But first, can scapegoats hurt other scapegoats? Yes, they can and do. Beware!
And by the way, I am referring to scapegoats of narcissistic and sociopathic family systems, and to some degree, alcoholic family systems can have similar qualities.
Just about all narcissistic and sociopathic families have scapegoats. But why?
as a means to blame someone for wrongs or crimes family members commit (i.e. for
As a way to justify abuse (family members are allowed to verbally abuse and possibly get away with other forms of abuse, but if a scapegoat so much as criticizes someone from the family, they are severely punished)
; i.e. "our crazy child is usually at fault for the reputation we have", keeping the family reputation clean by calling a scapegoat child crazy or insane).
and mistreat (scapegoats are used as the family garbage dump for the parents and their other children's rage and pent up needs to abuse - they feel they can't do it with their friends, teachers, bosses, other family members, so they use a scapegoat or two to take their frustrations out on).
as a means to use the scapegoat as an example for other family members, i.e.
* "If you don't do what I want you to do it, when I want to do it, you will end up like the scapegoat, ostracized and bullied. Is that what you want?" (narcissists are control freaks, and the more controlling they are, the more they insist on having their own way every time on every issue, and the more blame-shifting they are, the more likely they will need a scapegoat - the shunned ones are the ones they use as an example for other members).
* "If you don't do well on that test, you're going to look stupid, just like the scapegoat." (narcissists usually think their scapegoats are stupid - they often "talk at" fully grown adult scapegoats as though they are still 7 years old, and other children and adult children in the family see it. They are talked at as though the scapegoat still needs to learn lessons from Mommy and Daddy, as though they still need approval from Mommy and Daddy, and because scapegoats can still be trying to hold on to some vestige of family life, they sometimes put up with being talked at in this destructive manner, thus they are deemed to be stupid and inept, having the brain and emotional maturity of a seven year old.)
* "If you marry this person, you'll be marrying a person without much money, like the scapegoat who married that loser." - trying to control who their child marries, by comparing their potential spouse with the scapegoat's spouse.
In fact, the rest of their children are always being compared to the scapegoat, as ahead or behind, as though life itself is about a competition for approval, and they are expected to do much better than the scapegoat (so that the scapegoat can always be seen to be hierarchically inferior to the rest of the children).
). For those who don't know of her, or who haven't read her blog, and the many comments she has left on this blog, Peeps (not her real name) has come out with a fictional zine based on her life as an
ACON translates to Adult Child of a Narcissist. In the book, she has two parents who are narcissists. Her mother, she reveals, also seems to have Antisocial Personality Disorder traits, perhaps to the point of over-shadowing the Narcissistic Personality Disorder traits. Peeps also weighs, plus or minus, 500 pounds at any given time due to an autoimmune disease called
- stage 4.
She writes about both topics most of the time. There are forays into what it is like to live in poverty (many of the disabled and many ACONs live in poverty, at least for awhile, and sometimes forever). She also writes about the misguided attitudes people have about ACONs, attitudes people have about "fat people" (fat prejudice) without understanding anything about all of the complexities of the subject and various diagnoses that can contribute to it, and attitudes people have about other people who live in poverty, especially the educated poverty class (she and her husband have upper level degrees).
She was a substitute art teacher in the public schools and worked for a grant-based art program focused on visual arts in a juvenile home before she became disabled. She now shows her artwork in local galleries.
describing what life can be like as an ACON, and as someone who has to carry around a lot of extra weight, and how poverty effected her health and "fitting in" with various social groups.
There is a lot to being an ACON and disabled in America today, and all of the new discoveries that are coming out every month about this subject makes it clearer to professionals in the field that the avenue to healing for ACONS is that discussions about physical symptoms and autoimmune responses should be part of the therapy.
Patients and ACONs also contribute a lot to the discussion and need for studies, perhaps more so. Anyway, she gets me thinking about various topics that haven't been discussed before, including what this post is about, ways of thinking about issues when I'm not looking in the right direction, and sharing details about our lives (we have so much in common! Even a lot of tastes!). Our intellectual discussions can be quite lively. And I'm thankful that she is in my life (it's a blessing) and in many ways she has been a guiding force.
to help support a fellow ACON. And if you are not an ACON, I hope that you will consider buying it to see what an ACON goes through. I haven't seen anyone tackle this subject in zine format, and with some humor along the way, so that is another reason to consider it: it is a trailblazer in that way.
We are also publishing concurrently on this subject of a scapegoat hurting another scapegoat, so please consider hopping over to her blog
of scapegoats hurting other scapegoats (and if you are a scapegoat wondering how to deal with another scapegoat "who just can't seem to get over their experiences, of being scapegoated", especially if you've gotten over your own situation and have moved on, please read on to gain some understanding of what may be going on).
One way that I have seen scapegoats help each other is in the workplace. Scapegoats, more than any other type of person, will find it really, really hard to see another worker bullied. As we know, bullying brings out the worst in bystanders or the best.
The typical scene in bystanders are:
* joining the bully or bullying without regrets. They don't even perceive the bullying as "being wrong". There are no regrets for letting the person be bullied.
* Joining the bully or bullying with regrets (feeling pressured or looking at it as a case of the majority or leader "must be right to bully this person, and my thoughts on this matter may be flawed").
* watching the scene unfold without getting involved (this is the route that most majorities take).
* watching the scene unfold, but feeling shocked and frozen and wondering if you'll be next (this is another common response) - it is a trauma reaction, but the thoughts go more towards preserving the self and their job than to helping the bullied person
* defending the person until the bully threatens the defender (this can happen with some scapegoats). They become fearful of losing their job, an income, or being considered for a certain advancement. They "cave in" eventually, and stop defending the other person even if their conscience is on fire.
* defending the person stoutly and not backing down, and pointing to the damages the victim is undergoing (this is the route I see most scapegoats of their families take when they go out into the workplace).
For the scapegoat of a family looking at someone else get bullied in other life situations feels like an attack on oneself because the familiarity of being bullied looms too large for a scapegoat to just sit back and let it happen, which is also a trauma response. It activates the "fight or flight" responses in the brain, with the "fight" response taking over predominantly only because there are two of you, the victim and you, not just a singled-out person with no defenses.
Most bullying is done for hypocritical, erroneous reasons where there is a lot of projection going on. In the workplace, one reason for its existence is that one worker feels threatened by another worker's expertise, hard work ethic, or salary. Another reason for scapegoating (a person who is bullied by a mob, as in mob bullying) is that the scapegoat is bringing up complaints about workplace policies and treatment, complaints that
OSHA regulations are not being followed by the company. Scapegoating can also happen over education, looks, age, race, sex or popularity. It can be anything, but I would bet it falls into these categories more often than not.
Someone is picked on by a bully, and it either has a fast or slow trajectory.
The slow trajectory would mean false gossip, false narratives, smear campaigns and complaints about the victim to see how other people are responding to all of it before they escalate, to make sure there is no resistance to scapegoating/bullying an individual.
That will not sit well with a scapegoat either. They are very much ethics sensitives, spies and even psychics, at least some of them, and if something unethical like that is going on, it will drive most scapegoats crazy enough to speak up and defend the victim, even against a huge crowd. Scapegoats are called rebels for a reason - and this would be it.
But what often happens is that the victim, the main scapegoat, who is being victimized and whose name is being dragged through the mud, even though you are helping, defending and willing to go to bat for the main scapegoat, the main scapegoat will begin to feel the workplace is unbearable, more unethical than they can stand, disgusting even, and will leave under those circumstances.
Then the defender of that scapegoat becomes the new scapegoat (the secondary scapegoat) and the workplace bullies and enablers begin to attack them.
Sometimes scapegoats of families wonder why the scapegoating continues in a bunch of workplaces. The reason why is that a bully saw them as a threat to them in the workplace (salary, expertise, work ethic, etc), or saw them as weak and disenfranchised,
or saw they were a secondary scapegoat, the more important topic when it comes to this post.
In my own life, I experienced two work situations where I was a secondary scapegoat, so I know what happens in these situations intimately, over many years, and all of the trials, sadness and injustice that the primary scapegoat went through (and it was horrible and so undeserved!).
The way I managed to hold on and not meet the fate that the primary scapegoat did was that I was onto them right away, whereas the primaries were taken by surprise, i.e. surprise attacks. I knew all of the tactics the bullies used by then (each individual bully specializes in certain modes of attack), and I was always two steps ahead of them.
I had ways of being unnoticeably vague, distracted by work, or in a rush, when a bully would ask me a pointed or personal question, but I would never lie. I was unusually quiet, unrevealing, kept to myself in most places that I worked too.
I can say now that vagueness works with bullies because they see more to your story than you are telling them. In other words, the bullies would take what little information they received from me and go off on increasingly wild tangents of untruth. It took years for them to get into the wild tangents, but having grown up around too many bullies in my childhood, I saw that all of them tell lies about other people. At some point in their narratives they seem to believe in the lies they tell, and eventually end up as conspiracy theorists, spouting the most ugly untruths about others. It seems like they are getting away with it until the following can happen:
From personal experience, when the bullies in these two workplaces were found out, i.e. spreading the most far out, untrue gossip, the bullies were in trouble, not me. Recordings worked wonders too, and I would suggest that to anyone who is starting to be bullied in a workplace.
I was never the primary scapegoat in a workplace, only the secondary, but because I have experience with what happened to the primaries by proxy and defending their honor, and the secondary via direct experience, I feel like I know this subject pretty intimately, and how to counteract it with the most effectiveness. Perhaps I will touch on this subject again at some point.
