them, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
It's simply not possible for a toddler that age to hate anyone. It's not even possible to throw objects as a physics experiment. To me, and the people around me, it was about carrying things and having or showing some ability to throw things and pick up things, and that's about it. There was some intense examining of objects at times, which is probably a step into the next phase of two year old behavior. All of it was pretty cute and fascinating to watch.
When people don't stop short and question why someone else would interpret "hatred" in a toddler, you have to wonder why. Isn't that as irrational as devil possession of babies?
So when a toddler can be blamed for everything and anything, you can bet an adult child can be blamed x 1,000,000.
I think that attributing feelings and thoughts to toddlers and very young children should be part of mandated reporting. Narcissists and sociopaths feel that they absolutely need a scapegoat child, and as teachers, social workers and police, and the rest of us who are mandated reporters, we need to look out for signs of this kind of parenting. Since scapegoating is overwhelmingly life long, getting children placed in homes where they aren't scapegoated is important in terms of child welfare, and for the society at large. It shouldn't just be the elective choice of children who become adults to get counseling, and become one of the 90 percent who live without a parent, and often without their entire family. It is especially critical because siblings most often take part in the abuse too to garner favor with their abusive parent so that they can avoid the scapegoat's fate.
And some of what should be reported are parents telling a child what they feel and think, and certainly being punished over what the parent assumes about the child's feelings and thoughts.
The other thing that happens to children in narcissistic families is that when they are truth-telling, they can be severely punished for it. Let's say a child finds her mother in bed with another man, and runs to tell her father. In narcissistic families, the mother is likely to punish the child for telling, if she can't get her child to keep a secret before telling the father (narcissistic parents have no trouble encouraging their children to lie when it suits them). Narcissistic parents can also be tit-for-tat, revenge-seeking parents, and the child that tells is always going to be in danger. So this needs to be taken into consideration too in terms of mandated reporting.
- Promises, promises:
This is when the narcissistic parent makes the promise of an inheritance to get something out of a child, but never had any intentions of delivering on that promise. Many of these adult children find that the Will was written before the promises were made, and that the parent never changed the Will.
Many of the stories I witnessed had to do with money. They were all daughters who were expected to serve the family in some way.
A daughter, or daughters, were brought back into the family after long estrangements and were told that a lot of time had gone by, and the parents had time to think about events that had passed, and had decided that their daughter(s) were valuable and worthwhile after all. The daughters found out soon afterward that the parents wanted money from them.
The parental sob stories ran from the possibility of losing their homes, to medical bills piling up, social services threatening to take the rest of their savings and putting them in a home, and a host of other issues.
In most of these cases, the scapegoats had deep suspicions because the parents seemed to be living more opulently than they were. Also, the scapegoated daughters were used to having the rug yanked out from under them, and living in dire straights (poverty) after being kicked out of the family. They didn't trust their parents.
However, all of them buckled under and gave their parents money in the end. It wasn't always the amount asked for or expected because of the distrust or because the child didn't have it to give, but substantial amounts were given.
Most of the scapegoated daughters wanted to be re-included in the Will in return for giving the parents money for expenses, so that they might be able to recoup some of their financial losses if the parent died and still had some assets.
And in one case, a daughter wanted it in writing.
The parents promised to include them in the Will.
But in all cases they weren't.
In one case where there were two sisters who were scapegoated and thrown out of their families, their two brothers received the entire estate of four million dollars. The brothers told their sisters that the parents had plenty of money to leave them, but pretended not to have any as a way to punish them for "not coming back" after they had been kicked out (which shows that "getting kicked out" is often fakery, and about trying to get an adult child to submit, but it is impossible for scapegoats to know what is fake with their parents and what is not). So it was retribution and revenge for accepting the rejection, in other words. So bad. The brothers told their sisters that they deserved to be left out because they were "ungrateful" about the fact that they were given food, clothing and a roof over their head in childhood, and were given some tuition money. Note: most parents do not expect payment back from such services, but narcissistic and sociopathic parents do.
To me this story wasn't particularly shocking as I'm used to stories about parents seeking all kinds of revenges against their scapegoated children (especially children who won't accept their scapegoated role any longer), but I write this as a warning to other scapegoated children.
In the case where the parent "put it in writing", it was a fake Will with no signatures or notarized (she was told there would be signatures later), and there were a number of real Wills written after the fake Will, and she was clearly disinherited in those Wills. She was able to launch a legal case in which she received a small portion of her money back from the estate. The lesson here is to take anything a narcissistic or sociopathic parent puts in writing to your own lawyer and discuss the legitimacy of it, and whether it can be over-ridden with a new Will (in most cases it can be over-ridden with a new Will).
There was also another case where two scapegoated sisters who were estranged for nearly 15 years from their parents, were asked by their brothers to be caretakers of the parents. One of the sisters would have to give up her job in order to do the work, and another had to travel a long distance and give up her own nuclear family life in order to do the work. The brothers told their sisters that it would be a chance for them to "prove their worth", to "redeem themselves" to the parents. But, again, they obviously did not trust their parents because of the long history of being scapegoated. One sister was the original scapegoat, and got taken out of her family at age 16 by social services to live with her grandmother, and then her sister became the next scapegoat many years later, with the same result. The two sisters became close and lived together for awhile as they tried to figure out how to get jobs, build a social life, and get help without belonging to a family. Once they were achieving some success, the parents started phoning, coming around, and inviting them to holidays and family events.
By the way, this happens because narcissistic parents do not want their scapegoats to be successful at all - it makes them nervous, and it's harder to scapegoat children who are successful because they can live without parental contact or support.
To make a long story short, it was an "on again, off again" kind of situation, where the sisters would be invited back into the family, and then get kicked out again, until the sisters had enough and stayed out. There were also attempts to break the two sisters apart (triangulation) by getting them to be suspicious of each other. But it didn't work, and they would stoutly defend one another. Narcissistic parents can't stand that either, so they were probably kicked out for that reason too.
The sisters did not know why the brothers wouldn't do the care-taking themselves. If any of them had narcissistic qualities like the parents, they aren't going to want to do the care-taking (delegation is the primary role they will accept in a situation like this, i.e. getting another family member to do it).
The sisters also assumed they were not in the Will and they were sure that their parents did not care how they were faring financially, and never did, and never would. They told their parents that their brothers wanted them to do the caretaking, but because one of them had to give up a job, they balked and said no. The parents assured them that they had always been in the Will, that they had their differences, but that they were always considered to be family members, not ex-family members. They invited the two women to come any time they could get away, and apparently the parents sounded so warm and convincing, and the brothers seemed to be loving and welcoming too, that the two sisters jumped at the chance to take care of their parents, and lived with the parents for a little under two years. They made dinners when the brothers visited. They spent their own saved up money to hire night caretakers, took their parents to physical therapy, and doctors, and allowed them to die at home in the comfort of family (the parent's wishes).
After the parents died, the Last Will was read.
At no time were the daughters ever included in the Will. The parents obviously lied to them.
So this is another "warning situation" as to how scapegoats are treated. It sounds like a misogynist family too, where inheritances go to men instead of women. If the brothers had been loving brothers, they would have shared some of their inheritances with their sisters (this sometimes happens unless the brothers are narcissists themselves), but in this case, it did not happen.
