Closed interior door with a narrow line of light beneath it, representing the experience of being shut out while continuing to endure, witness, and remain present.

Scapegoating and the Cost of Speaking Up

The Truth That Cannot Be Erased

For over a decade, this space has been my witness. For a multitude of reasons, outside of what has been designated as my willfullness and lack of gratitude, I have never been a pleasing or “quiet” victim sufferer. By around age eleven, I understood that my highest goal in life was to become someone else—or to become more palatable while absorbing abuse. I failed equally at both. I sought and gave myself to many similarly toxic situationships, I suppose, in the name of practice and growth in the art of better abuse-getting.

The Reality of the Scapegoat

As a neurodivergent survivor of childhood trauma and sibling molestation, my so-called “hysteria” was the only language available to me in an environment that protected my abuser and pathologized my pain. My sister was endorsed as the golden child. I was left to navigate the wreckage of her actions alone. She was praised for not being like me and pitied for having to deal with my “drama.”

The Refusal to Be Gaslit

This blog documents my experience as the family scapegoat—the person who could not believe or pretend that the “flow” was good. I was encouraged to calm down, be positive, grateful, you know- JUST go with the flow, even when that flow was designed to drown me.

A Legacy of Resistance

My “tantrums” were protests. My “outbursts” were the sound of a person being erased in real time. I write about the dirty and unsurprising alliance between an abusive sister and a similarly narcissistic ex-husband for what it is: a coordinated effort which denied me peace and my children.

The Record for My Sons

I am not begging for a seat at a table where I am not respected. I keep this record so my children may one day understand that their mother was not “unhinged” simply as a defect. She was unsupported, overstimulated, and being crushed by a system she could not fathom.

A Note on My Methods of Survival

In earlier chapters, I used my sister’s full name and shared specific accounts of professional and personal abuse, including details she offered as warning shots about how she handles uncooperative others. I did this frantically, without a playbook on navigating coercive abuse or even any idea that coercive abuse was a thing. I did so without a support system.

I am not proud of the desperation that shaped those posts. But I am not ashamed of how I reacted to being molested, scapegoated, and erased. I was a person without a net, doing the only that I could—telling my truth- raging against those who harmed and silenced and erased me. In the only space I can.

This space is a sanctuary, a place where we cannot be silenced or erased.  If my experiences or sentiments resonate with you and you feel like sharing or connecting, please feel free to reach out.  No pressure, always, I’m down to listen. Message me anytime 🤍🤍🤍 wholesomebadass@gmail.com

Quote image: “If you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.” Exclusion, scapegoating, triangulation, and black-sheep labeling in family and social systems.

Dissent and Discipline: Understanding Family Dynamics

The Binary World I Grew Up In

In my family, things weren’t simply liked or disliked—they were either the best or the worst. No middle ground, no “not for me.” If you didn’t love something, you had to hate it.

Once something was labeled right or wrong, it became collective truth. Everyone had to agree—or at least pretend to. Questioning, hesitating, or feeling differently wasn’t just disagreement; it was dissent. And dissent made you the enemy.

That breach wasn’t corrected, it was punished. Not to remove the threat, but to create a cautionary tale: this is what happens when you don’t fall in line. You lose protection. You’re cast out. Cooperation or neutrality didn’t exist—only winners and losers. And victory was best established by the outcast’s observable demise.

Since exile wasn’t enough. You were destabilized—pressured, undermined, and then blamed for the very instability imposed on you. The campaign is subtle, managed through half-truths and character attacks disguised as concern.

And here’s the part that hurts the most: I absorbed it. I carried those hateful beliefs and destructive behaviors into my own life. It’s true that hurt people hurt people. For decades, I caused pain equal to what I had lived—sometimes more. The first 35 years of my life were marked by destruction, fueled by the system I came from.

Text image reading: “Trauma Bonding can make you terrified of ‘losing’ your abuser. Just keep in mind that you’ll also be losing the gaslighting, the sleepless nights, the knots in your stomach while they were ignoring you, the feeling of being blamed, and the stress of holding onto something that always felt like it was slipping away."

Trauma Bond: Addiction to the Abuser 

Across my closest relationships—mother, sister, husband, children—harm was never something to repair. It wasn’t acknowledged as harm at all, but reframed as my perception, my fault, my failure.

Peace was never on offer. If I stayed, there was no peace. If I left, I wasn’t allowed to go in peace either. Departure had to hurt—because how could being without them be permitted to feel better than being with them? Relief was available only through my disappearance or my transformation. A structural issue.

This closed system demands erasure or alteration, never mutual change. My pain is not evidence of harm, only inconvenience. I continue to bind myself to systems in which harm is normalized, repair is forbidden, and my full presence threatens the equilibrium.

Trauma bonding pulls me in. Scapegoating keeps me in place. I’m recognizing pattern familiarity, not personal defect.

“In a narcissistic family system, the scapegoat is forced to carry collective shame, guilt, and dysfunction. The family denies reality, refuses outside help, and isolates the victim, perpetuating the cycle.

The result is long-term harm: C-PTSD, anxiety, depression. Leaving feels terrifying, even though staying is destructive, because the bond convinces you that survival depends on the abuser.

Under extreme pressure, the scapegoat may break—reactive anger that the family then weaponizes as proof of their narrative: See? They’re crazy.“

If any of this resonates and you want to connect, please feel free to get in touch. wholesomebadass@gmail.com

Quote about false narratives created by people who cause harm to avoid accountability for their actions.

The Quiet Logic of Exile

In connecting with other survivors of similar dynamics, I’m recognizing a pattern that seems less personal and more structural.

In families and systems which rely on scapegoating, it’s apparently simpler to remove a wounded person than to acknowledge and repair what hurt them. Exile is the tidy solution.

Repair would require humility, shared responsibility, and change. Removal does not.

Visibility becomes an offense. Directness, sensitivity, and emotional earnestness aren’t acknowledged; instead, the person carrying them is quietly marked as the problem, serving well as a cautionary tale.

What’s unsettling is how ordinary this can appear. The cruelty is subtle by design- expressed through concern, whispered warnings, and selective protection that isolates while claiming to care. No clear moment of rupture. Just a reorganization around comfort and protection of the system. Those still inside the system learn—often without being told: alignment is rewarded, and absence is easier to live with than complexity. In time, the person who stands alone, their alienation – is put forward as evidence of “how difficult/unwell they are”.

The discomfort is neatly exported. The structure remains intact and protected fiercely by those it serves.