A scapegoated child may feel isolated to the point that they do not know how to bring attention to the pain they are feeling. In these cases, self-harm or self-sabotaging behaviors could help to draw attention to their suffering.
The feelings of being a burden, toxic, worthless, and unlovable are intolerable feelings and yet this is the core of how they then feel about themselves. A part of the person labeled the scapegoat feels that a part of them believes they are all bad and a part of them knows that the abuser is wrong.
Scapegoats often have trouble feeling safe in relationships – especially intimate relationships – due to the massive betrayal of trust in their family. They can also have challenges managing emotions, and find they either feel overwhelmed and anxious, or shut down and not know how they are feeling.
Potential Consequences Of Scapegoating
Scapegoating is a destructive behavior that can have long-term psychological effects on both parties involved. In the target of this behavior, feelings of worthlessness, guilt, isolation, and even conditions like depression and/or anxiety can arise.
A family scapegoat is a person who takes on the role of 'black sheep' or 'problem child' in their family and gets shamed, blamed, and criticized for things that go wrong within the family unit, even when these things are entirely outside of their control.
A scapegoat may be an adult, child, sibling, employee, peer, ethnic, political or religious group, or country. A whipping boy, identified patient, or "fall guy" are forms of scapegoat.
The purpose of a scapegoat is to pass responsibility onto someone else. Usually, this person is unsuspecting at first and agrees because they are trying to get along with others. This technique of passing the buck is very common with narcissists, sociopaths, and addicts.
They do this by seeing themselves as the healer and fixer of you. It is at this point that the scapegoat becomes the identified patient in the social group. They use the idea of themselves as a good person for focusing on helping and fixing you to further avoid their own pain.
As adults, scapegoated children may find themselves paralyzed with fear when they consider dissenting in work environments or with their partners. Disagreeing with someone brings oneself into the forefront. The act delineates the self in stark relief.
When a scapegoat leaves their family of origin they are going to experience a lot of invalidation, devaluation, dehumanization, and chaos that is designed to manipulate them back into the abuse cycle and remain a repository for the family's negative emotions.
Like the strong goat Aaron selected, the target of family scapegoating is also often the strongest and healthiest member of the family.
Signs you're the scapegoat of your family:
You feel you have to act out or defend yourself in rebellion (e.g., feeling hurt and angry, or the need to fight or lash out in some way). You look for the truth in your family's dynamics, and they don't want to hear it (e.g., "How dare you question my parenting").
In early Roman law an innocent person was allowed to take upon himself the penalty of another who had confessed his own guilt. Christianity reflects this notion in its doctrine of justification and in its belief that Jesus Christ was the God-man who died to atone for the sins of all mankind.
To begin the restorative journey, children who have been subjected to the scapegoat role must learn to stand up to shame and focus on healing their inner world first. Healing stems from a foundation of having a strong sense of identity and self, and building a supportive relationship with oneself.
Everything that goes well becomes associated with the golden child's goodness, while everything that goes wrong is blamed on the scapegoat. The golden child recognizes the inequity of this, and feelings of guilt for the treatment of their siblings may be carried into adulthood.
The Golden Child is trained to not support the Scapegoat, and to treat as less than, to neglect and to be unaware of their needs, just like the narcissist.
Effects of Being a Scapegoat
Trauma: Being deprived of a family's love, singled out as the “bad one” in the household, and having one's positive attributes overlooked can set up a child for a lifetime of emotional and psychological distress, where they struggle believing they are good, worthy, competent, or likable.
For Girard, scapegoats are always innocent of the specific charges laid against them; the accusations are always false; scapegoating is always a heinous act of injustice.
The phrase 'Scapegoat' is used to indicate that someone is being made to take the blame for something. Example of Use: “They made Jennifer the scapegoat, but it wasn't all her fault.”
According to the American Psychological Association, scapegoating is “the process of directing one's anger, frustration, and aggression onto others and targeting them as the source of one's problems and misfortunes.” The word's origin is an ancient Jewish tradition in which a goat was symbolically sent into the ...
Scapegoating is defined by dictionary.com as “the act or practice of assigning blame or failure to another, as to deflect attention or responsibility away from oneself.” Cheating individuals often use scapegoating as a form of Gaslighting, scooping blame onto their partner in order to justify their extracurricular ...
The “plebs” might resent them, but a scapegoat is a victim that can be safely attacked.
When the scapegoat fights back. It may take some time for the scapegoat child or adult to realize that they were humiliated for no reason. But once they do so, they need to fight back. The scapegoat sons and daughters of narcissistic parents must learn to re-parent themselves.
Studies have shown that the scapegoat does better in life than the “golden child”. Because they have had to fend for themselves most of their life, and haven't been spoiled like the golden child has. The scapegoat is forced to be more independent, and think for themselves, and be stronger.
A family scapegoat is a kind of family projection that occurs when a person places responsibility for unresolved problems on a child, sibling, or another family member. To put it simply, the scapegoat is a family member that is easier to place blame on rather than take responsibility for our own actions and mistakes.