#and they were just abusive and scapegoating a disorder they may or may not have had | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gay-simple-and-chaotic · 9 months

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huge vent ramble under the cut (my love if you're seeing this I'm just trying to process and get it out there, no need to check up on me)

beginning to think I might actually not just be traumatized and depressed but also have a personality disorder because damn. quiet bpd and avpd both really strike some uncomfortable chords

but at the same time i have too much control for it to be bpd, but I have too much self esteem for it to be avpd,

but at the same time, it's worse than just anxiety because there's so many more layers to it like,

if it was just social anxiety, I probably wouldn't be so debilitatingly terrified of putting myself in a situation where someone might criticize me. (Yet at the same time I've been able to overcome it sometimes! It's uncomfortable, it's draining, and I avoid doing it, but I have done it)

if it was just anxiety, I would have a stable sense of who I am (but I'm young and autistic, right? There's time)

if it was just anxiety, surely I wouldn't spiral into panic when I attempt to set a boundary, and if setting it seems to annoy someone, surely if it was just anxiety, my first reaction wouldn't be to recoil and downplay, to minimize my upset and my struggling? (but that's fawn response, it could be an anxious attachment style, I know I have that)

if it was just any of it, surely I wouldn't be so utterly unable to believe someone when they said they liked spending time with me, when they told me to my face that they don't see me as a secondary/backup friend, right? That wouldn't be this persistent, all-encompassing fear, that even though I like myself (too much too much, have a big head, make yourself smaller or you'll be intolerable and they'll hate you they'll leave you) and generally don't take shit (but you're too outspoken, over dumb things, you're sensitive and you've taken to "voicing your needs" and you're going to push everyone away asking them to do inconsequential things that annoy them, like asking them to not be mean to your favorite character), and show my affection openly to my friends (TOO MUCH TOO MUCH you're going to suffocate them and they're going to leave even after all your attempts to keep them close because you're too much you're TOO MUCH) and love them a lot, surely it isn't normal to be paranoid about your friends having favorites, surely it isn't normal to feel like no matter how much you try to bridge an unspoken gap (that probably doesn't even exist, it's in your head, they were annoyed once and now you're assuming they're holding onto it as much as you are) they're always pulling away faster and faster because all they were waiting for was an excuse to ditch you,

panicking and spiraling and self deprecating, wanting to drive them away but being so afraid, you're not angry you're never angry (except when it's unreasonable and you're frustrated and you want to cry because it's all so unfair) you're just afraid, you want them to go but you NEED them to stay, the thought of them leaving feels like you're dying, your throat is tight and you're struggling to think or act right when it occurs,

god, surely that's not something someone's supposed to experience, right?

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giftedsupport · 5 years

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Childhood Emotional Trauma and the Highly Sensitive Child

The subject of childhood emotional trauma and its consequences and symptoms are particularly pertinent to the gifted community. Growing research has found that a wide array of psychological difficulties finds their roots in these chronic childhood relational and attachment injuries. Children who experience this type of trauma show a disrupted ability to regulate their emotions, behaviours, and attention, and these symptoms often extend into adulthood, leading to clinical presentations including Bipolar Disorder, ADHD, Borderline Personality Disorder and even chronic physical pain (APA, 2007).

Paraphrased from here:

Being parents to a sensitive and emotionally gifted child has its own rewards. However, such parents need to be very mature and highly aware. Many parents do not have all that it takes. Most of the times, parents do not exploit or abuse their sensitive children on purpose, but their limited understanding or experience still gets the best of them.

The families of emotionally intense children end up in one of two ways: they can love the child, however much work parenting may be; or they reject the child for his or her strangeness. In an experiment conducted by Andrew Solomon, involving interviews with over 400 families, he observed that in the case of having atypical children, would-be good parent were extraordinary, going the extra mile if the need arose, while the would-be bad parents were downright abusive. He concluded that having an exceptional child exaggerates parental tendencies.

Complex or developmental trauma is particularly detrimental because it is invisible. On the surface, we looked just fine. We were provided with all the material things we need; clothing, food etc. But the way we feel inside does not measure up to what our appearance portrays. There is sometimes a pressure to keep up an illusion of a “normal happy child from a normal happy family”. Our parents and society tells us we are okay, but the fact that we did not feel okay makes us more confused.

A few toxic family dynamics a sensitive and intense child can end up in include scapegoating, parentification, emotionally unavailable parents, enmeshment, parental envy of their children, and more.

There is a LOT I could say about the intersection of being gifted (and thus often emotionally intense and highly sensitive) and having childhood emotional trauma. But I’ll try to keep it to a minimum:

You can be traumatized as a child and not realize it. You can have been emotionally neglected or abused and not realize it. Children accept whatever they grow up with as normal. There are many people who develop Complex PTSD in their THIRTIES from their childhood trauma and didn’t even realize until then that they had BEEN traumatized. I’m one of them.

So here is a very partial list of potential symptoms of childhood emotional trauma. If more than a couple of these sound like you, it might be something to look into:

High sensitivity to embarrassment; feeling extreme or unwarranted shame or embarrassment in awkward social situations

Feeling like you’re completely different than everybody else

Intense isolation and loneliness

Intense, lifelong longing to be loved

Mysterious health problems, chronic pain, chronic fatigue

Sudden and inexplicable floods of negative emotions; mood swings

Having a very poor idea of what you’re actually like or how other people perceive you

Irrational annoyance and anger

Pessimism; noticing the negative things in your life more than the positive things

Intense jumpiness; easily startled

Nightmares

Burnout

Mentally calling yourself names like “weird”, “loser”, “ugly”, “stupid,” etc.

