Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “scapegoat”
Someone who had survived narcissistic abuse as the scapegoat in his family of origin recently described what it was like for him to play his favorite sport – basketball. We’ll call this person ‘Steph’ (no relation to Curry). Steph loved shooting baskets and playing in pickup games with his friends since he was 5 years old. Something just felt good …
So you’ve done a ton of work to take stock of how you had to adapt to a narcissistic parent’s abusiveness. Now that you live with a hard-earned awareness of the truth about your parent, you are talking to your longtime friend from high school who asks you how that parent is doing and tells you how much they always …
Have you had a parent or partner in your life whose approval you wanted so badly yet always seemed out of reach? Did life feel more exciting or even more worth living when you were in the company of this person and much less so when away from him or her? Has the quest to be important to the narcissist …
I think there’s a lesson in how the most basic unit of life – the atom – is structured and how our inner experience is meant to be structured. Here’s what an atom looks like: You have the center or nucleus of the atom that has these sub-atomic particles called protons and neutrons that carry a positive charge. Then you …
The term ‘Narcissistic abuse’ is pretty recognizable that it’s a bad thing. Like no one’s gonna sign up for some form of abuse, right? So, if you’re unfortunate enough to know firsthand such abuse then how can it be that the prospect of leaving one’s abuser can feel scarier, more conflictual, and guilt inducing than staying in the abusive situation? …
I recently saw the comic Bill Burr perform – pre-Omicron days – and he talked about being on mushrooms with his friends. Now if you know much about him, he alludes to growing up in a family where yelling and unpredictable outbursts of rage from his father were just a part of growing up for him. I don’t know if …
If saying you’re sorry – and rarely hearing it – feels like an all too common part of your experience, then you may have had to survive narcissistic abuse from a parent or partner. A big part of this abuse may have also been an absence of protection from it by anyone else. When you are selected as the scapegoat …
I talk a lot about the process of narcissistic abuse and how a child is often selected and treated as the scapegoat for the narcissistically abusive parent. The question may remain of how exactly a narcissistic parent gets the child to identify with the role of scapegoat. When a child is selected as the source of all the family’s problems …
I think there’s an idea in the world of recovery from any sort of trauma – narcissistic abuse included – that it requires revisiting the feelings that were felt during the abuse and that if those feelings are felt and those experiences re-examined properly then the survivor will be released from it all. Although that may work in some cases, …
One of the most challenging aspects in recovering from narcissistic abuse is the task of putting psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical distance between yourself and your narcissistic abuser. I’ve talked about the guilt and ambivalence that can sometimes emerge when beginning to separate from a narcissistic family or partner. Questions can arise like: “Am I making all this up?”, “Am …