- Other reasons scapegoats are left out:
- Narcissistic parents hold grudges forever - even over the misplaced thought that their child gave them a difficult birth, or even a C-section. So for that, they seek revenge, and a Will is just one way they do that.
- Most narcissistic parents can't stand it if you have complaints about a sibling bullying you, especially if it is the golden child (who is the most likely to do it). They have invested so much in the golden child that they cannot stand to think that the child is anything other than a saint, and many narcissistic parents will retaliate over that because they believe they have superior abilities to tell who is good and who is bad, and you are challenging that. It is also why scapegoats often leave - it's a dire issue, and the parent will not only refuse to discuss the matter, but they demand you apologize. When you do not apologize for being bullied, they discard you.
- I have heard that some narcissistic parents discard their scapegoats when they start to get some serious medical issues over trumped up, made up charges, just so that the inheritance will go to their most favorite children.
- I have heard of a sibling who never told their other siblings that their parent was dying, so they could arm-twist the parent into signing over the Will completely to them. Then after the parent died, the sibling let the other siblings know that the parent died and that they got their entire estate.
- I have heard of a sibling who talked their parents into entrusting their money to them when the parents were dealing with a lawsuit, and when the parents died, not sharing the contents of what was in the Will.
- I have heard of a golden child locking their mother in a trailer on their property to avoid having her money go to a nursing home (the golden child was the inheritor), and leaving the mother alone to mess herself. The only contact the mother had with anyone was when her golden child slipped in a tray of food a couple of times a day. The scapegoat was shocked because the mother had always spoken so glowingly about the golden child, that the scapegoat thought she was okay.
- I have heard of a golden child keeping the parent's death a secret, not reporting it in the news, to keep his siblings in the dark about the fate of their parent.
- And there are so many more dark stories than this, but it gives you an idea of what narcissistic families can be like.
- Anyway, so when we mix this altogether we get:
- the insistence that the scapegoat is all-bad, all-of-the-time
- the insistence that the scapegoat doesn't have good motives in taking care of a parent
- the lifelong scapegoat role that both the parents and siblings of the scapegoat use for blaming, or in the case of sociopathic siblings and parents, getting the scapegoat incarcerated for crimes that someone else in the family committed
- trying constantly to get other people to believe the scapegoat is all-at-fault all of the time for what he or she does and doesn't do, and succeeding at it, even with lot of false narratives that would generally be easy to figure out if those people actually did some research, or had a little skepticism
- the insistence that an inheritance is a "prize" that must be won and fought over by their children (note, in most families, an inheritance is given out of empathy, to make sure their children are taken care of in old age - and since narcissists do not have empathy, a no-win, often dangerous, highly abusive, competition is set up instead).
- narcissists are known to break most of the promises and commitments they have made
- and 90 percent of scapegoats leave their parent or family of origin
You can see why scapegoats do not get an inheritance.
If you are a scapegoat, you can always consider leaving, not only to heal, but because scapegoating families, unlike other families, often cannot be counted on in any manner to help pull you out of financial danger, or to provide a soft landing, or to care about you, or to love you on any level, or to tell the truth about their intentions towards you, the last one being the most important.
It's always important to remember that narcissistic parents lack, usually in the extreme, any meaningful kind of empathy where you will be seen for who you are, for the humanity you possess, for your positive points, and for anything other than a person to blame and hurt if you are their scapegoat.
The way they keep you in the scapegoat role is through a lot of pressures, threats, punishments, awards, parentifying, infantilizing, unsolicited advice and commands, and they think, by hurting you that you will submit to their control and demands (but there are reasons why hurting you doesn't work for them because they are blind to how people actually respond to abuse and narcissists' lust for power in these situations).
WHO RECEIVE AN INHERITANCE?
WHY DO THEY RECEIVE IT AND MOST OTHER SCAPEGOATS DO NOT?
I do have some stories to share, but this is what I have found:
- The parents are worried about their reputation that they will garner when gone by not including their child in their Will. They figure if they split the estate evenly, the scapegoat will either cease to tell everyone how traumatized they were by living in a narcissistic family where they were abused, abandoned or given over to foster parents, or they will begin to think well of their parents because they've been treated fairly in the Will. This may especially be the case if part of the scapegoating was about telling everyone that their child was crazy, and needed constant mental health supervision.
- The parents think their golden child is getting too entitled to the parent's resources and they want him to think that he isn't any more important than any other sibling (cutting him down a notch or two - he or she is getting too arrogant, and assumes all "prizes" will go to him).
- The scapegoat isn't really a scapegoat (they are not treated with the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse), or they have a parent who switches the scapegoat role around to all of their children (each child takes a turn at the role - this isn't as common, but I've heard of it happening, especially when the parent senses arrogance - narcissistic parents don't want to tolerate anyone who thinks they are superior to them, or a child who they think is hoodwinking them and manipulating them through lies).
- The parent doesn't have all of the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder, and can see some value in their child, even if not as much as most parents do.
- The parent plays a lot of "Who should win the Will games", and decides the game isn't working, that the adult child is refusing to play because they are being threatened or abused by a sibling as soon as the game starts. Sometimes even narcissistic parents don't want a sibling to take over who wins the game. These parents would prefer a game where each child can stay in the competition indefinitely.
- The parent goads an adult child into "wanting an inheritance."
This is one case I have seen. Because the scapegoat was sure she was not going to get an inheritance like most scapegoats she knew, and when she was threatened many, many times that she would not get any portion of the Will, when her father asked her when he was getting significant health problems in his old age whether she wanted an inheritance or not, she told him "no" so that she wouldn't be hurt during the reading of the Will.
He mocked her, and chided her, and laughed at her, in the few family gatherings she attended about not wanting to be in the Will. "Sure, you don't want to be in the Will! Come on! I can see you lying through your teeth about that!" And the rest of her family would laugh at her. Or he'd introduce her as "the only child in America who doesn't want to be included in a Will." In other words, she became a laughing stock over it.
She was absolutely dumbfounded when he included her - and it wasn't just the dollar or two that so many other narcissistic parents give their scapegoat child to make sure they sit through the reading of the Will where the lawyer reads out how much everyone else gets. She got an even portion. Even our group was surprised - it's not usually "the way things go."
- The parent almost died and the scapegoat is the only one to take care of the parent (for many months), and to practically live in the hospital with her parent. The golden child sister appears when the parent lies on the deathbed, and produces a copy of the parent's Will. It is clear to the scapegoat that her golden child sister will inherit everything (which is usually what I see). The children are told to prepare for the worst by nursing staff. But a miracle happens and the parent recovers.
This was one story by a survivor that I was privy to. Whether she stayed on the Will is questionable. Narcissistic parents tend to change their Wills a lot based on narcissistic supply.
Apparently, the golden child had a temper tantrum when she found out. She was stomping her feet and yelling that it wasn't fair. You can't make this up.
- The parent dies and leaves an inheritance to a couple of her children and leaves others out. The children who received the inheritance either split the inheritance evenly between the siblings, or are ordered to do it by a judge. There are some circumstances where you can get a portion of a Will even when your parents don't leave you in - check with your state if you are in the USA, but it requires many, many efforts on the scapegoat's part (with evidence), that they, the scapegoat, tried to re-unite with their family. Most scapegoats aren't willing to take that chance because they are aware that the abuse will be much more egregious than it was before - it's a flaw in the law, and a flaw of judicial insight into what really happens in scapegoating cases.
