The Scapegoat’s Groundhog Day: Breaking the Loop of Family Betrayal

[00:00:00]Hey guys, nice to see you. I'm Art, exf family scapegoat, ex family traitor apparently. And if you guys are the family scapegoat, you have been labeled as the traitor as well. Let's talk about that for a second, shall we? If you're the family scapegoat, you have been dealing with a psychological irony that is so twisted it might have kept you actually trapped in a cycle of self-lame and guilt and shame and confusion for decades.

[00:00:35]And what happens is that in perfect unison, the dysfunctional family system, okay, they all of them will act as if you betrayed them when you actually finally said no. When you actually finally set a boundary, when you stated a preference, when you chose something that vied with you, but that didn't align with the delusional plan that your narcissistic parent had for you, they will shame and guilt you into believing that you are a family traitor that singlehandedly destroyed an otherwise loving home.

[00:01:19]apparently.

[00:01:21]I mean, this illusion and let's call it what what it is. It's illusion, okay?

[00:01:26]It's it's a delusion, okay? This twisting of facts that the narcissistic family system creates is actually so incredibly powerful um that we end up caught fighting a war in loops for our entire life to try and disprove to the people that actually betrayed us that we are not the traitors. We are not the perpetrators.

[00:01:54]We are not who they say that we are.

[00:01:58]And this toxic environment teaches our nervous system a really terrifying lesson.

[00:02:06]If you don't constantly fight, if you don't constantly defend yourself, if you don't constantly try to prove your reality and fight back just so that you don't drown, you will be betrayed and erased by your loved ones, by your own family in the snap of a finger.

[00:02:31]Think back to the cycles and conversations you had within your own childhood household. How many times did you have to sit with family members and try to convince them? Okay, you poured all your energy, you cried, you put everything that you had to explain to them that you were getting hurt by a family member that was targeting you, okay? that you were being abused, that things were happening at home behind closed doors that were not normal.

[00:03:06]How many times did you have to defend yourself against a delusional conflict that the narcissistic parent created out of nowhere only to find yourself being attacked from all angles in the aftermath, branded as the perpetrator to something that you didn't even start in the first place.

[00:03:30]I remember going through this loop endlessly uh with my brother and my father, the only family I've ever known.

[00:03:39]And you know, if I give you an example, my father, okay, he would act like the flying monkey. He would be sent by my mother to deliver messages about how horrible and evil I supposedly was and how much I was making my own mother suffer. Okay? And I mean, we're talking about this dynamic starting since I was a child. I've been making my mother suffer since I was like seven, eight, nine, 12, 14. So I would sit down with him and I would pour my heart out, desperately trying to get him to see my reality, right? And I would say, "Dad, she gets physical with me. She verbally assaults me. She gives me silent treatments that last for months just because I didn't smile correctly at her.

[00:04:23]Okay? She talks behind my back to everybody to family that I haven't even met. Okay? She creates fights completely out of the blue. Okay? Every single day, no matter what I do, I could be sitting in my room reading a book. She will find a reason to fight with me. Don't you remember when this happened, when that happened, when this happened? When that happened, Dad, don't you remember?

[00:04:49]And of course, I would pour every ounce of my energy into defending myself, engaging in this exhausting back and forth, you know, until finally, you know, he acted like somehow he understood for a moment.

[00:05:06]And sometimes he would say, "Okay, your points are valid. I will talk to her."

[00:05:11]Or he would say, "You know, she does things like that with me too, right? But you just need to laugh it off and ignore her.

[00:05:19]Or or he'd say, "It takes two."

[00:05:23]Or he would say, "My favorite one." E, you don't know how she talks about you when you're not there. She loves you so much. Really, I just want to point out that when you say something, but your actions are totally the opposite of that, that is called manipulation. But anyways, moving on. Um, every single time that this happened, okay, a couple of days later, the entire conversation was erased, it didn't exist. It was completely deleted from his mind, okay? From any one's mind, and I was right back to square one, having to fight all over again for my own basic survival.

