#family scapegoating abuse

[nothing0fnothing]

When you went no contact, did your parents lose their shit?

Yep mine did. It was a heavy 6 months of threats, gaslighting and smear campaigns. It was horrible to go through as an 18 year old who just wanted to build a normal life out of the nothing I'd been handed.

I went no contact at 17 and a year later my entire family had fallen apart. My siblings went no contact, my parents had divorced and sold the houses and the vibe was absolutely rancid.

It's because the scapegoat is the most important person in the dynamic. When you go no contact they either need to find someone else to blame for their own actions or the whole thing goes to shit.

[daughterofanarcissistwoman]

[connieaaa]

Family is who shows up.

[7yearsago]

The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.

Unknown

[melblogsgfreethruptsd]

“We’ve tried everything “ 🤥

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

npd culture is feeling kinda uncomfortable everytime someone talks about emotional abuse because you just know someone is gonna mention ppl with npd for no reason

.

[zeroducks-2]

I have a personal question, feel free to ignore, but how do you think being AFAB makes one relate to Dick Grayson more? I feel this way tbh. Or at least to people who are percieved or were percieved as female at some point in life (even if they aren't).

Dick Grayson is a fictional character and what you were assigned at birth doesn't "make" you relate to him any more or less, because what makes him the beloved character that he is aren't traits and/or experiences that are exclusive to any gender, assigned or perceived.

If you had the impression that more AFAB people relate to Dick and less AMAB people do, log off tumblr, go to a comic book store or a con or anywhere geeks gather, and check how many Dick Grayson fans who relate to him and love him are there. I promise you will notice that it's an even number between the different genders.

But anyway, I was assigned Duck at birth so what do I know?

[lisablack000]

It's not because we don't want to bother you. It's because we know you can't change it or fix it or you're just another flying monkey in the making. Either way, scapegoats don't ask for help because we know better

[usunezukoinezu]

Jerry Wise: emotional abuse narcissistic parents make you think is normal (so you grown up taking such treatments as normal and getting abused by others through your life):

1.verbal abuse 2.gaslighting 3.emotional neglect 4.conditional love

5.parentification 6.scapegoating 7.silent treatment 8.emotional manipulation (guilt, shame, etc.) 9.isolation 10.enmeshment 11.we are forced to be their extension 12.roles (golden child, scapegoat, codependent, black-sheep, etc.)

[sunnymoon-sunshine]

Onto my soap box time,

I absolutely 100% believe that Qibli's behavior towards Peril in Escaping Peril is 100% out of character, or at the very least, shouldn't make sense in relation to Qibli's character.

I understand why it works on a narrative level. Escaping Peril is, at its heart, about how ostracizing an abuse victim will lead them to seek out comfort where they can - often times leading them back to their abuser. It's about how kindness breeds kindness. There are a lot of good themes in Escaping Peril (even though I sometimes think it misses a few marks). So ultimately, it makes sense that Qibli is suspicious of her in his analytical way. HOWEVER, I argue that it doesn't make sense.

Mostly because of the fact that, in every situation that the two have been remotely close to each other, Peril has been in some way a savior and hero to him. You could argue that he's very aware of her past and that - even when doing those heroic moments - she was still doing them for selfish gain. Except for one.

When Qibli first meets Peril, it's after she stops the battle between the Outclaws and the SandWing army in The Brightest Night. Sunny has to plead with Peril to interrupt the fight, and it comes at the cost of Peril releasing Scarlet - but at the same time, Thorn makes a point to thank Peril, to refer to her as a saving grace, an angel.

The second time the two are around each other, it's when Peril saves Clay's life during the False Brightest Night. This was of her own accord, and is a stark example of Peril's defining trait: she will do anything for Clay.

The third time, she attempts to save Carnelian and Bigtail. It's tragic, but she tries - unprompted, too.