In some European countries, it's not possible to leave a child out of a Will. My understanding is that in Norway, children get a quarter of the assets and money, half goes to a spouse, and the other quarter can go to whomever the parent wants it to go to. It perhaps keeps the government from having to support scapegoats of families (which can be considerable with both housing and medical expenses). And to some degree, it may keep parents from going into full "scapegoat mode" to the extremes that it does in the USA.
And perhaps scapegoating children is more illegal in other countries than it is in the USA. It has become illegal in the United Kingdom, along with coercive control. The only good recourse children have in the USA is to get help when they are minor children, to have their parents caught by a mandated reporter (teacher, police, and so on), but many narcissistic parents homeschool, and those children, judging from what happened to the Turpin children, fell through the cracks in terms of intervention in a big way, showing that homeschooling needs constant and surprise visits from social workers. However, social workers intervening goes against the United States Constitution, where there is a clause that states that parents have the right to treat children any way they want. It is why we are one of the few nations left in the western world that still allows corporal punishment (of underage children only ... parents lose that right when their child becomes an adult at age 18). The USA has a higher rate of child abuse than other developed countries, scapegoating being just one aspect of it.
- The parent signed a legal contract to re-pay a scapegoat money back even if that money was passed to others in a Will.
I don't know if this counts as being part of a Will, but it may.
It is the way tenant agreements are often written too, that the inheritors are responsible for payment to a landlord.
- The parent signed a legal contract that their child would receive an equal part in the Will as the siblings, for having received services or money from their scapegoat. I have, however, seen this "broken" by a parent gifting another child a house or a lot of money before the parent died, leaving very little that was left to the scapegoat.
And by the way, I have seen and heard many, many stories from scapegoats where when they become much more wealthy than the parents, the parents play "the poverty card" and ask their scapegoat to give them the money.
In one case, a woman was thrown out of her family as a teenager, taken in by her grandmother, her grandmother paid for her college tuition (the parents were busy sending children they thought "could succeed much more"), went out on her own, started her own business and became a multi-millionaire. She spent her childhood being neglected and abused, got kicked out, and the parents dared to show up with their hands out, and expected her to "pony up" (the audacity, right?) , but the hardest thing for her was wondering if she should give them any money. She actually struggled with this decision (and I bet anything, she was left out of her parent's Will when she was thrown out). She was wondering if she should give the money they were asking to her grandmother instead, and have her grandmother make the decision of whether to give any of it to the parents.
- The scapegoat child is welcomed back into the family a few years before the parent passes and is re-included in the Will at that time.
I do know one person who was re-included in her mother's Will when her mother divorced a stepfather who was abusing her (her mother was involved in a lot of social clubs and charities, so "keeping up appearances" may have played a role in giving her scapegoat daughter an inheritance). The scapegoat daughter didn't get "a full inheritance" however (as much as her golden child sister did), but it also wasn't a dollar or two like most scapegoats get, if they get anything at all. It was enough to pay for a college to get trained in a field where she could make more of an income as she approached old age.
After being scapegoated, most scapegoats want to live in peace, even if it means being reliant on the government in old age. When those 90 percent leave their families, they are aware that they are unlikely to get an inheritance.
Also, PTSD which plagues most scapegoats, can cause the scapegoat to feel too "frozen" to do anything major like bring a lawsuit that is very difficult to win. Most scapegoats just want to retreat into a safe world where they can choose who they relate to, and what they do going forward with their own lives. In other words, they just want to be left alone. During the anger stage, when they are either abused or abandoned (or both), they might feel like winning a law suit, but usually they settle into feeling "frozen" to do anything with their family other than for the abusive members and the flying monkey enablers and co-bullies to leave them alone.
If you want to sue your parents before they die, there is a better chance of obtaining justice (than if you waited until they were dead). This is especially true in more of the liberal states (USA)
Here are some articles on that, (each state will have different laws):
Can You Sue a Family Member for Emotional Distress? - by Jack Bernstein, Injury Attorney for his own website (Florida)
Child Abuse Civil Cases - What You Need to Know - From the Law Offices of Joseph Lesniak, LLC (Pennsylvania)
Can You Sue Your Parents for Child Abuse? - Tario and Associates, P.S., Attorneys at Law (Washington)
Civil Claims for Injuries from Child Abuse and Neglect in California - for 1000 Attorneys website
RECOMMENDED: CIVIL LIABILITY FOR FAILURE TO REPORT CHILD ABUSE - U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs
Child Abuse Civil and Criminal Statutes for the State of Connecticut - written by Lawrence K. Furbish, Assistant Director for The Connecticut General Assembly (government website), Office of Legislative Research
Minor Child Abuse - Romanucci and Blandin, Attorneys at Law (Illinois)
Denver Child Abuse Attorney - Donaldson Law, LLC (Colorado)
California Child Abuse Lawyer For Failure To Report Child Abuse - The Keane Law Firm (California - suits against mandated reporters for failure to report)
Statute Of Limitations (Time Limits) To File A California Child Abuse Lawsuit - The Keane Law Firm (California) - see also above
Can You Sue Your Parents for Child Abuse? - by George Khoury, Esq. (2019 article ... check to see if laws have changed in your state)
Can You Sue Your Parents For Emotional Abuse? - by Tyler S. Rios for Merge Family
How to Sue a Parent for Past Physical & Mental Abuse - by Dana Hinders for Legal Beagle
Can I sue my parents for the YEARS OF EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL abuse I have suffered from? I am experiencing the effects of my abusive childhood now what can I do? - Reddit forum question
Can a child sue their parents? - Law Stack Exchange (discusses the possibilities of minor children bringing lawsuits against their own parents) ... also discusses scapegoating (referred to as "discrimination")
Overseas:
Getting help and compensation if you were abused as a child - Citizens Advice (Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales)
Canada:
Dysfunctional Families: Scapegoat Child Sues Parents and Wins - from the "disinherited website" (a British Columbia case)
If this isn't helpful:
If you are upset by the laws in your state, find ways to change them. Bring awareness to scapegoating issues, ways to resolve them through better laws, research whether scapegoats are willing to bring suits when they are in danger from family members, research what can be done while a scapegoat is pursuing a lawsuit to keep a scapegoat safe, how to encourage more scapegoats to come forward to find resolutions to their issues through the court system, roadblocks for scapegoats who have always "lost" in their families and feel they can't win in something as big as a lawsuit, and so on.
Instead of just disappearing from your family and "shelling up" in pain and isolating in anxiety-ridden "aloneness", discover what you can and can't do for scapegoats' cause. By the way, most narcissists who scapegoat will do anything to hurt their child except break the law. How would new scapegoating laws help you and other scapegoats you know?
Don't get the idea that it can't be done. The Child's Victim Act in New York State was started by an Emma Willard student (a high school student who was allegedly sexually abused and found roadblocks in bringing a suit against her perpetrator). She probably felt "frozen" from doing anything about her situation, until she didn't. If it can work for her, perhaps it can work for you too. Find out what she did to change the law. And by the way, after her allegations, the school was found to have many counts of sexual misconduct.