Inability to sit still; ADHD symptoms

Overachieving or giving up and underachieving

Perfectionism

Black and white thinking (things are either GREAT or TERRIBLE. They’ll lead to WEALTH AND FAME or HOMELESSNESS AND BEING FOREVER ALONE. There is no in between.)

Learned helplessness: you feel like there’s no way out of bad situations. Even when people suggest things that might help, you may find reasons to dismiss them as useless suggestions.

Inability to concentrate, excessive daydreaming, ADD symptoms

Giving in to people too easily; wanting everybody in the world to like you SO MUCH, ALL THE TIME

Feeling like you have no choices in how you live your life: things are planned out for you.

Asexuality (I’m not saying this is an illness or something. It’s just that a high percentage of people with childhood trauma (even non-sexual trauma) are asexual. Scientists don’t know why.)

Feeling stuck and perennially dissatisfied with life

Your friends or loved ones often try to convince you of good things about yourself, but you refuse to believe them because you’re SO SURE they’re wrong

#childhood trauma #emotional abuse #emotional neglect #gifted #gifted children #c-ptsd

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skullsgonehelterskullter · 4 years

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The Onceler’s Real Reasons For Chopping Down the Trees!

The Onceler’s Real Motivation for Cutting Down the Trees!

Hello. My name is Triniti and I speak for the Onceler. Before we get started today, I’d like to teach you a few terms that I’ll be using in this essay.

Most of you have probably heard of emotional abuse before. It’s something I’ve suffered through and something the Onceler has suffered through. Emotional Abuse is any abusive behavior that isn’t physical, which may include verbal aggression, intimidation, manipulation, and humiliation, which most often unfolds as a pattern of behavior over time that aims to diminish another person’s sense of identity, dignity, and self-worth, and which often results in anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts or behaviors, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Well, that’s quite a lot to take in, isn’t it? So let me tell you a few things that emotional abuse can present itself as: Intimidation, Manipulation, Refusal to ever be pleased, Shaming, Name-calling, Insults, Sarcasm, Silent treatment, Trivializing, Sabotage, Gaslighting, Scapegoating, Blame-shifting, Ranking and comparing, Unpredictable inconsistency, Threatening harm, and that’s not at all, but that’s not all this essay is about and I’m probably boring you.

One last term we should cover is gaslighting. This is an important one as I use it in this essay quite a bit. Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. They tell blatant lies; they deny they ever said something; even though you have proof; they use what is near and dear to you as ammunition; they throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.

So, why was all of that important? You’re just here for more Onceler content, right? Well, all of this has happened to our dear Oncie. My thesis? Emotional abuse was a bigger motivator for the Onceler than corporate greed.

The Onceler’s Family Life.

So, where could the emotional abuse in the Onceler’s life have come from? Simple answer, his family. When we first meet them it sounds like his mom is trying to be supportive and then she laughs his dreams off. “Yes, but just remember, Onesie, if some-how your invention ends up a failure instead of a success, oh it wouldn’t surprise me at all!” After she says this, the rest of the family joins in the laughing. A few things can be drawn from this conclusion.

One, she seems to do this quite often throughout the film and probably his past. This can take a heavy toll on his mental health as I’ll explain later.

Two, she seems to be the ring leader of the abuse because the others never join in unless she starts it. It’s better to make fun of someone else than to be ridiculed yourself right? It’s a come self-defense mechanism. Three, the other people in the family probably suffer to some of the same extent of abuse she places on him. Hence why they jump on the chance for the Onceler to be the victim.

From the line, “Nice wheels! *Punch* Burn!” we can learn that he’s probably been subjected to physical abuse too as he flinches before and after he’s punched. He lunches a lot around his family and they hit him quite a few times in this film. This can pair with the emotional abuse and cause him to be overly cautious around other people.

Another thing I’d like to point out is his weight. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with him. But have you seen his family? Why is he so skinny compared to them? Do they feed him enough? Not supplying basic needs is a form of abuse too. This one can’t be confirmed but it is something I noticed.

“Ha..ha.. Yea, Burn! But you’ll see, okay? I’m going to prove you all wrong!” Right after this line, the old Onceler says he had a completely irrational sense of optimism. Why? Because a lot of his drive came from trying to prove himself worthy and to make his family proud. Yes, he did want to change the world for the better, but when he has these negative feelings surrounding him, he’s going to do nothing but drown in his fear of being the failure his family has always told him he was. When you’ve been emotionally abused you always tend to look at the negative side first because that’s all you’ve ever been told. (You can see a little bit of this in the demo song The Onceler’s Travelling Madness.)

Another, smaller, instance is when he makes his first thneed. He says, “Now there’s a thneed! Nothing unmanly about knitting. No, sir.” Why would he say this unless his family had repeatedly drilled that into his head in order to discourage him from pursuing his dreams?

One more small one is when the Lorax first appears and asks why the Onceler didn’t notie the thunder and lightning. People who live in abusive households get used to chaos very quickly and tend to overlook big and small traumitic events. It’s very possible he didn’t even realize loud noises were going on because he’s so used to them happening around him all the time.