[00:06:08]and while dealing with him telling me that it takes two and the same cycles repeating themselves every couple of days.

[00:06:17]This is the scapegoat's groundhog day.

[00:06:21]This is the loop that repeats itself for our entire lives. This is what betrayal looks like again and again and again and again.

[00:06:34]This constant betrayal conditions your nervous system to believe that in order to survive, you have to keep explaining yourself. You have to keep defending yourself and you have to keep reacting.

[00:06:49]You have to fight to stay alive because if you don't, the people that surround the narcissist will side with the narcissist and they will leave you completely exposed and alone.

[00:07:03]Now they maintain a dangerous illusion that keeps you from ever breaking free.

[00:07:11]It kept me from ever breaking free.

[00:07:13]Well, from breaking free at the time.

[00:07:15]And it took a long time for me to actually realize that the enabling parent, the enablers are just as guilty of abuse as the actual abuser is because they maintain this illusion, you know, through those moments where they seem reasonable or or when they almost seem to understand. And sometimes when you lay out the absolute truth, they have no counterpoints to give you because you're right.

[00:07:45]So you think, okay, well maybe maybe now they will finally understand.

[00:07:51]But the end result is actually always the same. They watch you get hurt, do absolutely nothing, and then weaponize guilt, shame, and the happy family memories. They caught on camera along with the moral obligation of fa family sticking together no matter what uh no matter what goes on behind closed doors.

[00:08:09]Okay. To force you to stay in your place, to force you to be accessible to your abuser.

[00:08:18]And there is a second layer to this. As a child growing up or as a teenager, you know, growing up in this system, your natural and healthy response to all of this massive injustice is anger, right?

[00:08:32]It's rage. You fight back. You scream.

[00:08:35]You argue. This is protective anger. How could you not react to any of this? You know, you demand boundaries, you demand accountability, you demand fairness, you demand justice, all rightful things.

[00:08:50]You demand that the abuse stops. You demand to be left alone.

[00:08:56]But a toxic family system has a counter move for this um defensive anger. They will bring out this camera, the psychological camera, let's say, right?

[00:09:08]And they will film only your reaction and then your reaction is going to be played on repeat in the loop. Okay? To prove to everybody and the world that you're the one who is evil, that you're the one who's the problem, and that you're the one who is a traitor, and and you're the one who's defective. They will completely erase the context of what actually happened that provoked you. You know, they will point at your reactions, at your tears, at your screaming, and they will say, "Look at how crazy she is. Look at that bad character. Look at this actress. Look at this aggressor. Look at this abuser.

[00:09:51]Look at how aggressive this, you know, scapegoat, this this child is, right?"

[00:09:57]So they will use your justifiable self-defense to fit you for a psychological straight jacket. Okay?

[00:10:06]They will pathize your survival instincts so that they can lock you down, silent the truth and preserve their own delusion.

[00:10:16]Now, breaking this loop, it doesn't happen when you finally, you know, m make them see the truth all of a sudden after years of trying to convince a toxic system to love you and respect you and all of a sudden they have this aha moment and they go, "Oh, you know, you're right. Um, you're right about everything." The thing is that that doesn't happen. It doesn't happen in in narcissistic family systems. I think that the real breakthrough really happens when your system experiences a massive historic shift in perspective.

[00:10:56]Okay? You look at the minions, you look at the clan, you look at the loops, you look at the sheer exhaustion of the shifting goalposts, and instead of finding fighting and running harder, you actually stop and you finally say, "I'm done." At this point, whatever happens happened, but I'm done.

[00:11:21]If they fully turn on me, if they are lying with the narcissist, if they decide to believe the lies, and if I'm not there to convince them otherwise anymore, and then that happens, then let it be.

[00:11:34]I'm done. And then you walk away.