We know that family scapegoating can be just as painful and traumatic (and even more so because mob bullying is extremely likely, and even sexual abuse can happen as part of the scapegoating).
If you want peace in your life, please remember to help bring peace to more scapegoats who are more down on their luck than you were. The more peace that can be brought into the world, and the more repercussions there are for disturbing and abusing others to break their sense of peace and wellness in the world, the more peace we will be able to achieve. Also remember that perpetrators usually start perpetrating in their own families before they invade, lie and cause havoc for the rest of the world.
If you go this way, contact me. I'll be a part of the mob that helps to bring more justice to this issue.
The other thing that this discussion needs is a lot more research. Some ideas:
- Interviewing people who disinherit their children while their siblings get inheritances, and interviewing the disinherited as to what they think were the reasons for being disinherited (how much contact they had with their families, asking questions about abuse or parenting styles, what they would have done differently to inherit).
- Peer related scientific probes into the reasons for disinheriting, and how scapegoating contributes to being disinherited (I would think that this would be hard to research, but it's not impossible)
- Research on scapegoating and discrimination in society and the attitudes that arise from it (racial, cultural, sexual, body mass, the poor, and the disabled) and how it differs or is similar to family scapegoating. My wild guess is that the differences are miniscule (from my studies on the psychology of hate, judge-mentalism and contempt). I would even guess that the ratio of girls being scapegoated by parents in comparison to boys is the same as it is for sexual abuse survivors by non-family members (in other words, I would bet the rate for girls would be much higher than for boys, and match very, very closely, to that same rate for childhood sexual abuse by non-family members). I'd love to know if any of you are doing research like this. As far as I know, it has never been done.
- If the research comes to the conclusion that discrimination is the same when it comes to groups or races of people, as it does to be discriminated (scapegoated) in the family, then shouldn't the Child Victims Act encompass more than just sexual abuse of minors? Should it take into consideration other forms of abuse, especially if a survivor has been impacted negatively in the same way or worse than childhood sexual abuse survivors? What kinds of health and emotional problems do they both have, and do they match?
- Since all kinds of abuses tend to be allowed or over-looked in the homes of parents with Narcissistic Personality Disordered and Antisocial Personality Disorder, what kind of monitoring could be set in place other than Mandated Reporting (which can be flawed if a teacher is not taking behavioral problems seriously and only looking at it as a child who is vying for more attention)? How much one-on-one contact should parents with a proven track record of abuse and DARVO-ing have with an abused child? In other words, what are some preventative measures that could be used to prevent scapegoating?
- How many scapegoats were deemed to be crazy by their family members? I bet the rate of affirmation would be really high. I'd also bet that the rate of mob bullying would match those who are actually truly disabled either physically or through mental disorders like schizophrenia.
- In my own extended family, or a corner of it, the rate of estranged female members by an older generation of both men and women was/is so high and so all-encompassing, that all but one younger female member experienced it (it included daughters, step daughters, grand daughters, and step grand daughters). It adds up to nine members in all from three families, and from two generations. One of those nine members was male. Some step-parents in the family practice estrangements with their daughters and step-daughters too, and there are family members through marriage who have been estranged too, so it can be said to be a lot more than nine.
The stand-out was that it probably started much earlier in generations before. In those generations, the daughter was left out of receiving an inheritance, at least as far as any property or real estate was concerned, and perhaps with money too. Males were rumored to be favored down the line, and generally received more than females.
To me the estrangements with the current generations is so obviously a copy-cat approach that took fire in one generation, then in one family, and spread to siblings, then to children, as to what to do with female members. More than half of the women were given the silent treatment to start, until they became full-fledged estrangements. When reading John Gottman's findings, who I cite above, it is not surprising that the silent treatment, often accompanied by criticism and contempt, led to estrangements (according to studies by his institute, it is these four horsemen that permanently end relationships, and creates an enormous amount of distrust).
So a question I have for a researcher, would be how common is this? Is my extended family rare in terms of this kind of rate of estrangement that effects two generations of all of the women and girls (except one member)?
If you find estrangement in one family, do you find it again in the closest relatives, multiples of times, and inter-generationally, and even through marriage into a family? I would guess yes, but I also haven't been able to find a family with this many estrangements.
If we conjecture an issue like scapegoating, is scapegoating also going to be primarily multi-generational and family-wide, just as domestic violence and child abuse is, and is it almost always driven by the same kinds of discriminations in extended families that we see in society? - We know the answer to this is yes, but only based on what some psychologists are experiencing with their clients, but what are the hard statistics on this? Are women the most discriminated against in families who ostracize and/or scapegoat, and how many of them are there compared to families who ostracize and/or scapegoat based on political affiliations, the disabled, the choice of a religion, or the choice of a mate, for instance?
(with some recommended)
disinherited - Black Sheep and Scapegoats in Estate Litigation - by Trevor Todd, litigation attorney
excerpt:
Estrangement and the Wills Variation Act
As previously stated, one of the overwhelming commonalities between a black sheep and the scapegoat is that they are often advised by medical practitioners or counsellors to learn to distance themselves from their family, for their own mental well-being.
That is based on the probable reality that the family’s behaviour as a group will never change. The ostracized child will continue to be abused psychologically and be unable to escape or change the role he or she has been assigned.
When testators disinherit a child on the basis of non-contact for many years, alleging estrangement, it may well be that a valid Wills Variation claim should or will override the defence of estrangement if the long-term minimal or total absence of contact was based on the advice of a medical doctor or a qualified counsellor.
It would particularly assist the disinherited victim if such medical/counselling advice were passed onto the family members who were causing the continuing abuse, on or after family counselling has failed. At least records would be available to show attempts were made at reconciliation.
The common consensus of the general public, and even some judges, is the view that the black sheep or scapegoat should simply never give up at attempting to reconcile with the family, and that the fault must be with the ostracized one, not the family. Thus the scapegoat is victimized not once, but twice.
It is inconceivable for anyone raised in a “normal” environment to comprehend that an estrangement could occur for anything but valid and rational reasons. In my practice, the majority of estrangements are almost always the result of petty issues and irrational reactions to them.
Is it common for the narcissistic parent to disinherit the scapegoat from their will? - Transcending Narcissistic Abuse (forum)
Common: Scapegoats are Cheated Out of Inheritance: Stories/Wisdom to Share - forum for BPD FAMILY
How a Narcissistic Parent Divides Inheritance - by A.M. Champion for Medium.com
Is inheritance earned? When we are worth less to our parents - by Chess of The Scapegoat Club for You Tube
Risks of a Scapegoat of Narcissist Parents Choosing Hope for Inheritance in the Will Over No Contact - Raised by Toddlers: Surviving Narcissistic Parents
RECOMMENDED: When SCAPEGOATS END CONTACT With Family: A TRAUMA-INFORMED View #scapegoat #nocontact #cptsd - by Rebecca C. Mandeville, LMFT (You Tube)
4 Reasons Narcissists Desperately Need A Scapegoat - by Dr. Les Carter (You Tube)
8 WAYS A SCAPEGOATING NARCISSIST TRIES TO KEEP YOU IN YOUR PLACE - by Dr. Les Carter (You Tube)
Signs Your Family is Using You as the SCAPEGOAT - Psych to Go (a consortium of psychologists for You Tube)
Lessons for anyone who was scapegoated by a narcissist (Narcissistic Family Roles) - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula for You Tube
How the SCAPEGOAT keeps everyone IN LINE in narcissistic relationships - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula for You Tube
Lessons for anyone who was scapegoated by a narcissist (Narcissistic Family Roles) - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula for You Tube
excerpt:
Scapegoating is very bad for a child, and a child's mental health. It is emotional abuse, plain and simple.