The next bigger point is when he finally makes it big. The first person he calls is his mother. He’s feeling really great about himself because they were wrong! He can amount to something and he can be a success! “Mom? Hey, it’s me! I told you I was going to be a success! You need to bring the whole family here right now. We’re going to be rich!” The only reason his family comes to his aid is because of the money he promises them. We know this because they leave the moment he stops making money. I’ll touch more on this later.

When they arrive in the forest, she runs out of the van singing his praises. “There’s my suddenly successful son! We always knew you’d be a success!” She then uses a hug and kisses to praise him and give him affection, which if you remember is a sign of gaslighting. She’s using affection to ‘prove’ that she loves him.

“But you always said I wouldn’t amount ot anything, remember?” -Onceler. Here you can see that he is desperately trying to get his mother to remember just how badly she treated him. You can hear the hurt in the inflection of his voice. ‘Don’t you remember how you hurt me?’

“Oh, you hush your mouth. I was just trying to motivate you.”-Mother. She’s gaslighting him here. ‘What? No, I never did that. You’re crazy. I loved you this whole time!’

“I’m really glad that you clarified that because it actually hurt my feelings for a really long time.”-Onceler. She never acknowledges this and lets him continue the conversation. He doesn’t get an apology or closure until the end. After he finishes, you can see him flinch when she starts yelling at the other two to set up the RV.

Yelling is also a sign of emotional abuse. It scares and intimidates people into submission. You know that whole joke about if you shout loud enough at a grizzly you can assert your dominance and it will leave you alone? Same thing with yelling and emotional abuse. You can get anyone to do anything if you make them feel inferior enough. Hence the Onceler and his Mother.

The Onceler vs The Lorax.

Let’s take a break from that so you can absorb it. Take some breaths and think about it for a moment.

So, who is the Onceler exactly? Well we know he wants to do something incredible and change the world for the better. “Bout to make a thneed, bout to change the world.” He likes music and is really good at playing the guitar. He likes to play card games. He’s very imaginative and creative. He’s a great problem solver (when his family isn’t around). He thinks nature is really pretty. “Woah! This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen!”

He’s also very respectful of nature in the beginning. When he sets up his cottage, he sets it up in a place free of trees and other landmarks. His family goes too far as to harm the animals and the trees when they set up the RV. They throw bears around and Onceler reaches out to protect pipsqueak at his own expense when they are being saved from the river. He never intended to do any harm to the forest of its occupants in the beginning even though he did so by being a bit reckless. He even cooks them pancakes!

So, then why does he keep threatening the forest when the Lorax tells him to stop? I believe it’s because the Lorax reminds him of his mother. The Lorax also uses shaming and gaslighting to try and get the Onceler to do what he wants. For example;

“Hey! Did you chop down this tree?” Right off the bat, the Lorax starts with an accusatory statement. He knows that the Onceler chopped down the tree. It’s like a mother asking her three-year-old if he got into the cookie jar when he’s holding a cookie. He clearly knows that he did, in fact, chop down this tree but now Onceler is being faced with impending disappointment coming from another figure. A common reaction to abuse is to try and immediately escalate the situation and to keep out of trouble so you’re not yelled at or hit.

“Uhhh...no? Who did it? *Gasp* What’s that? I think he did it!” Hence this line. And here comes the inevitable yelling that he was trying to stop.

“Leave! Vacate the premise. Take your ax and get out!”

*Tries to placate the Lorax by giving him the peace offering of a marshmallow* This action shows that he wants to stop the yelling and hopefully make things right. But how can he offer an apology when he’s never been taught how? His whole life presents meant everything was okay now. Hence the marshmallow.

*Lorax start kicking the pegs holding his house up*

“Whoa! Wait! Hey, Mustache! Will you stop that? What’s your deal, man?” He doesn’t start calling names until he’s tried to peacefully ask him to stop first. He’s learned this from his family and does this towards the Lorax a few times in the film. But never towards anyone who didn’t cause him harm first. (It’s still an emotional abuse tactic though.)

“Whoa! Stop right there!”- Lorax

*Immediately stops and takes several steps back*-Onceler

“So, you would hammer one of nature’s innocent creatures?”- Lorax

*Shock and hurt* “What? No! I would never hit this little guy! You, on the other hand, I would gladly pound you and your mustache into the ground!” He is aggressive now because all his other defense mechanisms have not worked to get his aggressor to stop. But this next part is the important part.

“Behold! The intruder and his violent ways. Shame on you. For shame.” *All the other forest creatures start shaking their heads in disappointment* Who does this remind you of? The Onceler’s mother. She did this same thing with his family when he was leaving. The Lorax has shamed him for doing what he thought was a good thing and turned everyone against him. Feeling alone and isolated is a very scary thing, especially when everyone is targetting you. The Onceler has a lot of experience being on this end and never being able to stand up for himself. So, he turns to anger and ‘justifies’ his actions so people will stop targetting him and shaming him.

“All right, you know what? That’s it. You listen here, you furry meatloaf. I’m going to chop down as many trees as I need. Okay? Newsflash! Not going anywhere. End of story!”

After this, the Onceler and the Lorax reach an agreement of not chopping down the trees when Onceler sees just what kind of effect he could have on his new friends and doesn’t want to cause them any harm. But the Lorax keeps bringing up his mistake.

