When the scapegoat leaves a highly narcissistic family does the family designate a new scapegoat?
Makes you wonder, do they chose a new scapegoat? Don't go back! I am no contact with the whole bunch so have no idea if mine did. I am gone and it doesn't matter what they do anymore. I feel sorry already for whoever it is. I am the only one who managed to break away.
Even doing geneaology I looked for other escapees, one side of the family was definitely messed up with affairs and real grandpa sowing his wild oats far and wide. Maybe when some scapegoats leave, their families fracture apart. When you pull the "everyone's trashcan for negativity" thread out, maybe it crumbles apart. If you have the guts to leave and stay gone for years and years, others will notice: "Hey she's gone, if I don't go to Christmas dinner or blow off that wedding, whose going to care, Scapegoat Sue has done far far worse by disappearing!" They may find the courage to do slow fades and low contact themselves.
After all you already pulled a disappearing act and that doors been opened. The scapegoat has already committed the supposed ultimate evil by going poof so what they do will pale in comparison. This can give others permission to fade from the family. Spouses that don't like the main narcissists or are competing narcissists will withdraw as well. People today live far away, what will people mean who live hundreds of miles away after 25 years? There are no positive memories of "family" to keep the motivation up to remain in contact.
The others may be cowards and did what they were told, but rule by fear only goes so far. The narcissist will get old and that alone will remove the youthful energy it takes keep things going. Some families probably do fracture apart after the scapegoat leaves. I'm not sure if they pick a new one or not. If mine happened to, I hope the new scapegoat finds the courage to escape.
I'm pretty certain now my parents were narcissists. How else could I explain the mis-match between all the stories I hear of parents going hungry so their children could eat, and the fact that my parents never-ever missed a meal but we kids sure did! Both parents overweight and we kids skinny as rails. By the time we were in our teens we'd learned to fish/forage, con people into feeding us, whatever it took. I was the fishing/foraging one, my siblings coped in various ways. My older brother worked whatever work he could get and combined that with petty crime. Then he went into the Navy. Oldest sis had older "boyfriends" and we're talking .... I'm pretty sure one of them was in the Luftwaffe in WWII. Another was a Hungarian right-winger who was influenced by the revolution there which was in the 1950s. Look at Reddit's r/expatshame with the older white guys and Asian girls in their teens and that was my older sister. Eventually, as she was the "pet" of my father and he'd starved the rest of us to get her through Punahou School, a very expensive one, she entered an arranged marriage with one Tom Farrell, from a wealthy family, who paid for the rest of her tuition so she could graduate. I'd call the marriage semi-arranged because she really did like the guy. The sister just younger than me kept fed by exchanging sexual favors, and the youngest sister got by on a combination of petty crime, being a con artist, and joining one of the most powerful gangs on the island, the evangelical Christians. She's still a "Jesus freaky" and it's disgusting, but people get formed by their experiences and we all did what we could to survive.
ReplyDeleteI think in my own case I invented a sort of Stoicism. I became a minimalist, only caring for a few toys and those ones I made myself. When I caught sight of myself in a store window's reflection and saw the skinny limbs and swollen belly I recognized in the National Geographic magazine, I realized I had to do something to get more food and thus began the fishing and foraging.
We were all out of the house by 18, in the grand American tradition of: Fuck you kid, you're on your own.
The survivalist place I lived on 2009-2012 was owned by a narcissist. He seemed to enjoy courting trouble so he could go "Oh, poor me!" I'm sure now he invited me to live there in the hopes I'd rip him off somehow, steal stuff or something, and instead I turned out to be a good worker and improved the place a lot. But eventually he had all these other people living there and I was the one doing all the work. It was a huge relief to get out of there! And the guy was flabbergasted I'd want to leave, and I'm certain now that all kinds of things are being blamed on me.
Yeah if your parents were well fed, and you were starving, you and your siblings getting problems children in famine torn countries get, trhey definitely had some Cluster B or other toxc traits. That's wrong and it's criminal too though I am sure they never saw the inside of a jail cell for doing that to you. Reminds me of the J-Rods this family with their waif thin children all the Duggar snarking boards comment on since both parents are well-fed, one plump and one in the 300lbs range and the children all look like they are going to starve to death, and no social worker has done anything even though many online have said they have called into CPS and tell this woman and her husband on social media to "Feed your kids".
