Family Scapegoating in BPD/NPD Families

[FlawedDesign]

Hello everyone,

I posted on this topic previously under Parental Alienation/Pathogenic Parenting, under Attacking with Food, and under WendyDarling's Repetition Compulsion.  I realize that I should probably have opened a new and specific topic.  So here it is. 

I will continue from here.  Please refer back to those other topics if this interests you.  Family Scapegoating, often intergenerational, is a crucial concept in the Personality Disorders, but there has not been a great deal of work on it.

FD

[hope2727]

My therapist once told me I served an important function in my family. I am their scapegoat. By blaming everything on me they are able to interact with each other peacefully. It isn't any of their faults when things go wrong because all their problems can always  trace the blame back to me. So although I am LC with them for years I am still functioning to provide a place for all their anger and resentments. It helped me to understand and feel a bit less sad. 

[FlawedDesign]

Hi Hope2727,

Family Scapegoating is very odd.  It is often initially instigated by a parent with a Personality Disorder, and then purposely spread by them to the others in the family.  The family scapegoat is generally the most sensitive, truthful, and caretaking of their siblings.  They will care for and help everyone else to within an inch of their lives, so it truly astonishing to them (and to anyone seeing this from outside the family) that they are treated abysmally in return.  What happened to the Golden Rule?  If you are good to people, don't they usually return that behavior?  No... .not always. 

You see, a dysfunctional family with a Personality-Disordered parent(s) will have built a house of cards.  They have a public image they live through.  That image looks good, or even very admirable. It is a false self, but a useful one.  So the truth-telling kid who questions the family image because they know it is false might be a risk to that house of cards.  Indeed they are.  The remaining family members want to cut that risk.  Just like the ruling party in totalitarian regimes, they need to denigrate the truth-teller.  They need to send them to the proverbial gulag. And they do.  It is all so extremely nonsensical, but there you go.

The scapegoat feels hugely betrayed, and rightfully so.  They have loved, helped and cared for the family members now trying to destroy them.  Can any of us decent folk understand that kind of behavior?  But the destroyers simply go on with their phony lives, refuse to hear the cries of the family scapegoat, and laugh cruelly that it is all the scapegoat's fault anyway.  No, it is not. 

Scapegoats have been used in human life forever and ever.  Sometimes individuals, sometimes groups.  Philosopher Rene Girard wrote at length about scapegoating.  Ugly stuff. 

I am in the midst of a case of severe Parental Alienation/Pathogenic Parenting right now.  It is also a form of scapegoating of one's spouse/partner.  My spouse shows all the signs of BPD/NPD.  To my astonishment, when I reached out to my grown siblings hoping for support (they think of themselves as good, tolerant progressive sorts of post-modern folks), a couple of them told me to buzz off, and one actually went so far as to offer my cruel and alienating spouse assistance in "crucifying" me.  I had not seen or heard from this sibling in many years, by the way, although I had always sent family invitations and communicated that I do not bear a grudge.  And then, at the first opportunity, this grown sibling tried to ally with someone attempting to hurt me.  I was blind-sided!   I had not been aware of how far they were willing to go with this horrific scapegoating.  It also clued me in to the probability that this sibling has BPD/NPD themselves, as at least one of our parents did. 

FD     

[Kwamina]

Hi FD

You have chosen the screenname 'FlawedDesign'. Did you perhaps choose this name because this is how your family makes you feel, like you are inherently flawed?

I am in the midst of a case of severe Parental Alienation/Pathogenic Parenting right now.  It is also a form of scapegoating of one's spouse/partner. My spouse shows all the signs of BPD/NPD.  To my astonishment, when I reached out to my grown siblings hoping for support (they think of themselves as good, tolerant progressive sorts of post-modern folks), a couple of them told me to buzz off, and one actually went so far as to offer my cruel and alienating spouse assistance in "crucifying" me.
... .
It also clued me in to the probability that this sibling has BPD/NPD themselves, as at least one of our parents did.  

I have followed some of your posts on the Parenting board and from those posts know in what kind of a difficult situation you are currently in.

You also mention your siblings now. How was your relationship with your siblings during your childhood and when you were young adults? How did they treat you back then?

One sibling in particular you suspect might also have BPD/NPD. In what ways did this sibling offer your spouse 'assistance in crucifying' you?

The Board Parrot

[FlawedDesign]

Hi Kwamina,

Thanks for your reply.  FlawedDesign is what I think certain parts of humanity are.  Before recent years, I still believed in treating other people as well as possible, by default.  But with my husband's Narcissistic Abuse and BPD rages (he ends each one with spitting in my face), and after years of my being his doormat/whipping boy, I realized that there is a segment of humanity that is non-responsive to good. 

I was the caretaking parentified child in a large family.  Father was BPD/Alcoholic/physically abusive, mother was probable NPD and entirely into herself.  I took care of many younger siblings, and my parents' needs too.  I tried to live up to their fantasies as well.  I had no real childhood.

In my 20s, my siblings began shunning me, or treating me with utter contempt.  My world turned upside down.  Why were they doing this?  I had done and given everything possible for them, when I was still a child/teen myself.  I could never understand that.  So life went on, as did the heavy shunning.  They spread ugly rumors amongst friends and relatives of many false allegations.  The shock of it all nearly did me in.  It seems to me that the more empathetic and caring a person is, the more they are tormented by NPDs/BPDs. 

I married someone I thought was a nice young man, but who turned out to show himself as an NPD/BPD years later.  Four children by then, and I swore I would keep a safe and peaceful home for them.  So I bootlicked, for many years.

When my husband took us all into the dark spiral of Parental Alienation/Pathogenic Parenting, I found a message to him one day from one of my siblings, offering to assist in false allegations.  This sibling was happy to take part in making me look as bad as possible, though none of it was even remotely true.  They were both working diligently as a team to frame me.  I don't think I could have been more shocked in my life at this double betrayal.  Often, the alienating parent will try to alienate the extended family of the targeted spouse, but in this case, it was reversed  --  one extended family member offered to help destroy me along with my husband. 

Oddly enough, they had always disliked one another before this happened, or so they both claimed.  And you know what?  Both of them have responsible jobs, pay lip-service to all the fashionable virtues,  and come off in public as decent people.  So be careful.  NPDs are very good at disguising intentions.

FD