Ending Rumination and Reclaiming Your Reality for the Family Scapegoat

[00:00:00]Hey guys, let's talk about something that plagues all of us scapegoated survivors and it can happen whether you're driving to work, you're trying to rest after a long day, you're trying to focus on a task, maybe it's like 3:00 a.m. and you're staring at the ceiling unable to sleep.

[00:00:18]You catch yourself replaying that one event, that one conversation for the thousandth time over and over and over again in your mind.

[00:00:29]You find yourself wondering what you could have said differently, what you could have done to prevent this betrayal. Did you say the wrong thing?

[00:00:38]Did you make the wrong move? Or perhaps is it your fault?

[00:00:43]You know, so I want to dive into this topic of rumination today specifically for the family scapegoat.

[00:00:51]Uh and I'm going to be sharing my own experiences um as the ex-family scapegoat pertaining to this in the hope that it makes you feel less crazy. And I'm also going to share how I managed to break this cycle completely.

[00:01:05]And before I go any further, I just wanted to um jump here real quick and tell you that I just launched my brand new Patreon.

[00:01:14]I just set it up, it's brand new and my intention is to build a safe community where we can work on our healing together safely.

[00:01:22]And I will be releasing courses on a regular basis which you will all have free access to and uh the first one available is uh ready to go right now as we speak. So, uh along with a variety of perks of course. So, if this is something that you feel might benefit you, uh take a look at uh in the information will be in the description, okay? So, now getting back to the topic of rumination.

[00:01:49]So, really rumination is that relentless replaying of conversations and situations over and over and over and over again, okay? And uh you're back in those moments where you were hurt and betrayed and invalidated.

[00:02:05]And it's like you're stuck in time.

[00:02:07]You're trying to fix something that can't be fixed. And the thing is that none of these are regular thoughts, obviously. They are loops that rob us of the present moment.

[00:02:19]They steal our peace and they steal our energy, they steal our sense of self, our ability to ground ourselves, they steal our life and they fog our mind from seeing what is actually really happening in front of us, which I will explain to you um as we go.

[00:02:38]We become trapped in these endless fights with anyone that is a part of the narcissistic family system bubble and beyond, okay?

[00:02:49]>> [snorts] >> Um even if they are not in the same room as us.

[00:02:55]They will still hold such a huge amount of power over us and our reality without actually physically needing to be there.

[00:03:04]So basically, the abuse just continues and becomes transferred in our own minds, okay? And this is a fight that doesn't end.

[00:03:14]So in a way, our mind is trying to solve the unsolvable. It's trying to make sense of the nonsensical.

[00:03:21]And I remember this madness so clearly, these loops so clearly, because uh well, of course, now I reached a healthy, stable, peaceful place, which I don't ruminate about this stuff anymore.

[00:03:34]But at the time, I never thought that getting to this point was possible.

[00:03:39]And learning to control this wasn't just about techniques, which are important and useful, which I will share, uh but it's also about understanding the bigger picture and the reality of the family scapegoat.

[00:03:52]So much of this, in my personal experience, you know, boils down to the shock of betrayal trauma. It's the shock of betrayal.

[00:04:01]And and how many of you have been minimized, gaslit on so many levels? I mean, starting with society.

[00:04:10]Because apparently, no family's perfect.

[00:04:13]And terms like narcissism and manipulation and gaslighting have apparently become trendy. So apparently, that automatically disqualifies real survivors who share their real experiences into being illegitimate somehow.

[00:04:31]You know, and how many of you have been minimized and betrayed by siblings, the good parent, extended family members, uh family friends? And how much of their betrayal their dismissal of your truth make you suffer times 10, make you ruminate every day?

[00:04:51]How much suffering did that cause on top of what you actually had to go through?

[00:04:58]Okay, the injustice here is unreal.

[00:05:01]To me personally, and this is my own journey, you know, out of all the people in the household to betray the scapegoat, I think that the most shocking is really when the siblings do it.

[00:05:12]Losing my father was a big deal, of course, you know, the good parent, but when you see through the manipulation tactics and you realize that he that, you know, the good parent are are basically that that entity that keeps you in your place and prevents you from leaving, you know?

[00:05:34]They play the good cop, bad cop with the narcissistic parent, but they are still, you know, unified, right?

