Scapegoating and self-blame

[storyworld]

Hello, all. In my last therapy appointment, after sharing fragments of a memory and my difficulty in therapy in general, my therapist said I was the family scapegoat. The next day, I was trying to journal on this, and my anxiety increased considerably. But when I shifted my journaling to all the reasons I was a problem kid who caused problems for the entire family, my anxiety went away. I find it hard to process this as I already greatly distrust my reality and perceptions. One part of my says, "That's because you're taking ownership for your behavior," and the other part says, "That's because you don't want to deal with FOO gunk." I would love to hear other people's experiences of this.

[NarcKiddo]

Since starting therapy I am able to notice when I am reverting to old ways of behaving or reacting that are not necessarily good for me but which feel familiar. For instance, I am very easily able to step into a parental role with my mother because I was very parentified as a child. I hate the role but I can perform it standing on my head so often find myself trying to go there. It's familiar and easy. For sure it is emotionally horrid, too, but I am used to dealing with horrid.

My reading of your post suggests to me that you might not be journaling your problem behaviour in order to take ownership. That is a rational explanation for why you felt comfortable when listing all your faults. But the emotional reaction, of anxiety going away when you listed your faults, does not seem rational in emotional terms. People who are confronting their own failings and faults would feel all kinds of unpleasant emotions. I would suggest that the reduction of anxiety does not fit naturally for someone who was brought up in a healthy environment. So I am going to suggest that you might have been doing it because it is a role you know how to play. Being bad and full of faults is normal territory for a scapegoat. Accepting that you might not have been bad and full of faults, but rather were simply told so by your FOO, seems like it is not normal territory for you.

If I find myself somewhere unpleasant when journaling or in therapy the conclusion I tend to come to is that it is an area I should stay in if I feel strong enough to work through it some more, or an area I should flag up to return to when I am feeling stronger.

I apologise if I have gone too far in suggesting what I think might have been going on for you, since you only asked for other people's experiences.

Be kind to yourself.

[storyworld]

If I find myself somewhere unpleasant when journaling or in therapy the conclusion I tend to come to is that it is an area I should stay in if I feel strong enough to work through it some more, or an area I should flag up to return to when I am feeling stronger.

Thank you for that. I have often been doing the opposite. I like your suggestion about flagging it to return to it later. Also, no need to apologize. I appreciate you taking the time to read my thoughts and to share yours. I'm going to reflect upon and process what you wrote.

[Kizzie]

I agree with NarcKiddo, we often do feel comfortable with what is familiar even if we know on some level it's not true.    We are fighting the identity we were given and that can be really triggering so like NarcKiddo I say maybe flag it and come back to it if/when it gets to be too much. The fact that you know you were pushed into being the scapegoat is a fair amount of movement in recovery right there.     

[storyworld]

Thank you, Kizzie. That makes sense. And thank you for the encouragement!

[Kizzie]

 

[storyworld]

NarcKiddo, I would love to hear your thoughts on random bursts of anxiety in general. In your experience, when you suddenly feel anxious, or if thinking about a topic or the discussion of a topic makes one feel anxious, is that related to past experiences/childhood gunk, or can one train oneself to become anxious? I feel like when I think about talking about my childhood with my therapist, or when I think about it in general (as in, unpacking it), I feel anxious. Even regarding things I don't think should affect me as strongly as they do. And I'm trying to decipher how much of that points to things I need to unpack versus how much is me making myself miserable unnecessarily. 

[NarcKiddo]

In my case I find myself doing what I call war-gaming. I start planning what to do or say in every possible scenario. It takes up an inordinate amount of time and emotional energy as I imagine ever greater and more bizarre trains of occurrences. I'm still working on this with my therapist.

So far we have come to the conclusion that it is probably borne of having an unpredictable mother. Most of the time I would know what might set off a rage attack so I could do everything in my power to avoid it. Which wasn't a lot, as a child, if she became furious when she had to run an errand because I needed new shoes or had to take me to the dentist. But more minor examples would be if a friend broke or damaged something. I would get into a total panic that mother would be furious and then the friend would be terrified too. And then we'd pluck up the courage to confess and my mother would be simply charming about it and say 'accidents happen' or similar. And then I may, or may not, get into trouble after the friend had gone. My hyper vigilance to her emotional state meant that the less brain space I could allocate to dealing with a situation on the fly, the better. I war-gamed to have explanations or reactions planned in advance so I could play my part well and deflect impending rage. It was a coping mechanism that may have served me well then but does not serve me well now. I need to bear in mind that I am now an adult, with agency, and am perfectly capable of reacting to any given situation appropriately and sensibly.