... Don't let their abuse define you ...
Trauma bonding can be a major issue for scapegoats into their first initiation into "so called love" which was really about abuse, and as such, they may be at greater risk of equating love with abuse ...
... But there is some bright light, believe it or not, for the scapegoat ... This is the group if they can find the gumption and give themselves permission to be able to walk away from these toxic family systems, especially the scapegoated person who receives therapy, they may finally be able to give themselves permission to set a boundary, go "no contact", stop taking responsibility for the family B.S., and not be surprised when nothing is left to them in a Will, and when they are still told by siblings and parents alike, that it's your fault, and while the trauma bond always lurks, if the scapegoat can find the mental health they need, and finally escape (ideally both), they may be less likely to participate in the broken system.
Scapegoats may be more likely to "cut and run" and leave the family system, move far away, create a life in another place, and that geography can make it easier to maintain distance and boundaries even though we know narcissists are capable of taunting you from the other side of the planet. ...
Narcissistic Family: Signs You're Escaping the SCAPEGOAT ROLE - by Jerry Wise, MA, MS, CLC (You Tube)
Can a narcissistic relationship TURN YOU INTO A LIAR? - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula (You Tube).
These Twin Traits Make Narcissists Insufferable - by Dr. Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)
excerpt from video:
... If you say, "Okay, okay, I'll do everything that you tell me to do", then they are going to think, "Well, okay, I got my way." And then they are going to be that spoiled brat. And by the way, what they are saying is: "Feed me, feed me, feed me. I'm very needy; I feel very inadequate, and the only way I can be okay, is for you to satisfy my needs." They are very demanding, and you're in charge of their self esteem, and that's just not a role you need to play. Instead, the mindset I'm going to take towards this self gratifying and emotionally unregulated kind of narcissist, is:
My approach is, "I can appreciate your desire to be gratified. I have that same desire too. Just as we all do. But your strategy of doling out punishment and going into this high demand, condescending and invalidating role or emotion when ever you don't get your way, doesn't work, and I'm not going to go along with that."
And you might go as far as to say (I don't know if you'll say it out loud), but to the narcissist you might think, "Did it ever occur to you that one of the most gratifying things you can have in your life is co-operation?" ...
Narcissistic relationships LEAD TO F***ED UP RESILIENCE - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula
This is a worthwhile video to see if you are a scapegoat. While scapegoats count on their resilience time and time again, and get used to picking themselves up from all kinds of abuse, smear campaigns, being scapegoated and rejected, and left out of a Will, the challenge here is that you don't use your resilience and abilities to adapt and survive for other narcissists you might meet and their abuse, or to "give in".
My own experience with scapegoats is the same as what Dr. Ramani found: that they are the kindest, most adaptable, most hard-working people you will ever know, but hopefully they have, and you have, your limits. I do believe that there comes a time in every scapegoat's life where where "super resilience" begins to crack under health issues related to abuse, and where hypervigilance (one of the first PTSD symptoms you will be plagued with), begins to take its toll in a big way. Part of the scapegoat's road in life is that they aren't cared about by their family outside of the "punching bag" role that is demanded of them, and they have no choice but to be resilient if they are to survive, but being resilient with the right people, and the right employers, will keep you alive much better than if you keep resilient for narcissists. As one person commenting on Dr. Ramani's video said:
@SummaGirl1347 said:
As a child being raised by two malignant narcissists, it was either get really, REALLY resilient and self-reliant or give in to suicidal ideations. The first time I realized that my life was not going to get any better, and that I wouldn't be missed if I died, I was eight-years-old. But, I came to the conclusion that my death would only give them more attention and sympathy and I refused to give them the satisfaction. ...
@sushmayen said
We might be in the relationship thinking they'll take care of us in old age or during illness. They don't. They abandon us without a thought. We have to be resilient and not compromise our dignity
response to @sushmayen by @anitadanforth6995:
I just never assumed my parents would. it was cleaner to just stand on that than be disappointed so many times.
and I went forward with that resolve. beginning to earn and save Money at 12 yrs old. in the end I did get and inheritance...very late in life. which I am grateful for.
- So, some scapegoats do get an inheritance (from the comment above), but I wouldn't count on it based on all of the other comments I saw below the video.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED IF THERE ARE A LOT OF ESTRANGED FEMALES IN YOUR FAMILY: The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help (How to End Domestic Violence, Mental and Emotional Abuse, and Sexual Harassment) - book by Jonathan Katz (note: I suggested this to my family, and put his book in an area where some family members might see it). Read the reviews too, if you can.
Do narcissistic parents reject their children? - Quora question
An A.I. bot said:
Narcissistic parents can indeed reject their children, either emotionally or physically. Narcissistic parents often prioritize their own needs and desires over those of their children, leading to neglect, emotional manipulation, and even abandonment. This can have long-lasting effects on the children's emotional well-being and self-esteem. If you or someone you know is dealing with the effects of narcissistic parenting, seeking support from a therapist or counselor can be beneficial.
RECOMMENDED: The Ripple Effect: How Narcissistic Parental Rejection Shapes a Child's Life - by Art Florentyna, Trauma-Informed Personal Development Coach
excerpt:
Before delving into the topic of parental rejection, it’s crucial to acknowledge that individuals with narcissistic traits will frequently deny any form of rejection or wrong doing toward their own children. They may vehemently deny these behaviors and, instead, manipulate the narrative to suit their personal agenda and public image. Recognizing these manipulative behaviors and understanding the signs of narcissistic personality traits is essential for comprehending and addressing familial dynamics marked by scapegoating and emotional abuse.
A narcissistic parent or caregiver skillfully crafts a narrative where the scapegoat child is unjustly portrayed as the wrongdoer, a narrative that often takes root in the child’s early years. This calculated strategy serves the dual purpose of eliciting sympathy not only from unwitting onlookers but also from within the family itself. Its primary function is to redirect attention away from the actual issues, which are unrelated to the child and deeply rooted in the narcissistic parent’s emotional dysregulation, an unwillingness to acknowledge personal shortcomings, an unrelenting need to project pent-up frustrations onto an external target, and at times, an effort to conceal their own addiction to narcissistic supply, which is a compulsive desire for attention, validation, and control over others. ...
RECOMMENDED: There are also some videos by Judy Rosenburg, a practicing psychologist who runs a healing center in Los Angeles, California, who has a You Tube Channel and takes callers, some of whom have been disinherited from a Will by a narcissistic parent. She explains that Wills are decided by narcissistic parents in terms of how much narcissistic supply they get from their children, not on empathy (most parents will always choose empathy when deciding a Will).
The Golden Child role given by the parent will practically ensure that the golden child gets most of the inheritance or the entire inheritance - this is the child who has been spoiled since they were a toddler, and in return, most golden children understand that their job is to make the parent look good (not too hard when you are constantly rewarded and rarely, if ever, thrown off the pedestal of idealization). Not all Golden children like their set of circumstances, but most do.