[00:05:42]Um So that was a whole thing that I had to learn about and let go. But my brother A brother or a sister, if you have one, who grew up in the same house as you, who saw the madness, the violence, and the abuse, and then chose to pretend it didn't exist, you know, when they got older, and then actually started to parrot the abuser's narrative after some time?

[00:06:07]I mean, this is a devastating form of gaslighting.

[00:06:10]Because you have one person here who witnessed your reality, who wasn't an adult in the family, okay? They were the child with you, okay? You guys were in it together. They grew up in the same chaos as you, and they chose to rewrite history to align with the abuser's narrative?

[00:06:30]That made me question my own sanity.

[00:06:32]I think that in my experience, that was one of the people that made me ruminate the most in my history with my abusive mother and the narcissistic family system that I came from.

[00:06:45]You know, uh for me, the shock of my brother abandoning me and then disowning me when I went no contact with her was something that took me years to process.

[00:06:56]Because this was the brother who used to hide in the bathroom with me while the chaos between our parents unfolded.

[00:07:04]The brother I built imaginary kingdoms with as a child, when we only had each other. You know, we would create these worlds, you know, with these imaginary characters, and we had a bond. And he actually defended me sometimes when he could, uh when my mother targeted me daily.

[00:07:23]And he was the one who knew what made me happy, you know, he was the only one who knew. Like, for Christmas, he bought me these uh you know, I was young, I'm like 10 or something, he got his first job, and he bought me the first uh the whole series of the original Star Wars books, you know, I was really into the original Star Wars movies and he got me Heir to the Empire and the originals and you know, his face, he was so happy when he saw me open the present. He he was so proud, you know? And uh actually this memory still brings me quite a bit of grief to be honest with you guys. So nothing I can do about that. Something that I have to um you know, it's something that we all need to accept and I'm going to talk about that. That's why I'm here.

[00:08:13]And I think that one of the reasons why this hit me so hard was because I grew up without extended family. They were all lived in Poland. I met them like once in my life for 2 days and that was it. I have no relationship with them. So because of the that isolation that I lived in, my brother became my only window into what a normal family member might be.

[00:08:35]He was older than me. He got his own place. He went to college. He found a new life, a new girlfriend from a wealthy family and just like that, I watched him transition from I'm here for you and [snorts] what the hell is happening in this house to having complete amnesia about our upbringing.

[00:08:54]So, you know, I watched as he progressed from being my brother to a stranger and he eventually started to roll his eyes at me when I begged for help because I was still stuck in that house as a young teen with a crazy woman, you know?

[00:09:09]And then he pulled the well, you just have a bad character, that explains everything. Everything is normal. My friends have messed up families, too.

[00:09:17]Haha, it's all normal. It's the culture.

[00:09:19]He pulled that one as well. You know, all the classic gaslighting phrases have been spoken to be my by my my own brother and that was something that I could not process.

[00:09:29]And so the rumination would just start going in circles. Okay.

[00:09:34]What can I do? You know, what can I do to uh explain things to him? You know, how can I say things differently?

[00:09:43]I'm going to write a huge letter that explain what I feel. I'm going to try and say it this way. I'm going to try and say it that way. I'm going to try to just, you know, dismiss him when he calls me to vent about, you know, how crazy your parents are because he will do that. He would call me and go, "Oh my god, I can't believe, you know, our mom just did this." And he would laugh.

[00:10:03]"Isn't she crazy? Oh my god." "Oh my god, well, anyways."

[00:10:07]And then when I would respond and I go, "No, that's not funny. This is This is There's something seriously wrong. Do you see what's happening? Do you not see, brother? I'm stuck in this house.

[00:10:16]You don't understand what's going on."

[00:10:17]And I would be completely dismissed.

[00:10:20]"Okay, see you later. Bye." And then he would like just hang up the phone.

[00:10:24]So, me trying to figure out how to get him to validate me became very time-consuming.

[00:10:30]Until one day I literally decided that I had to release.

[00:10:37]I released him the day that he disowned me for going no contact with my mother after I wrote a huge letter, which I know now this is not the right It's never a right response to these things really, but my impulse at the time without the knowledge that I have today was to write this huge letter about all the things she did and, you know, and the response was my father told me to go take my pills and come back when I feel better. And my brother didn't even bother responding. He just disowned me.

[00:11:06]And that was the last time I ever heard from him. He didn't even call my son for his birthday. And I had to explain to my kids that uh their uncle wasn't coming. That was heartbreaking.