If I catch myself having a reaction that my logical brain thinks is inappropriate or excessive then I take it as a clue to something that should be looked at. I've worried about telling things to my therapist. The unpacking of some of that has been along the lines of:

I was forbidden to talk about family matters to outsiders. The consequence of doing so would be rage and retribution from mother if she found out. But she also told us that outsiders would use all information against us so it was not just traitorous, but also dangerous, to tell them anything. Double fear: of them and of mother.

Talking to my therapist involves talking about private family matters. The prospect of that easily puts me back into a childhood emotional reaction of terror. My adult logical brain tells me that the therapist will not tell my mother. There is no way she can find out. Even if she does find out I, as an adult, can withstand her rage. Or go NC. I can protect myself now. My emotional brain has trouble realising that. So I am scared of talking to my therapist. But I do. Every time I tell her a 'secret' and the sky does not actually fall I am building new neural pathways. Eventually I hope my knee-jerk emotional reaction will have been re-trained a little because I now know what the result of talking to an outsider is. And it is not as my mother said it would be.

I don't know if that helps at all, storyworld, but I feel "should" is a loaded word. If you feel a "should" or "should not" I think it deserves further examination. Logical brain can say "just forget about it" all it likes, but emotional brain may not be prepared to comply.

[storyworld]

Thank you. That is helpful.

This encouraged me: "Every time I tell her a 'secret' and the sky does not actually fall I am building new neural pathways."

My therapist has talked about brain science quite a bit, and I feel encouraged to know I don't have to remain stuck in a hyper-aroused state. I also find it encouraging to know you also struggle with difficulty speaking about your mom and family stuff. In my case, it is hard as, with one person in particular, I have pleasant bonding memories, and so I don't want to believe certain fragmented memories are real. I feel a deep sense that I am betraying this individual by even thinking these things. I have talked with one sibling in particular who is further along in her healing journey, and she tells me I need to accept the truth and allow myself to get really pissed in order to heal. (She said this in a loving and gentle way.)

I find I am also continually looking for reasons why I don't need therapy, as, well, it's not fun! And the very fact that I'm moving toward discussing things often causes loss of sleep. I want to feel calm, at peace, and joyful. And a part of me says I can do that if I quit thinking about all this gunk and focus on my present life. But then I also remember what brought me into therapy, and it was the fact that I wasn't able to live at peace. And I get discouraged that I have been going for a year already and as of yet, am only able to talk somewhat surface level about a handful of memories. (We are working on building up my ability to calm myself and remain in my window of tolerance.) I do feel I'm getting better at self-regulating. I'm currently reading through a book on various mindfulness practices, hoping the more I do that, the more my brain will find and remain in a calm state.

For now, I'm actually pissed that my parents experienced such abuse that it affected their parenting.

I greatly appreciate you sharing your experiences. Outside of this group, I don't have anyone I can talk this openly with. (My husband is gaining understanding, but he largely sees my highly functional, smiling side. (He would never judge me and would only be supportive; my hesitancy is 100% me.) I am also beginning to share more with my therapist, but some of my anxieties are, beside opening pandora's box, her seeing me fall apart. I've had some pretty strong reactions in session (where I felt as if I was in a dangerous place at that moment and wanting her to block/protect me in my visual space), and these have caused me to feel shame. And although I have teared up in front of her, I am anxious at the thought of crying in front of her.

[Armee]

I missed this post when you first made it because with the new format I haven't been getting notified of brand new posts.

But I relate to pretty much all you wrote, especially finding it more soothing to remind yourself why you are bad than to accept that it wasn't your fault and that you were the scapegoat. As distressing as it was for me to believe I was "bad and wrong" that feeling was familiar and safe.

Accepting I was "bad and wrong" kept the peace and kept me from seeing how bad everything was, because if I blamed myself, I could fix myself and do better next time and everything would be ok. So by trying to tell yourself you were bad and deserved the treatment you got, you are protecting yourself. As Kizzie said in response to my most recent post...ripping the bandaid off doesn't tend to work well. We need to lift a little tiny corner of the bandaid and let the pain settle, then lift a little more.