At this point, I'm not sure in which videos she discusses it, but it may be in the 2016 - 2018 era. I leave you her channel, and perhaps you can find the discussions about that there.
But besides divvying out assets, real estate and money over narcissistic supply, narcissists are also likely to do what they have always done: scapegoat (hurt, or try to hurt) one child. Seeing as that is the case, it kind of keeps you from caring about pleasing the parent, especially if you know scapegoats who worked really hard for their parent, did the lion's share of the drudgery and caretaking, and gave up their lives to do so, and still did not get a penny (I know quite a few of them).
Judy Rosenberg does talk a lot about narcissistic parents regardless, and the incredible hurdle you have to overcome to heal - she describes growing up in these families for scapegoat children as a "hostage situation". You are hostage to the parent's mind games, gaslighting, rage, punishments and on-going cycles of "love bomb - then devalue - then discard". When you finally leave when you are an adult of age 18 or so, a host of issues follow you where ever you go, especially C-PTSD mental health and physical health related issues, and having fear and anxiety in relationships which can make you vulnerable to other abusive people. The wounds can run so deep that it takes a long time to heal, and she warns constantly that "the hurter cannot be the healer" and not to look for comfort or support with family members.
If the family members aren't going through the same kind scapegoating, they are either likely to shut the conversation down, laugh at your pain, ghost you, or give you advice about how to get along with them or "forgiving them" (often very bad advice because it puts you in the line of fire again to get re-traumatized).
"Forgiveness shaming" is very bad for scapegoats, and audacious especially because of all that they have lived through. I have a post about that subject HERE.
Dr. Judy Rosenburg is not as well known as Dr. Ramani Durvasula who lives in the same city, and spends most of her time helping survivors of narcissistic abuse too. Dr. Rosenberg does have a slightly different perspective, but her views and how she constructed her Mind Map to explain what traumatized children go through is very relevant to the discussion of narcissism, and provides psychological modalities of healing from narcissistic parents and the damage they do to their children and the damage they continue to do to them even when they are gone.
If You Experienced These 5 Behaviors In Childhood, You May Have Had Narcissistic Parents - by Shahida Arabi for Thought Catalog (note Shahida Arabi is a researcher and writer on narcissistic abuse, wrote a bestselling book, and graduated from Harvard University).
- "but narcissists can't stand to think that it would be something within their own bodies, because again, they go around with the illusory feeling that they are superior and never at fault, and that other people cause them pain. " Yes, accurate. It's often commented that they project their own EMOTIONS onto safe targets, but not emphasized enough that they do this with ALL negative aspects of themselves; even physical discomforts within their own body, are blamed on someone else. They don't acknowledge ANY negative/discomfort/inconvenience that stems from within them - they are addicted to casting out blame on someone outside themselves. Not only don't they recognize their own anger, jealousy, rage, malicious intent (emotional states), they also do the same thing with their own physical states as well. Nothing inconvenient, uncomfortable, unpleasant, certainly nothing ugly or cruel is THEIRS to deal with. No, that's not for them to deal with. They can't deal with any of that. No, no. Even if they have to blame it on a toddler, attribute their own jealousies or negative feelings onto a defenseless baby, they'll do it. They'll shove all their unwanted emotions/psychological unwanted parts -their garbage - onto their own child if that's what it takes. There's always someone they need to unload their frustrations upon. Usually these character flawed men get to offload it to their underlings at work, and to their spouse. Disordered women traditionally did not have that luxury and can't exactly shove all that into their husbands (normally) so they'll shove it onto their child instead. It's not just emotional garbage they discard and project, it's also physical, it's also their own actions..it's literally anything negative at all about themselves that gets shoved accusingly at the scapegoat, so they take the blame, shame, and accountability for what the pathetic, weak charactered cluster B cannot. They're happy to have a child carry their burdens for them. Being abusive is like a burp to them, they feel better afterwards. They're the most toxic, gaseous individuals ever, if we're following this analogy - and rather than seeking treatment or learning how to handle their own emotions - they blast them out onto an innocent other. They actually feel entitled to do this, that because the feel bad, or feel pressure or discomfort, it MUST be from an outside source, since THEY are so superior. It can't possibly be theirs to deal with, from them. No, no.
ReplyDelete"A narcissistic parent or caregiver skillfully crafts a narrative where the scapegoat child is unjustly portrayed as the wrongdoer, a narrative that often takes root in the child’s early years. This calculated strategy serves the dual purpose of eliciting sympathy not only from unwitting onlookers but also from within the family itself. Its primary function is to redirect attention away from the actual issues, which are unrelated to the child and deeply rooted in the narcissistic parent’s emotional dysregulation, an unwillingness to acknowledge personal shortcomings, an unrelenting need to project pent-up frustrations onto an external target, and at times, an effort to conceal their own addiction to narcissistic supply, which is a compulsive desire for attention, validation, and control over others. ... " I've seen it stated here before that the abuse is an ADDICTION for the abuser, where they MUST on a daily basis funnel their frustrations onto an outside person...because they can't handle their own crap. They can't even acknowlege that it IS their own emotional states, mind sets, actions that they are dealing with. Or shall I say, "not dealing with." It's their addiction to shove their undesirable negative states/ideas/frustrations into another person, with the same speed and frequency as they arise within them. They can't hold an uncomfortable feeling or idea or responsibility for even a second, let alone have the wherewithal to DEAL with it. All the smearing, false narratives, and scapegoating is to conceal and coverup their addiction. That the are failed, pathetic, weak willed, weak individuals that can't really handle anything. No adversity or responsibility or feeling is too small for them to shove down someone else's being. They might as well have a giant sign on their foreheads that wails "I CAN'T DEAL WITH ANYTHING...I SHOVE IT ON YOU INSTEAD!" Consequences are for lesser beings. They're just smart enough to know they would feel shame if the public found out how far they go to conceal their addiction. So they set out to frame, to discredit, to tarnish the reputation of the one's they've used as their personal garbage can (abused). But it's still a double bind because even if their victims never betry their secrets, no matter how much they go along, they'll always be resented for existing becuse their very existence is still a potential threat to their reputation, to their social standing, to their facade. Even if that threat is simply a reminder to the abuser himself of who they really are.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the incident with the grown adult attributing (projecting?) negative thoughts/intents to you as a toddler. Disturbing, indeed. I was 1 1/2 - 2 years old and my mother would just grip me by the shoulders and shake, shake, shake whilst spewing out hatefully that I was evil and she wished I would go off with my father and "Die, die, die! Go to hell with your father!!!" She'd tell me I was evil and a bitch. From as early as I can remember. I just let her have her way with me and waited until her episodes were over. Until she felt her rage sufficiently cast out of her. But she wasn't a narcissist, she was a bipolar, bpd. Probably also had hormonal problems on top of that (having experienced several miscarriages). Clearly, she couldn't handle having children, but she just kept having them. This was a very overwhelmed, stressed out woman, and it was no picnic dealing with my father, I assure you. In between her ups and downs (between the violent rages and self-pitying depressions, the zany manic happiness -all taking place several times within the same day, mind you, on repeat - she could be empathetic, playful, at least TRYING to be an adult woman mother. But like my father, she couldn't acknowledge the bad things she said and did. She always had to project. Because in her belief system, she was NEVER WRONG. Period. She was perfect. And how dare she be asked to deal with anything. If she was feeling jealous of her daughter, she'd say her daughter was jealous of her (and start slapping and shaking me). If she felt attention wasn't going her way adequately, then in her mind I "stole" it from her. If she was throwing a tantrum as a grown adult, she'd wail that I was "bad" or "evil" or "difficult." If she didn't want to keep house or cook, she'd scream at her child for not handling it all, she'd hurl dishes at me if she didn't want to cook for her family. This all started when I was a toddler. She wasn't horrific all the time. In between her episodes (which were several times a day, unfortunately) she could be kind. I witnessed her being empathetic towards others in a way my father never was capable of. But she always had to pretend/believe away what she said and did. Always denied it. My job was to go along and pretend too, or else she'd become abusive again. However, she'd become abusive again no matter what I did or didn't do. Her volatility was all over the place. Had she been medicated, I think 2/3 of the problem would have been solved. But there remains a part of her, perhaps the bpd side, that just can't own her own negative emotions. She HAS to project them outside of herself. She HAS to believe someone else is doing it to her, rather than just experience her own emotion and have mastery over it, or at the very least realize it's her own emotion, like everyone else over the age of 5 has learned to do. It's not just narcissists and sociopaths that need people as a punching bag for their unwanted feelings/aspects. Whether by deliberate choice or unconscious immaturity, there are multiple personality types that end up abusing others because they simply WILL NOT accept "sh.." that is theirs to deal with. They need a punching bad for their frustrations, to funnel all their imperfections and unwanted responsibilities into. Yes, they even want you to be responsible for THEIR EMOTIONS. Especially, that.