So how does one scapegoat betray another scapegoat? Defending a person who is being bullied, even fighting for their rights and making it plain to the bullies that it is not right, not fair, not empathetic to their plight which, as I said before, scapegoats of families are likely to do, they do it with one caveat: they only take it so far, because they begin to fear they will lose their job, an income, or the boss's considerations for their hard work, and be singled out eventually, that the workplace will become as depressing an experience as the primary scapegoat is experiencing it, that they feel they cannot get through their days at work unless they back off, and some of them eventually betray the primary scapegoat.
And this folks, is how scapegoats can hurt other scapegoats in all walks of life, in the family, in friendship circles, and not just in the workplace. They become scared of losing something, or scared of what the bullies will do to them. It sometimes takes a long time for the secondary scapegoat to back off of protecting the primary scapegoat, to become a bystander, or even worse, a bully, but this is mainly how it happens. And narcissists, who usually only want one target to deal with at a time, are usually very persistent in trying to get the secondary scapegoat to back off. The narcissist(s) use a lot of manipulations, and sometimes awards, to get that secondary scapegoat to abandon the primary scapegoat.
Secondary scapegoats who take the route of backing off from helping the primary scapegoat can start spouting an attitude too - like "(The narcissist) isn't so bad if you talk to them. You have to be gentle and very, very patient. I can get along with him even though he isn't the easiest person to get along with. It's because I show patience. Why can't you?" or even the much milder "I can't fight everyone's battles for them."
It is a devastating turn of events to the primary scapegoat as they are now defenseless.
for scapegoats to become narcissists. They are the least likely to become bullying narcissists compared to all of the other children in an abusive authoritarian family. The more likely
, the obvious favorite of the narcissistic parent. (the link is to a Psychology Today article).
The scapegoat however, can become a reluctant enabler of a parent if there are two scapegoats in one family. They can become a source of competition (i.e. feel that they are better at something than another scapegoat is in terms of emotionally accepting and adapting to their "outsider" and "shunned" fate), a source of contempt (i.e. they are tired of, can't stand, or don't want to be around another scapegoat to remind them that they are one too), a source of irritation. In other words, they feel they are being looked at as a healer of other scapegoats and they don't feel they quite measure up (because they have their own needs of protection) - this type of scapegoat was represented in the series,
. In
this series the main character meets her first friend in a domestic violence shelter, the friend gives her a lot of encouragement and advice, and later finds that the friend ignores her after that friend goes back to her abuser.
These are just some examples of ways that one scapegoat can hurt another scapegoat, or let a fellow scapegoat down.
Some scapegoats can even become narcissists, but it is rare only because narcissists tend to choose the most empathetic and sensitive of their children to become the target, the scapegoat of their abuse. Most narcissists see empathy as a weakness, as cowardly, as a weakening of defenses, as a weakening of an ability to attack effectively. They see empathy as something other people will exploit, use to their advantage, use to abuse the empathetic person, and to incite obligation.
choose a child who is most like themselves, another narcissist, to be in the scapegoat role.
So the chances of scapegoats helping to heal one another are greater than the chances that they will hurt each other ... with some exceptions, including the exception of scapegoats in ones own family, just because narcissistic families expect all children to be in competition with their siblings and other family members.
Scapegoats grew up being "talked at" constantly too, in terms of "comparisons": "Your brother could walk when he was one years old! How come it took you until two years old to walk? I think we know the answer to that one!", or "I preferred your brother's company to yours. You were so glum and it came across as eternally ungrateful for the life I gave you," and so on.
When the narcissistic parent talks to the golden child about the scapegoat it can sound like this: "You know, your sister drank that much soda and got to be too fat. Is that what you want for yourself?", "Why would you think it would be good enough to get a grade B in science when your sister got an A? We expect better from you!", "I always loved you more. But if you keep acting like that, you won't be any closer to my heart than your sister was."
It can be an every day occurrence in narcissistic families, and anyone who has grown up in a normal family without constant comparisons going on can thank their parents for never going down this road, that all the siblings were, more or less, treated as equals, treated with dignity and respect, treated with acceptance, and more importantly, treated with kindness and with love. Anyone can see that there is not much kindness and love in comparing children to each other day in and day out, through an entire childhood and way beyond it.
What this means is that some scapegoats can still be in that "comparison competitive mindset" even when it feels much, much better to be out of it, even when it hurt them more than they could deal with when they were a child. The comparison mindset can be unconscious, subconscious or with total consciousness. It's always good to figure out which one it is when you are up against this sort of thing because it can foretell which way your relationships will go.
Competition, as bad as it felt for the scapegoat, could have been so pervasive in the early home that it took over how they thought about themselves and others, so that they never really felt connected to anyone, especially members who were touted as "better than" themselves.
We'll take these few sentences again: "I can talk to the narcissist. They aren't my first choice in a person to share things with by a long shot. Truthfully, I don't really feel comfortable with them at all. But I can talk to them about some things if I'm really, really patient. Why can't you?" - you can see the comparisons pop up just in these couple of sentences, even with the empathy as an introduction to the lecture, that you are touting yourself as "more reasonable, more patient, more this or that" because you can "sort of" get along with a difficult person better than another scapegoat can.
I bet your fellow scapegoat will either have a look of shock, or look dejected, or affronted. They will be backing away in some manner unless they are absurdly humble. And then that becomes an impediment to mutual respect, mutual support and mutual intimacy. It can create a kind of invisible wall of distrust.
Hierarchies aren't built for connections. They are built to either raise your esteem, and self esteem, or to lower it. The person that gets to decide the hierarchy is, of course, the narcissist in most situations. Doing this sort of thing with a fellow scapegoat will feel like "narcissistic comparing" on some level - triggering.
For instance, scapegoats are often shunned. Having gotten to know many, many scapegoats, about 90 percent of them were shunned over the most ridiculous inconsequential reasons you can think of, as if the parents had to grapple at trying to find something, anything, to blame their child with just so they could shun. It reminded me of
shunning by Mrs. Reed, though I'd say half of narcissistic parents shun for even more confusing, confounding reasons than Mrs. Reed did. At any rate, that part of the novel rang true to me, especially as it featured a golden child, and because it featured a hierarchy where Jane was on the bottom rung.
Some shunnings are for totally made up reasons, excuses to get the child away from the family, and some of them are pure malice: "I wish I had aborted you when I had the chance!" and "I gave birth to you, and I can take it away!"
Some scapegoats feel relieved to be out of the family, and in that case, it can be easy to break the obnoxious comparison narratives and a mindset that you had to endure or carry within yourself. Other scapegoats who may miss some of the people in their family, but are also determined to get away from it, may find it difficult to separate on a psychological level, including the type of comparison thinking that narcissists indulge in, even if they realize the narcissist's type of thinking is deeply flawed, evil or hurtful.
Some of this is the result of being constantly manipulated with to adopt all of the narcissist's perspectives. Scapegoats can find themselves unable to know
.
For instance, let us say that you show up at your narcissistic mother's party. You show up with jeans and a tee shirt because that is what she told you to wear at the last three parties she held. Now she tells you, "Why would you show up at my party looking like that!? I mean, you should look a little more dignified, not like a perpetual teenager!" She never told you to show up in something different, but now she's embarrassed by your appearance and admonishes you. So the next party you ask her what to wear, and she says, "Wear what you want! I'm not your fashion designer!" and you show up looking a little more dressed up, like the guests at the last party, and she snaps at you when you walk in the door: "You've got to be kidding, right? Oh, my God, you're going to look so out of place!" - This is just one instance of changing goal posts, but many narcissists do this in many, many situations, more serious situations than this, and some narcissists do it in most of them.
Another scene: A scapegoat was riding her bike on the side of the road and a car hits it, and she crashes into a ditch and the bike gets damaged. She walks home and her narcissistic father yells at her for "wrecking the bike".
"Do you know how much that bicycle cost? Well, you're not getting another one! You obviously can't take care of your things! Why are you like this? Your brother never ruins anything!" - she always gets compared to her brother and consistently gets the negative judgements. "But not you! You leave your mittens at school! You tore your raincoat up when you smashed into that electric fence! And now this!" She tries to bring up the fact over and over again that she was hit by a car, that the accident doesn't make it her fault because a car was involved, and that she got banged up too, but he doesn't listen, ever (so common).
The "changing of goal posts" would be this: Weeks later her Dad tells her that he's "had it!" and she needs a bike, and that she needs to get ready to go shopping for one now.
Here's another changing of the goal posts. She assumes that the replacement bike will be like the bike she had when the other bike was ruined in the accident. When they get to the check-out counter, her father instructs them to put on training wheels because "she is not an athlete like her brother."
And this folks, is also why children of narcissists can seem like they are crazy even when they are not. The parent can get into phases where changes are rapid-fire. They change ambitions, perspectives, ideas, plans, rages, apologies, and feelings on a whim, and not because of anything you say to them - they mostly ignore that.
Scapegoats constantly wonder if a different perspective than the one the parent has will ever be respected, or even looked at. Not listening and deciding what is what is a lot of what narcissists are about because they don't trust anything or anyone other than their own beliefs. Reality simply does not exist for some of them; only their beliefs exist, or at least that is what they make known, especially to their children.
