Grief or Sadness on Mother's Day for Estranged Scapegoat Children of Narcissistic Families

 

From all I have heard, Mother's Day and Father's Day are often the saddest days of the year for estranged scapegoats. 

This post is about Mother's Day. 

I remember reading Toxic Mothers Don't Deserve Your Time On Mother's Day by Lenora Thompson years ago for Huffington Post. Then she wrote a column for Psych Central for years about what it was like to grow up as "an only child" in her family of origin. Her column was named "When Narcissism Meets Normalcy." 

We became friends and since then there have been many changes in her life with the death of a parent and grandparent, life challenges, and some different perspectives she has had since that post long ago. She is still estranged from her family, although death can sometimes challenge the often "fixed order" of narcissistic family childhood roles into more fluid, transforming and less challenging situations. Not everyone adopts a narcissist's perspectives even if they pretend to or "play dumb", especially after the narcissist has passed away. Sometimes even before the narcissist passes, the perspectives are regretfully adopted, even if temporarily, by some members over a narcissist's Will and Estate, or some kind of help, or accolades, or gravy train. Since narcissists base most of their relationships on winning or losing "their approval", be what it may, and on rewards and punishments, once the rules for approval and rewards go away, the fixed perspectives on who to hate often go away too.

For instance: "Mom always hated my oldest sister, but Mom always hated a lot of people. She was a very difficult person to get along with and we should have all gotten a medal for not running away. But I never hated anyone, especially a sister I barely knew growing up except for what Mom said about her. But none of us really trusted her as distorting reality was the name of the game for Mom! However if I didn't pretend to hate my sister too, Mom would have made my life a living hell! Now I'm trying to get to know my sister since Mom passed. I haven't had a relationship with her since I saw her last, which is when I was 15 years old, and even then, Mom tried to separate us from each other and tried to build a hate campaign towards her using us kids first. I never really knew her. Mom wanted my sister estranged from the family in the worst way, but we never understood why. We heard a lot of fights, and then my sister was gone forever from our household, though I found out later she had moved to Canada and now has two sons. No explanation was given to us by our mother except ones that made no sense and were filled mainly with emotion and vitriol." - those kinds of changes.

And they happen enough.

There aren't necessarily the same kinds of narcissists around either to smear the original narcissist's  scapegoats. And if scapegoats leave the family, and a scapegoat is needed for another generation, the hate will be for the new scapegoat, usually a child, not for some old white haired scapegoat they barely know, and haven't seen since they were kids, and no one knows where they live, or even if they're alive. With many new members, new in-laws, and new babies, they might not even know that someone served as a bullied scapegoat member of the older generation in the first place.   

I notice in workplaces that the scapegoating dynamic can change drastically with new people, and even more by new generations that come in, where the scapegoating of one worker can go out of style in a year or two depending on the change-over, and sometimes even be gone altogether when the old guard no longer works there or dominates. Some workers don't want a gossipy heavily competitive combative negative work environment to begin with. They are not into hearing negative talk about people they haven't gotten to know yet, or they are more empathetic than the people giving the "low-down" on such-and-such a worker. They want everyone to get along. And they may not understand what was wrong in the first place with a worker that the last group found so horrible as to bully them so relentlessly.

I still notice, on the whole, that the youngest, smartest, most talented, most justice-oriented, most kind, creative thinkers are the people most likely to be scapegoated in narcissistically oriented environments, especially when surrounded by older, less talented, more insecure workers. The fact that dynamics can change so rapidly in terms of a prior scapegoat no longer serving that role is testament to the fact that it's not that the person is bad, but that the role that workers and families put these people into is bad (the bullying is bad, as well as not justified, and obviously not justified to continue it forever). 

Only toxic environments have scapegoating and bullying in them, and if the toxicity vaporizes because of different attitudes and perspectives of newly hired workers, then the scapegoating and bullying goes away too. And the workers who were doing the bullying suddenly can become "the outsiders". I've seen it myself in two work environments (very drastic changes over two years in that way). The same can happen in a narcissistic family, but at a slower rate. I've also heard of that happening to survivors who were previously estranged from their entire family getting contacted by family members again once one of the family bullies has died.  