So it always struck me as a little weird that he was so harsh on her in Escaping Peril. I mean, you could very well argue that her reputation is far more defining than anything else, but Qibli trusts Thorn more than anyone, and Thorn showed nothing but gratitude. I don't know, maybe I more wish that these moments where Peril actually helped were brought up, because almost all of her moments of saving dragons and helping were events that Qibli was around. He could have acted as someone who could have dug deeper into Peril's thoughts, and tried to play the Devil's Advocate.

I mean, it's not major. It may not even really be out of character. I just think some acknowledgement would have been nice from a character who has seen some of the moments where Peril tried to do the right thing.

[joyfulghostskeletonpizza]

Gaslighting. Scapegoating. Invalidation of his very real concerns for his family's safety.

So damn relatable for anyone who grew up in a narcissistic family.

x

[nothing0fnothing]

If you were the scapegoat in your narcissistic family dynamic I want you to know you have the power to burn that entire circus down.

They need you. They need you because without someone else to blame their conniving, manipulative, abusive behavior has nobody to hide behind. Without someone else to deflect blame onto, everyone else can get wise fast.

Sure, they could nominate a new scapegoat. It's theoretically possible. But have they raised that person to take shit since birth like they did to you? Can they guarantee this person will act their role, the way you did for years? Have they manipulated the perception of that person for years and decades, so everyone likely to look in would believe that they're the problem no questions asked? Maybe. Probably not though.

You have all the power in the family. All you need to do to put a stop to it right now, is ghost. Go no contact with your abuser and their enablers. Cut them off entirely. Block their socials. Change your number. Move to Thailand. Never speak to them again.

Watch from afar as the vaccum caused by your sudden departure sucks that entire abusive mess in and spits the assholes who benefitted from your pain into absolute chaos.

I'm a self confessed bitter hag, and there was nothing sweeter than watching my abusers lives go to hell, simply because they couldn't put me through it anymore.

[daughterofanarcissistwoman]

[connieaaa]

This Mother's Day I ended up contemplating my grandmother. My aunt posted about her on Facebook and got several comments about how kind and motherly she was, and I asked to know more because she was cruel to me. My aunt tried to reassure me that Grandma wasn't affectionate but she loved her grandkids dearly. I politely contradicted that I know my own experience, and I know my grandmother loved her grandchildren but she had very specifically excluded me and my brothers, and me most of all.

This was the first time I have viewed this experience with knowledge that I was actually visibly partially handicapped as child, and I realized that the reason I witnessed so much more of my grandmother's and uncle's cruelty is that they spoke in front of me like I wasn't there.

It also explains why one uncle always tormented me by telling me that my mom dropped me on my head when I was baby.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

payoff of being embedded in a unit of authoritarianism since birth is sure then being able to go like "wow this is just like dynamics & phenomena i experienced up close & personal, repeatedly, in many contexts & configurations in my first two decades of life" plus also beyond that in abuse culture world & the noncoincidence that even interactions beyond the confines of the home(tm) reinforced / did not contradict the hierarchy & concomitant abuse within....but then like hey yeah also the Larger Units of hierarchy & abuse / authoritarianism (ft. their logics & practices necessary for continuously & continually shoring up that hierarchy) can also make it like hey yeah the Two Parent abusive nuclear family more like the Two Party [the US is also a one party state but in typical american extravagance they have two] where right wingness is defined by the degree of directly embracing white supremacy & "left wing" is "anything else" hence like wow The Left is always infighting (everyone with any ideas besides "umm christofascist white ethnostate?" so like yeah there are many other ideas) vs The Right's admirable cohesion (simply re: the white supremacy idea which also necessarily embraces all other Out Group / Nonperson paradigms & practices b/c that's what all already has been necessary for shoring up the [when has the US been a nongenocidal non white supremacist non oligarchy])

like obviously individual experiences & contexts vary but like narrowing in on [the Family as immediate relations ideally cordoned off into nuclear households] ft. [Parental Authority the top priority of which is preserving that authority, ideally patriarchal, an abusive mother e.g.? hey, that ought to be the father] times it's like, think people tend to struggle re: having the "nicer" / "safer" parent who was also shitted on as well but also at the end of the day would always side with the "meaner" "more dangerous" parent, even in whatever terms most sympathetic to the abused parties, with the underlying logic that we're always just going to have to deal with them so some secret strategic mitigation is the best that can be done, perhaps the equivalent of being sent a ":(" after an Onslaught Of Expressed / Enforced Authority(tm) event....the tendency to see the best in any lack of actual intervention / protection on the assumption That Could Never Happen Anyway & forever At Least that the one parent isn't as bad as the other [the Not That Bad / Could've Been Worse infocation, like free bingo square in manifestations of minimization if not outright abuse denial] & all the sympathy for, you know, being human & doing their best(tm) &c which sure might all be true but the abused parties (oft children, more vulnerable than adults, by virtue of being children i.e. considered legal property of some specific adults & theoretical property of any adults in general (the paternal logic in any "protect [xyz]" like maintain one group's supposed ownership / control over [xyz] "for their sake" then? great) & also generally smaller & newer at being alive in this world) but who are liable to not extend that sympathy to themselves (or certainly not be extended that sympathy....when is "they're doing their best / they're only human / they mean well or whatever / they love you, they're family" successfully deployed the Thwart an abusive parent like it is to tell an abused child to not be too resentful of this situation, when is it actually deployed toward the abusive parent at all really. & again in the lack of boundary between the authoritarianism within many individual family households & that of the state they exist in (here re: the US) like that naturally one encounters the logic of abuse expressed just as "common knowledge" & the Assumptions of other people, e.g. the rejection of a parent having zero access to a child, the reinforcement of automatic apologia deployed for whatever a parent could possibly do, argued for "family", yet not deployed the same way to automatically defend anything thee child(tm) could do, thinking emoji lol....see: like the non boundary between [the Patriarchal home/family(tm)] & capitalism when uh oh capitalism the system of continuously maximizing exploitation Needs various forms of labor to be unpaid, uh oh another lack of boundary when white supremacy is used to also shore up the patriarchy that shores up the white supremacy, e.g. that even if in some "inferior" class it's treated as More Important that at least you're not that And black, the theoretical ideal/normal white man is a person while a white woman is a woman while a black woman is black, white women could have any legal property via chattel slavery which needed white women's participation to help enforce, the specter of sexual violence all coming from nonwhite & especially black men & it's up to the genteel white man to Protect Women (see prev, implicitly white or you'd have to specify otherwise)

anyway that is to get around to pointing to the Two Parent System wherein so shockingly the results are the same as the One Parent System re: abuse maintaining The Family (properly, i.e. unquestionable & certainly undeniable parental access to children, & "ideally" ofc again the patriarchal Father as ultimate authority w/ownership over the Mother, who in turn is theoretically honored for that motherhood (at least you own your children, insofar as it doesn't contradict w/what the father wants to do with his superior claim to ownership) & then finally all the obviously shittiness from being in that position in a patriarchy is in turn dumped on The Children who are ungrateful & owe the mother everything Because of what the broader society & immediate personal expressions of that abuse have done to her. see also ofc that two adults likely don't have the resources to raise a child in time or money or energy, maybe there's only one but also even an extended family's worth of adults aren't enough, is it enough when a child is sent to school for some other adults to be in charge most of the day, or even if someone is hired to look after them beyond that, all this ofc with the assumed premise that a child is always limited to the various Domains of The Adults In Charge, & from there i segue into how naturally being in gay baby jail unless & until adults are no longer recognized as Legally In Charge Of You (the grand like 5 minutes it's relatively been since the ideal timeline of a woman's life wasn't being legal property of her father until asap passed along to legal property of her husband. still considered ideal ofc but like with "maybe you can have a bank account" now & "maybe you can become 29 before you're in Old Maid danger" Maybe, i said, Maybe....anyway that obviously adults(tm) being divided up (atomised. spritz) into Households isn't even supposed to be enough to live on their own, re: necessitating Marriage, much less uh oh having kids who are stuck with their parents who are stuck with them, but then all the obvious actual problems & abuses inflicted on Adults to have to have their family households & exploited jobs are dumped on the children who Must appreciate & be loyal to the parents (i.e. never Deny Access) while yknow kids have Fake Problems they're whining about, the one Real Problem of having to pay a bill gets the payoff of leverage to tell your children to shut the fuck up or perhaps the more vulnerable spouse

hm didn't segue right into "so shoutout to like The Ratchet Effect diagrams lol, the "Two" Party System where its supposed left wing Blocks Movement To The Left, right wing Moves Everything To The Right" but even that is like, mm, conferring a passivity to what democrats do in the continual movement to the right (won an election? lost an election? the lesson either way is The Right Is Right; exact same logic as in "winning or losing" "the war on crime" like the collection & analysis of whatever statistics show the trend of some "crime" is increasing in frequency or magnitude? show that it's decreasing? the lesson either way is Cops Need More Power) like the institutional effort of democrats to push a candidate nobody wants through primaries (did we even do that this time around. oh great that the assumed candidate even graciously agreed to not force themself as The Candidate, & now like 5 min left with the Next In Line candidate dumped on everyone now with the lesson for the left(tm) to shut up already lol) & then it's up to Grassroots Voters. it's up to Unity & well we all Need to listen to the white supremacists, points were made, in the "elections" with voting as limited as possible & with the electoral college & supreme court as Safeguards against democracy & here's the senate, eternally thus, & again the conclusions will always manage to be moving To The Right, paraphrasing from twitter like democrats are about to be or already at the point of "in the name of unity we will no longer be running against republicans; it's too divisive :(" which yknow is already The Statements of all of yesterday from various like "i'm the republican official white supremacy agree-er now" after also the entire campaign of "no, I'm the fascist" where like wow shocking that the appeal to the fascists didn't win a) the fascists who will ofc want the even more overt fascism, why wouldn't they or b) the people who want antifascism actually, and do not want fascism; who could have foreseen? & it's always the fault of being Too Antifascist for the actions of the fascists or the Diplomatic Comprimises the other party makes with the fascists &/or their Failure to thwart them....the Nicer, Safer party in power is surely doing their best & at least they're not the Meaner, More Dangerous one but at the end of the day they'll always side with that party over america(tm) & those bearing the brunt of the actions of State Power can be told to keep their chin up or else to stop acting out b/c how do you expect that state power to respond, cmon, you bring it upon yourself, & you Have to work with them & understand all their feelings & your role in resolving those feelings by being lesser inferior property, you do Have to understand, b/c in the end this is All About Family, surely Good & Necessary, whoops i mean in the end this is All About America