[00:11:18]But um you know, so at the time I had to basically let him go and let the grief come in.

[00:11:30]And the grief came just like it did for every single person who was related to the bubble of my narcissistic family system.

[00:11:41]Okay, so you see when we ruminate, our mind is desperately trying to solve the unsolvable.

[00:11:48]Okay, it's a puzzle that you can't solve. There's pieces missing. You are trapped in a feedback loop because our nervous system is trying to process traumatic injustice that never received an apology or any acknowledgement or an ending. There's no closure. There's no closure when you come out of those systems, you know? And that is the thing. You can't just go, "Okay, it's over." Because it won't come from them.

[00:12:13]So we think that if we can just find the right words, if we can explain the how and the why clearly enough, or find that one perfect piece of evidence to show them, the other person will finally say, "Oh, I see now. I'm sorry you've been through this. I get it now, you know?"

[00:12:32]But that doesn't happen. So we keep replaying the scenes in our minds.

[00:12:36]If we change the script, if we do something different next time, if we show this evidence, maybe we can force a different outcome where we finally get justice or at least some small measure of validation and acknowledgement, you know?

[00:12:52]We're essentially trying to rewrite history to get the safety that we were denied.

[00:12:57]But the reality is that this rumination is a symptom of a nervous system that is still stuck in the fight or flight response.

[00:13:09]It's the brain's way of trying to protect us, you know? Trying to find an exit door in a room that has been welded shut. So we stay stuck because we haven't yet realized that the door we are looking for, the door of validation, of truth, of seeing is not going to come from the person who caused the wound. Is not going to cause from the people who are in denial and who choose to remain in denial to protect themselves.

[00:13:41]So, rumination essentially tries to protect us from the grief of the truth.

[00:13:47]It is our own way of stalling, you know, keeping us busy in the what ifs, so we don't have to fully sit with that painful reality of that the people who supposed to protect us or just be there for us, love us unconditionally, failed to do so.

[00:14:06]It creates a false future.

[00:14:08]Okay? So, by constantly replaying the past, your brain is actually trying to predict the future. It's searching for patterns, you know, so that if or when you encounter that person next time, you won't be blindsided. Next The next time if they do this, I know what to respond, you know? The next time I see them, I'm going to say this, you know? It's an attempt to manufacture a sense of safety through this hypervigilance.

[00:14:33]And this actually blocks you from seeing the real reality, what's really happening in front of you, the loops that are happening in front of you.

[00:14:43]In a way, rumination keeps the person who hurt you alive and active in your daily life. It ensures they are still the main character in your story and they take up space space in your head even when they're emotionally absent and they take up space away from the things that are actually that actually matter, you know, the the people who love you, who are present now, in all your present reality.

[00:15:11]You know, and all the stuff that you actually need to do for yourself.

[00:15:16]So, healing from this stuff, you know, is understanding that you actually have to learn to let this person go.

[00:15:23]Let the fantasy version of that person go, you know? Stop fighting back and instead realize that you're You already said what you had to say.

[00:15:35]They saw.

[00:15:37]Guys, they know.

[00:15:39]They know. Like if you're ruminating right now, believe me, they know. It It's not that they don't know. It's that they don't want to know. They don't want to know because knowing will pierce that illusion that they have constructed around themselves, and their entire world of pretend will collapse around them.

[00:16:02]And they will do anything they can to prevent that and continue living in this alternate reality they created in your head in which you are thrown in the trash. You are labeled as the family problem. So, they can feel clean. They felt They can feel great about themselves, you know?

[00:16:25]So, they've already made a choice, and it's not in your control or in my control to change that. And it took me a long time to understand this. This is a choice that they are making as adults.

[00:16:38]At this point, I don't think that there's anything else that we could tell our families that hasn't been said already.

[00:16:47]And so, this radical acceptance really is the first step.

[00:16:54]And when you accept it, well, the grief comes in, and this is, you know, what we are trying to prevent. This is what we are working so hard to prevent.

[00:17:04]But it's better to accept things as they are and let the grief come than to continue living, exhausting ourselves, you know, for people that will actually never give us what we need.

[00:17:19]And the second step is to begin training your nervous system into understanding that you actually don't have to stay trapped in the negative, you know, thoughts. You have the capacity to return to safety whenever you want. And you really do have that power, but it takes a long time. It takes a lot of mindfulness practice for to do this. There is a technique called pendulation.