“You chopped down one of my trees to make that piece of garbage?” He is once again imitating the mother by putting the Onceler down and insulting something precious to him. The Oncelere’s face falls and he holds his thneed close to him as if to protect it. When you constantly bring up someone’s mistakes, it makes them feel worse and worse about themselves and prevents them from moving on and bettering themselves. This creates a cycle of self-hatred that’s hard to break out of. The Onceler has experienced this from his family and from the Lorax. After he destroys the entires forest, he also experiences it from himself as he shuts himself in isolation and refuses to move past his mistakes.

The Family influence on his decisions.

Alright, the part we all really wanted to get to. We have seen that the Onceler is not a greedy person. So, why does he keep chopping down trees to make more money and keep biggering his company? Because his abusive family manipulates him into it and it’s hard for him to break that cycle. He fully intended to keep his promise on not chopping down trees and devised another system to gather the tusks from the trees.

When does he start chopping down the trees?

When his mother tells him to. Breaking his promise didn’t even cross his mind until his mother suggested it and here’s your proof.

Once-ler: I mean, look at this. It's amazing. I am so proud of me.

Once-ler's Mom: Oncie, we've got us a little problem.

Once-ler: Problem?

Once-ler's Mom: Mmm-hmm. See, we're not making Thneeds fast enough.

Once-ler’s Dad: Harvesting the tufts takes too long!

Once-ler: Well, what else can we do? (Didn’t mention chopping down the trees at all. What can he do? He can’t cut them and he has to find a faster way to harvest them. )

Once-ler's Mom: Well, and this just came to me, we could always start chopping down the trees. (Oh, can he?)

Once-ler: What? (What? No, I can’t. I promised.)

Now you're thinking.

That would speed things up!

Once-ler: But… (But I promised!)

Once-ler's Mom: No buts, Oncie. You're running a business now. You have to do what's best for the company and your momma.

Once-ler: Well, I guess it couldn't hurt to chop down a few trees. (Well, I guess if it’s to keep my mom happy and they’re proud of me, how bad can it be if everyone is happy?)

Once-ler's Mom: You've made me so proud, Oncie. Come here!

And here it is. The moment you choose to please an abuser is the moment you lose everything. And what happens after? Exactly.

One more thing I’d like to put in here is that pride also has something to do with it. He’s proud that he overcame adversity and made it big. He’s proud that he’s helping people. He’s proud that his family finally likes him. He’s glad he made his family proud! “Look at this! I’m so proud of me.” “You’ve made me so proud!” “Something good finally happens to me!” “This is all so gratifying! (Because I’m so proud of all that I’ve accomplished and All I’ve built and all I’ve collected!)”

His regret.

After this, his family starts pushing the Lorax and all his forest friends away so that he has no other information or support system so he can only keep making his decisions based on what makes them happy and what fuels his pride.

“I’ve done nothing illegal! I have my rights!” Are these his thoughts or his family trying to keep his guilt in check so he doesn’t compromise their money income? Just saying.

“The last tree. That might stop you.” You can see the guilt hit the Onceler really fast and he desperately tries to win the animals back as he realizes just how bad his actions really were. FOr the first time in his life he doesn’t receive any backlash for a mistake

the animals don’t fight him and the Lorax doesn’t tell him how wrong he was. He just sits in the knowledge that he was wrong. “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.”

The guilt hits him hard and he spends the rest of his life wallowing in his mistake. Not to mention all his efforts were for naught as his family leaves him, slamming him with more disappointment. “You have let me down. Bret! You are now my favorite child!” He tried so hard but they never cared about him and all his mistakes and choices were made in vain because you can’t please abusers. He had to be hurting really really badly after that.

I firmly believe he’s still a good person because I can see just how much he regretted his mistake. In my opinion, O’Hare represents corporate greed much more than the Onceler does because he doesn’t regret any of his actions and he purposely keeps the environment bad and making more smog and making more plastic to keep the people paying him and getting more money. He does all that on purpose.

The Onceler? He made mistakes and he was manipulated. It doesn’t excuse his actions and he does hold accountability because abuse isn’t an excuse. But it was emotional abuse, not corporate greed and that’s my point. Thanks for coming to my essay. Have a lovely day!

#the lorax #the onceler #lorax 2012 #oncie

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catholicismabusedestiny · 4 years

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FSA! I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANT UNTIL RECENTLY

03.02.2019

My father’s birthday~ I think that is more than just a coincidence that I found myself researching this topic or this date, but I did! Ever since my 60th, which was an awful, hurtful and emotional draining weekend for me; I became a hermit for months because each time I so much as thought about that weekend, I’d begin to cry and I didn’t want to do that around anyone else – especially my friends!

In truth, it was the most hurtful (and yet INTENTIONAL) act that anyone’s ever done to me and no one even cares. I’d told everyone that my vision for that weekend was to celebrate the passing of my health issues, the blending of my friends and family (which I’ve tried to do for decades) and the starting of my new business in California. I described it as “the best” event in my life – given I wasn’t married; I viewed this as the one and only event intended for nothing but to celebrate me, Mike.