ReplyDeleteBoth of my parents were highly catered to in their families. Treated as special, not ever having experienced parental discipline. Their parents each had different reasons for that; my father came from a wealthy hands off family (let the nannies raise them, send them to private schools, expensive camps) and were rather old when they had him. My mother was the only girl child, and in some sense the only child for awhile, as her brother was quite a bit older than her. Her parents spoiled her and doted, not out of neglect but because my grandfather grew up with a mean drunk of a father, and overcompensated by being overly nice and indulgent with his own daughter. My grandmother was super sweet and doting, doing all the chores for my mother even into her elderly last years. I'm just saying, no one ever held them accountable for anything, not even for things as basic as their own emotions. Tantrums? Soothe them, cater to their every whim, instantly. As a result they grew up unable to process, regulate, or even recognize their own emotions (at least not the less than wonderful ones). Little everyday things like the occassional discomfort or boredom, stress, or responsibility are intolerable to them. But they know enough to keep the tantrums behind closed doors, to maintain an outward facing facade that is the polar opposite of the way they are when they let their hair down and behave like themselves. In a sense, I've viewed them, and all those like them, as very immature babies or toddlers in adult bodies, with adult minds. But baby emotional and character level development. Lacking essential skills to make it as an adult. Yet excelling at one key to success, which is ACTING with an adult persona/facade when outside eyes are upon them. Performance artists. That skill alone, has helped them, in many situations succeed in the public eye. Sucking up to the right people. When the keep it together for just a little bit of time whilst interacting with others outside the home, that got them very far in life. If any dysfunction outsiders may get a whiff of, they can just suavely blame on their child. They've had immense practice at it, and are so convincing because they've convinced themselves first.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your story! It's a helpful story for other readers to see too.
DeleteWhether BPD, bipolar, narcissistic or sociopathic, the scapegoating is all very similar, because scapegoating is similar. Although scapegoating is not as common for BPD as for NPD or ASPD because of the ability for BPD to empathize and have remorse for their actions (usually), it obviously still happened in your life.
Although scapegoating can happen in all kinds of families, I'm finding it more in socio-economically challenged families and in wealthy families, and I'm also finding it more rare in middle class families where child welfare comes first and is shared family-wide.
In my studies on power and wealth, power can cause significant empathy deficits as well as unwanted and unnecessary aggression, so it is no surprise there. In poor families, the lack of parental oversight (because of having to work long days or several jobs in order to provide the basic necessities), there aren't role models teaching them emotional regulation, intellectual regulation, empathy, and other skills needed to survive in relationships of all kinds.
Entitlement to get their own way all of the time, without self reflection, is definitely arrested development. They never learned how to play fairly or compromise on anything - and we can see that either economic privilege and economic hardship could cause that.
It's an argument against severe wealth disparity, particularly since times of wealth disparity, the probability for revolution and destabilization goes up, often followed by violence, political extremists, and lots of civil unrest by people who feel oppressed by their own government, or the policies of their own government.
The tyrant types of extremists often come from wealthy families who practice wealth disparity on their own children, putting one child on the throne, and trying to push the other in the gutter, or poor children who grow up in environments where there was little parental supervision, being vulnerable to street violence, mass scapegoating, petty thievery, war, armed robbery, rape and other crimes.
Anyway, families who practice scapegoating and pedestalling are a danger for all of society.
I'm really glad you wrote this post. Around 90 percent not getting an inheritance or a small portion means that I have some decisions to make as to how I'm going to proceed with the rest of my life. It's doubtful I'll ever be welcomed back into the family, right?
ReplyDeleteIt seems like whether you get an inheritance rests on how much empathy a particular narcissist has. Can it be said that the least empathetic among these narcissists give nothing at all to their scapegoat or only one dollar, and the slightly more empathetic give something, even if it might not match the rest of the siblings?
You are welcome.
DeleteYou asked: "It's doubtful I'll ever be welcomed back into the family, right?" I don't see scapegoats being welcomed back, and I don't see many scapegoats asking to be part of the family again either. Successful scapegoats can be asked back for obvious reasons (too far out of a scapegoat role). Sometimes scapegoats are welcomed back when the golden child slips up or dies. At this point in my life, I doubt they are ever welcomed back for good reasons at all.
"Can it be said that the least empathetic among these narcissists give nothing at all to their scapegoat or only one dollar, and the slightly more empathetic give something, even if it might not match the rest of the siblings?" That's a very interesting question, but I don't know the answer. I would suspect the least empathetic narcissists would leave their scapegoat entirely out, and the ones with low empathy might leave them a little something.
You are right that narcissist's Wills and Estates are not decided via empathy. They simply can't be when empathy is either extremely low or not there at all. The Will is decided by the things narcissists have always been known for: triangulation, whether people accept the roles narcissists want to give them, wanting people to fight over them and their money (and not caring about the dangers this presents), and so on.
They will punish you for leaving in the first place, and drain you dry as a caretaker. I know mine wanted me poor long ago. She used to rub her having money in my face bragging about vacations and purchases they all did. They'll never share with the scapegoat trust me on that. I don't want mine back even if they came apologizing which I know will never happen.
DeletePeep said: "They will punish you for leaving in the first place" - and they will punish you if they were the one who rejected you. It's a complete double bind head game too, and possibly planned so that if you attempt to go back, they tell you they don't want you, and if you stay away they go on forever about how their child went "no contact." We know this is "no win" - assuring the scapegoat is set up to "lose" no matter which way they go.