[00:17:42]The idea is to gently oscillate or swing back and forth between the discomfort and then a safe resource.

[00:17:54]Now, a resource is really important to have in your healing. It's simply anything that feels safe and grounding to you.

[00:18:01]So, it could be the texture of a favorite blanket, uh the feeling of your feet flat on the floor, feeling like the floor so that the ground supports you.

[00:18:10]It could be your pets if you have any, uh or even the focus on a powerful mantra. It could be your garden. It could be a safe area in in your in your home.

[00:18:21]So, once you locate your resource, okay, the first thing that you do when you ruminate is you acknowledge the discomfort. Don't run away from it.

[00:18:29]Don't try to suppress it. Suppressing anything never works.

[00:18:33]Take a couple of seconds to notice where that rumination lives in your body because of course you have all of that stuff in your head.

[00:18:42]So, bring your focus away from your head and locate where that anxiety is living within you.

[00:18:49]You know, is it in your jaw? Is it your chest? Is are your fists clenched, you know?

[00:18:55]Uh and just name it. And don't try and change it. Just name it for what it is.

[00:19:00]Okay, I feel grief. I feel stressed. I feel betrayed. I feel injustice, right?

[00:19:06]And then you shift to your resource.

[00:19:09]Now, you know, bring your full attention to your resource, to that blanket, to that chair, that point of safety, and spend 10 seconds really feeling your resource.

[00:19:21]You can notice the details, the temperature, the texture, the way it supports you.

[00:19:25]And then you pendulum back. You move your attention back to the discomfort for a moment.

[00:19:31]And then back to the resource again.

[00:19:34]So, by doing that, you're not trying to fix the discomfort. You're basically teaching your brain that you have the capacity to step out of the loop and return to safety. So, by doing this, you're you're building a bridge between the trauma state and the present moment.

[00:19:50]Now, aside from that, there's another technique that I found incredibly useful. Okay? It doesn't have to be just one way. There's many ways that you can use depending on how you feel in the moment.

[00:20:01]Um what I found really helpful as well is uh choose a place that you know intimately.

[00:20:08]Okay? This is a way also to force your brain to switch gears.

[00:20:13]So, you imagine a place that you know, like your local grocery store, a path that you walk on, uh the school you go to. Like but it has to be a place you really know very well.

[00:20:24]And then you use your imagination and you walk yourself through that space and you you remember all the details exactly where they are. So, okay, when I walk into the grocery store, you know, on the right there's like all these drinks and healthy food things and on the left uh you go towards the meat section and then there's the fish and then you turn and there's the bread and so on. So, you walk yourself through the whole grocery store.

[00:20:51]So, by doing this, you're manually activating the logical spatial mapping side of your brain, which physically makes it harder for the emotional ruminating side to stay, you know, to stay activated, right?

[00:21:03]I went to the grocery story to the grocery store very often when I began this process, like 10, 30, 40, 50 times a day. Okay?

[00:21:14]Another powerful tool is sensory anchoring, as well. So, when you feel the loop starting, pause, look around the room, name what you see out loud. I see a blue lamp, I see a wooden table, I see my cat, I see my pig. Um hearing your own voice naming objects pulls you out of your head and anchors you firmly in the present moment.

[00:21:40]The idea is not to finish those thoughts, you know, and to really uh rather force yourself to um get out of your head. And you know, there's another fun uh thing you can practice as well is start taking micro pictures. Do a do a daily practice, if you can, if you have time, of taking micro pictures with your phone. So, when you're out and you go for a walk, maybe after the rain or something, you focus on a tiny specific detail, like a single water droplet, you know, on a leaf, or like the grains of sand when you're holding them in your hand, or, you know, um the texture of of wood, you know, of the tree, uh the a mushroom, a tiny little mushroom.

[00:22:24]So, you know, and you take pictures of that or or just focus on that because by practicing this kind of short focused observation, when you're not stressed, uh your brain uh can snap back into the present moment much faster when you're triggered. Okay? This is essentially you're training your brain.

[00:22:43]And of course, I can't stress enough how important it is for you to integrate physical exercise in your life, okay?

[00:22:51]The gym and running saved my life. I know a lot of people are into yoga and uh different practices, uh swimming.

[00:22:59]There's a lot of good stuff that you can do, but if you can even a little walk, a gentle walk around the block, you know, or or find something that you can do gently, you know, uh because there are so many benefits for the body and mind if you do this. And the thing is a lot of the healing work actually happens when you're actively doing things on a daily basis as a routine, not just when you're triggered, okay?