[00:11:37]You realize that no amount of fighting on your part or working overtime or killing yourself to be heard is ever actually going to get them to stop playing this toxic game, these toxic loops that never end. When I walked away, my worst fears did come true. My own brother abandoned me. My own father's true colors actually came out.

[00:12:00]the rage, you know, when I said no. Um, it like the truth really came out. All the things I had been fighting so hard to control happened. Anyways, and I had to sit down and face this reality.

[00:12:17]When the scapegoat finally walks out, you know, it feels cold. It feels like walking into a silent snowy winter forest all by yourself with bare bloody feet. It is lonely and it is heavy.

[00:12:36]But that that environment, you know, that coldness is actually the reality of the system that you've been stuck in, of the bubble of the narcissistic family system.

[00:12:51]It means that you're no longer burning yourself alive to try and control a narrative that naturally swings in a direction that is out of your control.

[00:13:01]This is like you trying to build a fire to try and force summer back in the middle of winter.

[00:13:10]But even if you burn the fire, if you keep feeding it wood, if you exhaust yourself trying to keep that fire lit, the trees are still not going to bloom.

[00:13:19]and the frozen rivers won't start flowing all of a sudden.

[00:13:24]So for your for a long time, you know, your only option was to keep feeding that little fire to prevent the cold and the darkness from completely engulfing you. You know, you did what you had to do. Okay? And I I I think that what happens is is we get stuck in this belief that if we keep feeding that fire and if we hurt, if we work hard enough, um maybe the weather will be able to change, maybe maybe the environment will be able to change. But the truth is that some things are really not in our control. My mother's sickness was not in my control. The way that my family chose to handle that was not in my control.

[00:14:11]The way that the system functions, you know, was never in my control to change.

[00:14:17]And the tragedy of keeping your focus entirely on the fire is that you spend all your time gathering wood and keeping keeping it going, never actually looking up to realize that the climate around you is simply never going to change.

[00:14:33]If you stop making the fire and actually get up and leave, you know, you will see that the darkness and the freeze will take over because that has always been the reality of the narcissistic family system.

[00:14:49]So when we map this specific brutal cycle where your defense is weaponized against you and your loved ones um you know and everybody just turns on you it causes havoc in your nervous system and a narrative forms in your subconscious mind. I must fight for the rest of my life, no matter where I am or what I'm doing and what situation I'm in because if I stop fighting, you know, the second that I drop my guard, people will leave me. So, we start to overfunction in relationships. We apply this continues on beyond the narcissistic family system. We believe that the moment that we stop being useful or overgiving or perfect, you know, they will drop us and betray us. We won't be good enough. We don't deserve to be loved by them just as we are. We have to keep working really hard. You know, you might find yourself cutting people off at the first sign of a boundary issue, unconsciously testing people just to see if they will fail you or or maybe leaving a good situation before they can leave you, right? I mean, that constant anxiety, that rush that pushes you to overwork um you know, makes rest feel dangerous as well. I mean, and also think about, you know, when you write long exhaustive text messages or emails trying to explain facts or state your truth, feeling a desperate need to prove your innocence or sanity even in minor situations like you have to explain yourself. You have to, you know, it has to, they have to believe you even if it's a minor thing. You know, it becomes really hard to just sit still and to let things be and to actually allow ourselves to rest.

[00:16:46]But knowing why our body does this is really a first step. Because true healing requires us to take our eyes off of the dysfunctional family system entirely and turn them inward towards the part of us that are still operating as as if they have to keep the fire going because if they don't we will perish. We have to start paying attention to that part of ourselves to this inner protector.

[00:17:16]If your trauma was built on a loop of constant fighting and overexlaining and running, then your healing cannot happen through intellectual understanding only.

[00:17:25]Your nervous system uh has to learn how to feel safe for the first time. And then healing really begins with an acceptance of the true reality that comes with this heavy grief. When you stop waiting for them to finally see you and hear you, when you stop trying to fight and you let things be and you let things be as they are, you make, you know, you basically watch them make their own choices, as painful as it is, you actually get your power back. You know, you take your power back and you bring your focus on finding a better, healthier environment where you can actually thrive and feel safe and especially be at peace.