However, to then experience what actually occurred and to know that it was done intentionally to hurt me is/was something so harmful/difficult to process that I sought out my therapist’s assistance to make sense of it. Ironically, I’ve only been seeing this therapist about 6 months yet - he too – referred to FSA as something I needed to research and boy he was right.

Per my therapist’s advice, I’ve done some follow-up research on a topic we’ve discussed at length in therapy; he’s instructed me to review various case studies and ensure that I have a thorough understanding of the phenomena of Scapegoating, or FSA, as the therapist’s call it. In fact, I reviewed the content from a book he’s recommended and below are some excerpts from that book.

“Since publishing my first book on what I named Family Scapegoating Abuse (FSA), many readers have written me with questions regarding family scapegoating and the challenges faced when attempting to recover from its damaging effects. In today’s post I answer five critical questions about this most insidious form of systemic psycho-emotional abuse”.

Understanding Family Scapegoating Abuse (FSA)

Over the past few months, I’ve had many readers of my blog articles write to me privately or in comments to the effect of, “I can’t believe what I am reading – It’s like you’re writing about my own life!”

Many of those writing to me express the intensity of emotions they experience when recognizing themselves as FSA survivors. Typical comments include, “At last, there’s a name that describes what I’ve been experiencing”, and “Now that I understand what may have happened to me, I have hope that perhaps there’s a way for me to recover.”

Often those reaching out to me to share their experiences of being scapegoated also have a lot of questions about family scapegoating abuse as related to their experiences of painful and damaging family betrayal.

Below are five of the most frequently asked questions I am asked by clients and readers, along with my responses (in brief), that are critical to understanding scapegoating abuse and it’s effects on the targeted family member:

1 – What Is the ‘Family Scapegoat’? ‘The Scapegoat’ is one of the roles ‘assigned’ to a child growing up in a dysfunctional family system (I say more about this process in my answer to question 2). The scapegoating typically (but not always) begins in childhood and often continues into and throughout adulthood, although the role may be passed around to different family members at times.

Because family scapegoating processes can be insidious and subtle, many adult survivors do not realize that they are suffering from a most egregious (and often chronic) form of systemically-driven psycho-emotional bullying and abuse, with all of the painful consequences to body, mind, and spirit.

More specifically: Children and adult children who are caught in the ‘family scapegoat’ role are the ‘identified patient’ in their family. As such, they are often the targets of ‘shaming and blaming’, distorted family narratives (aka ‘smear campaigns’) and can end up rejected and discarded by those who were supposed to love them the most: Their own family-of-origin.

2 – Why Do Families Scapegoat? There are a multitude of reasons why one (or more) family members become the constant target of rejecting, shaming, and blaming behaviors within their family-of-origin. It is usually the case that most family members who scapegoat are genuinely oblivious to the fact that they are engaging in mentally and emotionally abusive behaviors and become highly defensive if confronted with their damaging and harmful behavior.

In Family Systems theory, scapegoating in a dysfunctional family system is understood to be fueled by unconscious processes whereby the family displaces their own collective psychological difficulties and complexes onto a specific family member.

This process of projection, shaming, and blaming serves to divert attention away from the rest of the family’s mental and emotional problems via casting the targeted family member into the role of ‘scapegoat’. This does not mean that all acts of blaming and shaming a child are unconscious – rather, the projection process fueling the scapegoating of the family member is unconscious.

Despite the fact that the ‘family scapegoat’ role is common to dysfunctional families, there is surprisingly little research or literature available to both lay-person and clinician describing family scapegoating’s features and effects on the targeted child / adult child. As a result, family scapegoating is seldom recognized as abuse warranting clinical intervention and treatment. More to the point, however, is that those within a family that’s exhibiting signs of Scapegoating will not recognize the signs themselves, or what role they might have in continuing this abuse.

3 – What Are the Effects of Family Scapegoating Abuse (FSA)? Many FSA adult survivors fail to realize that they have actually suffered from psycho-emotional abuse growing up, and even their therapist or counselor might miss the signs and symptoms associated with being in this most devastating dysfunctional family role. AMEN to this!!

Specifically: Adults seeking assistance from a mental health professional may find that the genuine pain and distress they are experiencing is minimized or even invalidated (e.g., “But they’re your family, of course they love you”; “Family connections are so important, it can’t be that bad”; “It’s best if you forgive, we need to maintain ties with our family to be healthy”), which only serves to reinforce the scapegoated adult’s fear that they are somehow fundamentally to blame for their strained (or non-existent) family relationships.

As a consequence of having their family relational distress and abuse symptoms go unrecognized, many adult survivors of FSA suffer from anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and anger management issues. They may have been diagnosed in the past with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and even Dissociative Identity Disorder with Psychosis. Once again, AMEN!

In addition to the above disorders, FSA survivors may have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Agoraphobia. Others may be diagnosed with a personality disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder, especially), or an attachment disorder.

4 – Can Family Scapegoating Abuse Lead to Complex Trauma?

Yes. It has been my observation that in addition to being diagnosed with one or more of the disorders listed above, many family scapegoating abuse survivors are suffering from symptoms of undiagnosed, untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which I will be addressing in a future blog post. Each and every diagnosed I’ve highlighted in red are contained within my medical files.

More specifically: As related to my ongoing work with adult survivors seeking to recover from family scapegoating abuse, it is my experience that the rejecting, shaming, and otherwise non-nurturing, harmful, and abusive family environment my clients grew up in (and had no means of escaping from) has actually contributed to their experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD – which is also known as complex trauma disorder) secondary to chronic parental / family psycho-emotional (and at times physical) abuse.