Maybe you can practice, when you have that protective response and start to believe you were bad, also think "I know why I think this. It protects me to think I was bad." This might help the truth settle in slowly. Cause part of you really really needs to believe you were bad. And it's not just that the truth is painful that actually you were a scapegoat, but also that it's a bit dangerous to reject that role...something bad will happen. For me, the consequence I had been trained to believe was "someone's going to die." We can't mess with these protective mechanisms without a slow adjustment to the truth.

I also want to validate your fear about telling your husband things. I have a dearly supportive loving husband who I told nothing to. I didn't know how to explain what was happening, or what happened, or why it was bad, or that there was significant trauma. It took years of practice with my therapist saying "have you told your husband this? No? Tell him." And I'd go home and try and would just freeze.

Eventually after a few tries a few weeks apart I'd be able to tell him "I want to tell you something but I can't speak." Every little thing was a struggle but each time I managed to tell him something he got closer to not just understanding what I was telling him, but to understanding ME. I started to make sense to him and he's been able to be a really good support person for me.

This was not easy and is a work in progress. I still don't tell him things right away, it takes a few weeks or months. But we are so much closer because of this work and I needed my therapist to keep telling me. "Tell your husband." Occassionally I'd have to have him come to an appointment with me and get help telling him things he needed to know. But mostly I'd just keep trying until I was able to say it. I feel accepted by him in a way I never could have before when he just saw the smiley side. There's something really nice about finally making sense to someone. So keep going, I know it's hard, and it's a slow work in progress.

Lastly I wanted to address your desire to feel calm, peace, and joy. You know this so I know I'm just telling you something you know and am just trying to reinforce it. Peace joy and calm don't come from sweeping things under the rug. That's what we did our whole lives. We swept and swept and swept. That's why we feel like we do.

Theres a difference between thinking we "accept" our past and are over it and fine and what happens when we actually process and work through what happened. The process is painful but it's the path to finally getting to feel that peace and calm and joy. That comes from getting these burdens out, seeing how these bad thoughts about ourselves formed and why they persist, and then practicing many times challenging them.

Those neural pathways you are working on building are like building muscle. You can't lift a weight one time and get big muscles, and you can't just go straight to the 100 lb weight. You have to start with the 5 lb dumbbell and lift that many times, and then move on the the next level, and the next. Just keep lifting the weights and eventually you'll feel good more often than you feel bad or numb. It takes time and is worth it.

I've been where you are. Things are not yet perfect of fully healed, but after 4.5 years in therapy I finally feel peaceful and calm most of the time. I still have bad days or weeks. Moments. But the steady state is peace and calm, feeling bad is the little blip on the radar. Before, feeling bad was the steady state with almost no blips of feeling OK. Then it shifted to occasional glimpses of  what it's like to feel ok, to where I am now. I wish it weren't so slow and painful but it is so very worth it. Keep going.

[Kizzie]

I have to say both of you have articulated things so well that I too think and feel and have trouble or don't want to express. I know I have this tribe of people here who are so like me in many ways and that I can say these things out loud and you will get it. But I am still reluctant and even with my T because everything in me does not want to be seen as vulnerable or weak and so it's buried. Very well trained emotionally to not incur my NM's or alcoholic F's wrath.  I too present a together personna and "wargame" as you put it NarcKiddo. It's almost like I cannot get out of that personna it's so cemented in place. But at least I see it now and can admit to it here and with my T, that alone is a big step. 

I can just feel the anxiety thinking about talking about it further though. It's like, "Nope back in the box you go." Intellectually I can see the pain my parents wrought upon me from afar so to speak, but emotionally if I get too close and I feel like I did as a child it will be too much and I will fall apart. My T has gently spoken to me about the personna.  She's the first T who has CPTSD and works with CPTSD clients I've seen so she understands that many of us do this.  I have been able to finally talk with her about just how terrified younger me was and is and we've agreed that we will need to work on convincing her we'll be ok. 

So all this is to say you're in good company Storyworld and here's to new neural pathways!   

[pisces4eva]

Just want to say thanks for summing this up so nicely.  I really resonate with this situation/description.

In my case I find myself doing what I call war-gaming. I start planning what to do or say in every possible scenario. It takes up an inordinate amount of time and emotional energy as I imagine ever greater and more bizarre trains of occurrences. I'm still working on this with my therapist.

So far we have come to the conclusion that it is probably borne of having an unpredictable mother. Most of the time I would know what might set off a rage attack so I could do everything in my power to avoid it. Which wasn't a lot, as a child, if she became furious when she had to run an errand because I needed new shoes or had to take me to the dentist. But more minor examples would be if a friend broke or damaged something. I would get into a total panic that mother would be furious and then the friend would be terrified too. And then we'd pluck up the courage to confess and my mother would be simply charming about it and say 'accidents happen' or similar. And then I may, or may not, get into trouble after the friend had gone. My hyper vigilance to her emotional state meant that the less brain space I could allocate to dealing with a situation on the fly, the better. I war-gamed to have explanations or reactions planned in advance so I could play my part well and deflect impending rage. It was a coping mechanism that may have served me well then but does not serve me well now. I need to bear in mind that I am now an adult, with agency, and am perfectly capable of reacting to any given situation appropriately and sensibly.

If I catch myself having a reaction that my logical brain thinks is inappropriate or excessive then I take it as a clue to something that should be looked at. I've worried about telling things to my therapist. The unpacking of some of that has been along the lines of:

I was forbidden to talk about family matters to outsiders. The consequence of doing so would be rage and retribution from mother if she found out. But she also told us that outsiders would use all information against us so it was not just traitorous, but also dangerous, to tell them anything. Double fear: of them and of mother.

Talking to my therapist involves talking about private family matters. The prospect of that easily puts me back into a childhood emotional reaction of terror. My adult logical brain tells me that the therapist will not tell my mother. There is no way she can find out. Even if she does find out I, as an adult, can withstand her rage. Or go NC. I can protect myself now. My emotional brain has trouble realising that. So I am scared of talking to my therapist. But I do. Every time I tell her a 'secret' and the sky does not actually fall I am building new neural pathways. Eventually I hope my knee-jerk emotional reaction will have been re-trained a little because I now know what the result of talking to an outsider is. And it is not as my mother said it would be.

I don't know if that helps at all, storyworld, but I feel "should" is a loaded word. If you feel a "should" or "should not" I think it deserves further examination. Logical brain can say "just forget about it" all it likes, but emotional brain may not be prepared to comply.

[DD]

One point I wanted to make but am hesistant about: I don't think you can fabricate these reactions to keep or make yourself miserable. You can however push them away so they vome back with force.

I kept thinking I was doing this to myself and was the one to blame and sometimes still I do. Because it is so easy to think I'm the faulty one. But I am not.

Every time I have followed the pain (and yes, it's painful), I discover more about myself and my past and yet another puzzle piece falls into place. And I make more sense to me. But boy, would it still be easier to think I'm the bad one. But more deep I go, the more I make sense to me. It can't be a bad direction, can't it?

[storyworld]

DD, thank you for your perspective and sharing your experiences. I am slowly trying to unwrap my thoughts and experiences. I find your comment on physical reactions thought-provoking. I don't always know why I sometimes feel so intensely anxious, but I am trying to consider roots to emotions. I alternate between, "I don't want to think about this gunk ever again," to, "Okay, let's keep working on the gunk to get to a place of peace and joy.

[Saluki]

Hey Storyworld,

Thank you so much for sharing this. I'm a bit low on brain power to comment properly at the moment but I have similar experiences so following.
I was groomed to blame myself, to believe I was a nightmare child who my "poor mother" couldn't cope with. I was also groomed to feel that the CSA I suffered was my fault, that I asked for it, that it was because I was such a badly behaved child.
Those beliefs are so hard to change and I get a lot of completely random and seemingly pointless anxiety. Huge amounts in fact. Just writing this my heart is racing, I'm feeling dizzy and that vile acidic substance, whatever it is, is pumping into my stomach area. I don't understand what my body is trying to protect me from because I'm sat in bed, quite safe right now.
I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow which I'm dreading. I absolutely hate seeing the doctor. I feel ashamed, embarrassed, stupid, like he doesn't believe me, like he's not taking me seriously. I feel so stupid in his office.