ReplyDeleteI am glad you could get people to feed you and do fish and foraging to survive. Imagine the kid with no skills to live off the land, that's horrible. I had more the fat high carb malnutrition thing making me fatter but to go without food at all sounds like nightmare except for what you could get for yourself. I did supplement my diet BTW at my friend's houses, oddly when I had my Vietnamese friends and the years of the most time at their house, eating bowls of various meats and vegetables and rice, I was at the most normal weights of my childhood and life. So I knew the "feed me" con games. Sometimes I wanted more than bowls of cereal or crummy sandwiches to eat. I couldn't get too much food for friends usually went for leftovers because they were poorer, and I knew they could only spare so much but I think the added nutrition helped.
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Yeah that's too bad your brother had to turn to petty crime and your brother probably joined the Navy just to have three hots and a cot on the ship and combined that with petty crime., Yeah I can see your older sisters getting older men to feed them, men with money. I never got involved with men too afraid, but always looking for mother figures older women to invite me over and feed and talk to me. I'm not sure what I would have done with outright starvation, probably cleaned out the church and school refrigerators--we lived right across the street from the Catholic school.
ReplyDeleteSo Asian teenage girls who are poor will go for the rich old white guys? I didn't even know that was a thing but you do read of the pervs who make trips to Asian to the sex industry. Asian girls in their teens and that was my older sister. Since she got expensive private school, do you think she was the golden child. She sure seem to pal around with some big whigs, was your family connected? BTW I strongly suspect my sister's marriage was "arranged", some of the brother in laws are in politics, a few multimillionaires, her father in law was a mayor of a large city in my state. I found a picture of him once meeting Jimmy Carter.
That's sad one sister turned to prostition. I guess I can understand the sister turning to the evangelical Christian gang, to get fed. I always had the feeling a lot of super-poor people went "religious" for the benefits, aka get fed, have the church pay bills, potlucks. I felt a bit irate at the last IFB for never having any damn potluck dinners, I mean I'm poor, sometimes that was some of our best eating. LOL So maybe I had a tinge of guilt that way. Ironically with Covid stimulus, have had more fruits and vegetables available. We have decided we don't want to go back getting food from the Christians. I do think a lot of people get sucked into the evangelical world for community and other benefits, social times. I mean I was guilty. I lived in this fundie town, that was very small, it was church or the bar, and I can't drink without getting sick, so it ended up being church and later the co-op. Yeah she was formed by her experiences, whether she's in it for the benefits or a combination. I sincerely believed when I was in but they got to pour a little sugar on top to bring the converts in. I notice around here, some churches really pour on the programs for the poor to get converts in the door, I guess 5 or 10 bucks even from the poor families adds up....
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ReplyDeleteYou're better off being a Stoic. I'm trying to teach myself to be one. Not sure I am good at it. Get worried this world the way it is, is going to drum every last emotion out. Some ACONS get a little worried about me when I say "I'm done being an empath and need to harden up!"
Its good you learned to feed yourself. I have all these food foraging books in here, that's kind of weird isn't it. Never eaten anything doing it but somehow the knowledge became important to me. Mushrooms seem too complicated and dangerous by the way.
Yeah my father went on about kids being kicked out at 18. Why even have them if you are seen as a burden the day you come into the world. My parents don't realize how they formed my child-free attitudes. Your parents in failing to feed you and your siblings failed the most basic responsiblity of parenthood. I am curious did you ever say I am hungry or try to get food out of the kitchen would this get you abused? Mine guarded the refigerator like a hawk. I wonder how my metabolism would be if I could eat what I wanted and not have everything so controlled.
Yeah I talked to husband saying if I wasn't disabled I wouldn't mind a commune or alternative living and he has said hell no, they'd control you there and have their own hierarchies. Looks like you ran into it there with the survivalist narcissist, probably used you for all the work, yeah probably a smear campaign was in the works. Sadly I have the thought that many people who start a commune/survivalist intentional community don't go into it with good intentions. Maybe I avoided a bullet being so fundie and into conspiracy without getting sucked into some fundie cult. My deliverance minister wanted me to move down to her "compound" to get through the "tribulation". Sad thing is all these lahtest events are VERY TRIBULATION oriented. I bet some of these Christians are really sucking in the converts now out of fear and distress.
Yep Mom was overweight, Dad well-fed and got a bit overweight late in life (he lived to 63). Us kids were skinny and undersized, to the extent that when I chipped a front tooth, the dentist just rounded off the sharp edges and said it's not anything to worry about because ti's a baby tooth. (I'd lost my baby teeth years before).
ReplyDeleteI have ONE older sister. She's the one who went with older guys and then went into the semi-arranged marriage with the son of a rich family (who, to most people, is a fairly disagreeable guy but she seems to like him).
NO ONE other than my grand-aunt Mary when we occasionally visited her, fed me. If I went out and earned a few dollars I could spend them on food. I have two younger sisters, the youngest became an adept con artist while the 2nd-youngest traded sex for food.
My brother quit the petty crime as soon as he could get into the Navy. The 2nd youngest sister, the trades-sex-for-food one, went into the Army and quit her "town bicycle" antics because they were no longer needed.
My youngest sister is still a Jesus-freakie and is married to a Hawaiian guy who was working in a warehouse when they were engaged at least if not married. He's now a police chief on Maui. He seems like a nice guy.
All of us are child-free.
We kids were fairly good at making sure we all got fed, if there was any food in the house, say I'd weeded a garden and earned enough to buy a dozen eggs and a can of chili, we'd have scrambled eggs with chili on top or something like that. We were doing our own cooking by our teens.
I think you got it in a nutshell: I eventually ended up with most of the work at the survivalist place and now that I'm gone I'm sure all kinds of shit is blamed on me.
It's sad your parents were overweight while you were all skinny and not getting enough. Yes most good parents will make sure their kids are fed. If I had a kid they would get the food over me. Both of us never eat each other's food. We are careful to SHARE. Around here, I know people find this hard to believe, and we have a lot of food now from stimulus money, we always had to be cautious due to lack of money. Aka, no one could free eat and have snacks and make dinner vaporize. That means munching down on left overs for an afternoon snack means someone may have not gotten dinner that day due to our poverty at times. We always make sure each other has enough. He said he would buy me oranges soon since those ran out. Yeah having people even in the same household not think of food needs and with kids, that is criminal.
ReplyDeleteOk one older sister, yeah I may have read that as two but you had the younger Jesus freak sister too and second younger sister so three all together right? It's sad when any young woman has to do sex work to stay alive or to eat. That really was a massive failure by your parents too.
I am glad your brother could go on the straight and narrow via the Navy. Sometimes the military can save someone in extreme poverty if they have the health and mental abilities to get in, from a horrible life. Of course the dangers of being put in combat are there but Navy is probably better than Army infantry. At least two of my poorer Vietnamese friends when I made contact with them on Facebook, joined the military. Their family was poor but their parents fed them as children. I knew it was their path to better things, and the best option they had. One I had short contact with on Facebook, he actually became a prepper and went off the grid. Sad to say he had become an ardent Republican circa 2010 when I last had contact with him. Glad your younger sister got the nice police chief husband. It's interesting you all ended up child free. I think having a harsh childhood can lead people not to have children of their own. I was sick, but there was part of me that wanted nothing to do with any of it. My parents were angry and screaming and I think having children was so bad for them, even as the narcissists they were, they would have been better off never having any.
Yeah you got smeared. I know the predators out there do use those who want to do good work, or "help" or have decent work ethics. It sucks.
One older sister, then one older brother (Navy) and a decent, smart, guy, then me, then one younger sis and then the youngest sis. I know, it's confusing.
ReplyDeleteMy older bro was on Navy ships, trained as a machinist/mold-maker whatever that is, then Dad fixed him up with a job at Grumman. Dad had done some computer programming for Grumman. I hope my older bro is doing well. Pretty close to none of us are in contact with each other these days. Yeah I'm glad the youngest who's a jesus freakie ended up with a nice husband. My dream is that when I'm ready to move back to Hawaii, I can start getting us all in communication again.
Actually it's interesting ... now that I'm gone from the survivalist place, they'll have to pick a new scapegoat because allegations etc. against me when I haven't been there for 8 years are going to run thin. They'll pick someone though. They always do.
ReplyDeleteYeah I am sure they have a new scapegoat by now. My family probably does too, since I am 8 years gone in June. What else would be left to say? Time will make it run thin definitely. Sad how people and too many groups operate that way.
DeleteReally sad stories here ...
ReplyDeleteBut, yes they pick a new scapegoat when you are gone. Narcissists cannot stand being accountable for anything and they feel they must have a scapegoat to take all of the blame. It's why they play the victim when they hurt other people too. And it's how many criminals act: most often they blame their victims.
This has nothing to do with the person or people they scapegoat. It has to do with their inability to admit culpability.
As far as not getting enough food, that seems to be really prevalent in abusive families and I haven't seen much literature on it. It's something to research for sure.