[00:18:17]For decades, your nervous system believed that resting equated psychological death. So to heal, you have to build a relationship with that exhausted part of you. That rushing, that overfunctioning part of yourself is in fact an inner protector who has been working overtime to keep you safe. And that inner protector doesn't know that you are now an adult. So hating it or suppressing it, it won't heal you.

[00:18:46]Suppressing anything will never heal you. Rather, it's important to become mindful of where this anxiety lives within you and then talking to it, paying attention to it and telling it, you know what, thank you for keeping me alive. You know, when I was 9, 10, 14, you know, you did an incredible job defending me, but I am the adult now, and I am the parent now. Okay? I'm going to reparent myself now. And I got this, and you can rest. you can rest when the anxiety starts to vibrate in your body on a quiet weekend or when you're just sitting there watching TV trying to rest after work, you know? I mean, instead of picking up a broom or cleaning the house and organizing a closet um to escape this feeling, you practice sitting with that discomfort without trying to change it, without doing anything about it, but just focus on when that where that physical feeling is in your body and just stay with it.

[00:19:53]And then second by second as your body starts to notice that nothing terrible happens when you sit down when you stop moving eventually that feeling will start to become less and less powerful.

[00:20:07]But this takes time. This is not something that happens in a day. This is a daily mindfulness practice that you have to start doing every day.

[00:20:18]So the next time that you find yourself, you know, typing a massive block of text to explain your intentions or, you know, when you start begging for your boundaries to be understood or, you know, when you're trying to rationalize everything that you kn do to someone, another adult in your life, stop. Stop and recognize that that urge to overexlain is just your childhood system trying to defend itself.

[00:20:49]Remind yourself healthy people do not need you to write an essay an essay, you know, to treat you with respect. Okay?

[00:20:57]You don't you don't need a 45page brief just to honor just to have somebody else honor a basic boundary.

[00:21:06]So this is you operating from the old rule book. And really think about it for a second. You know, the fact that we actually have to fight this hard for abuse to stop.

[00:21:24]This is a sick system, guys. This is not a healthy environment for you. This is not how healthy relationships work. I'm a mother now. Okay, I have my own self-created families. That kind of stuff does not exist in a healthy household. Okay, it just it's not normal. And so, you can drop the shame and drop the guilt and really pay attention to yourself and bring yourself to a safe environment where you slowly work on rebuilding your life. And I know this is very, very, very hard to do.

[00:22:01]I've done it, too. But this is the path.

[00:22:05]And there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There really is. And your new mantra must become no is a complete sentence. But learning to forge healthy connections slowly, very slowly and in due time is really also an important step to healing because then you realize you know that they're really in their dysfunctional bubble. eyes. Healthy people don't behave like this. So when you make healthy connections, it rein it makes you stronger. It reinforces your resolve even more. Okay? It makes the shame and the guilt go away completely because then you really realize that you've been right all along and that you are not alone.

[00:22:56]Healing means choosing to stop feeding the fire in a frozen wasteland and actually packing your bags to find a better climate. It means intentionally surrounding yourself with what makes you feel safe and good.

[00:23:14]And when you do these things, you are not a family trader. I am not a family trader either. Okay? We are survivors.

[00:23:25]We have been through things that are indescribable that are not normal that nobody should ever have to go through and then we have to explain why we have to set a boundary. What you know you're the holder of the light and whether they choose to see your light or not can't be your problem anymore. It just can't. You know if they want to stay in that dysfunctional bubble let them be. You know they can just do that and then you will find real authentic true healing and true peace.

[00:24:05]So remember the most important thing that you can do today is repeat I love myself. I trust myself. Trust yourself.

[00:24:14]Trust your instincts. Trust yourself and bring yourself to safe ground. You are not a trader. Okay, I'm Art. I hope this helped you and I'm gonna see you guys soon.