[00:23:29]It's not just when you're triggered that you start doing those things. It's every single day you incorporate these healthy routines into your life. And after a while, you will see that they will make a huge difference for your mind and body.

[00:23:43]Uh another thing is keep a journal, okay? This is really important. I can't stress that enough. Uh I did this and you basically write write down all the betrayals in there and you keep them in the book. You You write down your reality. You write down what you've been through.

[00:23:58]And whenever you start to ruminated about something, you look at that book and you go, "You know what? It's actually all written in there already. I don't have to worry about this now. It's all written, okay?

[00:24:09]So, I can rest now and I can let that go." So, that journal is going to become like a safe anchor for you after a while because everything's in there. You don't have to think about it. It's all written down. So, you can safely, you know, think about other stuff.

[00:24:25]But as a final note, I want to tell you guys, um you know, we often hear the term radical acceptance in psychology, right?

[00:24:34]Uh and the thing about radical acceptance isn't just about understanding the term itself, you know?

[00:24:40]It's not just about understanding, "Okay, this is gaslighting. This is manipulation. This is triangulation."

[00:24:46]and all that.

[00:24:47]It's really learning to feel within what it means, you know? And radical acceptance really means that our attention essentially needs to be turned towards ourselves entirely, 100% because there is no point anymore on giving our energy to them. It's a waste of energy.

[00:25:10]For so long, our attention was held hostage. It was tethered to them, to our parents, to our siblings, to the why and the how could they?

[00:25:21]We were essentially outsourcing our life force to people who had no intention of helping us because they chose denial at our expense.

[00:25:31]Radical acceptance is the moment you realize that your energy is not infinite. It's finite. It's a finite resource.

[00:25:39]So, when you accept that reality of the situation, when you truly accept that the person you need that the person you needed simply doesn't exist in the way that you wish they did or you fantasized or maybe that they once did, when you realize it's over, that energy finally comes home.

[00:25:59]You take that 100% of your attention and you pour it into your own soil.

[00:26:07]You pour it into your own physical body, into your own healing, into creating the life that you are building right now.

[00:26:15]And this is not a passive act, okay? It is the most active, protective thing that you can do for yourself.

[00:26:23]It is saying, "Everything I have been trying to give to them, I am now going to give to me."

[00:26:32]Let the idea of them go. The fantasy version of them doesn't exist. No relationship is worth giving up your sanity or health for.

[00:26:41]No relationship should be that hard, guys. No healthy relationship will ever ask this out of you.

[00:26:49]If a relationship asks this much out of you and creates this much suffering, it's not healthy. It is not safe.

[00:26:59]Okay? Relation- healthy relationships do not invalidate you and especially not your very real trauma.

[00:27:08]They don't deserve you and they don't deserve me.

[00:27:12]Okay? They don't deserve me, either.

[00:27:14]The grief is real.

[00:27:18]But if you let yourself gently go through it, and if you utilize this grieving time as a huge indicator right now that you need care, that you need a lot of self-love, that you need to connect with healthy people, that you need to connect with yourself, that you need to find yourself for the first time.

[00:27:42]You know, you allow for reality to sit still without trying to change it and you allow yourself to process the grief.

[00:27:52]And as you do this, you know, it will transform. The initial shock of the betrayal, you know, will transform into into you finally reclaiming your own identity.

[00:28:04]And you know, of course this grief is something that takes a long time to pass and you know, like like I talked when I talked earlier about my brother, I felt it, you know, I felt the feeling because you know, it is my brother, right? And um he was the only one I had and so I am very sad about that.

[00:28:30]But I'm going to be okay. You know, I'm going to breathe through it.

[00:28:35]I'm going to focus on what I do have around me. I'm going to focus on um helping people as much as I can and I'm going to focus on living my very healthy life and happily and without carrying any shame anymore. You know what I mean?

[00:28:56]So, you're not alone on this journey.

[00:28:57]We're all on this together. And the most important thing that I can tell you is repeat, I love myself, I trust myself.

[00:29:05]Everything you feel is normal and you just allow it to pass. Allow it to pass.

[00:29:11]Accept things as they are and bring your entire focus on self-love, guys, because you are worth it.

[00:29:19]I love myself, I trust myself, and I will see you guys soon.