But in the meantime, while the scapegoating is "fixed" and the continuing bullying plan is in place, you might be feeling some grief and sadness on Mother's Day if you are estranged from your Mom.

Your Mom may not even be the bully. 
* Maybe the bully is your father or stepfather, and like all bullies, they have to separate the two of you so that they can have your mother all to themselves. 
* Maybe the bully is a sibling and they want your Mom's undivided attention, all of her worldly goods, all of her affection going to them, and you're estranged from your Mom because being around your sibling is dangerous. 
* Maybe you have all of this going on, and even your Mom has been brainwashed to hate you. 
* So maybe you stepped away, and didn't know what to do other than that. Maybe you were in shock that it was happening at all since you were always welcomed by your Mom before. You didn't know she could be talked into hating you so easily. Maybe suddenly your own children and spouse needed so much attention that you put whatever was happening with your Mom on the back-burner to think about for another day. By the time "another day" came, there weren't any solutions that were palpable, or were made available to you. Were you supposed to stay estranged just for the agenda of the bullies in your mother's life, or stay estranged because your mother was going along with the stories and hate-speech of others, or did your mother assume you were going to put up with bullying and then didn't know what to do once it became clear you weren't going to put up with it? 

A lot of families go silent during times of estrangement; they are not open to any kind of discussion. So you never really know, and then estrangement becomes your way of life out of default. You might feel devastated or mad and speak out, but usually when you do that in these kinds of situations, the silence continues, and so does the confusion. 

Sometimes you get an answer like a fleeting facial expression you had was taken out of context, or because of a singular phrase that most people would have over-looked or forgotten about. Or someone might have mentioned lack of object constancy to you. 

This is way more common than people realize as to who becomes estranged.

You might find out later from a therapist or two or three that bullying families are usually toxic families and get worse, and that the bullying gets worse and worse too no matter what you do, and can become life-threatening if those bullies feel you are defenseless or vulnerable. Maybe you seek a therapist, and they read off what the traits of narcissism are, and you notice those traits sound so much like the traits of the bullies you are dealing with. Narcissists are antagonistically inclined. So then you might become reliant on the advice of a therapist and they become who you go to for comfort, explanations, solutions, a way forward ...

But before you get to wanting advice from anyone, the confusion gets worse and worse, and the cognitive dissonance becomes extremely uncomfortable especially for making decisions. In the end, you may not go to a therapist. You may go to your family's minister, or Co-Dependent's Anonymous, or a close friend who has known you most of your life, or to someone you know who also had to deal with estrangement, or a psychic or fortune teller if you are inclined to go that way. At any rate, you are more than likely to go to someone to help you with the grief and confusion. Most scapegoats deal with a brick wall of silence from their family, or an uncharacteristically inflexible, unyielding "I have to win" attitude that didn't seem to be there before. And most people avoid bullies and bullying, so you, like most people in the world, are not going to take actions to place yourself in situations that are potentially bullying.

For most of us, our actions are going to be about getting answers we can understand.

Maybe all we have to understand is that either the mother, or the people surrounding her do not have object constancy when it comes to relationships, even relationships with children, siblings and mates. Lack of object constancy is just another trait of narcissism, so it further confirms someone or everyone in the group is narcissistically inclined.  

Estrangement becomes your new way of life as well as deepening relationships you've had all along, entering new relationships, dealing with the symptoms of being estranged, possibly dealing with some financial fall-out, or hanging out with other people who have become estranged - you've entered a new life, at any rate. You hope the door that you just walked through is sunnier than the dark traumatic one you've left behind. 

Like the change of the guard at a workplace, we can find that we are suddenly not bullied at all, and actually appreciated for who we are and what we bring to the table, with nothing in sight remotely like the scapegoating we endured before.

However, as the years roll by, you may sometimes wonder about your mother. 