anyway yeah i'm like damn my "nicer" (also shitty) father who was also the even more sexist & racist (& certainly no Less ableist, queerphobic) parent was basically the democratic party of the Two Parent System of Family Government lol. b/c we Need to perpetuate this Family, no other logics much less actions are acceptable....& people struggling with the Parent / Adults in their life like that who were the "safe" & "protective" ones who markedly failed to protect & minimized the harm afterwards but also in general, never to confront the reality of the situation, or do damage control like "aw some points were made at all :( ah i see you have Feelings about this :( hmm yes the Parental Power is gonna have to make some changes" & then as soon as possible (assuming reeling in the party who was deviating too much) these changes(tm) are already compromised or diminished if done at all, & then oops things incrementally might be right back to how they always were, no guarantees it won't be Worse b/c the Power is even more insecure / aware of weaknesses, & the only way this is thwarted is if the Wayward Parties can actually leverage new boundaries / less vulnerability, not b/c the supposedly sympathetic parties, who never came through where it counts & likely would also become overt antagonizers / wielders of whatever power within the Family hierarchy / turn on the more vulnerable parties to Get Them In Line, actually came through. movement Away (more disruptive to the maintenance of The Family, The State) is blocked, incrementally only ever moving everything back, & then Further....& despite this being what the power structures are, & do, the Disruptive parties liable to be scapegoated lol, can't believe the scapegoat child is ruining everything for everyone, this Family would totally improve & start being everything it could be otherwise & we ignore who actually has the power & is actually enforcing the hierarchy harming everyone to point to that scapegoat; can't believe thee left is destroying america (republican voice) can't believe the left is destroying america (democrat voice) So You See? The Undeniable Consensus. just like how i believe it was my fault my family unit was Like That & i had those experiences, according to the vast majority of Input from that family & even others who, knowing nothing, would say how Lucky i was to be relatively close to home, or just of course that oh well parents love their children & mean well & try their best. just like how i believe that being treated like i've been generally as a neurononconforming person, i.e. hated & the interpersonal abuse & bullying & ostracization & [attention possibilities: ignored, responded to but negatively, interacted with to get something from] & actually rewarding interactions or just actions being liable to get Deluxe authority responses as disruptive(tm) & ofc disobedient(tm) like hell fuckin yeah lol. just as i don't think that other people who have similar experiences or ones i don't have, i.e. assessed race being automatically seen as wrong / inferior, being isolated & undermined from all around? well gotta be their fault then, cmon lol....Abuse is actually normative, not extraordinary, in every Arena of interactions, & so are the logics / apologia / assumptions

anyway lol re: like yeah people struggling with the like betrayal of the "nooo i'm on your side, i sympathize, i'm the one who's nicer & you Need so that things aren't even worse" party, not even One Big Novel betrayal, but rather that that's what's Been done the whole time & doesn't stop. that supposedly if you have Any sympathy for that party you have to be like aw :( keep doing your thing (necessarily reining everyone in) or if you have Any sympathy for the people who also want things to improve but blame & take it out on the more disruptive parties (more disruptive to an abusive family e.g., btw. & not like i see Cohesion as necessarily some Good rather than neutral? when i'm autistic / my existence is supposedly antithetical to this? or when i'm able to look at a zillion hypothetical or actual situations & recognize how "cohesion" isn't the best goal / a destructive one / a vague concept anyways like cohesion Between Whom? on what basis? recognized & pursued how? why? up next: same as vague shit like "family" or "community" &c) then it's like yep gotta be Responsible for their feelings too if you're at all sympathetic & capitulate, The Only Possible Action, vs the idea of those in power actually making things shit stopping, much less being stopped / having to stop in the various ways that can happen....one way being "oh no, adult children who choose to be no-contact with parents" which is seen as A Tragedy, & sign of a Deteriorating Society, take me back. ah jeez oh no, look at the divorce raaates....Oh No, twentysomething women aren't pursuing marriage enoughhhh....again the undetectably identical echo when people peak vaguely talk about "conflicts" that thwart "community" or whatever, ugh nobody will date anymore, commit anymore, be friends anymore, hang out as coworkers anymore, talk to me if i want to talk to them anymore, &ccccc....

the real tl;dr is like wait ""two party"" (one party) US electoral system, just like ""two parent"" maintenance of thee family lol. ratchet effect raise your hand if you've only ever experienced Movement Away from the abusive family blocked, forever incrementally ratcheted back in to the desires & pursuits of those most in power / top of the hierarchy / thus of course most invested in the abuse, that's what the power & hierarchy is made of, sustained by, perpetuates....sorry doing our best :( sorry that's just all that's realistic, no other choice Really. cmon. kind of Your Fault if you don't agree to that & whoops now Everything is the fault of whoever doesn't agree & cooperate enough :( now look what you've done & brought upon yourself :( & we'll just forget the eruption of violence suppression happened & will happen again & be the overhanging threat all in the meantime

[melblogsgfreethruptsd]