From all I have seen, scapegoats who want relationships outside the family know they cannot conduct themselves at all like they do inside the family. The competition thinking that narcissists keep requiring, especially when they want you to agree to and coddle their non-reality based beliefs, and the prejudices that go with the competition thinking that they have, as a scapegoat you know you have to give up comparisons when you relate to people outside of your narcissistic family, and comparative thinking between individuals, even if you place yourself second to everyone else in your family, if you are ever going to have a meaningful relationship outside the family.
This is to say that most scapegoats know they have been manipulated, and separated from others via comparisons and untruthful smear campaigns to the point of feeling love starved (because they are judged so poorly in comparison), but some of them have been so indoctrinated as to not know how to stop comparing. And often their comparing can be self sabotaging, that they aren't "good enough" for anyone, that no "one will ever listen to what they have to say", let alone people who are open minded, affectionate, honest and loving. And some of it comes with the realization that their parents would not approve, or accept them at all if they saw their scapegoat with someone who was really kind, honest, faithful, good looking, caring, doting and loving, and God forbid, put them first, and was loyal to them (i.e. opposite from how the parent treated them in their original family of origin).
In fact, most scapegoats are aware that it's their parent's worst nightmare to have their scapegoats in a happy marriage, with a successful career, a lot of money, and with well adjusted children who are making a name for themselves in the world, and attribute it to the scapegoat's upbringing. In order to have any chance of a relationship with a parent, some scapegoats know they have to sabotage their own success and their good relationships, compare themselves to other people and appear to be wanting in the qualities others have, and adopt at least enough of the parent's narrative to be acceptable to a parent. That includes "comparing".
They also know that these parents soothe themselves with comparing, that they tell lies about other people, that they attribute all the successes that a scapegoat has to either themselves or something nefarious and criminal. For instance: "She lied to get that job!" "She doesn't have a successful marriage! I bet that she's cheating every chance she gets." "Her children say nice things about her because she threatens them." "She appears well adjusted because everyone around her is trying to hide her insanity." "She can't be that successful. She's hiding something because if she was successful, she would move into a mansion." And so on.
Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a psychologist and expert on narcissism, has said in her videos many times that this is all projection on the narcissist's part, that scapegoating is basically the narcissist's own worst qualities put on to someone else. Jay Reid, a psychotherapist, has remarked a number of times in his videos that the family does not know the scapegoat. The family has been too busy scapegoating to get to know the scapegoat.
And that boils down to why narcissists are not in touch with reality; they put acting on something before getting to know what is going on, and ruminating about it afterwards to come up with the best outcome.
Knowing that, in many instances if a scapegoat wants to continue a relationship with a parent, they have to be willing never to confront the competition, the lying and assumptions, the sabotaging, and smear campaigns the narcissistic parent spreads about them.
I know very few scapegoats who want that, who are willing to fight their way back into their family, knowing these sets of circumstances are waiting for them. Peep's family seems to be the exception, and maybe it is because the older scapegoats in that family set a precedent, that you have to accept your lot in life, and the role the family has given you. No, you don't, but maybe the advent of more alleged psychopathy in that family frightened enough of them to submit.
This is to say that scapegoats can mess up their relationships with other scapegoats when they aren't fully committed to being healed and accepting of their fate as being "total outsiders", when their mind is still back with the family. Some of those thoughts can be about how to get re-entry into some family members' lives. But sometimes it is not possible because narcissistic families are cult-like and narcissists lecture their family members constantly, and expect the narcissist's perspectives to be repeated constantly by its members.
Part of those lectures include expecting others to adopt the shunning of scapegoats too, and trying very hard to get all members to hate their scapegoats. The pressure to hate can be so pervasive and constant that some members feel ground down by it, and give in just to get the narcissist off their back.
A lot of it also has to do with coercion, using money and rewards, fear, and guilt trips, and "you owe me!" pronouncements, i.e. obligation to the narcissist's power.
I think when we scapegoats do get into a loving relationship with a loyal mate who treats us well, and protects us from abuse, and we are no longer love starved, we face rejection from our parent(s). I have talked about narcissistic parents ruining weddings before (almost a given for a scapegoat), and they especially sabotage weddings where they aren't the focal point, and where they can't control the guest lists, and where they think their own marriage is not going as well as their child's, and where a scapegoat is actually loved! - horror of all horrors to a family who enjoys blaming and hurting the scapegoat whenever they need a fall guy! - which is usually forever if the scapegoat doesn't escape.
In the world of scapegoats, instead of sabotage, we often get a wedding where the parent doesn't show up to it instead. Some of those parents can talk other family members into not attending either. "If you go to that wedding, you'll be hurting me, and believe me, you don't want to be doing that or there will be dire consequences!" - the threats come out. Very common.
I also have observed that when we scapegoats do find a fulfilling career that our narcissistic parent might envy, we get rejected over that too. If a scapegoat is good looking and well dressed - that's another problem for narcissistic parents. Winning awards is another problem. Having more money than they do - another problem. They can hate us all they want for getting further and further from the down-trodden scapegoat role, but if you have enough good things in your life and the parent only wants you back because they HAVE TO HAVE a scapegoat, why would we want to go back?
So knowing this, they often hoover, and then try like the dickens to sabotage us any way they think will create misery for us. Usually that's a smear campaign for most narcissists. However, malignant narcissists can go further and talk to our boss, sleep with our marriage partner, agree to babysit our kids while talking trash about us to them, steal, get into criminal mischief, home invasions, stalking and other crimes - and often it's hard to tell if they are the malignant brand until the crimes start happening.
Anyway, the reason for this section is to explain that most scapegoats who hurt other scapegoats can do so by falling into "the comparison trap". They haven't grown out of it yet. They haven't decided to drop that horrible legacy. It is still ingrained in the way they think because of the pervasiveness of comparing one family member to another. If there is any contact with the family, that can exacerbate the compulsion to compare.
They may realize over time that comparing people is a blockage to fulfilling relationships, and it is, but until that realization dawns on them in a significant enough way, they may keep doing it, at least for awhile.
The other thing that many scapegoats take with them from the family are unsolicited advice and commands, not that most of them do it because they know that they wince when they get it from family members, especially family members who have proven over and over that their advice and commands are not for their benefit at all; it is only for the benefit of the parent and keeping you in the role they have assigned you.
However, I do think the "you should" statements are the exception. "You should put your money into this stock. You'll make a lot of money that way." "You shouldn't leave so soon." "You should try to hire this musician. He's so good and he needs the work." "You shouldn't talk to Dad. You know how he is." - and so on.
The "you shoulds" are almost daily faire in narcissistic families, and in some sociopathic families too, though there are more commands than "you shoulds" in sociopathic families, a lot more rigidity in terms of expectations of service to the family.
While scapegoats say "You should --" quite a lot less than other family members because the "you shoulds" are mostly directed at scapegoats, let's face it, they can find themselves saying it in other situations unconsciously, or barely conscious they are doing it until they get a reaction.
I have made that mistake myself in relationships that were exceptionally non-narcissistic, relationships that were profoundly empathetic. And it was only when I saw the reaction that I said to myself, "You stepped on a boundary. Don't do that! You can see the wincing, the same as when it was done to you."
I also noticed that people are a lot less open to hearing you when you say any "you shoulds".
I stopped the "you shoulds" and the result is a lot more closeness. And I have come to look at "you shoulds" as unnecessary, as "pushy", as invasive (not grossly invasive, by any means), but they really don't achieve things in a good way, not in close personal relationships.
And another thing I discovered is that advice should be worded when the person asks for advice (an extremely important distinction here!), as "Maybe you could look at it this way? ... Maybe it calls for __________ kind of action? What do you think?" - always putting it back to their thinking it through rather than as your idea. The "maybe" part of it makes it more of their idea, about them gaining the skills of solving hard interpersonal issues, and knowing that it was their decision rather than your imposed "you should".
At this point in my life I'm always striving to be more empathetic, to have more closeness in my life, to listen more carefully, to have greater understanding, to gain a lot more knowledge about how inter-relationship issues can be solved effectively without any narcissistic tactics what-so-ever, which is one reason I don't want narcissists in my life, or even in my work life, any more. It's like dealing with bulls in a china shop when everyone else is trying not to break the china.
The china in this analogy is the relationship, and in having a relationship, you toast to your dear friend by clinging the thin porcelain cups together without breaking each other's cups. You are sensitive to each other. You preserve the relationship at all cost. You are whole. They are whole. There are no wounds between you.
Narcissists never preserve relationships like this. They come in like a bull and ruin them. Everything has a chip in it, and every family member has chips and cracks - they put getting their own way above any and all relationships.
And you can see that because an agenda comes first, the fulfillment of the agenda comes first before the relationship does too. Very pitiable.
A lot of us get angry and disgusted when the specter of "I have to get my own way, so I'll punish" tactic of narcissists becomes apparent again and again. But really, it is more pitiable and sad than provoking. They never experience intimacy ever. They never experience the joy of not breaking people and relationships. They never experience the joy of mending relationships in a way that works. They never experience the joy of compromise (the apex of that would be playing music where every musician and their talents are taken into consideration at all times). They never experience the joy of giving up on the "you shoulds" that drive intimacy away. They've never experienced what scapegoats eventually come to experience when they leave the family to find real love, ever.
Empathy is a valued quality for most of us; it's what scapegoats are particularly starved of all through childhood even as they are taught to have huge amounts of empathy for the slightest tiniest wounds and the "princess and the pea" feelings of narcissists.