DeletePeep also said: "... and drain you dry as a caretaker" - another very probable losing proposition filled with head games that the caretaking is "not good enough", therefore setting you up to lose at that too. I've seen that story over, and over, and over again.
It's similar to the story in childhood where the golden child makes a "B" in a course and is praised up and down for it, and the scapegoat gets a "B" at the same course and is admonished for it: "That's terrible! You could have done better!"
The drumbeat is lose, lose, lose, no matter what you do and how hard a scapegoat tries. It's like in Peanuts where Lucy takes the football away from Charlie Brown again and again even when she promises to not take it away. While Charlie Brown is willing to land on his back by such tactics over and over again, 90 percent are not willing.
And when the scapegoating is about something like being a woman, or disabled, trying to twist yourself into a pleaser puppet won't work, no matter what.
500 Hundred Peep, I realize what you are saying. I think I have cognitively come to the conclusion that dealing with my family is hopeless but not emotionally yet. I think that is a natural progression, isn't it? Where your mind loses hope, but where your emotions haven't caught up with your mind yet? Even if the emotions are going the way the mind has gone, just more slowly.
DeleteI realize that if I was invited back, I don't know what I would do in my present state of emotions. Part of inviting me back would entail that I deal with an uncle and expect to have no boundaries of saying no or of being safe from him. You have to give up your entire family just to be safe from one uncle. That's what it looks like. But I still love people in my family. They will probably not love me after a while because of the smear campaigns. I don't see that my life will improve by going back, but the emotions are still raw. This is very hard. If I had no emotions and didn't care, I could just leave and claim them all to be monsters. Some of them may be like monsters in the end of this process, but I'm not there yet. I may be thinking of them as monsters if they keep trying to hurt me. I will see.
And Lise, I understand what you are saying about Lucy and the football. That is why I took a step away from "the Lucy" in my life in the first place.
I can relate to what is being said in the post and in the comments.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was an enabler to my father, but she was also beaten down and treated like dirt under his feet. She died before he did. I always thought of her as a sweet mother, but she enabled him, so his abuse went unchecked.
He was raging constantly, especially in front of us. He felt ultra entitled to receive what ever he wanted from us, whether it was good for us or not. Mt two brothers tried hard to please him, but fell under addiction. They had no kids, barely had girlfriends, devoted their lives to pleasing him even when they couldn't please, while I worked hard, stayed away from alcohol, and had some really great children.
The bastard left my two alcoholic brothers his entire estate, and me and my kids completely out. So much for being the good responsible daughter. My two brothers were way worse than my raging father at scapegoating me. I was always to blame for their drinking, their tempers, for getting hit by them, for everything. While I didn't break contact all together, I could only take one of them at a time. My brothers were bad for my kids. So I met with my father at a diner once a month, and paid the bill.
So you know what his inheritance has gone to? His house which my brothers took over is filled with filth, beer cans, vomit, poop from animals, hanging bats in the attic. I never saw it, but I have pictures from my brothers friend.
Narcissists don't seem all that smart. If I had inherited the house, I would have kept things in good order and handed them down to the next generation. While I am angry at my father for not taking into account what "his inheritance" was going to (filth, endless alcohol, ruined furniture, ruined heirlooms and more addiction), I am most angry and sad that scapegoating me was so important to all of the males in my family they lost sight of who they were really hurting in the end.
You point out flaws in the laws for scapegoats. So, am I to understand that child protective services can remove a scapegoat from a family, but once you are grown, you have no protections? That you have to show attempt at reconciliation except in the case of advice from a mental health practitioner that you should go "no contact"?
ReplyDeleteWhy would there be a law in the first place that puts the burden of reconciliation with the abused? We don't expect citizens who have been robbed to reconcile and apologize to their robbers. It makes no sense.
Exactly. Even lawyers see that the present laws are flawed.
DeleteJust because they are laws, doesn't make them right. Jim Crow laws said that segregation based on race was acceptable - we know that law was wrong.
And I bet laws like that led to all kinds of other prejudices in people of that generation. Scapegoating is basically prejudice. It's still the same "be subservient", "be submissive", "conform to what I want", "You're inferior to ---", "You, the underling, is not accepted into this social group" that the Jim Crow law was about.
If a government allows laws to be made around prejudice, a lot of people are going to take advantage of it in all kinds of ways. "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile".
I had two relatives tell me I was disinherited before I went NC, I was going NC anyway. None of these relatives defended me, and laughed along with my mother when she joked at a gathering how she was cutting me and my brother out of the will and giving it all to my sister. My grandmother who never defended me either, said, "Don't look to your mother to take care of you" [well none of them ever cared for or about me]
ReplyDeleteMy mother made my sister the executor of her will about 15 years ago, it's funny my GC sister called me up one day, and bragged that she had been made the executor and my mother had given her a copy of the will. I said, "can I see it?" I wanted to see if I was cut out. She refused to show me no matter how I asked. I knew the fix was in. My family is well off [6 figures plus]
My household is imploding in poverty, I am trying to rescue us from homelessness and hopefully will get a subsidized apartment soon but I have to revamp my whole life and start over. I have a lot of sadness about this lately, so much has been ruined. Scapegoats are often put into poverty and disinherited. They sabotage us to make us poor. My mother got other relatives 6 figure and middle class jobs right out of college or high school. Thanks for your great article Lise.
Hi Peep,
DeleteYou said, "Scapegoats are often put into poverty and disinherited. They sabotage us to make us poor. My mother got other relatives 6 figure and middle class jobs right out of college or high school." - so true. I think we both know a lot of people who have lived this ... a lifetime of blaming, shaming and rejecting, and then poverty. Often a lot of abuse too.
I'm so sorry.
Narcissists who love misery-making is why there are 90 percent who go "no contact".
It seems sadistic that your sister wouldn't tell you, but then again she might have been coached not to tell. Many of these kinds of parents seem like they want the disinheritance to be a shocking, hurtful surprise, but it isn't - it's common, even with scapegoats who never leave, and take on the bulk of family duties.
I think we know too many scapegoats who end up in poverty, that it is extremely common, but the fact that it is common doesn't make it right.
For some reason, Your other comment did not publish, but I will copy and paste it, so that it is part of the discussion.
Ooops, Peeps, I just saw your comment above in an imbedded section, so it published.
DeleteI can really relate to this. As soon as I was an adult, I was constantly threatened by both of my parents that I wouldn't get included in their Will unless I did everything they wanted. While I wasn't rebellious, I had my own ideas of how I wanted to live my life, and it meant getting married and having children with the man of my dreams.
ReplyDeleteThey took me out of the Will. So be it. I did a perfectly natural thing. I grew up, got married, and had kids (and I might add they did this too, but somehow I'm not supposed to?).
As far as I can tell, I was the golden child, not a scapegoat. They practically wrote a script about how I was supposed to live. They considered me to be the only one who could do what they wanted and make them look good. My sister who is ten years younger and disabled is the scapegoat. She gets blamed a lot over what would seem to be excuses for my parents to ignore her.
Rotten parents!
Thanks for your story, Brenda!
DeleteThis story sounds very familiar.
Often golden children are expected to be enmeshed with the parents, and when you aren't, they tell you there will be consequences.
Narcissistic parents don't like their children growing up (it's part of narcissistic parenting). It's a crisis of power, control and influence for them.
I'm sorry you lived through this.