5 – What’s One of the Biggest Obstacles to FSA Recovery? Scapegoated adults often don’t realize how their familial distress has been negatively impacting nearly every area of their life, including their mental and emotional health, relationships, work, and their ability to realize their most cherished goals and dreams. Over the years, therapist’s have referred to this phenomena; but, I was quick to dismiss it for various reasons; however, now that it’s had two decades to percolate in my head while familial strife worsened to the extent that I now feel like an orphan with instructions that “no one wants to hear anything you have to say” yet no one’s told me what it is their upset about? Now I’m thinking that they might not even know what their upset about.

More specifically: Scapegoated adults often feel debilitated by self-doubt and ‘imposter syndrome’ in their relationships and in the work-place, and blame themselves for their difficulties. They typically struggle in regard to creating and experiencing a sense of life mission, passion, and purpose, and find themselves succumbing to feelings of futility, hopelessness, depression, anxiety, and despair. In extreme cases they may feel that taking their own life is the only way to end their pain. OMG AMEN!

What the FSA victim may see as ‘family conflict’ is often unrecognized mental and emotional abuse. To compound matters further, the FSA victim typically doesn’t realize how being the target of family scapegoating is affecting their ability to succeed and thrive in their personal and professional life.

It may not even occur to the FSA victim that they may need to limit or (in extreme cases) even end contact with abusive family members (which has been recommended to me on more than one occasion) who refuse to take ownership for their damaging behaviors – especially if there are cultural and/or financial considerations that seem insurmountable and impossible to overcome.

While being scapegoated within one’s family-of-origin is recognized as being harmful, the negative effects are most often categorized as mental and emotional exclusively. However, being in the role of the family scapegoat can also result in the targeted child being physically bullied, sexually abused, or denied medical care. We as a society need to acknowledge this and stop putting our heads in the sand so as to avoid overwhelming and unpleasant realities.

Learn more about family scapegoating abuse and how to dis-identify from the false family narrative so you can release the 'scapegoat story' for good! I just ordered this book!

Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed

Help and Hope for Adults in the Family Scapegoat Role

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the-courage-to-heal · 8 years

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6 Signs You Were Raised By A Narcissist:

To outsiders, your dad is a larger-than-life social magnet who attracts people from all walks of life. Or your mom is the perfect woman, always looking to please and juggling everything with ease. But behind closed doors, all pretense falls away. Only you, their child, knows what it’s like to endure their cold shoulders for days on end over a minor infraction, or bear the brunt of constant, age-inappropriate demands for perfection and strength. You know what it’s like to be parented by a narcissist.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is one of 10 personality disorders described in theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, an authoritative psychiatric guide. Narcissists tend to have an inflated sense of self-worth and base their identity on the praise and approval of others. Their intimate relationships are superficial and focused mostly on how other people reflect on them, with little to no empathy for the other person’s experience. They genuinely believe that they’re better than other people, but they are also prone to feeling intense shame over critiques they receive or mistakes they make.

Researchers estimate that less than one percent of the general population has evidence of “full-blown” NPD, but anywhere from two to 16 percent of people who seek therapy have the disorder. That’s usually because the loved ones in their lives have demanded they seek help or risk losing their relationship, career or other life privileges, explains therapist Wendy Behary, founder of The Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey and author of the book Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed.

But children of narcissists are rarely in a position to demand that their parents seek help. In fact, they may not even realize that their parents were narcissists until they seek professional help for their own struggles, said Behary, who specializes in treating people with NPD and their “survivors.” While narcissists come in all varieties and their symptoms vary across a spectrum, Behary notes that there are a few ways for adult children to tell they may have been raised by a narcissist. In the points below, both she and psychologist Craig Malkin, author of the bookRethinking Narcissism: The Bad — And Surprising Good — About Feeling Special, break down the signs of a narcissistic parent, and what adult children should do to break the cycle of destructive decisions.

1. You’re a complete doormat.

A narcissistic parent will trample all over their family to address their own desires without giving much thought to what anyone else needs. Because of this, some adult children of narcissists will actually overcorrect and bend over backwards to make sure no one could ever possibly perceive them this way. Alternately, they may have grown up all their lives being told that their needs don’t matter. Either way, the result is the same: They let people walk all over them because they’re not in touch with what they need and they don’t know how to express it.

“They’re not able to say, ‘I matter,’ and ‘I have needs’ because that feels narcissistic,” explained Behary. “Someone who’s fighting hard not to be a narcissistic parent ends up being trampled on.”

“I’ve seen clients whose parents made them feel sick, crazy, or selfish for expressing the most basic of needs,” agreed Malkin. “One of my clients felt so worthless and frightened as an adult, he suffered from nightmares and cowered in the face of any authority figures because they reminded him of his abusive father.”

What you can do: Learn as much about narcissism as you can, in order to be able to identify the dysfunctional messages you grew up with and start working against them.

“If I meet someone who has grown up with a narcissistic parent, or if I’m clued in that that might be the case, it’s really important for me to make sure that they understand narcissism in all of its colors,” said Behary. “We figure out together what type of narcissism their parent had, but even more importantly, we have to look for the part of them that got lost along the way.”

2. You’re afraid you might be a narcissist yourself.

Not everyone overcorrects in reaction to seeing narcissism. Some children see that the only way to avoid ridicule and abuse is to be like the narcissistic parent, and over the years, this survival tactic turns into the way they genuinely see the world. Adult children who adopted these coping mechanisms may find themselves putting others down out of a fear — rooted in childhood — that if they don’t show strength first, they could be crushed, just like when they were young, explained Malkin. “Extremely strong-willed children, more extraverted from birth, sometimes become narcissistic themselves in a game of ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,’” he said.

What you can do: Seek the help of a professional to help you break out of abusive behavior patterns, especially if you already have a partner and/or children.

“Children of narcissists who find themselves name-calling and hurling insults aren’t without hope, but they need to roll up their sleeves and work hard emotionally,” said Malkin. “They need to become comfortable feeling — and expressing — vulnerable feelings like sadness, loneliness, fear, and overwhelm with those they love.”

3. You feel relentlessly competitive with, or resentful of, your sibling.

Narcissists have trouble with personal boundaries and view other people as extensions of themselves. In families with several children, one may be chosen to reflect the narcissist’s best qualities. They get the most attention, praise and support, but are also under the most pressure to perform. Another child may be a target for the parent’s blame and shame, and scapegoated as a burden that can never do anything right compared to the chosen child. They may also be blamed as the reason that a narcissistic parent is forced to act in an abusive way. Both projections are two different sides of a narcissist’s personality, but the chosen child and the scapegoat will have two very different childhoods, and this pits them against each other, even into adulthood.

What you can do: Reach out to your sibling with what you’ve learned. If you were the chosen child, you might resent your sibling for the fact that they were under a lot less pressure than you. But if you were the scapegoat, you might resent your sibling for soaking up all the praise and glory and leaving none for you. Understand that the narcissist pits people against each other on purpose, to serve their own needs, and that this dynamic wasn’t your fault.

“Extremely narcissistic people love to put people on pedestals — almost as much as they enjoy knocking them off them,” said Malkin. “Perfect people don’t disappoint, so if you idolize people — even your kids — you needn’t ever worry about being disappointed or hurt. Scapegoating accomplishes much the same thing. You never have to worry about expecting too much and being disappointed because none of us really expect anything from people we view as worthless.”

There is hope for siblings who were put in this position as children, said Behary — even if the only thing that unites them in the end is the shared experience of having a narcissistic parent.

“They can end up feeling extremely bonded to one another,” said Behary. “Common hostages going through different phases of torture, based on how bad the narcissist might be in their life.”

4. At times, you’ve felt you were more your parent’s partner than their child.

Not all narcissists command the spotlight with their bold, brash personalities. Some narcissists demand the attention of the room by playing the victim or describing their problems as greater than anyone else’s problems. They may also try to control other people’s actions by threatening to harm themselves unless a certain outcome goes their way.

People with this kind of narcissistic parent may feel that they spend their entire childhood running to put one fire out after another, or trying to maintain the peace so that no one is hurt. Some of Behary’s clients tell her that they felt more like their mother’s husband than their mother’s son, and this burden meant that they were doing more of the emotional supporting than the parent was. Or they felt their life was all about keeping their father from getting angry at the family.

“It’s the sense of drama that the child feels they have to manage,” said Behary. “In order to do that, they really have to forfeit a lot of their own innate childhood needs.”

What you can do: Take time to acknowledge the young child that’s still inside you, and ask what his or her needs were and still are. Behary advocates using the power of imagination — aided, perhaps, by photos from childhood — to acknowledge the emotional needs that weren’t met and still aren’t being fulfilled by your parents.

“She’s still suffering in there and she needs someone to care about her,” said Behary. “She needs to be able to feel that she’s fine. She needs to know that she has rights too.”

5. You derive self-worth solely from your achievements.

Some children of narcissists figure out that the only way to get along in this world is to do as their parent does and derive their self-worth from production, performance and achievement. While they may not be beset by the perilously low self-esteem and overwhelming sense of shame of a true narcissist, some adult children may take on behaviors like workaholism because their performance is the only way they’ve ever been taught to define themselves.

“The child of the narcissist learns that the only thing that matters is what I can produce in the world, not just my own little being,” said Behary. “[This] is very similar to the way the narcissist can be in the world, except children of narcissists may not have same brash overcoating — they’re more detached, more self-contained.”

What you can do: Try to empathize with your parent, suggests Behary. You don’t have to feel sorry for them, but it can be helpful to emotionally inhabit the feelings and choices of another person, to understand their thoughts and decisions, even if you don’t agree with them. Because of Behary’s work with narcissists, she understand that they are often intensely suffering because the survival tactics they learned in childhood are backfiring on them in adulthood.

While some researchers think that there may be a biological basis that makes some people more vulnerable to narcissism than others, others agree that the personality disorder stems from a complex mix of factors that include exceptionally harsh criticism and/or praise in childhood, which causes the child to shield their low self-esteem with a strong, perfect persona. It also makes the child especially needy of praise, admiration and flattery in order to feel normal, while leaving them especially vulnerable to even the slightest criticism, notes the Mayo Clinic.

“I care about the [narcissists] I work with because I know they’re suffering underneath,” said Behary. “People will say, ‘You’re such a softie on them,’ and I say I hold them responsible for their bad behaviors, but I don’t blame them for how they were formed.” Behary emphasizes that while narcissists may have turned out this way through no fault of their own, it is solely their responsibility — not their children’s — to do something about it.

6. You have no sense of yourself, your wants, your needs or your goals.

A telling trait of narcissism is grandiosity: thoughts or feelings that one is superior to others, even if one doesn’t have the achievements to justify it. Narcissistic parents may see themselves as elite, but because they never achieved a certain level of success, they may find meaning in living vicariously through their children, explained Behary.

“Many children of narcissists will say, ‘I’m not sure how I ended up in this career because I never really knew what I wanted,’” said Behary. Or, “I always felt like I was poised to be more of a reflection of my mother rather than be my own person.”

What you can do: Consider going low or no-contact with abusive or manipulative parents. Not all narcissistic parents are abusive, explains Malkin. But parents with extreme forms of narcissism can leave their adult children feeling like shells of themselves, and sometimes the safest thing for adult children to do is to limit their exposure to these toxic relationships, especially if the parents don’t think they have anything to apologize for.

Malkin says there are three signs an adult child should consider going low or no-contact with parents: Abuse, Denial and Psychopathy. No one should ever have to put up with emotional or physical abuse, and if parents can’t acknowledge the fact that there’s a problem in the first place, there’s little chance that anything will change. Psychopathy, which in this case will look like a pattern of easy lies and remorseless manipulation, indicates that the parents aren’t just bad at putting themselves in others’ shoes — they may actually lack the ability to empathize with others, and may even lack a conscience.

“Abusers are 100 percent responsible for their abuse, and only they can stop it,” Malkin concluded. “Until they do, interactions won’t be safe.”

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brentrogers · 4 years

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Psychology Around the Net: July 11, 2020

This week’s Psychology Around the Net explains the difference between emotional baggage and emotional success, dives into stereotypes and how to combat them, discusses mental health services for police officers amid today’s climate, and more.

Stay well, friends!

Mental-Health Advocates Push for More Services for Officers Amid Protests Over Policing: Law enforcement and mental health experts agree that mental health support programs for police officers are especially important now, during the nationwide protests over police brutality and racism. According to Dr. Michael Bizzarro, the director of clinical services for first responders at New Jersey’s Penn Medicine Princeton House Behavioral Health, the protests over policing are extremely challenging for law enforcement right now because it wasn’t so long ago police officers were being praised for their work during the coronavirus pandemic. Says Dr. Bizzarro: “In March, April, and May, they were heroes. Now they are being seen as villains.”

Emotional Success Versus Emotional Baggage: You’re probably familiar with emotional baggage, but how about emotional success? What’s that? Well, it’s not that you are happy all the time with no problems and just a rosy outlook, but it does mean you know how to deal with those problems and charge on.

Stereotypes Harm Black Lives and Livelihoods, But Research Suggests Ways to Improve Things: [EDITED INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT] Katy Milkman, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, talks with Modupe Akinola, an associate professor at Columbia Business School who also studies stress, racial bias, and workplace diversity on how stereotypes are formed, how stereotypes affect decisions, and what we can do to combat negative stereotypes.

Is There a Connection Between Sibling and Workplace Bullying? Linda Crockett, an internationally recognized expert on workplace bullying and survivor of sibling scapegoating, intimate partner abuse, and workplace bullying, addresses the connection between sibling bullying and workplace/adult bullying.

Outdoor Light Linked With Teens’ Sleep and Mental Health: Recent National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded research shows that teens who live in places that have significant levels of artificial light at night usually get less sleep and are more likely to develop a mood disorder than adolescents who live in places with low levels of light at night. study author Diana Paksarian, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow at NIMH and the study’s author, says: “These findings illustrate the importance of joint consideration of both broader environmental-level and individual-level exposures in mental health and sleep research.”

Sean Astin Says Mom Patty Duke’s Mental Illness Led Him to Advocate: ‘There’s No Judgment’: You probably know Sean Astin as the talented actor from iconic movies like The Goonies and Lord of the Rings, but did you also know he’s active in the mental health community? Astin’s late mother, Oscar-winning actress Patty Duke, was one of the first in her field to go public with her mental illness; she shared her bipolar diagnosis in her memoir and worked to raise mental health awareness until her death. Astin will be participating in the Well Beings virtual town hall hosted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and WETA, Washington, D.C.’s PBS station, aimed at launching a campaign targeting the youth mental health crisis. “I’m not speaking as an expert; I’m speaking from personal experience,” Astin says. The town hall will be live-streamed on Tuesday, July 14 at 11 a.m. ET.

Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash.

Psychology Around the Net: July 11, 2020 syndicated from

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whorchataaa · 4 years

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Psychology Around the Net: July 11, 2020

Stay well, friends!

Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash.

from https://ift.tt/2Oe2RVs Check out https://peterlegyel.wordpress.com/

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ashley-unicorn · 4 years

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Psychology Around the Net: July 11, 2020

Stay well, friends!

Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash.

from https://ift.tt/2Oe2RVs Check out https://daniejadkins.wordpress.com/

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brentrogers · 4 years

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Psychology Around the Net: July 11, 2020

Stay well, friends!

Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash.

Psychology Around the Net: July 11, 2020 syndicated from

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