When they are adults, scapegoats deserve the kind of empathy they gave and never received in childhood. They deserve "being mattered" for once in their lives. They deserve the best kinds of relationships and connections having lived through the worst. When they find that empathy, they don't want to destroy it. So I would say to any scapegoat, it really does mean dropping the "you shoulds" even if you say it with the best of intentions, if we don't want that wince, or see a jolt backwards from the other person we are relating to. In order to move forward into experiences that are continually fulfilling and enlightening it requires being sensitive even to wincing.
And instead of the "you shoulds", maybe the practice of understanding what they are going through on all levels, is what is required.
For instance, I have a friend in my life right now who is living through a traumatic situation. It's pretty clear she is trying to come up with solutions, but I decided to skip over suggesting possible solutions. I started asking about "symptoms" instead. And sure enough, she has symptoms of trauma. Then instead of advice, I'd ask questions like, "Do you feel better when you leave and go work and do your own thing? Do the symptoms abate somewhat?" And that had her leaving the situation more and more. To her it was still untenable and unbearable, as she returned to it every day, albeit for shorter periods of time, but the important part of this information she received from me is that all of her symptoms were trauma-related, and she could find them all by looking them up and reading about them, one by one. It put her in touch with her own body and mind, giving her a lot of insight about what she could take in terms of those symptoms, and what she couldn't take, and how to tell when those symptoms got worse, and what the trigger was for them getting worse. For me, it was better than any "you should" statement or suggestion I could ever have made.
Likewise
Peep started asking me many questions after a long e-mail to her about a situation that I wasn't handling well, didn't know what to do with, although I knew that my symptoms were trying to tell me something, but I didn't know what. Was I just triggered by past events? Or was there something in the present relationship that I wasn't looking at right? I was "freaking out", for lack of a better word, to the point where I wasn't "thinking straight". Her questions put me on the right track. They were so helpful. She also told me of similar experiences she lived through and that made a huge difference too. And she collects resources.
Peep and I talk about scapegoating a lot. Scapegoats who are educated, who read and write a lot, seem especially enlightened about interpersonal matters, and her marriage, like mine, is a happy one, so she knows what makes and breaks relationships through experiences.
The third thing that scapegoats can take with them is
assuming people have given up on relationships with them. Scapegoats were given up on over and over and over again in childhood and often way beyond that if they still had a relationship with their rejecting parent in adulthood, and they can assume that other people have given up on them even when they haven't. They assume someone wants to ghost them or give them the silent treatment when the other person has actually been in an accident and are in the hospital instead.
Scapegoats may have to be reminded over and over again that they are not actually being abandoned, that "something else" is going on instead.
Abandonment is especially a big "alarm bell" for scapegoats, and the way trauma works is to give a scapegoat symptoms when something similar appears to be going on (called triggers), so that they will avoid a person who is abandoning and cruel. Only a likeness, or "like situation" needs to happen in order to get triggered. Symptoms exist to keep you from going back to situations that hurt you, in order to preserve you. People who hurt you will cause you to get PTSD eventually.
What I need to say about abandonment needs to be clarified. Abandoning a child is not just leaving them to fend for themselves. It can mean not protecting them against bullying. It means not listening to them any more (in essence, the child's voice is virtually "turned off" - very common in narcissistic families to the point where a child feels mostly invisible - it's a major part of scapegoating a child too). It means abandoning them in terms of their need for connection or conversation, even with other people who are part of the family. It means abandoning them in terms of affection, safety and love. It means abandoning their health or mental health (not caring). It can mean abandoning them to a person who is either exploitive or abusive (like insisting they have a relationship with a step-parent who treats them like Cinderella, or who sexually abuses them, or insults them constantly) - that's just one instant. It can mean abandoning them by putting them outside every day until supper or bedtime and let the consequences of what happens to them play out (children without much, if any, supervision, tend to be exploited). It can mean abandoning them to live in their own special unit (like an unheated cabin or barn on the property) until they can "behave themselves" - more common than what you'd think. It can mean abandoning them to another home, or hospital, or orphanage even when they had a parent who was capable of taking care of them, but were too addicted, or running around having affairs, or too self involved to care. It can mean abandoning them for a new marriage partner. A lot of scapegoats experience abandonments on so many different levels, and some are taught that they deserve to be abandoned over and over again, that some of them assume abandonments, even cruel ones, even ones that make no sense at all to them, "are part of life". So they can give up on people when an abandonment isn't even taking place, when they get "triggered".
So scapegoats can give up on relationships or become incommunicative introverted wallflowers who are very quiet and appear to have nothing to say in the midst of an argument. Since arguments with narcissists lead to abandonments, they expect to be abandoned when there are arguments with anyone, or even when they merely hear arguments. They equate disagreements and arguments with destructive outcomes, always.
Some of them tell themselves that peace has to come before disagreements, so they can go quiet, and refuse to talk (because they used to be shouted down when they talked), when something just needs to be hammered out to find a solution.
It takes a lot of patience on the part of others, as well as continued affection and love, for scapegoats to get the idea that most people do not abandon other people, that stability is actually a sought-after set of qualities that most people want in their relationships. That can sometimes surprise scapegoats, because scapegoats assume narcissists get a lot out of making everything unstable and rocky, and tossing people aside. Scapegoats assume that their own big desires for peace and stability are an anomaly, that no one else wants that except them, and that they can never expect it in any relationship, ever, especially when they are a child, and even later if they haven't made a significant break with their family.
They may not know, for instance, that they are valued when another person is distracted, for instance. They might assume they will have to "make it on their own very soon" if the other person is not totally in the present with them, and they may spend a lot of time trying to figure out the logistics of being tossed out, thereby not living in the present either, causing a lack of intimacy for both people.
The fourth issue where scapegoats can hurt each other, even if they have both been abandoned, is
if one scapegoat still wants to be part of his or her family unit still, and is doing everything he or she can to be accepted back in, especially the part of the family unit with the narcissists.
Or they might want rewards from the narcissist, which is never a good sign. Wanting rewards from a narcissist is about "manipulating and using people", and we know that there are plenty of people who would abandon a narcissist in a second if that narcissist didn't have money or rewards of any kind - not a good sign in a scapegoat as it can point to co-narcissism. As I've said before, the scapegoat is the least likely to be narcissistic, but it doesn't preclude it from happening.
It's actually the scapegoats from wealthy family members who leave and never expect anything, are the ones whom I trust the most, and who I feel at ease to be myself with the most.
Re-entry into an abusive family, means, on some level, condoning the abuse. Or it's white-washing it. It's accepting it on some level. Granted there are desperate homeless scapegoats who end up going back, and I suppose that can be excused to some degree if they don't use their accepted "status", and don't adopt some narcissistic traits and perspectives to hurt other scapegoats.
When I'm around those scapegoats who want to go back to their family, I do get headaches, mild ones. Not as much as narcissists by a long shot, but enough to pay attention to.
To my way of thinking, it's especially concerning when another scapegoat who wants re-entry is in the same family you are in. I would say, once they are on that track it's wise to consider whether they can be trusted. In that case, these are the questions you might want to be asking:
* Are they excusing the abuse of the narcissist?
* Are they telling you that the narcissist is not that bad, or are they saying that a lot of relationships are like it, or are they comparing how they relate to the narcissist to how you relate to the narcissist?
* Are they suddenly turning on you, as though "the rift" is evenly attributed in terms of fault between you and your parent, for instance, where you were thrown out, even when you bring up an extreme "power differential" that makes it clear you were thrown out by the fact that they wanted you to be in a submissive role, or taking a member's abuse, or where they wanted to command what you did, said, where you went, and so on?
* Are they indulging in
toxic positivity, where they are telling you to "get over it!" or "leave the past behind!" or saying a lot of "you shoulds", just like the narcissists in your family did, or saying "your parent doesn't know any better", or "You need to see the positives in your parent; every person has a light within them", especially if there is absolutely no empathy behind it for you. And this is especially concerning: Are they telling you that they don't want to hear any more details about your struggles in "making it on your own" or dealing with some left over "lingering hurts"? If you are in poverty, do they ignore you, or that part of your life? Do they act like they don't want to hear it? In other words, are they abandoning you just like the narcissist did in hearing what you have to say? - I would say this is one of the worst signs of all, and
toxic positivity makes it even worse still.
* Is this fellow scapegoat suddenly acting flippant about the smear campaigns of your narcissist parent - like they are accepting some of it, and even condoning some of the negativity and known lies of the narcissist, whereas before they did not?
* Are they suddenly preferring the company of narcissists instead of the scapegoats?
* Are they talking about what they "got" from the narcissist?
* Are they suddenly putting the narcissist on a pedestal?
* Are they hanging out with the narcissist to hurt another person?
* Are they telling you, knowing of the abuse you went through, to go back to the narcissist and make up? To forgive and forget? That it's the necessary thing to do to bring healing to both of you?
* Are they telling you that they didn't like the life of the outcast scapegoat, and preferred the family even though they are still abused in it, and that they are "trying to work it out" or "make it work", and that you "should" too?
* Are they telling you that the narcissist isn't that bad? That there are people who are worse than they are, like ______
xxx________ family member?
* Have they suddenly ghosted you and never gave you an explanation as to why?
* Have they said, after so many years of sharing, "I'm not sure I want a relationship with you"? - and you don't know why?
* Do they seem more concerned with what the narcissist thinks of them than being in a relationship with you, than in deciding who they have relationships with is their right and privilege, and not the narcissist's decision?
* Are they afraid of not receiving the narcissist's "rewards" if they are in a relationship with you? - again, my own alarm bells go off when this is part of the picture. You'll have to decide for yourself whether they do for you too.
