Movie Reviews: spotlighting survivors of abuse, survivors of toxic partners and families, survivors of alcoholic families

image by © Lise Winne

(please note, this page will be constantly updated as I write new reviews)

pg 1:
(click on movie name to be taken to the review)

Into the Wild -- a young man from an allegedly abusive family who has graduated from college, leaves on a two year adventure that neither his parents or sister know about.

August Osage County -- a toxic abusive family with substance abuse issues gathers for the disappearance and death of the patriarch.

pg 2:

Good Will Hunting -- a survivor of severe child abuse and parental abandonment is a genius janitor who works at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and ends up transcending his past through therapy and abilities to solve complicated math problems.

The Tudors (series) -- my pick among movies and series about how abusers act (narcissists, malignant narcissists and sociopaths). King Henry VIII of England rules with an iron fist, believes his words are divine, surrounds himself with other narcissists and sociopaths in the way of flattering servants, practices "idealize, devalue and discard" with his wives, has his wives banished or executed with trumped up charges, and is a serial bully both on the world stage and in his private life.

pg 3:

The Book of Esther (T.V. show: Law and Order, Special Victims Unit) -- a survivor of egregious child abuse tries to get free of her family and ends up with the Special Victims Unit, only to return to her family. Based loosely on the Turpin case.

pg 4:

Mommie Dearest -- The quintessential child abuse movie. A survivor of child abuse from a famous alcoholic movie star goes through life wondering if her mother loves her, and dealing with the fallout of her mother's unpredictable rages and narcissism.

Gaslight -- The movie that inspired the psychological manipulation game called "gaslighting" (a favorite game of narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths). A vulnerable young woman marries a man who tries to convince her that she is going insane, but his motivations are not what they seem.

pg 5:

Sleeping with the Enemy -- A domestic violence victim from Massachusetts tries to find a way out of her abusive situation by planning an escape (while fawning so as not to be suspect). She fakes her own death and takes up a new identity in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

pg. 6:

Maid -- A woman who is the victim of domestic abuse, leaves with her daughter only to find poverty, bureaucracy, an unsupportive challenging family situation, underpaid maid work that is disgusting or that constantly seems to squash her dreams of providing a better life for her daughter, bad luck, and a society who largely treats her needs and her child's needs as if they are invisible. 

pg. 7:

Series Review: Wilderness (Amazon Prime version in six episodes, 2023 -- A little girl grows up with a cheating father and marries someone who cheats on her too. During a dream trip of national parks, gazing on high mountaintops and cliffs, and hiking in the wilderness, she dreams of revenge, but there are unforeseen consequences for those revenges. 

DOCUMENTARY REVIEWS:

Jeffrey Epstein, Filthy Rich (Netflix) -- This four part series takes on sex trafficking and sexual abuse of underage girls: how they were trafficked to other powerful men (allegedly even government leaders), how they were silenced, the trauma they endured, the conspirators around them who condoned, normalized and pushed for the abuse. Gripping heartbreaking ending, with some hope.

Guardians Inc, Dirty Money Season 3, Episode 5 (Netflix) -- This series takes on the subject of forced and fraudulent guardians who sell all of an elder's assets without the consent of the elder, pockets the money, charges exorbitant fees, gets them declared incompetent (a ward of the state) by over-medicating, and isolates their victim, all with a wink-wink-nod-nod from corrupt judges and unscrupulous lawyers. A must-see.

Do people who have been brought up to abuse and be terrorists have a choice in their behavior?

cartoon, © 2016

all rights reserved

(for questions regarding use of images or contract an image for your next article

contact: LilacGroveGraphics (att) gmail.com)

I made this cartoon, but on this topic, despite what I have portrayed here, I have no idea!

But, I do have some thoughts on the matter.

If a child is brought up in a home where bullying of his scapegoat sibling is condoned by his sociopath or narcissistic parent, are his emotions and brain more or less permanently wired and conditioned to see that sibling as inferior and a convenient target to abuse? This topic might be good for a researcher to explore.

Some research has been done about parents who raise abusive narcissistic children. According to this article in the Washington Post, researchers Brad Bushman of Ohio State University, and Eddie Brummelman, a post-doctoral researcher at Holland's University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University, discovered that narcissism develops from being treated as superior to other children by parents. Here is an excerpt:

"I've been studying aggression for about 30 years ... and I've seen that the most harmful belief that a person can have is that they're superior to others. 'Men are better than women, my race is better than your race, my religion is superior to your religion.' When people believe they're better than other people, they act accordingly."

He and Brummelman wrote in this paper: "Narcissistic individuals feel superior to others, fantasize about personal successes, and believe they deserve special treatment. When they feel humiliated, they often lash out aggressively or even violently."

Let us take a look at the Kornegay family again as an instance of an allegedly over-valued child and an undervalued child living in the same household (I have talked about them before in many other blog posts). The golden child 16 year old son was allowed to discipline and abuse his 15 year old sister (who was kept in an empty room with a locked door with only a blanket and a bucket to pee in). Keeping her in a locked room is how she was punished by the parents, and the 16 year old was just following their orders, and believing in them about his stature (as being entitled and more favoritized than his sibling). The 16 year old was allowed to discipline and punish her in any way that he desired, especially when his parents were off on trips (which included verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse, including depriving her access to a bathroom, a kitchen, or any emotional or mental stimulation).

Could it be argued that the 16 year old was conditioned to believe he was doing the right thing, so that he always felt he was in the right no matter how much abuse he instigated? The impetus for his abuse was to control the scapegoat, to discipline her, to keep her contained and imprisoned so that she would accept her low stature, so that she would stop complaining and stop fighting for her freedom. Even as an adult, even with exposure to a doctrine in the greater society that bullying and abuse is wrong, would he have really believed that it was wrong, especially if his parents told him he was not wrong, ever?

The problem with reactions to abuse in the present day is that many family members (cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, children and siblings) often have the attitude that familial abuse is a private matter that should be decided within the family, and that it does not concern them, and that they should stay out of it. They often also condone and take part in abusing scapegoat(s) too, especially if the authority figures of a family can convince other relatives that the scapegoating and isolating of their family member is necessary, if they can convince others that the scapegoat(s) are crazy and/or bad and/or deserve abuse. So the bullying becomes a nightmare for the victim. It is a wonder that suicide rates aren't higher (most prisoners live on self-generated fumes of hope for awhile, including victims of abuse, so that may be the reason for why suicide rates aren't higher).

Abusive families can even have liberal agendas. Some of these families espouse being against domestic violence, but not when it comes to their own homes and how they punish their children. They will say that terrorism is evil, that the people in those organizations are bigoted and ignorant, but when it comes to their own child, they are bigoted and treat them like a slave or an outsider, i.e. as "not good enough", or only good enough to bully. I have heard abusive people even say "these terrorists should" automatically and magically "wake up to the fact that violence is not the answer for our species or the planet," and yet at home they partake in violent aggression and scapegoating of a child or other family member.

The truth is, they may not deserve a peaceful world or a peaceful life if they can't make it happen in their own homes with their own families. Perhaps they can't stop the tide of violence and abuse in their homes any better than the terrorists can stop acts of terrorism, acts of war, and taunting towards nations, races or ethnically diverse groups.

I generally refer to the kinds of hypocrites that talk of peace, but condone family scapegoating, as the "they should people". These are folks who go around and say, "They should be stemming violence at these rallies", "They should do something about our neighbor selling drugs", "They should be patrolling our streets more often", "They should let women have the choice about what to do with their own bodies", "They shouldn't be giving food stamps to just anyone; there needs to be an application process which is heavily vetted" (and guess what: in order to get food stamps there is a lengthy application process and it is heavily monitored and vetted, but some of these people don't care that they made factual errors .... the more important part of their message is the they part, the theys being those amorphous authority figures that are in charge of decisions and laws making the world and civilization a certain way). And, of course, I always love: "They should be doing more to put an end to domestic violence" (and yes, abusers say it with a straight face, and even go into detail about how they need to pass better legislation for victims, and it is shocking to hear it!).

One of the reasons why most abusers cannot tolerate therapy (only one quarter of one percent enroll in domestic violence therapy voluntarily -- most domestic abuse offenders who go to therapy are court-ordered), is that they are deathly afraid of shame and their own hypocrisy. Instead of dealing with shame and hypocrisy, they take the tack of blaming their victims instead: the he made me do it desperate and not-believable explanations and defense mechanisms. The reason why they run so fast away from their victims, giving them the silent treatment and spending an inordinate amount of time smearing their victims' reputations, is to make sure that they will not feel any shame at all for what they have done, or their part in it. It is simply easier for them to get rid of their victims (and yes, this does and can include their own children), and to pretend that they are the victims instead, and lie, manipulate and make up stories, all in order to keep the big bad shame monster away from them. Everything is sacrificed so that they do not have to own up to how they treated, and still treat others.

Eventually their narcissism grows so sick and so deep and so entrenched that they actually get happy and smug that they have hurt so many people and, most of all, gotten away with it so many times. They can be extremely bitter old people whose narcissism and abusiveness has gotten much worse -- the overwhelming trend.

Many abusers insist that ending a relationship with their victim, and subsequently living with the constant paranoia at being found out about their true natures is much more preferable than working things out with their victims. If you know of parents who ostracized their child over something trivial (like breaking a vase by accident, or of not being available for babysitting for a week because they had rehearsals for a school play, or of breaking a curfew once, or of unintentionally hurting their parent over a sentence), then this is what is going on, partly. The other part of the picture is that they feel ostracized children will be learning "Don't you ever cross me, or else" kinds of lessons that abusers are famous for. They also believe their ostracized victims should be making amends to them, giving into them, trying to ameliorate the ostracism by behaving ("behaving" often meaning willing to tolerate more and worse abuse just to be a member of the family).

If they take their ostracized children back without their children doing the beg, the plead, the "please forgive me" dance, most often it IS NOT because they feel badly about abusing their child, it is purely to save face. Most of their friends and family know that ostracizing a child who is normal, out in the workplace without addictions or a criminal record, or pursuing an education, is usually about toxic parents that abuse. Sometimes the narcissists are caught at a lie, or making up a story, or their children are speaking out, or their children or a spouse runs into one of the narcissist's friends and tells the horrible story of what the parent did (and it can't be covered up with a lie because so many people are telling the same story), that is the point where the narcissists try to do damage control, because their reputations are at stake. Even if they feel they can cover their tracks, they know people will be looking at them suspiciously. A child talking about favoritism and sibling abuse is a nightmare enough (and many scapegoats of narcissistic parents get ostracized for even making mention of the subject), but a child talking about child abuse is their worse nightmare!

This happens even on a larger scale.

Etsy, a large publicly traded company who hosts mostly sole entrepreneur sellers of handmade, fine art, supplies and vintage, seemingly couldn't stand all of the bad press in major publications that resulted in many, many sellers speaking out against the company. The company muted so many of its sellers in its public forums from even hinting about Etsy's arbitrary rules about what constituted handmade (and the company's hypocrisies in this regard). In fact, it was argued by many of the sellers, that the venue gave certain sellers who were, in effect, "forum flying monkeys and cupcakes" who went along with every Etsy policy and change, no matter how bad, preferential treatment (favoritism) in the way of features, front page exposure and top press exposure. So, thousands of sellers were muted in the forums and banned from the site for talking about these issues. So, many of these sellers tried another avenue: they banded together to speak out against Etsy in major publications instead, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Regretsy, and many others. This, in turn, caused Etsy to lose credibility with both sellers and buyers, and their business started floundering. Shortly afterwards, Etsy set up "seller teams" which were open to even the muted sellers, but were "private" from buyers and potential sellers, in order to contain the dissension and complaining within its own company (this was the cynical view by many of its sellers, anyway). The sellers' favorite phrase, in fact, within these teams was that "Etsy would prefer us to piss and moan inside the tent, so long as it stays in these private teams, than outside the tent where all of the world can see it and the big publications can run with it."

I think families do this with their ostracized abused members eventually too, and for the same reasons.

So, the ostracized member is most often NOT taken back into the family for the right reasons (love); they are taken back because the shunned member is embarrassing to them and creating embarrassment about them as well. It is rare for narcissists to take back ostracized children unless their child is getting uncomfortably successful for them (they have had the attitude that their scapegoats aren't supposed to be successful, after all; they are supposed to be poor, hungry, hurting, groveling and grieving) or unless their scapegoat is giving the family a bad rap (this can especially be of concern if there are other ostracized members and in-laws who see the evil, hear the evil, and speak about the evil they saw and heard, i.e. backing up the scapegoats with the same stories about abuse).

So, if you are being taken back into the family fold, look at the circumstances of your return first. I would bet it has to do with exposure. I would also bet the furthest thing from these abusers' minds is loving. No, if anything, it is how to be ever more clever so that they can get away with more underhanded not-as-easily-detected abuses, abuses that are nauseatingly transparent, as retaliation over their abused members exposing them. It is probably about hiding the abuse better too. Remember: most abusers don't go to therapy voluntarily, and they never admit to hurting others (unless it is for show).

Licensed therapist, Josephine Ferraro, wrote an excellent piece about why clients who feel shame end therapy sessions abruptly (and mostly she talks about victims of abuse carrying around shame, so you can imagine why perpetrators cannot stand living with shame in therapy for even a milli-second). 
 
So anyway, many liberal families who abuse their children act just like Etsy in this regard. They believe in liberal causes like Civil Rights, Women's Liberation, health insurance for all, peace, safeguarding democracy, Domestic Violence awareness (possibly to hide who they really are), but live a duplicitous life by abusing their children, or a child, mercilessly behind closed doors.

Which brings me to my next question:  

If a child is brought up in a terrorist organization and taught to kill infidels or the citizens of neighboring countries with a lot of military and weapons training, does the child have any real choice when he becomes an adult? Can he really think that terrorism is wrong and have the forethought to know that terrorism brings devastation to those who are targets of terrorism and those who practice terrorism? If all he knows is that infidels or the citizens of another country are inferior to him and must be killed, can his mind really entertain other, more contrary thoughts? Is he really capable of moderate, reasonable thinking and reactions? What if he is assured everlasting life, twenty virgins, a place in the leadership for his terrorist activities? Does he feel he has anything to lose by being a soldier of his organization's righteousness?

If there really is no choice for children who have been raised to be golden child bullies and abusers and/or golden child soldiers of terrorist organizations, it means that the brain is more of a computer than an explorer and researcher, more intransigent than investigative.

Even Christ realized that the people who were executing and torturing him did not know what they were really doing ("forgive them for they do not know what they are doing" -- Luke 23:34). His persecutors were taught to hate and torture. He realized the executioners job was just a job, that there was no real enlightenment or understanding behind it. Indeed, none of the people who put Christ to death really knew Christ or made a rational, understanding, unbiased decision. Even though Christ's doctrine has been out there for 2,000 years and counting, most people, I am convinced, still do not understand him and his word. Too many people have twisted his words and intentions, such as "thou shalt not kill", as justification to kill. They think that Christ would make exceptions, that he might order killing in a just war, or order abuse in a troubled household. They think that Christ would condone violent actions in some situations rather than oppose them.

Are you kidding me? Nothing, absolutely nothing, he said condoned war, abuse or terrorism. How arrogant to think that he would rubber stamp all of the wars, or the present war, in his name! One thing about arrogance is that it can turn people into narcissists and sociopaths who think they are better than their victims.

It is my contention that Christ, even with followers, was a scapegoat for irrational rage and hatred. And did we human beings pay for it! And we are still paying for it as one war after another, after another, after another, with no rest for the earth and its living creatures, is instigated for the sake of religion.

I believe that most scapegoats come to the conclusion that Christ did: that people do not know what they are doing when they hate. And believe me, scapegoats can go through feelings of anger and hatred just as much as the perpetrators do, but they don't let it take over their heart and their thinking (usually). They can be especially angry over all of the injustice they are put through, but their reactions in dealing with their anger are night-and-day different from their abusers (usually). Unlike the haters who torture others as a pastime or job they think they are entitled to perform, and where obtaining new narcissistic supply for their hatred is just part of their game plan, the scapegoat leaves the field of battle because he does not want to feel hatred. It is my contention that he does not leave the battlefield because he is hated; it is because he does not want to feel hatred, and to be living in battlefields. He already knows that the hatred that is being lobbed at him over endless inconsequential controlling tactics from his perpetrator(s) is irrational. The real issue is that scapegoats do not want to resemble their perpetrators at all: they just don't want to go around in life filled up with hatred, scheming retaliations, letting hatred define all of their movements throughout life the way perpetrators do. Most scapegoats, I have found, are most interested in doing work that helps others. They might pursue legal avenues, restraining orders and the like, to keep perpetrators from seeking any more ways to hurt them, or from hurting others. In other words, it is not a measure for revenge, but a setting up of boundaries. Unlike perpetrators, other people are not an obsession: scapegoats don't tend to think about "people manipulations". Survivors don't want to spend their lives being punitive, petty and "stupid" carrying around hatred in their bodies, minds and souls. They know first-hand what the perpetrators of hatred do to victims who are hated, so getting hatred out of the body and soul can be the primary focus and motivation of setting up boundaries and going "no contact" to safeguard against any more abuse. These are good reasons for going no contact, unlike narcissists who use the silent treatment. Narcissists silent treatments are about manipulating people and punishing those people who refuse to be manipulated. Going no contact, however, is a response to abuse, a protection from abuse, and a protection from one's children learning from abusers, and being around manipulation and abuse.

So scapegoats and refugees of violent dictatorships seek ways to avoid the abusers and terrorists: they leave their families; they leave their countries. They move to places where they can live in peace and not be tortured. Most scapegoats come to the realization and conclusion that hatred, lack of empathy and lack of deep rational thinking (stupidity) are one and the same.

Hatred is blind. Once hatred takes hold (overwhelming the emotions to the point where it takes over its host with irrational decision-making), perhaps that is when the brain becomes incapable of new ideas. A moderate ordered peaceful mind and the "thinking" that is required to make situations peaceful, is deeply compromised to make room for all of that rage. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I believe that narcissists generally and often experience so much rage that it is the only thing left in their minds, hearts and bodies: it has completely and utterly taken over them to the point where nothing else can be felt, and no other thought can get in. These aren't generally people who solve problems or compromise, so it must be. Instead, they make many more problems for themselves, as well as for others. And they never have a creative solution to an interpersonal problem they are encountering with another person. The silent treatment or attacking is the only thing most of them understand and use. Which is to say, their method of solving interpersonal conflicts and issues is quitting (they are, by and large, quitters in areas of their lives that are not working out exactly as they want, not just in relationships). So, it would stand to reason that their systems are mostly full of rage and hatred.

Hatred is myopic, hard hearted, unpopular and throw-back. It is emotional, and not thinking. It is irrational, and not expansive or enlightened. It's bed-fellow is often fear, envy, selfishness, greed and anger.  There is a reason why Jesus, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, William Wallace, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, Crazy Horse, Spartacus, Mandela and Moses are looked upon with reverence.  

When we are taught as children to hate (whether it be a sibling, a race, or group of people), and taught to view them as outsiders who need to be punished, abused, ruled and isolated, are we risking the longevity of our own species? I would say yes, but this is a blind guess, not backed up with research.

These are important questions. The answers lie not only in education, but whether we have an ability to fight terrorism, bigotry, enslavement, family abuse, unnecessary wars, school bullying in an ever-crowded world with ever-more need and ever-more diversity. It is not a matter of who comes out on top and survives, it eventually becomes a matter of survival altogether, for all of us.

Further reading:

Erroneous Blaming and Erroneous Punishing is Abuse! -- my own post about how many abusers take their own perceptions of someone else's thoughts and feelings, and use it to punish. I believe this is at the heart of terrorism too, where people's skin or a religious persuasion is used as an excuse to start a war (punish)

Toxic family values stem from Great-Grandparents life experiences -- from the Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Flying Monkeys -- Oh My! blog

Further reading on the present political climate in terms of narcissism, scapegoating (bigoted policies) and abuse:

America's Agitator: Donald Trump Is the World's Most Dangerous Man -- from Spiegel Online International, a German publication

Some Excerpts:

* On his narcissism:
 Those who have experienced this man's temperament know just how thin-skinned and aggressive Trump can be when criticized or provoked, and how mercilessly and excessively he pursues revenge. 

* On his scapegoating:
 Racism has since become a core element of his campaign, but it has only intensified in recent months. At first, Trump was only talking about the need to stop illegal immigrants. Only when he realized that this was what got him the most applause did he become more radical. In June, he said that Mexico is "bringing drugs, crime and rapists" to the United States, and that he would "build a great, great wall on our southern border," and "I will have Mexico pay for that wall!" He also announced that he would deport all 11 million illegal immigrants within two years.

* On his belief that he is superior (a "golden child", god-like) ... note: narcissism runs in families and is passed down through the generations:
 But what worried him the most, says D'Antonio, is Trump's belief that he is genetically superior to most people in the world. In all of their conversations, he notes, Trump kept returning to the notion that by virtue of his birth, he is simply better than other people ... 

... His son, Donald Trump Jr., shares his father's conviction. He said he was a firm believer in the concept of breeding, in "race-horse theory." Then he pointed at the ceiling with his finger, in the direction of his father's office. "He's an incredibly accomplished guy, my mother's incredibly accomplished, she's an Olympian, so I'd like to believe genetically I'm predisposed to (be) better than average."

* Lack of self reflection, the worst quality of narcissism:
 His biographer talks about the dark sides of Trump's self-absorption. "Trump lacks any self-irony, any form of critical self-perception." The entire family is like that, he explains. When he tried to joke with Trump's children about their father's penchant for gold and glitter in his buildings, none of them understood what he was getting at. "They don't notice when something is ridiculous," says D'Antonio. "This is the most telling characteristic of the entire Trump clan: the persistent denial of reflection."

* Enlisting bullies to take care of people who disagree with Trump's views:
 Almost every evening, Trump goads his supporters to shout down protestors or throw them out of his rallies. He often ridicules these individuals from the lectern. If one of them happens to be on the heavy side, he pokes fun at "that fat guy," which fans interpret as a signal -- that Trump won't mind if they get a little physical with the protester ...

... A study by pollster Matthew MacWilliams shows that what Trump's supporters have in common, more than anything else, is the desire for authority. MacWilliams asked people whether they preferred a respectful, obedient and well-behaved child or an independent and curious one. Those who tend to favor the former are seen as being authoritarian. Trump was the only candidate strongly favored by the respondents with authoritarian ideas.

* Trying to win over voters by making wild promises that are not spelled out, the main strategy being making arrogant statements and insulting his fellow Republicans, Jerry-Springer-show-style: 

Never before has the grand, time-honored Republican Party been as helpless and hapless as it is right now. The party's leadership had sought an establishment candidate like Jeb Bush or the younger Marco Rubio. But Trump?
"We are in total chaos," says Peter Wehner, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush. He says the Republicans are already divided and that a Trump candidacy could spell the end of the Grand Old Party. When Wehner talks about Trump, it sounds as if he's referring to the head of some dictatorship. "Trump is erratic. He is emotionally unstable, has authoritarian tendencies and a certain cruelty. He is a toxic figure, a demagogue. Trump would cause a lot of damage to the Republican Party. If he won the nomination it would be a hostile takeover. We must prevent it."

* Name-calling and verbal abuse (comparing refugees and migrants to animal species like snakes, pigs, rats, spiders, etc), another narcissistic trait not too endearing:
Bush, to his credit, never compared migrants to poisonous snakes -- something Trump did recently at a rally in Pensacola, Florida. Later that night, Trump addressed what has been one of his favorite topics lately: Europe's refugee crisis. "Just talk to the folks over in Germany," he said. "Europe is being destroyed."
When he puts on his reading glasses, the audience goes quiet. "Just listen to this," he says, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. He printed out the lyrics to "The Snake," an old soul hit from Al Wilson. The song is about a snake, half frozen from the cold, that asks a woman to be let inside. The woman takes pity on the animal and holds it to her bosom, upon which the snake bites and poisons her.
Trump reads the lyrics aloud passionately, as if he were auditioning for a role. "Oh, shut up silly woman," he says, imitating the snake: "You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in." The crowd cheers. They're over the moon. Trump just stares back at them. "We're gonna get bit."

A Washington Post Article on a scientific study about child rearing that predicts voters for Trump -- voters for Trump overwhelmingly want children who are "obedient" and do what they are told by authoritarian figures, as opposed to parents who want children to develop into thinking autonomous personalities with their own interests, insights, perspectives and trajectory.
Note: most victims of abuse prefer the latter, and raise their children that way too, because we have been scorched and burned too many times by the former. The problem with authoritarianism is that "authorities" who are abusive and inflammatory are a nightmare to those who live or think differently from the authoritarian figure. Dictators are so rigid in their prejudices against those who are "different" that it creates an immediate dichotomy: the "for" group and the "against" group, what revolutions are made of. In a country like the United States, known for its diversity, having a dictator who is inflammatory, bigoted and intolerant of other viewpoints will be a disaster for so many people.
I would bet that Trump, in the long run, will be remembered as the most hated president we have had in U.S. history. I will also predict that he goes down in history as being a ruthless dictator who tried to overturn democratic procedures. Trump believes he will be great for the nation and proclaims this over and over (and people latch onto his rhetoric and promises instead of his policies); however, just because Trump believes it, doesn't make it so.

Another article on Trump as narcissist by Bobby Azarian

Another perspective on why people who believe in authoritarianism are, by-and-large, voters for Trump by George Lakoff

In contrast, here is an article from CNN and Reverb Press that quoted Bernie Sanders, talking about his religion (and it is decidedly non-narcissistic, against bigotry, against looking at scapegoated refugees who are trying to run away from war and ruthless dictator as a problem):
Again, quote by Bernie Sanders:
Every great religion in the world -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism -- essentially comes down to: "Do unto others as you would have them undo to you" ...
... The truth is at some level when you hurt, when your children hurt, I hurt. I hurt. And when my kids hurt, you hurt. And it's very easy to turn our backs on kids who are hungry, or veterans who are sleeping out on the street, and we can develop a psyche, a psychology which is "I don't have to worry about them; all I'm gonna worry about is myself; I need to make another 5 billion dollars." ...
... So I believe that when we do the right thing, when we try to treat people with respect and dignity, when we say that that child who is hungry is my child ... I think we are more human when we do that, than when we say, "Hey, this whole world, I need more and more, I don't care about anyone else." That's my religion, that's what I believe in." 

I am not sure who this cartoon was made by (I found it on facebook).
If you know, please contact me and I will give credit here for this
insightful cartoon:

co-dependent no more in the abusive family

name of art: "Followers as Zombies"

image is © Lise Winne

digital art, 2015

(for questions regarding use of images or to contract an image for your next article

contact: LilacGroveGraphics (att) yahoo.com)

Someone asked me once what co-dependency meant. I told them that in short, it is a dependency on a dysfunctional unhealthy relationship or person. However, that is a simplistic version. For the sake of better clarification, I'll focus on an encyclopedic meaning (from Wikipedia):

Codependent relationships are a type of dysfunctional helping relationship where one person supports or enables another person's addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.[1] Among the core characteristics of codependency, the most common theme is an excessive reliance on other people for approval and identity.[1] ...

... In its broadest definition, a codependent is someone who cannot function from their innate self and whose thinking and behavior is instead organized around another person ...

... Codependency has been referred to as the disease of a lost self.[12][17] Codependent relationships are marked by intimacy problems, dependency, control (including caretaking) denial, dysfunctional communication and boundaries, and high reactivity ...

The article also talks about what it is like to be a co-dependent of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (two disorders that show high rates of abusiveness -- and yes, alcoholism can mimic Narcissistic Personality Disorder).

I thought this post by Melanie Tonia Evans from her blog, described what it was like to live with a narcissistic abuser and how she eventually got free from it. And, by the way, all of the things that work in normal relationships like asking to be heard, arguing your points, pleading, expecting decency, expecting the other person to meet you half way, does not work in abusive relationships. In fact, sometimes the more you try to work at resolving conflicts, the more the abuser tries to continue to hurt you, and the more severe the PTSD symptoms become. Your emotions and your life unravels. The abuser gets a high from all of it, all the pain and anguish you are feeling (they looooove all this drama, after all: all of your fussing to be heard and considered, all of your working, all of your overtures, all of your efforts at understanding, all of your emotions, and compromising, and pleasing, and pleading -- it is just delicious for them and makes them feel sooooo self-important!). It is disgusting, but unfortunately, it is the way it is. Here is part of the post from Melanie Tonia Evans:

As with all narcissistic abuse the ex-narcissist targeted my weak spots, my unfinished business, profoundly ...

... But rather than accept how his many abusive behaviours were diminishing me piece by piece … I stayed, I argued, I prescribed, I lectured … I fought back ...

... And I stayed even though there was no change or resolution that ever lasted ...

... My reactions got worse and worse … and I didn’t realise that this was wonderful for a narcissist – it granted him tons of attention. The knowing that he existed and had the power to affect another human being so significantly ...

... All of this drama was keeping him distracted from his own tormented inner being and alive ...
... The more I was hooked onto trying to get him to change his behaviour, the more I lost the ability to detach and look after myself, and as a co-dependent I had never mastered this skill previous to him anyway ...

... In this severely dangerous state of me being separated from being anchored in my own body able to create my own sanity, safety and peace, he was able to swiftly pull out the rug from beneath me, with violent threats and actions, intimidation and or abandonment – with me not letting go ...


Co-dependent relief, I believe, comes from being with others who are willing to share the power with you. And believe me, relief after being through this kind of hell is the right word.

In musical band terminology, sharing power is called "not having an ego."

Egomaniacs are bad for bands because they jockey for attention away from the other performers in order to get the audience to have eyes on them. They often play too loudly, or take too many leads, or they try to play a lead line when someone else is playing a lead, or they dance too frenetically and bump into the other musicians, or they always want to play their songs. One of the reasons why bands break up or go through a lot of members is because of problems with egos. As Alison Krauss said in this interview by Piers Hernu about performing with her band, Union Station:

I’ve been working with Union Station for 26 years now and with all the differences in personality, not being family, being raised all over the country and having different tastes, it is amazing that we’ve stayed together. The secret to working with the same group of people for a long time is lack of ego – no one person rushes to the front and is self-serving.

All long term relationships are like Union Station.

Just as in a band, if your voice is being drowned out by one, two, three or more voices in an abusive family that desperately needs co-dependents, you aren't really part of that family except in your genes. Abused members of families tend not to have voices. Or, to take the band analogy, their voices are drowned out; it is like playing a quiet acoustic instrument like a harp with no sound reinforcement while one or more of the other members are blasting their sound with neon electric guitars through huge speakers. And by the way, the harp analogy is a good one because many of the victims of family violence tend to be doves (and doves flock together, and are the symbols of peace and co-operation). 

If you leave your family, your contributions, your expertise on your instrument won't be missed, because it was barely audible to begin with. You could be playing your heart out, and be superbly talented, and be playing along note for note, adding tasteful flourishes here and there, but no one notices, and furthermore, they don't care how talented you are because they are EGOs: they only care about showing off their own talent ("and by the way, don't listen to that harp player way in the back; she's a nobody"). If you are a family scapegoat and act up in the back with your harp, and try to bring attention to the fact that you have something to contribute, it will be like your family will put a glass box around you and your harp, contain you from breaking out of the soundless role they want you to fulfill and the glass box they have put you in (and yes, being in an abusive family makes you feel like a prisoner). Furthermore, the whole band will be told to stand in front of the glass box so that no one in the audience will see you. And often when the family is done performing for others, it will expect you to be a Cinderella and clean off the stage like a stage hand. If the family performance was less than stellar, they will tell you, the harpist, that it was all your fault that the family sucked in their performance and that the audience wasn't pleased. And by the way, sucked is the right word: abuse tends to be crude in its vocabulary. If they are really abusive they'll call you names, spit at you, and kick you around.

So part of breaking out of the family prison and co-dependent role is to find a band of like minds (like Union Station): a band of people whose members can take leads and then be in the background when someone else needs to take a lead. It takes awhile to build a family of choice, because it is not always easy to tell if someone is going to dominate the group, until you've played with them for awhile. Therapists generally suggest one or two years to assess the situation correctly.

It is the supporting professions and the helping professions where one finds the most team players, and the least egos. It is not always the case, but it is mostly the case.

So back to our harp analogy: harps do not really go in a band of loud obnoxious electric guitars anyway, even when they are more audible. So, if you are a scapegoat and leave your family, whether that is forced upon you through shunning or it is your voluntary decision, one of the first things you will feel is that you "didn't belong in that family anyway." You feel different from them. It's like you were born to the wrong species. The idea of them prancing around on stage like a bunch of peacock GODS competing for guitar riffs makes you feel disgusted, sick to your stomach. The audience is just as craven and unsophisticated as the band is: all those drugged glazed zombie eyes in the audience seem to think that just because something is loud, neon, screaming to be heard, and that when one of the players amps up the sound on his guitar, that it means the music is good. In fact, to any critic that happens to come around, it sounds like a discordant mess (and yes, a lot of toxic families are loud and discordant). There are always fist fights breaking out in the mosh pit. There are usually arrests and a lot of illegal substances. The audience they attract seems as out of control as the band. In fact, the members of the band are now all turning on each other, especially since they don't have the harpist to blame any more. It is almost like they needed that harpist to keep themselves unified. They fight amongst each other about who is better, they shout over each other to give each other advice and commands, they are all in disagreement about who needs to stay in the background, and who needs to clean up the bloody mess after the show! It is an angry, gnarly situation which is attracting negative attention from the press. Venues stop hiring the band because they bring trouble.

So, let's just say your new band of choice has a cellist, a classical guitarist, an acoustic bassist and a multi-instrumentalist who plays recorders, penny whistles and a flute. Your harp sounds exquisite with these instruments. The audience you play to might be smaller, but they are attentive, respectful, quiet (they want to hear your music after all, and not just get shit-faced and throw empty beer cans at the stage). The seats are more expensive too than they were for your foul family band, so in the end you are making more money with a whole let less stress. You actually can sleep better at night because your ears aren't buzzing from the after-effects of ungodly decibels, watching near-murders in the mosh pit, watching the egos bump into each other and give each other dirty looks when the audience seems to prefer one over the other. Most of all, your life seems more serene because you made a definite choice (because making choices in a voiceless, hopeless, desperately toxic-to-your-health situation makes you feel in control of yourself and your own life, and takes the control out of your prisoners' hands). The press says "Where has this talent been hiding out?" When the reporters find out, you tell them, with embarrassment, that you made a big mistake in thinking your past band was a good fit. Finally, you have arrived at the peace you deserved all your life, and all along (if only you had been confident enough to know that your voice should have been heard sooner ... so you see, this was the problem all along: your family taught you that you weren't worthy of being heard, that you only deserved to be in a small glass box, and ignored).

       

In a nutshell, you leave a co-dependent role by being independent of abusers and finding a family of choice. If it takes awhile, then you can work on it little by little until you can escape. 

And sometimes it feels just like an escape too: you might escape with no money, with just the clothes on your back; you might be in as much danger from your abusers as escapees from kidnappers; you might feel they will try to do their damnedest to give you bad press (slander you); you might feel they will never stop at trying to stuff you in that glass box again; you might feel that they'll try to make you comply with the same toxic family rules and guilt trips every time you bump into them (and to this I say that even many child sex molesters pummel their victims with guilt trips! -- yes, it is true); and they might always be scheming at how to effect you negatively. 

It sucks being in an abusive family and it is hell when you are co-dependent with a family like this. But like all hells, they are like caves: there will be a way out eventually, especially if you search for the light and work hard and intelligently for the escape route.

One reason why a family becomes a bullying family (using one scapegoat as its punching bag) usually has to do with co-narcissism, which I'll talk about in another post. Basically there are generations of narcissists: junior narcissist became a narcissist to survive the abusive tendencies he or she saw from senior narcissist(s). Often it is the favored golden child (or children) in a family who carry on the tradition of being narcissists and perpetuating narcissistic abuse for future generations. 

Being a family victim of co-narcissists is totally unendurable for most people. It is like any abusive relationship except it is x 2 (and sometimes x 3, or x 4, or more). Having one abusive spouse or parent is hard enough on most people. Being abused by a bunch of co-narcissists all drooling to take pot-shots at you is like a singular person trying to fight an army. Don't do it. Find a way to escape.

note:

If any of you are wondering, I do play the harp (a Celtic harp)

I also have a lot of dove paintings. Some are here in my Artfire shop.

also note: 

for more information on how I made the art/illustration above, 

I have written about that extensively on my art blog here.

I found this on the Baton Rouge Counseling Center website:

The article where I found this graphic has some good advice as well:

Codependency can be very difficult to deal with unless you seek qualified help and support. The good news is that through counseling, recovery literature, and support, these codependent patterns and their origins can be recognized, faced, and overcome.

This wonderful post by Annie Reneau is a love letter to parents who keep minimal or no contact with their abusive families in order to bring up their own children in loving homes without dysfunction and abuse. As the article says, it isn't easy for the parent to renounce their family, but your kids will thank you for it.

The silent treatment and complex PTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder)

name of art: "This is Your Brain on C-PTSD"

image is © Lise Winne

cartoon, 2015

(for questions regarding use of images or to contract an image for your next article

contact: LilacGroveGraphics (att) yahoo.com)

(Note, this blog is part of a series:

*The first post is The Silent Treatment is Abuse!,

*The second one is this post, The Silent Treatment and Complex PTSD,

*The third post is about Healing from the Silent Treatment)

As a Mandated Reporter for the State of New York, I am required by law to report signs of child abuse.

One of the biggies of child abuse detection is a parent giving a child the silent treatment or isolating a child away from family and/or friends for days, weeks or months. Another red flag is if the isolation of the child is being used as a punishment.

Make no mistake about it, long isolation periods that go on longer than a day or are repeatedly used for punishments are not "time-outs"; they are abuse.

The general rule for using a time-out is to apply the child's age as a gauge: for a 4 year old, the time-out should be no longer than 4 minutes, for a child of five, the time-out should be no longer than 5 minutes and so on. Time-outs should only be used to cool down (i.e. to decrease anger and rage in yourself or your child so that you can talk rationally about the issues that produced the conflict).

Time-outs should not be used to hurt a child, ever. Any time-out should also have a time-limit, i.e. "I will talk to you in ____ minutes."

Children who are repeatedly isolated and given the silent treatment can and do develop C-PTSD.

Ostracizing a child should never be practiced if you want a future relationship with your child. It is a relationship killer. Ostracized members of families feel like they don't belong to their families, that they are different (that's the reason they see themselves as black sheep: they don't fit in with the white sheep). They are not comfortable with their family, and what is more, they find their anxiety levels rising markedly when they are around their family. They find no comfort, no belonging, no support, no validation as a member, from their family. If a child experiences any form of severe trauma in the form of abuse from a parent or sibling, the child will always have some form of apprehension and pain relating to his family on some level. His family becomes a reminder of the pain he endured. This is especially true if other family members are used in the pursuit of ostracizing your child.

Like a family of crows that has lost one of their members to a hunter, the crows will avoid the hunter, as well as the field where the shooting took place. Humans also avoid people who hurt them and they generally do not like to go to places where they might be hurt again, or triggered (i.e. where it reminds them of the abuse). The more severe the trauma, and the longer the pain lasts, the more the avoidance behavior is set (permanent) in the victim when it comes to contact with their perpetrator.

When I talk about the silent treatment in this post, I am referring to prolonged silent treatments; i.e. silent treatments that go on for more than a day, or a few days, or are repeatedly used in order to bend someone to your will, in a close personal relationship.

A close personal relationship is defined as parent to child, child to parent, spouse to spouse, domestic partner to domestic partner and sibling to sibling.  Long time close friends who share a lot of intimate details of their lives and who spend time together one on one are also considered to be a close personal relationship.

From my own observations from being around hundreds of victims of abuse and from reading thousands of posts in abuse forums from victims of narcissistic silent treatments, is that the majority of the population finds they cannot tolerate relationships where they are subjected to the silent treatment (at all), especially if their perpetrators continually use it in conflict resolution, or prolong it over weeks, months or years.  It is also clear that most victims abandon perpetrators of the silent treatment.

Some terminology is in order here: narcissistic silent treatments are a prolonged silent treatment designed to punish the victim, usually over a slight or criticism, and they usually last a couple of weeks to a couple of months, though they can last for years or an entire life time. It is a form of abuse (psychological abuse designed to wear down a victim and get the victim to feel guilty, and emotional abuse designed to play on a victim's self esteem. The message is: "You're dead to me").

Silent treatments are almost always used in tandem with other kinds of abuse. All abuse tends to escalate, becoming more and more unbearable for the victim.

Victims of punishing silent treatments usually develop a particular kind of PTSD that is a bit different from other forms of it. As Pete Walker, therapist, author and director of a counseling center stated in this article, child victims of C-PTSD

... had suffered extreme emotional neglect: the kind of neglect where no caretaker was ever available for support, comfort or protection. No one liked them, welcomed them, or listened to them. No one had empathy for them, showed them warmth, or invited closeness. No one cared about what they thought, felt, did, wanted, or dreamed of. Such trauma victims learned early in life that no matter how hurt, alienated, or terrified they were, turning to a parent would actually exacerbate their experience of rejection.

The child who is abandoned in this way experiences the world as a terrifying place. I think about how humans were hunter-gatherers for most of our time on this planet—the child's survival and safety from predators during the first six years of life during these times depended on being in very close proximity to an adult. Children are wired to feel scared when left alone, and to cry and protest to alert their caretakers when they are. But when the caretakers turn their backs on such cries for help, the child is left to cope with a nightmarish inner world—the stuff of which emotional flashbacks are made.

Indeed, chronic silent treatments are abandonment. The victim's feelings, thoughts, experiences and dreams do not matter in the relationship. A long silent treatment is different from physical abuse in that it sends a different message. With physical abuse, the message is: I want to hurt you; I want you to be afraid of me; I want you to have bruises, scabs, scars and to feel tortured in some way. With a long silent treatment, the message is: I want to hurt you; I want you to be afraid of me; I don't care if you survive; I don't care about who you become or who you were in the past; I don't care about what you have to say or what your perspective is; I don't care if we have a relationship or whether I ever see you again; I don't care if you are hurt by this or of any kind of pain you experience in life; I don't care about what happens in your life whether good or bad; I don't love you; I don't care about any future births, deaths, weddings, funerals, awards, holidays, birthdays, graduations, new jobs, new friends, new learning experiences, moves to a different location, etc. The silent treatment sends the message that you are "worthless, a nobody" to the person who instigated it, whereas physical abuse tends more often than not to send a message that you are "somebody, but not much more important than a horse or a dog that needs to get whipped in order to make it comply."

Unlike physical scars that heal, the silent treatment wound stays with the victim day in and day out until the victim forges other meaningful relationships. Sometimes if the abuser shows mercy relatively early in the process, change is possible (but not too likely -- I discuss why in my post about How Dangerous is My Abuser).

In relationships where the perpetrator is a parent giving his child the silent treatment, the abuse usually is preceded by a lot of verbal abuse. Name-calling is used to separate the victim from the rest of his family (scapegoating). As with physical abuse, the point is to declare the victim sub-human, so the verbal abuse often includes comparing the victim to subhuman or animal species. As in Nazi Germany, once someone is deemed to be subhuman, the justification for abuse consumes the family agenda. Families use words like stupid, smelly, vile, crazy, useless, worthless, rat, goon, snake; their hate continually pours out onto the victim and increases in intensity. Victims are reviled no matter what their response is. What they say is interpreted in a dark way. In desperate situations, perpetrators will say the victim "looks disgusting" (as a way to further the agenda of being sub-human). Additionally almost all abusers use the "ungrateful" phrase, and seek to punish victims over interpreted feelings, thoughts, or "that look on your face". The point is to always interpret body and facial language in a dark way (erroneous blaming).

As abuse escalates to other forms of abuse (which at the very least usually includes slander), the symptoms of C-PTSD can become chronic, sometimes to the point where the victim becomes totally silent. C-PTSD from being the family scapegoat can be so severe and disabling that the scapegoat almost always feels better when he is away from his family. At the point where he realizes he has no voice, no justice, where he is living in a constant state of hypervigilence is when he begins to separate from his family.

An adult will exit by removing himself from the family and setting boundaries.

Children are a different matter, and the dependency on the adult has a great impact on the child's psychological welfare.  Some children react by keeping quiet, shutting down, being still and not interacting with the family. This can exacerbate abuse, as narcissistic perpetrators, in particular, have been known to interpret depression and shutting down in their victims as rejection and criticism (narcissists punish if they feel criticized or rejected). Some children react by making elaborate plans to run away, or ways to commit suicide. Some children react to isolation by play-acting with dolls or through creativity. Some children react by destroying their toys or furniture. Some children have revenge fantasies. Each child is different, but the danger is when the child shuts down altogether, or kills himself. He is likely to have terrible school grades too (Amygdala Hijacking).

(more on the recovery process in the next post of the series)

In relationships where a partner is using the silent treatment against another partner, the point of the silent treatment is the same except the stronger message is "you are no longer lovable, desirable, sexy, and you don't matter to me". If the abuser is a narcissist, further punishment may come in the form of an extra-marital affair.

From my own observations, when victims realize that they are in an abusive relationship, they react to it in the following way: shock -- grieving -- hypervigilence -- laying low and pretending to keep compliant while planning an escape -- separation from the abuser -- being hoovered back in by the abuser at least once (but only if it happens in the first three months of separation) -- honeymoon with the perpetrator -- after the perpetrator starts feeling accepted by the victim, starts getting demanding, furious and snippy again -- abuses again, round and round until ...

The victim breaks the cycle: permanent separation; all hoovers are rejected by the victim, no matter how desperate the perpetrator is -- surety about separating from the abuser, but a few doubts now and then; some grieving -- finding other victims to talk to, research, therapy, self help groups, focusing on practical matters and surviving; self esteem is built back up again -- feels increasingly disgusted with the abuser; has no desire to be around abuser; feels stupid for falling for abuser's lines -- abuser no longer is the focus of attention in the victim's life -- stops thinking about the abuser unless there are triggers (reminders, continued relationships with people who knew the abuser, seeing someone on a street that looks like the abuser).

This isn't always the script. Sometimes the silent treatment is permanent because the abuser finds someone more perfect (usually someone the abuser feels will make a better sycophant).

So who is most vulnerable to C-PTSD? People who have disabilities and are financially dependent on the abuser, the old, and child victims are most vulnerable.

Child victims can be the most vulnerable because they cannot understand why they are abused. Abuse becomes normalized. They are the most likely to believe that they deserve abuse, especially if it comes from a parent. They have no other resource for their self esteem, so they grow up feeling that they are bad (even when they aren't: see my post on erroneous blaming). They feel they have to take injustice and abuse to survive in the family system. Their screams for justice most often fall on deaf ears because abusers have been known to rewrite reality to suit their own needs. Besides, doling out injustice is a sure-fire way to let a child know that the parent is in charge of everything at all times and will supersede any perception the child has, including making sure the child knows that the parent is in charge of defining or redefining the truth and doling out harsh judgments if the child doesn't go along with it. The child victim is talked into being crazy if he believes in any other version than the altered one of his parent (this is called gaslighting and it is typical in households with a personality disordered parent ... People with personality disorders make up the huge majority of the nation's abusers -- see my post here about that).

But why don't all children in an abusive household get C-PTSD?

There is a good reason for that. An abusive parent with a personality disorder like narcissism typically has a golden child who she (or he) favors and feels can do no wrong, and a scapegoat who she disfavors and feels can do no right. The scapegoated child or children are the most likely to be saddled with C-PTSD. Everything that goes wrong is seen as the scapegoat's fault and the narc mother talks all of her children into looking at the situation that way. Thus, it is typical for the scapegoat to be bullied by the whole family.

An underage scapegoat cannot escape unless social services catches on. There are clues about abuse, even if there are no bruises and the child is reluctant to talk about his family environment. If social services does their job right, there is either counseling for every member or the child is taken out of the home with a chance at a better life.

Be aware that emotional abuse (of which the silent treatment is just one among a whole arsenal of emotional abuses), is now illegal in Great Britain for parent to child relationships, and spouse to spouse relationships.

If the abuse goes undetected, C-PTSD can become a permanent condition: the child shuts down involuntarily when there are triggers or stress. Shutting down is the brain's way of protecting itself from chronic pain; this is why it is involuntary. The amygdala and hippocumpus are the parts of the brain effected. Looking depressed and spacey, hunched and rocking back and forth, disassociating (becoming unresponsive in conversations, not reacting to stimuli, looking icily stunned), having nightmares which keep the family up at night, not being engaged when the rest of the family is having fun, unable to focus or complete tasks in an appropriate amount of time (because the fight or flight parts of the brain are always activated) is all used as an excuse to abuse further.

And what punishment is used? More isolating of the victim! Most child victims learn not to protest injustice, which leads to more trauma responses: being withdrawn, distracted, anxious and quiet. All of the scapegoat's concerns are branded as inconsequential and ignored. The victim is treated as though they are a deranged freak of nature that needs to be caged. Even the other siblings are taught to view him in this way. He is often bullied by the other members of the family every time he has a healthy reaction. The unspoken rules for narcissistic and alcoholic families are "don't trust, don't feel and don't talk." In all altercations between siblings, the golden is seen as always right whereas the scapegoat is seen as always wrong.

The abusive parent often refers to the family scapegoat as "difficult", "a little crazy" with the intent of getting everyone to feel deeply concerned for the parent who has this wacky dreamy child, instead of for the child! It is an abuser's dream, especially someone with narcissistic personality disorder! They feel completely absolved and love the attention they are getting, while the punishments of their child deepen with no repercussion! Party on, right?

Furthermore, studies have shown that a family scapegoat is more likely than other kids to be bullied in school. This is because school bullies pick up on the aura of insecurity and the loner status of the scapegoated family member. Sometimes, the scapegoat child tries to commit suicide to get out of his seemingly hopeless situation.

So, how does the golden child get to be so favored and in charge?

For being easy. For mimicking his parent (which the parent takes as the highest form of flattery). For entertaining his parents every whim and wish. He is less sensitive and knows how to hold back tears (narcissistic parents are known for feeling insulted and infuriated if their children cry, especially over injustice -- they take a child's tears as a sign that the child is trying to tell them they are a less than a perfect parent; this is how twisted a parent's disorder can be: they can't take even a hint of complaint or criticism!).

The isolating and toxicity can reach epic proportions as demonstrated by the Kornegay family of Gainesville, Florida. In that family, the fifteen year old girl scapegoat is locked in her bedroom for up to seven months with no furniture, no books, nothing except a blanket and a bucket to pee in. She is abused verbally, emotionally, physically and sexually by her golden child brother and next door neighbor uncle and sent to her room if she protests how she is treated, or if the golden tells his parents she is misbehaving. Since she is locked up most of the time, she is often neglected and forgotten by the family, so, since narcissistic families always need a scapegoat on hand at all times, her younger eleven year old sister starts to get scapegoated too, and sexually abused by the same brother. Eventually the two sisters team up together, and find a tragic ending to their scapegoat status and the family as they knew it.

Although this family is an extreme case, families that scapegoat head in this direction of extreme isolation, adopting similar attitudes and practices to the Kornegay family inch by inch, and year over year.

When the scapegoat becomes an adult and leaves the family, he (or she) is often relieved. It is rare for scapegoats to have significant contact with their families unless they are worn down by a constant hoover. Having any contact at all, or even seeing their abuser out on a street can trigger the trauma and make the brain respond in an extreme way, with everyday life becoming debilitating again. If you read my last post, I stated that most victims eventually prefer to keep the silent treatment going, and some make sure it is permanent by moving away and not telling their perpetrators where they are going.

There are times when scapegoats may ask for assistance from their family. There may be desperate times such as a medical crises or just when they have left home at 18 years of age. They are often denied or there is a huge price to pay for an inconsequential amount of money! Abuse forums are full of stories of parents who offer no financial or familial support when their child becomes desperately ill, or when he turns 18, a grueling experience of extreme poverty and deprivation that most families do not put their children through.

But, if scapegoats can rise above their poverty, and their scapegoat status, especially if they can stay away from abusers, they are much, much happier out of their families than in them. They blossom. They often take big chances and do important work. They can become very successful. Why? Because they all know they have to be successful to stay out of their traumatizing toxic families!

The reason they become scapegoats is because they do not tolerate their family's ludicrous punishments ("You are being punished for not being grateful for that 10 dollar school activity fee" and other forms of erroneous punishing). They tend to talk to outsiders about their family. They tend to fight or take flight; i.e. they don't just take abuses lying down. The ability to forge in another direction and fight against tyranny is also why they tend to be more successful than their siblings who remain behind to dance to the family game.

The longer they stay away from their families, the more their PTSD symptoms subside, the more productive they can be.

Except ... just at the point of success, this is when many abusive narcissistic parents find they want to re-establish a relationship with their child after all (with tears and apologies and a "won't go away until I show you how much I appreciate you" attitude).

Except beware: it can be a ruse! Remember: they haven't forsaken the silent treatment as a weapon. They haven't recognized your feelings. They haven't done anything to work on better conflict resolution skills. If they refused to go to therapy, it is because they didn't want to look or talk about their abusive ways.

The real motivation is often that the abusive parent can't have a successful scapegoat! What will people think?!? Oh, no!!! All of these people have been told that this child is a crazy, deranged animal that had to be locked up in childhood, and forsaken, to keep the family functioning and happy! So the parent, in the guise of being helpful, tries to get in the child's life to meddle. "This success story has to be dismantled! We can't have this!" they think. So they often try to get the scapegoat back into form by giving lots of mendacious advice, which is in the guise of being helpful, but which more often than not are bad recommendations, a set-up for failure, a trap for co-dependency even if that reliance on the parent only entails "you need my advice".

If the scapegoat has a stroke of bad luck with his success, the parent can act gleeful, like a predator, in for the kill! The silent treatments and all manners of abuse and co-bullies come out yet again!

Back to the debilitating symptoms of C-PTSD!

I have talked about why the silent treatment is abuse in my prior post here, but if I had to sum up the post, I would say that the silent treatment is abuse because, like any other form of abuse, PTSD or C-PTSD is often the end result for victims.

As author of the popular self help book How to Do No Contact Like a Boss, Kim Saeed said in this post about the silent treatment:

Psychologists consider the silent treatment a form of abuse. It’s a popular form of mental torture used by Narcissists, whereby they cut their victims off by not talking to them for extended periods of time ... The Narcissist uses silent treatment as an aggressive measure of control and punishment for something his or her partner did; a sadistic form of “time-out”, ostracizing the victim as motivation for them to behave. It is the ultimate form of devaluation, causing its target to feel voiceless, alone, dismissed, negated as a person; invisible.

Most people consider the silent treatment to be both cruel and an extremely childish reaction to conflict on the part of the abuser. This is what is taught in anti-bullying seminars to school children too. It is one of the poorest ways to resolve issues, and actually makes the conflict impossible to resolve the longer it goes on, destroying the relationship in the process.  

Why does it destroy relationships? You can't trust people who abuse you. Ever. Once there is no trust in a relationship, what do you have? Small talk with high anxiety.

The message from a narcissistic abuser in terms of sharing a relationship with you is that you don't matter (only they do), what you say doesn't matter (except to use against you to win), what you want doesn't matter (only what they want), your perspectives and opinions don't matter either (only theirs do), and all of the special days (weddings, funerals, graduations, birthdays) don't matter to them because you need to be punished (because they see you as flawed; in fact in their minds everyone is flawed except them: thus imperfect people need to be beneath them at all times and what better way to do that than to punish -- that is their crazy-making relationship agenda!). So since only they matter in the relationship it is a non-relationship.

Because of your flaw, they believe that you need to be taught a lesson in the guise of getting rid of the flaw. Your purpose in life, as they see it, is to be a real-life marionette until you learn ... except they will make sure you understand that you are never capable of learning their lessons, that it is hopeless, a permanent flaw, because they deem you to be too stupid, which can only be reprimanded through more of their abuse towards you.

What they want most of all is to make sure you understand why they are teaching you lessons and inflicting so much pain on you, to make you concede to them (because in their minds, they know best), to get you flustered and angry, to plead with them to be kinder ... and they desperately seek to squeeze every last bit of it out of you through the silent treatment! It is a totally barbaric dishonorable repulsive one-sided relationship. You are expected to willingly disempower and renounce yourself for the narcissist abuser (their huge jacked up fantasy). 

You will notice that with anyone who uses the silent treatment consistently that when you speak, you will either be talking to a brick wall, or they will desperately try to find a way to twist it, to discredit you, mock you, make you feel indebted, to belittle and berate you, to blame you, to brandish more anger, to get you on the defensive, and demand, and demand, and demand. Many narcissists interrupt your speech too. 

If the silent treatment goes on for more than a couple of months, the message is clear: ostracism is a totally calloused, unfeeling, uncaring response to whatever the issue was that initiated it (and most ostracisms are). The victim comes to a point where he no longer wants to fix a relationship like that. Silent treatments that go on for more than a few months or a year seem pathological; the majority of victims on the receiving end of them don't want to be around a person who has resorted to it.

However, the majority of abusers also instinctively know that victims will be exasperated and finished after a certain amount of time has lapsed. So they tend to stop it within a certain length of time. They know that their victims will reject them for being so cruel and unreasonable. So most perpetrators tend to resort to weeks-long or three-month-long cycles of the silent treatment followed by a hoover and honeymoon period. Most abusers do not intend for a silent treatment to go beyond a two week to three month period of time (something that I gleaned from reading domestic abuse forums). It is obvious that the height of their victims' grieving happens somewhere between two weeks and three months. So the narcissist, knowing that his victim is intensely grieving and vulnerable to reconciliations, comes back like a knight in shining armor to save the day just at the apex of his victim's suffering to comfort (often begging for forgiveness and another chance).

From the hoovering process, the abuser notices that his victim welcomes him with open arms, relieved that the separation wasn't permanent, that the perpetrator understood and really cared about his victim. Alternately, sometimes abusers act as though nothing at all has happened while they were away, that the silence was no big deal, trying to make it seem like you over-reacted instead, misread them, didn't understand what they were really doing, and so on. 

This often works (once). When it becomes a pattern via the wheel of abuse, victims tend to decrease their tolerance of it, and seek ways to get out of the relationship. It can take a few cycles to get there. Perpetrators tend to escalate to more severe forms of punishment or violence at that point, in reaction to their victim's realizations of the cycle. Why? Victims tend to react to abuse by mentally and emotional retreating and shutting down their responses. This tends to infuriate perpetrators.

Anyway, perpetrators know from victim retreat signals that the silent treatment isn't as potent as it once was; i.e. having the same effect as before. To the narcissist abuser, greater punishments than the silent treatment need to be implemented to control an increasingly quiet but seemingly more recalcitrant victim who is becoming weary, disinterested, distant and disgusted. The perpetrator's guilt trips and tried-and-true methods of abuse are no longer working in the same way. Instead of the victim crying, wailing, pleading and in pain, waiting for the knight in shining armor to appear yet again to sweep them off their feet to relieve them of their suffering, the victim is rolling his or her eyes! "How dare they roll their eyes at me! I'll teach them a lesson!" 

So, what about the victim? What does he or she go through when trying to talk the issue over, when trying to plead with the abuser to be recognized and to put aside the silent-abuse tactic to hammer out a solution?

The first thing victims realize is that they aren't being heard and that they won't be heard (usually). The more the victim tries to communicate to the perpetrator, the more punishment and silent treatment he or she receives. But not all of the time. Sometimes the perpetrator might mock, lecture, insult, berate or bully his victim.

The communication breakdown is the first sign that the relationship is being sacrificed for a power and control agenda, meaning the perpetrator is letting you know that he has to get his way, and dominate you, before he will accept any relationship or attempts at reconciliation with you at all.

If it becomes clear that the silent treatment will continue, victims go into a grieving stage, then an anger stage, until they finally accept that the relationship cannot continue and has to end. Acceptance can also mean that the victim initiates the finality.

The finality to the relationship is reached by any of these avenues: the perpetrator has moved on and no longer wants the victim, the victim has moved on and no longer wants the perpetrator, the victim has C-PTSD (is dysfunctional in everyday life because of the abuse) and the symptoms are too severe to continue with the relationship, the victim wants to feel safe from the perpetrator, the abuse or silent treatment has gone on too long or become too much of a pattern with no resolution, the perpetrator refuses to go to counseling to work on a healthier way of communicating and resolving, the victim does not want to be dominated, controlled or abused any more, the victim wants a healthier life surrounded by real love instead of walking on eggshells around an abuser who can explode at any moment over anything and initiate the silent treatments yet again (or other forms of abuse), the victim has become disgusted with the perpetrator and the perpetrator's games, the victim sees no other resolution to the relationship than to end it and put up a boundary that cannot be crossed, and so on.

If the silent treatment is used primarily to punish and silence the victim, the symptoms that victims feel at being shut out, told they are "nothing" by the deafening silence, and ostracized are very often C-PTSD.

I'll tackle what the symptoms of C-PTSD are first.

Out of the Fog is one of the best resources on the web for understanding personality-disordered individuals who resort to abuse and aggression, and how their victims are effected by it. According to Out of the Fog, this is a definition of C-PTSD:

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) - Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a psychological injury that results from prolonged exposure to social or interpersonal trauma, disempowerment, captivity or entrapment, with lack or loss of a viable escape route for the victim ...

C-PTSD Introduction
C-PTSD What It Feels Like
Differences between C-PTSD & PTSD
C-PTSD and Scapegoating
C-PTSD Characteristics
C-PTSD Causes
C-PTSD Treatment
C-PTSD Links

Some victims also suffer from Somatization Disorder. According to this wikipedia article on the disorder:

There are many different feedback systems where the mind affects the body; for instance, headaches are known to be associated with psychological factors,[14] and stress and the hormone cortisol are known to have a negative impact on immune functions. This might explain why somatization disorders are more likely in people with irritable bowel syndrome, and why patients with SSD are more likely to have a mood or anxiety disorder.[4] There is also a much increased incidence of SSD in women with a history of physical, emotional or sexual abuse.[15]
Long term silent treatments and cycle of abuse patterns where silent treatments are repeated, bring out these symptoms in victims:

- feelings of helplessness (not being able to resolve the issue)

- feelings of injustice (especially if the perpetrator used erroneous blaming or blamed you for something you did not do, or withdrew over something narcissistic -- i.e. over a criticism, or because you had to assert your autonomy in some way)

- feelings of dread (because you don't know when the silent treatment will end)

- feelings of alienation (because you don't feel connected any more ... additionally many silent treatment abusers use slander to get more people or a family to ostracize the victim more, using co-bullying to intimidate their victims further)

- feelings of low self esteem and unworthiness (because if this important person doesn't value you, who will?)

- possible feelings of suicide (i.e. "I feel worthless, all alone, the world seems against me, there is no way out")

- not being able to concentrate (because the C-PTSD has hijacked the amygdala part of the brain, making learning, keeping organized and concentrating difficult)

- grieving (because the relationship can never go back to "normal", you will never trust the person again, and you can never have a shred of intimacy with them again because they've made it clear that they are out to hurt you and will use emotional, psychological and/or verbal warfare and torture to do it)

- not being able to trust others (i.e. if you can't trust those closest to you, who are supposed to care about you, who can you trust?)

- feeling shut down to other possible relationships (i.e. fear that others will punish you with the silent treatment as well, fear of predatory abusers, fear that you are too vulnerable to take on other relationships)

- feeling afraid and anxious (if they are willing to negate you, and not care about you, and escalate abuse, what else are they capable of?)

- feeling like a prisoner of their silence (especially if they live with you)

- feeling like you will never be able to trust others (because if you can't trust those closest to you, you probably feel you cannot trust others)

- feeling like you will always be in pain when relating intimately with others (because of an inability to trust, an inability to be treated well by those who have purported to love you in the past, feeling that you are unable to attract a trustworthy person who is above using the silent treatment as a weapon, feeling that if you weren't worthy of a non-abusive response then will you ever be worthy of compassionate responses, on-going feelings of alienation and being punched in the gut)

- stomach issues (fear and flight responses tend to make you not hungry and to lose weight, whereas gnawing constant depression tends to make you eat more and to gain weight)

- headaches (C-PTSD tends to cause sleeplessness and hypervigilence, making you foggy-brained and having a constant dull headache)

- chest pains, palpitations, heartache (stress and PTSD can cause your heart to palpitate and your heart to ache, but see your doctor in case there is something else going on)

As studies have born out, victims of abuse tend to live shorter lives (have less life expectancy) because of struggling with symptoms for long periods of time. If a victim's family has escalated the silent treatment to scapegoating and permanent ostracizing, surviving without familial support can be extremely challenging. Many scapegoats can and do become victims of poverty at some points of their lives, although they also tend to be the ones who can rise out of it more easily too. But until then, victims can be careless about self care and be self-punishing, especially if they don't seek help (not eating right, becoming addicted to substances, not exercising right, letting their physical appearance and home projects slip, going around tense, depressed and afraid, which sends cortisol levels skyrocketing, which in turn compromises the immune system).

According to psychologist Karen Young from this blog post:

The silent treatment, even if it’s brief, activates the anterior cingulate cortex – the part of the brain that detects physical pain. The initial pain is the same, regardless of whether the exclusion is by strangers, close friends or enemies ...

... Paul Schrodt, PhD, Professor of Communication Studies reviewed 74 relationship studies which involved more than 14,000 participants. Paul Schrodt, PhD, Professor of Communication Studies reviewed 74 relationship studies which involved more than 14,000 participants ... Findings from his in-depth analysis revealed that the silent treatment is ‘tremendously’ damaging to a relationship. It decreases relationship satisfaction for both partners, diminishes feelings of intimacy, and reduces the capacity to communicate in a way that’s healthy and meaningful ...

Nobody engages the silent treatment expecting it to damage the relationship, and that’s the danger.

This is why when you are on the receiving end of a bullying tactic like the silent treatment you may want to seek professional help and get into as many self help groups as possible as a way to connect with healthier people and mitigate the pain of being without your old support network. Building new better relationships from the ground up is often the only way to respond to escalating abuse. Healing and connecting with non-toxic people is the best defense and offense against the cold, unfeeling, uncaring, obliterating silent treatment and the people who continually use it.

Just like most wars, abuse is a tragic waste of time and resources. Imagine if your perpetrator used diplomacy instead of the silent treatment! What a better world it would be!

Most people cannot live with the symptoms of C-PTSD. That is why they cannot stay in abusive relationships.

Some resources for further reading:

Symptoms of PTSD

How PTSD effects the brain

A list of all abuse-related conditions (including PTSD)

How emotional abuse including abandonment, shaming ("that look on your face"), scapegoating and familial contempt can create long lasting PTSD in children. This post also looks at children who are already going through a traumatic event and parents who react to it by rejecting, using the silent treatment or exacerbating/manufacturing more trauma (this is how children can develop C-PTSD, a condition which is more difficult to treat than PTSD).

Most victims of narcissistic abuse have some form of PTSD or C-PTSD

Why people with PTSD have trouble learning and can have high anxiety in ordinary situations. This post also covers why abusers (who thrive on fear, panic and terror to achieve what they want from their victims) will have victims with more pronounced symptoms of PTSD the more they abuse. The authors propose that true recovery comes from getting away from the source of the problem (abusers) and being in relationships that offer true altruism, support, trust and on-going commitment to healthy communication and conflict resolution.

How parents react to trauma in a child can determine the severity of PTSD

Child abuse and later PTSD can show significant genetic signature

A woman shares her story of having PTSD over an emotionally abusive relationship and her journey through her feelings

PTSD can make a person go silent completely (become stone-faced)

PTSD is linked to a 60 percent increase of strokes and heart attack in women

PTSD and Somatization Disorder

Researcher Kipling D. Williams is still studying PTSD as it relates to ostracism, and found that ostracism has stages. The resignation stage for the victim typically sets in after a couple of weeks or months (i.e. the victim accepts that he cannot effect the situation, and resorts to accepting life-long ostracism). He found that moderate use of marijuana can relieve some of the pain and symptoms associated with ostracism. This more current clinical study by Gabriela Neitlisbach and Andreas Maercker found that trauma survivors with PTSD report more social stigmatization and isolation, and that more isolation and ostracism compounded PTSD symptoms (making it a cycle that is hard to break).

Being warmly accepted and integrated into another social group other than the group you were ostracized from can determine how long and how severe PTSD symptoms are and how long they last. Recovery from being a victim of the silent treatment depends on how well you can attach to supportive people and how much you are able to be an integral part of other people's lives. The kinds of people you attach to are critical: compassionate people with good hearts can help you to have faith in the human race again and relieve some of the symptoms of C-PTSD, including minimizing the tendency many victims have: fixating on un-fixable relationships with abusers). -- It is an important part of the recovery process which I discuss in the next post about recovering from the silent treatment).

New York Times articles on severe child abuse and neglect cases, Huffington Post articles on severe child abuse cases, Huffington Post articles on severe child neglect cases, and a blog which follows cases of child neglect and child abuse -- a great majority of these children and teens are living with some form of ostracism/silent treatment for minor and unusual offenses (my post on erroneous blaming and punishment explains it from the abuser's perspective and the victim's perspective). Many of these stories are about teens and children who are banished to a locked up bedroom or basement, and even outside in the elements. Some are locked out of their homes in freezing conditions, left miles from home on a roadside and told to walk, told to "parent themselves", and so on.

added 4/18/20: What Family Scapegoat Abuse Survivors Need to Know About C-PTSD - by Rebecca C. Mandeville, MFT for Psych Central

I found this on the Sisters of Survivors: From BPD NPD and Psychopaths and Sociopaths page: