Scapegoat Child In Narcissistic Family System

Narcissistic families exist. Moms and dads can turn on one child, and sadly the siblings of the family can often follow suit. If you are the scapegoated child, you will be punished for your emotional honesty and integrity. Lisa A. Romano the Breakthrough Life Coach Breaks it all down!

Transcript

So today we're going to be talking about the plight of the scapegoated child in a narcissistic family system.

So we're talking today about what it means to be the scapegoated child inside a narcissistic family system.

So the scapegoated person in the family is the one that is all the stress and the drama and all the blame that is prevalent in the family is being directed towards the child as a way to escape what's really going on,

Escape the truth.

So you might have an alcoholic mother who is picking on one of her children,

Saying that he's different,

He doesn't know anything,

He's overly sensitive,

He's the problem child in the family and focusing on the scapegoated child,

Picking on the child,

Gaslighting the child,

Pitting the children up against one another.

And when this is happening,

All eyes are on the scapegoated child,

The way the child reacts,

And no one's holding the alcoholic mom or the narcissistic dad accountable for their own behavior,

Nor are they being called out for the way they are treating their own child.

So scapegoated children oftentimes are the children in the family that are the most emotionally honest.

They are the ones that are not willing to play the game.

They are the ones that fight for justice.

They are the ones that don't like the way their parents are behaving.

They are the ones that are soaking up all the energy and all the toxicity of the family.

So they might look like the child in the family that is depressed,

That is anxious,

Maybe the child's acting out in school,

But that's because the child is absorbing the energy of the family system and the child knows something is wrong.

Lots of times the scapegoated child is very protective of other people,

Very protective of the siblings.

Maybe you have a situation where dad is narcissistic and dad is highly volatile,

And the scapegoated child will be the one that is defending his mother against,

Let's say,

The alcoholic dad.

And the alcoholic dad has issues with the son who is protecting his mother.

So oftentimes in a narcissistic family system that's way out of whack,

That is so outside the bounds of healthy,

I won't even say normal because unfortunately in today's society,

I think most families are a little dysfunctional.

It takes a lot to have emotional intelligence and to have two parents who are emotionally intelligent,

Who see the big picture,

Who aren't highly reactive,

Who don't see their children as extensions of themselves,

Who don't have some type of an addiction issue or some type of mental health issue,

Parents who are highly aware of their own triggers,

Their own trauma,

Their own codependency,

Their own narcissism.

That's a tall order.

Most parents,

I think most people are highly unaware of how their minds operate of pain versus pleasure.

They're not aware of subconscious programming.

So I shy away from saying normal families because I think the norm is to be somewhat out of balance.

The goal is healthy family dynamics.

Now in order to have healthy family dynamics,

People have to feel safe.

In unhealthy family systems,

Children do not feel safe.

Like I said,

You could have siblings that are pit against one another.

Growing up,

I was pitted as the overly sensitive child.

I was the one who was seen as the kid that was never happy.

Well,

I wasn't happy and my parents weren't happy.

They were very anxious people,

Very controlling people,

Very judgmental and very critical people.

Although on the outside,

Most people wouldn't say that.

On the outside,

Neighbors would think that my parents were Ken and Barbie and everything was fine.

And I would see the flip in reality.

I would see like mom would be raging at me literally one minute and someone would knock on the side door or the back door and she'd give me a look with her face would be all grimace like,

Get out of here.

And the next thing I'd hear is like,

Hello,

How are you?

Like nothing ever happened.

And it was so bizarre and I couldn't figure out like what's happening.

I just used to assume that it was me,

That there was something wrong with me.

And so when you are the scapegoated child,

You're the one in the family that is acknowledged that something's off.

I as a child could not pretend and I was the child that my mother picked on and picked on me more when my dad wasn't around.

So I know all too often what it feels like to be the scapegoated child.

One of the qualities that I also had as a scapegoated child was I was very protective over my brother and my sister,

But it was an odd dynamic because my father specifically,

When it came to schoolwork,

My father would say,

Why can't you do your schoolwork like Lisa?

I had empathy for my brother and I wanted to protect my brother,

But I knew at the same time that my father was making it difficult for him to have any kind feeling towards me whatsoever because he was pitting him against me.

He was actually comparing his work to my work.

My mother,

On the other hand,

Would triangulate.

She would talk negatively about me to my brother and I knew it was happening,

But there was nothing that I could do.

I was a little kid and I knew that my brother was not going to have kind feelings towards me because of what my mom was doing.

Many of you might have heard the story where I talk about,

It was very rare to hear my mom laughing.

She's the unrecovered adult child of an alcoholic.

She had a lot of trouble with feeling out of control and I personally feel that she controlled her anxiety through cleaning.

That's what gave her solace.

What was the only thing she could do,

Really,

Because she worked for my father.

He had his own business and she had to stay home and answer his phones,

His business phones.

We didn't have a second car,

So she was pretty stuck.

It wasn't often that she laughed.

One day I came home from school and I heard her laughing and it was intoxicating.

I remember dropping my bookcase,

My book bag in the kitchen and slowly ascending up the staircase hearing my mother laugh and hearing my brother laugh.

When I got to the landing of the staircase,

I started to recognize what I was hearing.

She was reciting my journal.

She was reading my journal to my brother and it was as if someone poured gasoline over my entire body.

It was so violating and my mom was the kind of person that you felt like you were in a Petri dish.

You felt like she was inside your head.

She was always on top of you.

She'd count your underwear like I'm not kidding.

She knew whether or not I was changing my underwear.

She knew everything and it was just very exhausting.

It felt very intrusive and I just always felt like,

Wow,

I have my journals.

At least I have something I can write how I really feel in my journals if it was my safe place.

When she violated that safe place and she shared it with my brother,

While she bonded with him,

She pushed me out and pushed him against me.

In that situation,

My brother then becomes her hero because I get upset and then my brother has an opportunity to stand in and gain my mother's validation to be her little soldier against me,

Against his sister.

This is very common in narcissistic families and dysfunctional families where the siblings don't even have a chance to get along with one another because there's an imbalance of power and authority is being abused and the children in the family have no shot at getting along because the narcissistic parent,

The emotionally immature parent is going out of their way to create distance between the siblings for their own ego.

You see this all the time.

I know of one family where there was problems between the husband and the wife and it was like the wife took one child and the husband took the other child,

Literally under their wings.

There was a third child that felt invisible,

Was feeling all this anxiety and it just became a complete mess where the mother was poisoning the one child against her father and the mother was also moving one of the other daughters away from her,

So pitting child A against child B.

So dad steps in and says,

Oh,

I have to take care of child B because I see what she's doing with child A and child B.

It's just totally dysfunctional and we're not talking about it.

We're just sitting here in the air and no one's being held accountable.

So the thing with being the scapegoated child in a narcissistic family is you're the one that's willing to confront what's going on and so that makes you a target because you are not towing the line.

You are not pretending everything's okay.

You are calling out your parents.

You're calling out the injustice and because you're saying,

Hey,

I don't think that's right.

Hey,

I think we should talk about it.

You become a target.

I remember when it was just a ridiculous thing and if you come from a dysfunctional family,

You will relate to this.

You know,

One of the things that I wanted to teach my children growing up was that you don't have to kiss anybody that you don't want to and that included my parents.

And one day my mom came home from work and my son was about four years old and her friend was over too.

And so suddenly my mom wanted to play Nana,

You know,

And my mom really didn't spend any time with my children because she worked full time and I understood that.

But to,

To in front of your friend,

Try to act like Nana.

It's sort of wacky for the four year old child because he doesn't get it.

And so my mom came home from work,

Her friend happened to be there and she makes a big deal that she's home to my son and come give grandma a big kiss,

Come give grandma a big hug.

And my son flashed me and looked like I don't want to give grandma a kiss.

So I said,

Mom,

He doesn't want to give anybody a kiss right now,

Maybe later.

Well she was P O'd.

She was so annoyed.

She was irate.

Once her friend left,

That's,

That's when it was obvious.

The passive aggressiveness.

I mean it came out of nowhere.

Once her friend was gone,

That's when her rage started to come out because I was saying to her,

No.

And my son was saying no.

And you don't say no to an emotionally immature parent or a narcissistic parent.

You don't say no.

Right?

And if you do the three P's,

There's a pattern of punishing people who disagree with them.

And that's exactly what happened.

And literally it came out of nowhere and she's banging the cabinets and she's getting all nasty under her breath.

And I start to go into my trauma response and my father kicked me out.

He said,

You and your monsters get out of here.

And I looked at him.

I said,

Dad,

What are you talking about?

Like you know she's wrong.

There I was.

I was opening my mouth.

I was challenging the system.

I was saying,

Hey buddy,

You know this is uncalled for.

You know this reaction is ridiculous.

You know that she shouldn't be behaving this way and you're kicking me out of your house.

And you know what he said?

He said,

I have to live with her.

Go home.

He called my kids monsters.

I can guarantee you they weren't monsters.

And this is not some delusional mommy talking.

My kids were not monsters.

But here I was,

I was confronting the family system.

And so about a week later,

My dad shows up with the pie on a Sunday afternoon and I'm just like,

What the heck is going on?

And this is typical of scapegoated children.

They're similar in that they're like,

Oh no,

There's an elephant in the room and we have to talk about it.

And that's why you become a target because you are the one saying,

What's wrong with you to your sister?

What's wrong with you to your brother?

You know this is wrong.

You know what she's doing.

You know she's drinking.

You know he's having an affair.

You know that they stole money from uncle Jack.

You know that they're doing this and yet you're acting like they're not.

What are you doing?

So the scapegoated child in lots,

Lots of cases will be the sibling that is challenging the norm.

And that's why you get punished.

And so my dad shows up with a pie and I remember looking across the street like no phone call,

No apology.

You're just going to show up like nothing happened.

I'm sorry,

But I'm not made that way.

Like it does not compute.

And so when I opened the door,

I said,

What's up?

And he's like,

What do you mean what's up?

And I was like,

You so that you're just going to show up with a pie.

We're not going to talk about what happened.

That's it.

We're going home.

And they left.

I mean,

This happened over and over and over so many different times where there was an incident in the family.

I tried to confront it and then I was punished for trying to confront it.

This is extremely typical.

It's important to remember that a narcissist knows who is going to allow them to manipulate them,

But they also know what child is going to give them a hard time.

And that is also why you will become a target of a narcissistic parent.

If you are a strong willed child,

If you are the child that questions authority,

If you are the child that want,

Why,

Why do I have to do that?

If you are the child that is not going to acquiesce and subjugate themselves at will because mommy dearest raised her voice or mommy dearest is drunk and she wants you to go get her glasses or she wants you to go run to 7-Eleven for another six pack and you say,

No,

You're drunk.

If you're that child,

Then you're the one that she's going to try to break.

You are the child that recognizes that this is unfair,

That this doesn't make sense,

Right?

This is unjust.

None of this is making sense to you and you know it and the narcissistic mother can sense and so the narcissistic father can sense that you are not going along with the program.

You don't smile when they say something racist.

You don't smile,

You don't joke when they make fun of your aunt that just left the house,

Right?

You don't jump when they say jump,

Right?

You don't go along with what they're doing.

If your parents are addicted and maybe even criminals and you're the child that's like,

No,

I'm not doing it,

That's wrong.

There are narcissistic parents and a form of abuse is criminality.

Teaching the child to shoplift,

Teaching the child to take advantage of a system,

Right?

There are parents who actually teach their children how to do that.

So you would be the scapegoated child if you were the child that said,

No,

I'm not doing that.

You were the child with a moral compass.

You were the child that has an animal and you're taking care of the animal and the narcissistic parent does something terrible to your animal and you say that's ridiculous and that's unjust and that's unfair.

So you are the child that is saying this is not right,

Right?

You are the one challenging them and that is one of the reasons you would become a target because you are not tolerating what the family is doing.

So dad takes you out for a ride and he starts talking to you about having an affair with the lady down the block and you go,

Dad,

I don't want to hear this,

You know,

You will be a target.

In my situation as my mom,

Many of you know that my mom had a couple of strokes,

One major stroke one mother's day after my father just cursed her out for having an accident because she had had a stroke prior and she was becoming a little bit incontinent.

She had an accident in church and he was irate.

And I called in the middle of this because he had to clean her up and he was using foul language towards my poor mother who is becoming more and more helpless.

And a few hours later she had a major,

Major stroke and not very long after that she started to have hallucinations,

Dementia was setting in and it just got worse.

And I was the child in the system that was challenging my father saying,

Dad,

You're not a caretaker.

You can't take care of mom and he would scream at me on the phone,

How dare you tell me that I can't take care of my wife?

And he would hang up on me.

He threatened to cut me out of the will.

He told my brother,

I don't need her.

I'll cut her out of the will.

Why?

Because I was challenging the system.

But I have to tell you,

If you are the scapegoated child,

You are being scapegoated because you're strong willed.

You're being scapegoated because you have empathy and you have emotional intelligence enough to see the big picture.

And you know that what is happening is unjust in your family.

You have a moral compass.

You recognize when people and your parents are abusing their authority.

You know ignorance when you see it.

You know stupidity when you see it.

You know meanness when you see it.

You know criminality when you see it.

You know projection when you see it.

You know when your mother is treating you unfairly and you say something or you just simply don't go along with the program.

Your mother has a number of faces.

How many of us can relate to this?

I used to say,

My mother has three faces.

So she had a face with me,

She had a face with my father,

And then she had a face for her friends.

I mean,

It was scary.

And it was very unsettling as a child.

But my mother would expect me to go along with her ups and downs and her cues.

So if she was screaming at me and my father came home,

I was supposed to pretend that she just wasn't screaming at me.

And I couldn't do that.

If my father was up,

Right,

And five minutes before I was down,

I was expected to be up because my father was up.

And if you didn't mirror back this,

I'm a happy dad,

Look at me,

Back to him,

He was upset.

So the scapegoated child is a child that doesn't do the yo-yo very well.

And then there are children,

I can tell you,

That between my sister and my brother,

They were so hypervigilant and so attuned to my mother and my father that if my mother was up,

They were up.

If my mother was down,

They were down.

They just mirrored everything that she did.

And I just couldn't do it.

I tried when I was younger,

Really,

Really little,

But there got to a point where I just couldn't do it anymore.

I remember another time,

Which was terrible,

Another time where I was invited to a neighbor's pool and my sister and brother weren't around,

Which was rare.

I didn't have a lot of friends growing up,

So the fact that I was invited to a neighbor's pool without my siblings was pretty cool.

Having a good time in the summer.

And my mom called my neighbor up and said,

Send Lisa home because my mother's friend stopped by with six of her children.

And my mother expected me to entertain these kids.

And so I'm not a puppet,

Right?

But my brother and my sister probably would have been a puppet.

My mother and I didn't get along.

She knew that I didn't want to be there with her friend and all their kids in our pool.

And when she called me up,

I was about 10 years old and she said,

Look,

Lisa,

All very,

Very happy,

Which was not the norm.

Lisa,

Look,

Look,

Betty's here and these are her children.

I was like,

What's she smoking?

Like suddenly you're my friend?

You like me,

Lady?

And she said,

Say hello.

So I said,

Hello.

And I walked out.

I went out the front door and I started walking towards the neighbor's house again.

And my mother was ticked off,

Ran through the house,

Grabbed an Avon brush and held me with one arm and hit me outside the house with this Avon brush.

It actually broke.

So I was being punished because I wasn't going along with the program.

Now,

Some people will say you were 10,

You were rude.

And I would agree.

I absolutely was 10 and I absolutely was rude in the moment.

But pan out.

Can we just,

Can I get an amen?

Can we pan out?

Can we see the big picture?

My mother couldn't stand me.

My mother didn't want me around.

The only thing that felt right was getting out of her vicinity so she didn't have to look at me.

Being out of the house,

Being across the street in someone else's pool so she could have the house to herself is what I thought she wanted me to do.

Calling me up,

Acting like my friend,

Susie Sunshine.

Hi,

Lisa.

Look who's here.

Did not compute.

I was very confused.

And so,

Oh,

I'm supposed to act like I'm happy to see you and your friends.

You can't stand me.

It was such a weird thing.

But I got punished because again,

I didn't make her look good in front of her friends.

So a more mature,

A more emotionally intelligent parent would have handled that completely differently.

And I would dare say that an emotionally intelligent parent wouldn't be hot and cold,

Wouldn't be scapegoating their child.

My mother did things like,

I remember trying to help her do the laundry and she made fun of me because I didn't know how to,

I was like 10,

Maybe 11.

I didn't know how to fold a fitted sheet and it was a big deal.

Look,

Lisa doesn't know how to fold a fitted sheet.

Oh my God.

Look.

And it was mean.

You know,

People say,

Oh,

She was just joking around.

No,

You know,

If you have a mom that does this to you,

Someone from the outside will say,

Oh,

You're being dramatic.

But you know,

You live with it.

She's your mother.

She's not their mother.

Day in and day out,

You hear the digs.

You hear the way she tries to make you feel bad about yourself.

You feel it and it's really,

Really confusing.

Now,

So you're strong willed.

You're empathetic.

You have a moral compass.

You recognize things that are unfair,

That things are unjust.

And you're very uncomfortable with it.

You're very emotionally intelligent.

Sometimes,

You know,

In my case,

I was depressed as a kid.

I had anxiety as a kid.

Well,

I was inside a system that was very sick and I was aware of it and nobody was doing anything to fix it.

And worse,

It seemed like I was being blamed or I was being gaslit.

It was like,

No,

You're just crazy.

We're fine.

You're just crazy.

You know?

And so,

Yeah,

Being gaslit as a little kid does a lot of damage.

There's a lot of complex PTSD,

A lot of anxiety,

Like I said,

A lot of depression.

Some of the ways that I coped was I counted,

I memorized license plates,

I would pull hair out of my head,

I would write stories,

I would imagine I would have deep,

Deep fantasies in my head about being rescued.

I would imagine I had a boyfriend.

And these fantasies really helped me escape the,

I would say,

The overwhelming suffocation that I felt in my family.

And without these behaviors,

I don't know what would have happened.

I'm very grateful that I counted on my fingers.

I had this thing where if I heard a sentence,

I would repeat it in my head and I would,

On my fingers,

Count the letters of the sentence.

And in my head,

I felt complete or I felt satisfied or I finished a loop if it ended on an even number.

So if it ended on 10,

Right?

So that was the goal.

I know it sounds crazy,

But anybody out there struggling with OCD and anybody out there who also struggled with bizarre coping skills,

You'll get it.

One of the worst things that happened was as a result of being in this type of a family system was I did develop eating disorders.

I was exercise addicted.

I never thought that I'd ever be able to beat it.

I abused laxatives for a while.

I was starving myself.

I would eat maybe three cookies a day and I would go on my exercise bike for 10 miles in the morning,

10 miles at night.

And I didn't feel right unless I completed the 20 miles.

So it was a very grueling process while it was happening.

And it took me quite a long time to understand that everything that I did,

All of these weird behaviors actually was an effect of a cause.

And I wasn't the cause.

I wasn't the cause.

It wasn't me.

It was my programming.

That's my tagline.

It's not you.

It's your programming.

It wasn't me.

It was my environment.

Right?

Epigenetics is real.

So I was a cell and I was put inside an ACOA family,

Adult children of alcoholic family,

Unrecovered.

And so I was essentially raised by two unrecovered alcoholics.

And we didn't talk about our emotions.

Everything was very stifling.

A lot of criticism.

Everything was very cold and very stoic.

There was no soft place to land.

My father wasn't a nurturer.

My mother wasn't a nurturer.

My mother didn't make me feel seen.

My father didn't make me feel seen.

And so it was a very grueling way to grow up,

To feel like I'm part of a system,

But I don't belong here.

And seeing my mother and father so addicted to one another.

I was the one she projected upon.

I was the one that paid the price of,

You would say,

Her disconnect from her mother.

And I was the one that,

You know,

I stayed away from the family.

Then at 12 years old,

I stopped staying home.

I was just like,

I'm out of here.

Once I found a group of friends,

I wanted nothing to do with my family.

And then I got criticized for never being home.

So there was no way to make the people in my family happy.

And so I would say that if you are the scapegoated child,

You are not alone.

Scapegoated children are persecuted.

Scapegoated children are punished for telling the truth.

Scapegoated children are punished for not going along with the program.

Scapegoated children are punished for not laughing when their parents do something obnoxious.

Right?

Because when you laugh,

It's like you agree with your family.

And then when you don't laugh and you hold back,

It's like,

Oh my God,

You're shining a light on the fact that they're out of their minds.

Right?

And so you're,

You're showing them that,

Oh,

Something is right.

And you're also showing them that they don't have as much control over you as they would like.

And you will become a target because you're proving that you are not as controllable as your siblings.

Now,

I would say that all of these qualities that make you the scapegoat,

The fact that you believe that,

You know,

You have a right to be treated fairly and you can recognize when you're not being treated fairly,

The fact that you know that something's wrong,

The fact that you can separate yourself from them and feel like this something's off here.

The fact that you can do that will help you in the long run.

You see,

Because what happened in my family was all of the things that they seem to dislike about me,

My,

My,

My ability to stick up for myself,

At least with them sometimes,

You know,

I was able to say,

Listen,

I don't think that's right.

You know,

Don't do this.

Don't do that.

Especially as I got older.

These qualities really,

Really ended up saving me because I was able to see that this was not right,

That this was wrong.

And so again,

Being able to say,

This is wrong,

This is actually what's wrong on what is wrong in this family system really saved my life.

The ability to recognize right from wrong in a family,

The ability to be analytical.

The matrix is not outside of us.

The matrix is inside of us,

Right?

So the fact that I,

As a kid was emotionally honest,

Right?

I could feel like there was something wrong,

Something was off.

Whereas my sister and brother just kind of acclimated to what was going on.

My sister until not until,

I mean,

My dad passed away this year due to COVID,

At least that's what the hospital says.

But you know,

Up until fairly recently,

My sister was drinking his Kool-Aid,

You know,

Now she's saying like,

Wow,

Now I see the narcissistic symptoms in dad,

Like,

But before then she was the golden child,

Right?

So she lived with them.

She got the house when they passed away,

You know,

And he kept her close and he would compliment her,

Right?

Me,

I was,

I was put,

You know,

Like Lisa,

The big mouth,

Oh,

Get her out of here.

You know?

And so because I was always seen as that,

That child,

It was so much easier for me to heal from the family dysfunction.

My brother was very much,

Um,

My mother's golden child,

Right?

And so she protected him and he protected her.

But because I was a scapegoated child,

I was the one that was,

I was able to escape.

So to anybody out there who feels like the scapegoated child inside a narcissistic family,

Don't give up,

Right?

Learn about codependency because you will develop codependent patterns.

You will become a fauner if you're not careful.

You will be someone who freezes.

You might begin to subjugate your needs for the sake of your family.

I suggest that you don't do that.

I suggest that you honor yourself.

You look within,

You recognize this as a dysfunctional family.

Learn everything you can about the narcissistic family because if you are the scapegoat,

You are the one that's telling the truth and the members of your family that are under the spell of the narcissist and are afraid to go up against mommy dearest or papa dearest,

They will turn on you too.

You will be seen as a complete threat to the system and it will spread.

It will spread to your cousins.

It will spread to family members and if you're not careful,

This becomes all encompassing.

You can actually get sick,

Right?

You can get physically sick trying to fight this family system.

I think the best thing for you to do is to accept what you cannot change and to honor yourself.

Find your own tribe.

Find a therapist that understands this dynamic or a life coach.

Get inside a Facebook support group that you think can support you as a scapegoated child.

ACOA is a great resource.

Al-Anon,

CODA,

These are great resources for adult children that come from dysfunctional homes.

Make sure that you build yourself from the inside out so you know it's not you,

It's just your programming.

You know that your mother's a narcissist.

You know that your father's a narcissist,

But the goal really is to detach and to accept what you can't control because unfortunately when you are the victim of a narcissist,

You're the scapegoated child,

What can happen sometimes is you can get,

You can lock your horns.

It's important that you're careful if you come from a narcissistic family because understand narcissism is an addiction to the ego.

The narcissist is never going to be able to transcend ego.

They won't have an ego death and they get off.

They get their power from keeping you below the veil of consciousness,

By engaging you,

By you being a target.

They need a target.

So when you detach,

When you pull away and you say namaste and walk away as I like to say,

Then the target is gone.

They can't gain a source of narcissistic supply from you if you just don't play the game.

And it'll take time to heal because you're talking about rejection,

You're talking about abandonment,

You're talking about healing from low self esteem,

Which is a parent's job to make you feel seen and a narcissist makes you feel the opposite.

They make you feel unseen,

They make you feel invisible and the only time they do see you is when they're chastising and criticizing you.

This could become your own negative self talk.

You could develop a highly critical inner critic and these are the things that you have to work on on yourself.

It's all your inner child's healing.

There's an inner child inside of you that deserves to be healed.

You have to access your higher self because higher self knows all.

Higher self knows that you're everything and everything is you.

Higher self knows that you're enough.

Your parents don't know that you're enough.

They don't even know they're enough.

That's why they play these silly games.

They have to play these narcissistic games because they're narcissists.

You're not a narcissist.

You want to be out of this dynamic.

You really have to learn to let them go.

You know,

There's an old saying,

If the cucumber is bitter,

Don't eat it.

If the rock is hot,

Don't pick it up and certainly don't stick it in your pockets.

A lot easier said than done but this is the way.

Detachment is the way.

Recognizing what's wrong is not you.

It's the sick family system.

Recognizing that you don't have to carry the shame of a sick family system.

You did not create your mother.

You did not create your father.

You did not create these narcissistic dynamics so you don't have to chew on it.

You don't have to accept it.

You don't have to keep it in your life.

But this is a very,

It's not an easy road but it is the road back to yourself.

I can tell you that it is the road back home when you let this go,

When you stop playing this game.

You will ultimately find and reclaim yourself.

Namaste until next time as I bow to the love and the light that is absolutely in you.

Don't be a 5 watt bulb when you can be a 100 watt bulb.

Bye everybody.

Reviews

Great thank you

I felt like you were describing my life in so many ways. Thank you for the validation. It really is a difficult road, but I am healing

Thank you. 😊 I needed to hear this tonight

Thanks so much for this talk Lisa. I am currently stuck in the confines of this same pattern after freeing myself for years until COVID took away a lot of my energy and strength as an RN in the ICU. I felt a very similar trapped and helpless feeling then and could not keep up my habits and coping skills to avoid the negative voice that returned and has cost me mostly everything I had and I am back in that household as I tried working through countless other nursing jobs while living in hotels and AirBNBs with no support system until I was down to homelessness and when offered a place in that same household and was enticed by the surface level “concern” for my well-being shown was quickly reminded of what had pushed me out of the house young and through a long a difficult road to finding myself and my meditation practiced as well as self-worth. Many relationships of co-dependency, one very abusive one similar to the feeling I would get back home, later I found real love and care, sabotaged it I think by my underlying feelings of this can’t be real and might as well tear off the scab before another few years go by, and finally found my true self, through a spiritual path of healing after many years of excessive drinking and detoxes, rehabs, homelessness, and finally someone who saw a light in me that sparked a flame that I never knew I had that was the reason why I was the scapegoat the entire time. I am an empath, a healer and lover of all life, and still see the child in my parents who had their scare and is why they are the way they are but know I can help them see this. There are those ready and willing to accept change and those not, but I have a hard time not being exposed to the verbal and emotional crippling words and emotions that are as if I was 10 years old again and the reactions that elsewhere I do not have a problem with. I have sought help through therapy and reaching out through every avenue I can think of and have been unable to find more than some comforting words similar to “you will get through it as you always have” but am more and more frozen in one room, too panicked to leave, and always finding the hurtful words that will come through my door waiting for me to break down and give in to the anger and hurt that causes me to react the way she is looking for after my attempts at rational and objective explanations in response to her same patterns of negativity, blame, and narcissistic behaviors and patterns of attempts to “be right” no matter how illogical and hypocritical. So I thank you for speaking of something that has me feeling so scared and alone right now and hope I see a window open somewhere since the door I used to get back into this has since closed and I am becoming more and more tired of fighting and just find sleep easier and easier to go back into regardless of how much I get. I lost a lot of that in my times nursing through COVID and prior so maybe I actually just need so much with so much sleep debt but know it affects my body and mood and has me feeling as though the gap between me and the beautiful world and light I finally had come to find in the world around us more of a dream than anything that was ever real.

Preach it Lisa. Just like my story. I always knew they were soooo off. I challenged them from a young child and was I punished emotionally. They were so emotionally bankrupt, it was shocking. Done some deep healing work and codependent no more for sure. What a sham such families are🥲🥲🙃thank you Lisa, you are a shining light for scapegoated children if narcs. I’ve healed, blocked and deleted them and sadly disconnected from my family who are blind to narcissism and if course I’m the crazy one. I don’t enter into any conversation around why I don’t connect with my family and I take no crap from anyone anymore. Boundary boss and self care. Thank goodness for healing and knowing source has my back and knowing what a great Soul I am❤️❤️💕💕💕narcs stay far from me. I’m
Not easy to manipulate and beat to my own drum. Peace is my prize always

This is so interesting and really resonates with me, thank you 🙏

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟Thank you Lisa, for sharing your powerful personal stories 🙏you were the first person on this app to really help me open my eyes and my brain to the trauma I had experienced at the hands of my emotionally immature family. Your teachings have helped me make what feels like true quantum leaps in healing ✨💖✨thank you for all you do for us

Excellent

Another excellent one! Thank you!

Practical, honest, riveting, and empowering! Grateful for your courage and thankful for your strength.

Wow. Thank you so much for this. I didn’t know what a scapegoat child was but you described me, even down to the license plates!! Thank you so much for informing those of us who did not know what we experienced growing up but we knew it was wrong, and said it was wrong, and could never understand why our siblings and other parent acted like everything was okay.

Beautiful and amazingly truthful and spot on! Thank you Lisa ❤️❤️❤️