* Are they afraid of the narcissist's "wrath" if they are in a relationship with you? - this one may not be as bad as the previous one, but it is placing the narcissist's feelings first, something to always consider. Part of the family legacy is to always put the narcissist's feelings first, always, even if you have to ignore the much more dire circumstances, and much more "real" feelings of other family members.
* Is this scapegoat afraid they will never be admitted back into the family if they are in a relationship with you? - this one says they are still more invested in the narcissist's mind trap than in healing, and in talking to you, and gaining perspective into what it is like being a scapegoat - also not a good sign, for you or for them, in my book.
* Do you feel like you are being brought back to an old learning experience, when you are talking to them? Are the old lessons, old anger management issues, and everything else that goes with a narcissistic family still being talked about because they are still there? Do they expect you to help them deal with it "until they can escape" - even though they have never attempted an escape and it's, again, been decades in the making? Do they call up crying because of the next abuse they've been through?
Sometimes in these situations all you can contribute is listening, because if they haven't "graduated" past being stuck in an abusive relationship, even when it's gone on for decades or a life time; they still believe, on some level, they can do something where family members will care about each other rather than be in competition with each other.
Even though these kinds of people are usually not a trust issue, I still find myself getting headaches around them. I haven't really explored why.
The people who are dealing with this are exhausting to talk to because they indulge in circular conversations: "I'm going to leave", followed by "It's a lot to give up. Don't you think people can change?" When I say no, it's been going on for decades, they try to prove to me wrong. The lecturing and anecdotes about this go on for a long time, and that's when I get a headache. And then at they end they say, "I think I have to give this some more thought and some different kinds of experiments. I'm going to try ___________________." And at that point I'm just listening, not contributing.
There may be other situations I may add, as they come up.
a warning when it comes to other family scapegoats from your own family (aside from what I have stated before):
Narcissists don't like scapegoats from the extended family talking to one another. It makes them very, very nervous, and panicked, feeling like they are losing control, especially of the narrative, and the perspectives they want every family member to have (yes, they are even controlling to this level).
That is when they get into "reward mode". All of a sudden they will be ingratiating themselves to you. They'll be sending you money or birthday cards when they didn't before. They'll be inviting you to family events where they didn't before. They will be telling you they made a big mistake of abandoning you after years and years of the silent treatment. They will say they missed you a lot when they barely registered that you were alive before. They will be a little too sweet.
This is called
hoovering by the way. Hoovering is different than a genuine reconciliation, or a genuine apology in that they still have cruel Narcissistic Personality Disorder traits and tendencies. What this means is they haven't changed, in the way they perceive things, or in the reasons for why they are in relationships in the first place (to get rewarded via narcissistic supply, and for narcissists with sociopathic traits, narcissistic supply, greater power, greater domination, getting their own way chronically, slaves, money, material things all at the expense of others).
They haven't rehabilitated themselves. They haven't done the Twelve Steps. They haven't gone to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. They haven't gone to anger management classes. They haven't stopped lying. They haven't stopped the smear campaigns. They are still blaming other people, setting up conspiracy theories that people are trying to rig something, and playing the victim. They haven't tried one iota to change their behavior. They have just waited, and waited, and waited for their scapegoats to be vulnerable, desperate, and willing to do just about anything to end their plight. It is about getting them
trauma bonded again
. This changes a bit when they are having a panic attack about all of these scapegoats talking about the family, and what they experienced, and the abuse they endured, and the family history of estrangements, disapproval, shunning, and abuse, and laughing about the fact that they were all called "crazy" ("Yea, crazy for not following orders!") and all of the expectations they had of us being ultra submissive when they can't do it themselves. There is talk about being told what
we should be doing at all times in our life when they can't even follow ethical codes of conduct like being polite.
It's wonderful to commiserate with other scapegoats. It's great. It's very healing. It's like being in a union where you have each other's back and feeling you can go on strike even as the narcissistic bully continues to try to lord it over all of you.
But family scapegoating tends to be through the "extended family" in this way: each family usually only has one scapegoat, two at the most, unless it is one of those families where children went "no contact" one by one, and I do know some of those. So, the union of scapegoats tends to be among cousins, and maybe a nephew or niece, or an aunt. It can be between sisters too. And this can be problematic. The narcissists in their panic will be hoovering some of them back.
Hoovering sends up immediate alarm bells in my system (I don't know about you). But for me, I don't just get the "knowing" headache. I feel sick to my stomach. I feel like I can't breathe. Once I can calm down, I call them out on not being genuine. I call them out on all of the insults they indulge in (it's simply not possible that changed overnight). I call them out on the times they ignored me when I was going through an illness, when they decided to carry their agenda even into those dire issues (I don't believe in a sudden about-face that they suddenly care about my health either - very suspicious). I call them out on their total lack of empathy and ethics (which doesn't take any speculation on my part - they know as well as I do that they lack both). Then they become enraged and decide that they need to pick someone "easier" in the pool of scapegoats.
Narcissists are total wimps when it comes to working on relationships. "I can't do it! It's too hard!" And they are also too entitled: "Everyone owes me! Everyone has to do what I want!" They sit back and wait for your cues so they can take some sort of an action which helps them to look better to you or to their entourage. ("I'm only sorry over nothing that's important!" - yup, wimpy).
In fact one of the reasons narcissists typically don't do much of anything to mend or to help to mend their relationships, and purposely leave you high and dry, and try to get other family members to reject you too, is not just to punish you for your independence and your independent decisions, it is meant to achieve another goal: to get you as vulnerable as they possibly can. They want you desperate, impoverished, down on your luck, no one helping you in the emergency room, even homeless, so that if you do "go back", everything is on their terms again, they get to call all of the shots because of your terrible condition, so that they can wipe out your independence, wipe out your goals and happiness, wipe out any kind of love and compassion from other people that you might have, so that all you have left is to live in is their narcissistic hell, and scapegoat you in a way that punishes you more, and worse than you were before.
It is like women who have endured domestic violence and "go back" to their abusers. The abuse gets so much worse, more hospital visits, more isolation, more punishment for having left, more punishment if the abuser thinks you are planning to leave again, worse symptoms, even when you've been sweet-talked into going back.
Hoovering always comes with sweet talk. And the sweeter it is, and the more consistent the love bombing is (usually over years for scapegoats), the more it tends to erode away your distrust, unless you are very, very aware of the narcissist's game plans.
When family scapegoats are hoovered, it's not much different than the domestic violence offenders, or it can be exactly like it. It tends to be more emotional abuse than physical abuse, but if a member feels they can get away with physical abuse, you get that too. And again, that family member is usually bigger, stronger,
a male against a female, and is higher on the hierarchy in society as well as in the family.
So the way it happens is this way: the narcissists reach inside the scapegoat group to those who are more vulnerable to sweet talk, to manipulation, who are vulnerable to being rewarded, who are younger, and they may even ply them with money (i.e. "buy them off"). They will examine carefully each scapegoat's weakness: Is the scapegoat less ethical and likely to throw another scapegoat under the bus? Is the scapegoat sick, impoverished, or so down on their luck that they are vulnerable to being manipulated with money? What will work to get them "in line", serving the narcissist(s) instead of the family scapegoats? How many of these scapegoats can give up their empathy and reject other scapegoats for money, rewards, and sweet talk? - that's the agenda.
God help us all for our vulnerabilities. It doesn't mean the most vulnerable scapegoats are narcissists, or even nefarious, even the ones who may have a couple of narcissistic traits here and there. But after they "give in" to the hoovering, they become a lot more vulnerable to the narcissist's mind games, the narcissist manipulating them to believe in conspiracies, manipulating them to believe in the narcissist(s) fake victim stories just because they are receiving something from the narcissist that they may have always wanted.
In return these scapegoats can become more vulnerable to doing the narcissist's bidding too, their dirty work including hurting other scapegoats, or anyone the narcissist(s) want to attack. - I have seen it too many times.
Scapegoats who seemed to have all of the morals in the world can all of a sudden put the rewards first and stop thinking about what scapegoating did to them or to you. They have become comfortable, conveniently numb, or fulfilled enough to let their morals go. Or it is done to keep themselves out of poverty, or to get much needed medical attention, or to get help sending their child to college.
However, everyone who has been abused in the family system and been rewarded by the family to keep scapegoats from talking to each other, can eventually become sacrificed again. One reason why narcissists don't really like keeping a scapegoat around, is that the scapegoat reminds them constantly, just by their existence alone, that they, the narcissist, is abusive. They see the scapegoat as a threat to their reputation in terms of the abuse they commit. That's why they never, ever admit to being abusive.
Which has the result of making narcissists more unethical. Then they have to cover up that so that they don't "appear" that way either. And while the ethics go down, down, down, they don't stop abusing. They get away with their abuses by being unethical, or they discard us as a way to "get rid of what they've done".
I've never seen a situation where scapegoats "gave in" to the family scapegoating role, including all of the unethical ugliness floating around, and come out of it by being loved and valued
over the long term. It can take years for a narcissist to blow their top again, but it will happen. These "gone back scapegoats" keep thinking they will be loved again if they work hard enough for it, but end up with more severe neglect and often more abuse than they did the last time. The parent can act sweet for awhile, but the major flaw of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is that
they can't deal with shame without raging, so they insert a little control here and there with the "gone back" scapegoat. Eventually the narcissist asserts more control, and then a lot of control. After that, the micro-managing comes back into play, until there is full-out abuse again. It is what old age was like for
Peep's Aunt Scapegoat who seems to have had no more fight left in her to protect herself or Peep, or any other member being scapegoated, other than to accept her fate.
