By Rebecca C. Mandeville, PsychCentral, February 19, 2020
As a licensed Psychotherapist specializing in Family Systems, I have worked with many clients who struggled with being in the family scapegoat role, yet they did not realize how this was negatively impacting nearly every area of their life. They often presented in my practice with anxiety, depression, and poor self-esteem, but blamed themselves for their symptoms, not realizing how being the family scapegoat had affected their ability to succeed and thrive in life.
Family scapegoating is far more common than people realize. ‘The Scapegoat’ is one of the roles given to a child growing up in a dysfunctional family system, and can have a lasting negative effect. Many family scapegoat victims/ adult survivors fail to realize that they have actually suffered from a most insidious form of psycho-emotional abuse growing up, and even therapists and counselors can miss the signs and symptoms associated with what I term ‘family scapegoat abuse’ (FSA) as well.
In fact, the genuine distress experienced by adults who are targets of family scapegoating is sometimes minimized or dismissed by Mental Health providers due to a lack of awareness of just how damaging this form of familial abuse can be. For example, a client seeking help with their family situation might be told things like, “But they’re your family, of course they love you”; “Family connections are so important, it can’t be that bad”; “It’s best if you forgive, we need to maintain ties with our family to be healthy”; “It’s important you don’t do a ‘cut-off’, you’ll just be repeating unhealthy family patterns”, which only serve to reinforce the client’s fear that they are somehow fundamentally to blame for their strained (or non-existent) family relationships.
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