"Did she really deserve not having contact with me at all?" you might ask. Wouldn't it be nice to drive to her house, give her some flowers, and take her out for lunch like you used to in the old days? But you hesitate. Can't go; the bullies are still there. Or maybe she never loved you in the first place; maybe it was all an act. Maybe she's adopted bullying herself, but you didn't really know it until you were estranged. Maybe she always thought of her real family as the bullies, and you were on the side for only a little while. Maybe she's so brainwashed that her own thoughts don't exist any more. Maybe she would never appreciate the flowers anyway. Maybe the bullies give her huge expensive bouquets of flowers that fill up her entire living room, and take her on vacations to the Italian Riviera, and your little bouquet and little lunch at a modest cafe would never be appreciated. "Bah, humbug! Not enough flowers! Not enough food!" Maybe this, and maybe that ... and all of the maybes don't lead anywhere except to more maybes. Maybe the advice you have been given about narcissists, and their isolation tactics, and their divide and conquer strategies is all of the "maybe" you need to know, and when you think about the scapegoating again when you no longer are a scapegoat in any part of your life, maybe that's what's keeping you away from another Mother's Day with your Mom.

Perhaps you just try to forget Mom and Mother's Day when there is no clear path that has revealed itself for yet another year of estrangement. Maybe taking a walk in the woods or celebrating your own motherhood with your child or children is how you go about Mother's Day now. At least there is no bullying or fear of bullying. It's a sweet holiday that you should enjoy precisely because there's nothing but flowers and love, and most of all, no bullying.

You may not even want to think about Mom because thoughts of Mom conjure up too many memories of the bullying and bullies. Or the violence. Or the sexual abuse. Or the stealing. Or the threats, intimidations, and the ordering you around as if you are a slave to a thankless family. Or however you were hurt by them. So you put thinking about her on the back burner just as you did when the estrangement first started.

Anyway, while Lenora Thompson's article for The Huffington Post is certainly a legitimate reason for not celebrating Mother's Day, and a lot of survivors go through "exactly that", what I'm saying is also the way survivors think about Mother's Day. It's more about the grief, sadness and confusion starting up again, and even of not wanting to remember the past. Especially since it came with so much confusion, a change of rules, or a change of judgements, or a change in someone's attitude. For instance they may have thought that estrangements are a good thing and should be done more often.

Since it never really made much sense to begin with except, perhaps, the very human tendency we all possess to flee from bullying (and wars, danger, violence, bombs, hate speech, prejudice, threats, intimidations, slaving, maybe even physical abuse, or being shamed for things you didn't actually do, or being treated as though you are vermin, Hitler's favorite phrase, or a recalcitrant sycophant-puppet). Everything that bullying and family wars bring seem so annihilating in so many ways, whether in whole or in part, whether they want to erase your personality, or your thoughts, or feelings, or reactions to the bullying, whether through making your health worse, or effecting your mind and body in negative ways. It's all so destructive and most things in life are all better than that kind of destruction. However, that doesn't make it less sad, especially on the day that celebrates parenthood. 

I just thought that this perspective on what can happen was as necessary as Lenora's.

Thank you. And I hope you are enjoying Mother's Day. 

An Update: Writing More Posts With Another Writer

Peep (not her real name) of the blog, Five Hundred Pound Peeps, and I will be publishing more posts together (this is her statement about that). The last post we published together was this one. 

We thought it might be more helpful for our readers. I do as much research and reading as I can on a topic, and she tells the personal side of the story. 

The next one in the series will be about rebellion and scapegoats. The title to mine is: "Are Scapegoats of Narcissistic Families Really Rebellious? Or Is It Just a Complaint by a Narcissist to Get the Scapegoat to Be More Submissive?" 

Another topic we will cover has to do with the positives and negatives of going "no contact" (dealing with family estrangement). I have shared a lot of personal stories of others in the post, A Psychologist Speaks Out About People Estranged From Their Family, and Narcissistic Abuse Survivors Speak Out About Suicidal Thoughts, Scapegoating, and Losing Their Entire Family of Origin, but I think this new post will add even more insights, especially details on positive aspects of going "no contact" as that one had a bit more to do with the negative aspects, and some anger towards narcissists. For instance, one of the more positive aspects is the ACON community (another link here, or try a twelve step group here, or go to your local domestic violence center and find a group there). I also offer some personal perspectives, and things I've tried, and things I would have changed in that post, and hers will be mostly about personal issues she has had with going "no contact." 

As you can tell, a lot of our posts are about scapegoats, and geared towards scapegoats and what they go through. We hope it is helpful to other scapegoats. 

Here are other topics we will be writing about in the future: 

* Do Scapegoats Really Resent the Golden Child? Or is it Just Something that Narcissists Make Up or Assume So That They Achieve Their Goals in Hurting the Scapegoat?

* Ways in Which the Scapegoat is Often Arm-twisted by the Family to Accept Bullying and Mobbing

* Muscle Aches and Pains When Traumatized from Abuse (with a Discussion on How Narcissists and Sociopaths Contribute to It)
     (note: this one requires a lot of study into the science of trauma and the physiological reactions to it in one's body, and some of it is hard for me to understand because I do not have a medical or science background - but it is interesting enough for me to pursue and hopefully explain it in a way that will be enlightening. It is one of the symptoms that can have a major impact on other organs of the body, causing more stress on the body, and once you have it, you have it in spades. It's hard to ignore, and if you aren't aware of conditions like Generalized Anxiety Disorder, you can think you have a bad case of Fibromyalgia or that you have a disease of the nervous system. It's systemic - every muscle is effected. It's one of the major physical symptoms, which many child abuse survivors experience along with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It may take me awhile to publish compared to other posts, but it will hopefully be interesting to you as well as Peep's post where she will talk about when and how this set of symptoms came about, and her struggles with it on a personal level). 

Another post Peep has suggested to me is that we do one on "poverty and scapegoats". I think the way I'd like to tackle this is to get a lot of stories from scapegoats and to see if they went through a period of short term or long term poverty and if it is a common experience among them. My intuition would say yes, at least the ones who are either shunned (and I use the word "shunned" because narcissistic families are very cult-like - you aren't acknowledged in any way if they discard you - even the fact that you are alive is not acknowledged) or the scapegoat has left of their own accord.

I could also contribute to the discussion because I went through a period of poverty between ages 18 - 21 (and I had jobs during that period and at 19 was going to college full time too, and a story to tell about the bureaucracy hurdles of trying to get food stamps during that period). It was also a period of rampant sexism in America where young women made quite a bit less than men. Employers constantly told young female workers that they weren't going to get paid for extra work or overtime, and in my case, my boss withheld two weeks of pay because I was dating someone my boss thought I should marry. There was the constant "drone" that women had no place in the workplace and to get "hitched" and have babies instead. Young men made passes at you at work, and if you rejected their advances, they could lord it over you about the fact that they had more money, higher wages, and could get in higher positions over you, no matter how talented you were because no one liked "a pushy woman asking for a job." It impacted my life. 

I would like to do a post on scapegoats and sexism, and how many shunned or treated-like-a-minority scapegoats are vulnerable to sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexual harm, sexual ostracism, being cheated on, and sexism. In terms of narcissistic families, I did hear somewhere that girls have a much higher rate of being scapegoated than boys do, as high as 13 - 1. If true, this may have to do with the fact that boys are favored in society too, or at least once were. We will see how a female politician fares against a male politician (but I would bet that if she does win, it is because women will go out in force to vote for her). 

At any rate, it is going to be harder for Trump to beat her with his usual insults and name-calling. Calling a woman "crazy", "lying", "nasty" and "stupid" is what domestic violence offenders call women. It is also what girls are often called too in child abuse situations. These are the most common words of violent perpetrators of women and girls at any rate. Perpetrators also indulge in false narratives and smear campaigns about women. It's going to cause any woman who has been called these names to vote for Kamala Harris (and I bet it would be significant numbers of them, at least that is what I predict from my mini corner of the planet).

If she does get elected, maybe it is a sign that "enough is enough" when it comes to male leaders and their agendas for women.

One of the reasons we are doing these posts together is to give you a wider breadth of a topic, what I have researched and discovered from hearing survivor stories, how it effected Peep on a personal level, and so that the most informed decision can be made, especially if you are a scapegoat of a family.

For instance, the most difficult and major choice you can make in your life if you are a scapegoat is whether to respond at all if you've been discarded or shunned by your family, what typically happens if you respond to a shunning, or if you've made the decision yourself to go "No Contact" after a life time of being treated like a second class citizen in the home and sometimes even in the world at large. That is one of the major topics we will be discussing.

Some other scapegoat posts I have written are listed HERE.