For individuals, scapegoating is a psychological defense mechanism of denial through projecting responsibility and blame on others. [2] It allows the perpetrator to eliminate negative feelings about him or herself and provides a sense of gratification.
People are more likely to engage in scapegoating when they are stressed, experiencing oppression, or afraid. Scapegoating, in turn, can lead to the oppression of a scapegoated group.
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.
with the least power.
A child may be chosen as the family scapegoat because of: Intelligence: A parent may fault a child that isn't as capable at school, at work, or helping with family. Appearance: A parent may favor a child with a more favorable appearance, including things like skin tone or hair color.
Scapegoats are chosen because some part of their identity reminds the narcissist of all the painful thoughts, feelings, and emotions that they have suppressed within themselves.
Scapegoat theory refers to the tendency to blame someone else for one's own problems, a process that often results in feelings of prejudice toward the person or group that one is blaming. Scapegoating serves as an opportunity to explain failure or misdeeds, while maintaining one's positive self-image.
Like the strong goat Aaron selected, the target of family scapegoating is also often the strongest and healthiest member of the family.
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.
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.
Of the child roles in the narcissistic family, the entitled and enmeshed golden child is probably most likely to develop a narcissistic personality. However, being scapegoated can also lead to narcissism, particularly the covert form.
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 ...
For individuals, scapegoating is a psychological defense mechanism of denial through projecting responsibility and blame on others. [2] It allows the perpetrator to eliminate negative feelings about him or herself and provides a sense of gratification.
When they grow up, scapegoated children may experience the following: Difficulty expressing their needs: From a young age, the scapegoat child learned to hold things inside. Anything they said could and would often be used against them.
The question that scapegoats face is what they can do to deal with the problem? While one would might think this should not be a problem for an adult, the fact is that these people become depressed, anxious, withdrawn and even, in the worst cases, suicidal.
The “plebs” might resent them, but a scapegoat is a victim that can be safely attacked.
Scapegoating, in some cases, is a way for families to cover up issues they cannot face. When this happens, an individual (usually a child or sibling) is targeted by the rest of the family and becomes the root cause for all that is wrong in their inner circle.
The narcissistic parent wants the scapegoated child to believe they are as horrible as they are being told. If the child shows a sense of self-worth or self-possession the narcissistic parent will take this as an affront to their authority.
Expectedly, the scapegoat oftentimes feels very jealous of the golden child. And the golden child is usually so enmeshed with their parent that they can't see anything wrong with the parent-child relationship they're in. They'll jump in to defend their parent and might even think they have the best parent in the world.
Overwhelming guilt: Typically, if there is a golden child, there is also a child identified as the family scapegoat. Everything that goes well becomes associated with the golden child's goodness, while everything that goes wrong is blamed on the scapegoat.
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.
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.
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").