This is to say that fellow scapegoats can go "unempathetic on you" when they are in the family again, more unfeeling, more lecturing (telling you to go back to the narcissist to tough it out the way they have, or tell you that the narcissist has changed and is "a lot more sweet now", or agree with what you are saying, but that "you need to get over it" because they can't be bothered thinking about any more about the plight of scapegoats - "it's so yesterday for me!"). You can have so many of the same symptoms you had with narcissists, even though it's being around your fellow scapegoat that seems to be causing the symptoms.
For scapegoats who remain outside the family system, unfortunately dealing with a scapegoat who has caved in to narcissistic pressure via hoovering, love bombing and being paid off, can feel like being around another narcissist.
We're used to the uncaring actions of narcissists and sociopaths and expect it, so in a lot of ways we're more on guard than with a fellow scapegoat. Narcissists are going to be arrogant. They're going to be above it all, telling every living being what to do and what to say, and even what to wear on some occasions. They're going to expect you to tough everything out. Some of us are even used to calling "B.S." on their acting and false personas, and their
Jekyll and Hyde behaviors, and their uppity self serving actions, calling them out even on their cover ups for the sake of a sham of a reputation, and so on. Antagonism is always present when you are with, or around, narcissists.
When a much sweeter scapegoat tells you to toughen up and go back to that, it is shocking, and it can send your system into shock. You wonder if you got them wrong. And it also feels like dealing with another narcissist because it can be sudden: first you were commiserating together, and sharing really deep things, and your ability to trust was really "opened". When a scapegoat who has been hurt over so many of the same things you have been hurt over, suddenly acts like they don't care if they got hurt ("I'm over it now" - because they got hoovered by a narcissist), your body and brain can feel like a five alarm fire. You're not gong to feel well at all.
This is to say that they can get
fleas (a psychology term meaning they temporarily adopt some narcissistic traits to cope with an antagonistic, narcissistic family system). It's real, and it's something to be wary of for this reason:
Even though we tend to lose these former "nice scapegoats" who understood what we went through so well and so compassionately, we know that the more vulnerable a scapegoat they are, the more pressures they are living through (financial hardship, illness, end-of-life, and so on), the more that the narcissist can entrap them. In return for helping the scapegoat, the narcissist will want something from them, like telling them everything they want to know about all of the deep conversations they had with other scapegoats including things you never wanted repeated to a narcissist. It goes without saying that the narcissist will want total blind loyalty, for their scapegoat to "go back" to self sabotaging sycophantry, like being totally submissive to anything and everything the narcissist wants. A lot of narcissists give the minimum amount of help, and then threaten the scapegoat that if they don't pony up with blind loyalty and being a robot to be ordered around incessantly, the narcissist will retaliate.
Some scapegoats will go down the loyalty road, as Peep's Aunt Scapegoat did, beating themselves up, and letting themselves get beat up for the help they received. They become martyrs for the narcissist and the family just because they got help, or because they wanted the narcissist's help in a medical situation, or they wanted the narcissist's money. They may even be willing to let the narcissist call them an
"it" or a
"nothing", or
"ungrateful" or
"totally crazy" for those rewards, the common things that narcissists use in insults and in smear campaigns.
Other scapegoats will be flagellating themselves in a different way, upset with themselves for falling for the narcissist's hoover again, when they knew what the end result would always be (more abuse, more shunning, more neglect, more cruelty). They too, may be willing to let the narcissist call them an
"it" or a
"nothing", or
"ungrateful" or
"totally crazy" without a single word or look backwards, trying to find contentment, finally, in their own independent life away from the family.
We know we do
not have to feel grateful for being abused, but some scapegoats really will feel that they have to be grateful for a year or two of help, and put up with 20 years of abuse for that help, as hard as it is to believe.
I think adult scapegoats know, or eventually realize, that most families don't put their members through this, but narcissistic families expect huge, huge recompenses that are from a member whom they rejected, who they took back for a period to help them, with a lot of caveats. "I picked you up when you were down!" - even though they largely contributed to the scapegoat being down, "You owe me big!!!" - screaming into the scapegoat's face from six inches away.
All narcissists and sociopathic people with power expect to be rewarded, worshipped, given special treatments and entitlements to hurt other people whom they have helped in the past. Just about anyone with the slightest bit of empathy can see that being scapegoated is not a good trade for being temporarily helped.
Most scapegoats will not be able to handle rounds of abuses even if they are "helped" by a narcissist. Narcissists will typically have a lot of internal tension at forcing themselves to be consistently peaceful for a scapegoat with PTSD, or calm and reasonable in any personal relationship, and the chances of going completely all-out abusive with a scapegoat is high, very high, sending that scapegoat out of orbit again, whereby the scapegoat may very well be commiserating with other scapegoats once again.
The statistics for "going back" for women in domestic violence relationships is seven times before making her final exit.
For adult family scapegoats, I would put that figure at two times. There are no statistics when it comes to scapegoats, but that is what I see.
I think the reason for two times is that the parent/child relationship isn't as close a bond as between intimate partners, and children leaving home is not an anomaly. Adult children also have an easier time going low contact to see if they really want to be in the relationship at all before they do the total break as compared to domestic violence victims. And children are meant to leave, maybe not altogether to the point of "no contact" for the rest of their lives, but enough to be independent.
If abuse can't inspire a scapegoat to be independent, I don't know what will.
Also statistically adult children generally are not the ones to initiate reconciliations with their parents. When the child is estranged, if there is a reconciliation, 80 - 85 percent of parents initiate the reconciliations, and only 15 - 20 percent of adult children initiate the reconciliations depending on which research article you read. If the parents are narcissistic, I would bet that even more parents are the initial initiators only because narcissists are control freaks, insisting they lead the way, and get their own way in all or most interactions with their children. For instance, I can't see
this kind of situation that this link points to with a narcissistic parent.
Otherwise I'm not sure as to why those statistics are like that, but I would guess that overwhelmingly therapists and counselors tell parents they have to initiate reconciliation if they want their children back (with
these rules).
Also therapists and counselors strongly suggest estrangement ("no contact") for adult children who are being abused or bullied, and even more so if the adult child/client has been diagnosed with PTSD, or is an obvious family scapegoat. It may also have to do with the power differential.
However, if you are an adult child and you do not feel loved, seen or heard by your parent, you're not going to want to be with your parent, or show up at any of their invites.
There is a feeling of less obligation to parents these days anyway, especially if the parent is controlling, abusive, compromise-resistant, terrible at listening, mostly lacking in empathy and personal resolution skills, and using you too as their convenient scapegoat. There is
a societal trend in estrangements which makes it easier and societally more acceptable for adult children to back away from a parent, and to go "no contact", especially when there is a history of abuse, abandonments, familial prejudices, intimidation, threats, and gross instability.
There is a lot less shaming going on to get scapegoats to reconcile with their parents besides, not that it ever worked any way. With the older generation, the attitude was: "What did the child ever do to make a parent reject them?" With the newest generations, the general attitude is: "What did the parent do to ever make a child not want to have contact with their parent again?"
I would even say that "the script has switched", done a 180 degrees. I heard the first signs of it in a hospital where an older person was blamed for having estranged family members. The person blaming her was a young nurse.
As far as fellow scapegoats go, the relationship does take a bit of a "hit" when a fellow scapegoat "goes back" and sounds like a bit of a narcissist, or when they go back and they aren't doing well but think you should be trying to get along with difficult people too, and even a fellow scapegoat who still "wants to go back" but doesn't know how to traverse the bullying.
I think the reason is because this "going back" means you are not dealing with the same issues together, the way you used to.
Their issue is going to be about "how to get along
with the narcissist". Your issue is going to be about "how to get along
without the narcissist", how to heal, how to successfully navigate your own life without them in it, how to invest your time in relationships where your levels of empathy, respect and ethics match with the other person so that you don't go through this again.
If it's your own abusive family member they go back to, or even if the abuser has love bombed to break up "the scapegoat healing group" (the more likely scenario), the anxiety levels go up considerably for most of us who don't want that same narcissist back in our life. We don't want to make up; we don't want to be manipulated; we don't want to hear about how "changed the narcissist is" because we don't believe it, and haven't seen any change for years, decades, or a life time. We are tired of feeling perpetually confused as to how to act around their moods and have given up on it, even though many of us don't judge people for trying. We are tired of them insisting in every situation that nothing is ever their fault. We are tired of their
broken promises, their
fake personas, their
jekyll/hyde behavior, their
lack of empathy and warmth,
their lack of ethics, their
trash-talking about other people, and being manipulative. After awhile we may be tired of hearing how this scapegoat has tried x, y, and z to get along with their abuser, and what worked, and what didn't work, all of the endless trials to make it work, or how wonderful it is that they are being loved bombed
all of a sudden, without explanation, as if the abuser is panicked and must prove something, after years and years of abuse and contempt. Most scapegoats who see no other way other than to go "no contact" have had to endure several lifetimes worth of dealing with these narcissistic traits, plus lots of gaslighting and projection, and boggling double standards, plus all of the trauma, and a lot of us don't, or can't deal with any more of it.
As I've written in other posts, whether we can deal with it or not is largely decided by how much past trauma we've had, how much abuse we've received from the narcissist, how ill or disabled we are, how ill or disabled we were after their abuses, if our self esteem was trashed by them, whether we have trauma symptoms around them or other narcissists, and how much help we have received, including therapy, in dealing with our traumas over our lifetimes.
For those scapegoats who are "sick and tired of being sick and tired", and have had emotional abuse, physical abuse, and physical intimidation (intimidation meaning shouting at you in close range, not letting you pass through when you want to leave, roughing you up, and so on), and went through physical symptoms from trauma that took years and years, and lots of therapy and money to recover from, they are going to be much more resistant to going back than members who weren't abused as badly. Some physical issues from trauma cannot be recovered from, no matter how much therapy you receive and no matter how many EMDR sessions you have, and you can end up with chronic unfixable conditions, something that Peep and I both have had to deal with.
So we may back off a little from the "gone back to my abuser" type of scapegoat, and not be as trusting, even if we may have empathy for their plight. It doesn't mean we don't want them in our life, but navigating what we should not say to them, especially if they are a conduit for the narcissist in terms of telling them information about us, is very, very difficult. Should we say we are fine (which could mean stalking from a narcissist because typically they want their scapegoats
NOT to be fine), or do we say we are going through some issues (which can mean the narcissist is happy and will leave you alone ... but they might constantly be grilling the conduit to see if we are recovering from our issues or not, and if we do recover, again it can mean some hoovering, or stalking, so that they can mess up our lives again).
It can be scary to talk to family scapegoats who have "gone back". We often don't know what to reveal and what not to reveal and it can make us an "anxious mess". On the other hand, we don't know what to say if they are going through a devaluation period with the narcissist again, because we don't know how much information they will take back to the narcissist, and where the narcissist can claim it is our fault for
turning people away from them.
Either way, our advice, if they ask us for it, is not going to be "Stay with the narcissist! You'll be fine! Everything will work out and be so good!" It's going to sound more like "Stay with them if you like trauma bonds."
If that former scapegoat is truly on even footing this time around with the narcissist, with the same financial status as the narcissist, not being controlled, not being enmeshed, not enduring lectures, not enduring commands, not parentified or infantilized, never gaslighted, never undergoing perspecticide, never expected to have the same perspectives of the narcissist, there is less likelihood of a trauma bond, but this is incredibly rare for a former scapegoat, and narcissists are not comfortable treating any scapegoat as an equal.
So this "going back" type of scapegoat is very likely to be going through what they did before with the narcissist,
only much worse.
Even so, after many, many years, those fellow scapegoats can ghost us anyway.
It happens more than I thought it would (typically 8 - 12 years after ones own estrangement from the same authoritarian relative that they have gone back to or gotten loved bombed by).
In my own opinion, it's not worth finding out why they cut you off. It's not empathetic, and that's all I'd want to know. If I was to assume anything, it would be that they are not comfortable with the fact that you're still on the outside of the family dealing with the challenges of a totally independent life, while they are on the inside dealing with the challenges of co-dependency and trauma bonding with a volatile controlling narcissist and they figure you and they do not have much to say to each other any more ... or they are being pressured or manipulated by the narcissist not to have anything to do with you. One of those two things are taking place; I would bet money on it.
Where once you looked like a hero to them to have spoken out about issues that you both experienced, now you just look pathetic to them for not having given into the narcissist(s).
In conclusion:
Assuming scapegoats are
making mistakes about "the comparison mind-set" and indulging in "you shoulds", and "assuming abandonments when there aren't any", and "going back" to such an extent that they change their perspectives to the point of lecturing other scapegoats, and assuming they are not acting aggressively about these four things, that it's a true mistake, or unconscious on some level, they can clean up these past messes, these past legacies. A gentle reminder to a scapegoat that they are taking this legacy with them should horrify most of them enough to stop, or to want to stop. It did for me, and I thank my husband for that.
To my mind, it is these four things which contribute to hurting other scapegoats.
For now I'll call them the "Four Horseman of the Scapegoat's Apocalypse" - the idea coming from John Gottman's
"Four Horseman of the Apocalypse" . In the latter case, therapists and psychologists use Gottman's four horsemen to determine how destroyed a relationship is, and whether it has any chance of being repaired. The Four Horseman in that case are on-going criticisms, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt.
SOME STORIES ABOUT SCAPEGOATS WHO HAVE BEEN HURT
BY OTHER SCAPEGOATS
You can read Peeps autobiographical post through this link. You can see for yourself what she lived through.
Her story features all four of these Four Horseman of the Scapegoat's Apocalypse from her various family members.
I comment on some of her passages below.
She writes:
My ole Army friend who had the multimillionaire parents, used to say something very strange to me. I worry about her and sometimes fear she probably ended up in bad circumstances from not detaching from her very wealthy and narcissistic parents. Sadly she inherited the "codes" of her family while I sought to reject what my family stood for. She often repeated to me that "humans were like chickens, and that the chickens always chose the weakest and most vulnerable to peck at and destroy". I used to reply, "That's messed up you know, that's not the way things are supposed to be." She accepted it as a fact of life.
Wow, I sure won't accept it. I know that it happens in narcissistic families, but I also know that there are many, many more parents who deal with situations like these (some of it from being a school teacher and being community oriented): rolling their permanently disabled child around in a wheel chair until the end of their days and do not regret a single minute of it. I know parents who spend night after night sleeping in the same hospital room with their child who is dying from cancer. I know parents who spend most of their time with their Downs Syndrome child and love doing it. I know parents who would do anything to bring back a child who has passed on, who don't go a day without missing them. I know parents who go to classes and therapy every week for years to learn how to deal with alcoholic children. I know parents who lovingly, and without hesitation, do everything they can do for adult children who have been to war and have significant trauma reactions from what they lived through and on-going feelings of hopelessness and depression. I know parents who have a daughter who was sexually abused as a young teenager who could barely function afterwards through her teens and into her twenties, and so the parents built her a small house on their property and financially decided to take care of her. I know a couple of parents whose children are amputees and help them night after night, and day after day going to physical therapy, buying limbs, helping them in and out of cars, chairs, the front door, etc, and provide either financial assistance (for one set of parents) a home for them (for another set of parents). I know parents who have children who are schizophrenics and who keep track of them and see them every week and are involved in their cases and care.
I only know a handful of narcissistic parents, and yes, they pick on the weakest and most disabled every single time, and use them as an example for the remaining members to "put up" and be controlled. The message seems to be "If I can throw away a child who is disabled, and show that I don't care about them and their disability, I can throw you away too."
Emulating chickens is sad.
Peep writes about scapegoats who never leave their families and thinks they are in the majority. However, I see just the opposite. I know an awful lot of people who are estranged from a parent or their entire families, and some of them weren't scapegoated; it wasn't the reason for the estrangement. A lot of it is over lifestyle choices (who they love, or who they want to be in their adult years, and the parents do not approve), or they are estranged over politics (there are a lot of those types of familial estrangements).
But getting back to estrangements with scapegoats, I tend to think and see the opposite of what she reports, that most of them go "no contact". It is heavily promoted by therapists in domestic abuse circles, for one. Most scapegoats end up in therapy because they don't know how to deal with the ways they are being treated, and family is the last place they can get help because of the cult-like atmosphere where the head narcissists decide, for everyone, how a member is to be treated. There are pressures, as well as threats, about how to treat others, "to follow suit". Therapists explain, and explain, and explain, to their clients how cult-like narcissistic families work, why they don't change, and how the abuse escalates against the scapegoat, with most of the more egregious abuse perpetrated by the enablers and co-bullies of the head narcissist. Some scapegoats die. It is not an issue to be taken lightly, in other words.
It is not something a scapegoat can change either ("Since when did they ever listen to what you had to say?" is the constant reminder you hear from therapists treating narcissistic abuse victims, that wiping out your voice is an ongoing agenda, that your words and feelings never meant anything compared to their own, and a few other family members they choose to be a mouthpiece).
The reason why therapists say you are a scapegoat is because narcissists need scapegoats. They are a "must", in narcissistic families. It's the only reason they exist at all. It has nothing to do with you (because you aren't listened to or known). If the narcissist is going to elevate themselves to the grandiose level of power, control and dominance over everyone and anyone, they need a scapegoat. And if you don't want that role any more they get extremely rageful, and abusive, and it drives them crazy, especially when you've got legal barriers against all of their attempts to re-scapegoat you - they believe that hurting you will both relieve them and get you back in the scapegoat role.
When scapegoats are in therapy long enough, or they end up coming back over and over again because the domestic violence issues are actually getting much worse, it becomes clear that the therapists are right, that "no contact" is literally the only way to live.
For some of us it may take going back to realize it, but for many others all they have to do is to listen to the horrific survivor stories in the room to come to the realization, "I'm never going back."
Therapists who specialize in domestic violence treatment do try very hard to provide you with all kinds of services and groups to counteract the pressures to go back to the family (they let you know beforehand that "the terms" of going back will always mean you will be put in "the scapegoat role", always, always, always, that you won't be able to get out of the role by protesting, by explaining, by defending yourself, by telling the truth, by being a sycophant, by being saintly, that absolutely none of these things works when it comes to scapegoating). As long as these family members are not empathetic (it is very, very important to gauge the amount of empathy you receive), they won't see or care about how you are being effected by being
their scapegoat. And it goes without saying that if they are sadistic, give you silence when you have something important to say, lecture you as though you are a seven year old, project their intentions and behaviors on to you, and spend lots of time blaming, shaming, gaslighting and indulging in perspecticide,
they want you in the scapegoat role - no ifs, and, or buts: extremely important to know that. And therapists in this field do let you know it, over, and over, and over again.
These sets of circumstances never make it appetizing to go back. And you can actually see the therapists are right via the other scapegoats around you sharing their scapegoating history.
One way to tell if they don't want to scapegoat you are these signs:
* they respect you
* they listen to your side of the story
* they don't assume they know what you are doing, what you are feeling and what you are thinking; they ask you to go into detail
* they don't blow up at you if you say you are hurt by them
And some signs that they want, very badly, to keep you in the scapegoat role after you are estranged:
* every contact is rife with conflict
* they are trying to terrorize you for leaving
* they go silent on you when you ask them to respond to something important
* they don't care about your feelings
* they don't care about your side of the story
* they want no other communication with you except to lecture you or brow-beat you
* they continue their agenda of gaslighting, projecting, blame-shifting and lecturing
* someone else in the family will tell you to "get over it"
The signs of "wanting you back in your scapegoat role" are drilled into you over and over again. It's as though it is a mathematical equation that will always come out the same way every single time. 2 +2 = 4. Gaslighting, projecting, blame-shifting and lecturing = you are their beloved scapegoat.
Noooooooo!
Having scapegoats in ones family who are willingly living with abuse, and living with their abusers caretaking them, and never wanting to leave, as in Peep's family, are scapegoats I have never met. It may be the difference between the more conservative midwest, and the more liberal states in the northeast and the western coast. I'd also bet that in the liberal states, people are much more inclined to go to therapists for answers to interpersonal problems. Perhaps in the midwest, it's more about going to church and church leaders for answers, and yes, they are more inclined to say, "Stay with your family and turn the other cheek."
Another story:
Toxic Positivity and an inability to be resilient between sisters:
I wrote
this post which features two sisters who were "let go" by a father.
They got along, lived together, helped each other for awhile.
But one of the sisters was more resilient than the other sister. The resilient sister told the un-resilient sister to stop thinking about the parents, to get up and "do something!", to "stop moping around" and so on.
This is a perfect example of "you should", one of the four horseman of the scapegoat apocalypse.
It is also a perfect example of "comparing", one of the other four horseman of the scapegoat apocalypse.
And as I've said these two things do not work in relationships with other scapegoats.
One of the reasons why is that some people really do become disabled from narcissistic abuse. They become unable to cope mentally, emotionally, in keeping "going" and organized with their personal affairs, and their health even becomes trashed. Some of them start disassociating even. They aren't going to "snap out of it" no matter how much they are told to do so. They are going to act like any wounded animal. And guess what. When the wounding is that deep, it's normal, for God's sake!!
Some people can snap out of it. They get wounded, feel healed, go out into the world, and never think about it. They want to bury it out of existence, as though it's a misfortunate nightmare that only took place in childhood and will never be experienced again. That's normal too.
Even though they seem juxtaposed, they are both normal reactions to narcissistic abuse.
One of them seems more like one of the Borderline reactions, but like all the Cluster B personality disorders, Borderlines usually grow up in environments of abuse and neglect too, or more importantly, abandoning environments which caused them pain and for their brain to develop a certain way (having predictable reactions to unstable environments depending on which of the four types of Borderline Personality Disorder that they have).
Judging someone else's level of trauma is really destructive to all relationships, not just between scapegoats.
The one sister who wasn't so resilient may have had more bullying, more scapegoating, more blaming and shaming than her sister, perhaps some bullying at school that her sister didn't have. Trauma takes on many forms, and it's not up to a sibling to tell us that our version of trauma needs to be fixed their way.
I don't know, but I would suspect that the abandonment of her sister was more traumatizing than the abandonment of her father. It probably added to it, and the brain considers the sister to be a threat and not someone she can trust either, so it is no wonder she fared worse.
There is no "putting your big girl pants on" and "facing the day" when trauma is involved. It has enough variations, and one of those variations is being disabled with overwhelming symptoms that a person cannot change on their own without professional help, and that a hostile sister definitely cannot change.
ON THE WORLD-WIDE SCALE
We know that the groups who get scapegoated the most in a society tend to be minorities, and especially minorities who are financially challenged.
In this country that was the Native Americans, Black former slave populations, people with Japanese ancestry who were full Americans, and women who were seen as second class citizens.
Intergenerational trauma still exists for these populations.
briefly:
So the antagonistic part, and even the hoovering, in terms of relating to
Native Americans was done to get them to give up their land. White settlers made promises to the natives in the way of treaties, that white settlers would no longer be permitted to settle or invade their land ... until white settlers wanted more of their land, even the parcels that were officially signed over to them.
In other words,
broken promises became part of the legacy.
I do think broken promises can cause trauma.
The history turned out to be a never ending series of many, many broken promises, broken treaties, destruction of their food supply, and a genocide whereby white settlers took land by force, and killed the natives if they were in the middle of these land grabs. They were relocated constantly and eventually put into concentration camps where soil was poor for growing food and grazing animals (what we now refer to as reservations).
The natives lived in poverty, and they were even stripped of a food supply, making them totally dependent on the white man to supply them food. Many still live in poverty to this day.
Politicians make promises and grand gestures to them now and then, but mostly it's a trauma-bonded kind of relationship that they have with the rest of the U.S.A., especially the government, something that never inspires them to have trust in people outside the reservations, the intentions towards them, and who can blame them - this seems like something that Russia seems to want to emulate in its war against Ukraine.
Most of "the help" in terms of money and tax breaks, is given to the top richest corporations and people of the USA, not to impoverished minorities like Native Americans, and not to recompensate them for the damage, genocide and land grabs that are still effecting those who are left.
Do Native Americans sometimes target other Native Americans? Sometimes they do in this fashion: Some tribes reprimand each other for their role as scouts in the 1800s, who lead white soldiers to other tribes knowing that the white soldiers would attack and kill the members of these tribes. Some of them are reprimanded for giving into the white man's practices, traditions, culture, viewpoints and alcohol. There is tension too when it comes to "giving in" to the fake promises, the unreliable incomes, and toxic practices, and general unempathetic viewpoints and actions in American culture.
With
black populations who were originally brought into the country to be bought and sold as slaves, and who were eventually freed after the Civil War, there has been a legacy of voter suppression, hiring suppression, Jim Crow laws, archaic "rules" like being required to ride in the back of a bus and not up front, not being admitted into stores, restaurants, restrooms, colleges, and other establishments; i.e. not being treated as "full human beings" with the same rights as the dominant white race in the country.
It is racism, and it is still going on today unfortunately.
There is a legacy of poverty, lynching's, bombings of black churches, torching a city and black neighborhoods across the country, police brutality, corrupt and erroneous arrests and convictions, kangaroo courts, trauma and pain of populations because of what happened to relatives in the past, and the disenfranchisement that still goes on today, including continued acts of voter suppression and gerrymandering to keep black people from voting, and to make it harder for them to vote, and to keep them out of better paying jobs and careers.
Politicians make erroneous promises to these populations too, with changes that are baby steps at best, but do little to alleviate disenfranchisement and suffering in a major way.
Does this population sometimes pick on each other?
Gang violence is one way this sometimes manifests.
In my view, generational trauma bonding with white racists is one reason why a scapegoated, generationally traumatized group of people do not always coalesce to fight against disenfranchisement and prejudice, and why some of them are joining groups and political parties who have traditionally been racist and gerrymandering, some of them even extremely racist.
With
Japanese Americans, 110,000 were scapegoated in
World War Two and sent to concentration camps.
Note that they were full American citizens, most of them born in America. Their ancestry went back to Japan, and for many of them, that was all; they no longer identified with Japanese culture.
You can read the story from
Wikipedia.
I don't see any mention of in-fighting within the camps in the Wikipedia article, so perhaps in that case scapegoats
did not hurt other scapegoats.
Women used to be considered the property of their husband's, and if they were spinsters, of their family of origin. They had no voting rights, and in England they were not allowed to own land or buildings.
Women were also groomed to be submissive.
If they weren't submissive enough, a husband or parent could have them committed to an institution for the mentally ill. During some period of time, these institutions practiced lobotomies on their patients, rendering them so submissive and brain damaged that they were incarcerated for life in them.
Even if you were submissive, you could still be committed to an institution for the mentally ill because you were no longer wanted.
As we know, the problem with being submissive in all situations is that you can be abused (it renders you powerless, without feelings or a voice in terms of how people treat you and "what is expected of you" and "what is done to you.")
The message is that you don't have a choice as far as your fate.
In all forms of scapegoating, being submissive, subjugated, pleasing, and a sycophant is a requirement in terms of acceptance. And yes, this still happens today, even in the country I live in, even with more women in the workforce than not.
Do women who have endured expectations of being submissive at all times from a family of origin or from a husband scapegoat other women?
Yes they do, and from being in the workforce, and still in the workforce to a large degree, I would say that it is pervasive, disturbing and even disgusting if they are touting themselves as women's libbers, or for women's rights.
However, workplaces have been getting so much better in my own experience from an older generation of women who never practiced what they preached finally, finally retiring. The rancor, the nasty gossip, lording themselves over a younger generation of women when they were equals in pay and positions - "don't kick yourself in the bottom as you go out the door to your retirement!" It was torturous in many ways.
Again, from my own experience, my own generation of women learned a lot from that, and we don't do this to each other or to younger women. The workplace is quite peaceful, a drastic turn-around from what it was before, thank God.
a quote from Dr. Gordon Neufeld:
