Scapegoating Or The Root Cause????

[Mammo]

Dear @Mammo, I'd like to ask you one, two questions, before I try to offer what ca...

As someone who is English...trust me, you're English is probably better than most of the natives... :)

By "we" my T meant myself, brother and sister should have been taken into care. The more physically violent stuff was typically reserved for my brother (e.g. he got chased up three flights of stairs being belted as he ran...punched repeatedly in the face...) - things for me/sister were less violent (slaps across the face etc) but I "saw" a lot of the things that happened to my siblings and was the only one who saw him hit my mother...

What was interesting last year - when i flew to the UK to confront my Dad about hitting my mum - was that all of my family said I shouldn't do it. For a variety of reasons, but one of them was "If (I) provoke him...he'll just go crazy and start ww3 and then you'll end up starting the very thing you're trying to stop."

This was a legitimate concern as no one had ever confronted him about this. Was certainly something that weighed heavily on my mind....and theirs too apparently. So on some level, yes, we still seem like "little kids" walking on eggshells around his temper. Though if I asked them this directly, they'd probably deny it.

My Mum's response was "I'm a big girl...I can look after myself in a fight..." (yeah right...).

 

[Friday]

They're blaming you for something 100% outside of your control.

It makes about as much sense as if this were all MY fault.

Replace everything they say to you with FridayJones. I'm not only making your mom sick, it's my responsibility to make her unsick. :confused: There is no universe in which that makes sense. Except for the one between our ears, where we blame ourselves.

 

[shimmerz]

Re: cutting off. I cut-off my Dad a few months ago,

I think this is important here. This may be what stirred the hornets nest.

 

[RavenGirl]

@Sighs,

yet I am the black sheep of the family and

I'm the black sheep too, but that's ok because the black sleep are the prettiest! Lol :roflmao:

 

[Mammo]

They're blaming you for something 100% outside of your control.

It makes about as much sense as if...

This is gold-dust...literally made me laugh out loud...well then, @FridayJones - are you gonna behave then and pop your pills every morning...??! Ha.

Thank you for making me laugh.

 

[shimmerz]

because the black sleep are the prettiest!

True story ^^^

 

[Mammo]

I think this is important here. This may be what stirred the hornets nest.

I don't doubt that has caused issues. But I couldn't keep pretending anymore. Who the F#@k tells his daughter that hitting her mother is "cathartic"? And when I tried flipping the argument - I said "if my partner hit me, wouldn't you have a problem with that?" - to which he responded with "not necessarily"...

I couldn't carry on pretending I was ok with that...

 

[DogwoodTree]

it's just really hard not to think you're going insane when there's multiple intelligent, well-educated people who do care about you, telling you that you're the problem...

...this is called gaslighting. They have to make you look crazy so they can believe their craziness.

My family is made up of very intelligent, well-educated people, too. They really think I've lost my mind to be creating boundaries and facing issues and not kowtowing to the family line that all is well in "paradise." I've had to keep notes and bounce issues off my T just to confirm that I'm not psychotic and making crap up.

Their intelligence does not prevent them from being dysfunctional. If anything, intelligent families are worse because they come up with much more subtle dysfunctions and more convincing reasons for why you're crazy, and it's that much harder to dig out the well-hidden lies. But intelligent codependency and enmeshment and emotional blackmail are still...dysfunctional and destructive.

One way to handle this...when they try to convince you that you're the problem, just say yes. "Yes, I'm the problem. Growing up in this family really screwed me up. And it screwed you up, and everyone else, too. The whole system is broken, me included." And then what are they gonna say?

Doesn't really matter...because admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery (applies to codependency, too, not just addiction). So...you can work on your own problems. But you can't do a single thing about their problems as long as they don't believe they have a problem. They're living in denial, and there's nothing you can do about that except stop trying to protect them from their pain. Their pain and torment...that's the only thing that will ever get them to see the truth of their own issues.

 

[shimmerz]

I don't doubt that has caused issues. But I couldn't keep pretending anymore.

Sorry, I didn't mean that as a 'you did the wrong thing'. Scapegoats become scapegoats, generally because they shine the light on dysfunction in the family. They speak up. Or act out in such a way that the abuser is at risk of being exposed.

I would suggest that anything you say may be a setup for discrediting you. I would restrict all contact at this point if you can. And no, please do not mistake - I was NOT implying that you did anything wrong by speaking up.

 

[RavenGirl]

Yikes, toxic. :depressed: I wouldn't go back there for anything if it was me. If you feel you must do something, call and talk to your mom but I wouldn't subject yourself to going to the family home. Sorry they're putting you through that. It's like quicksand, one wrong move and we're sucked in... ((Hugs))

 

[Renestel]

Wanted to reply to your 3 here:
"Hi - I agree, but I think she knows that I don't want/like to talk about it. This is for a number of reasons:
1. What, am i supposed to say "well the T says the reason I'm so f*cked up is because you abused us as children"? Can't say that...don't want to upset her or start WW3.
2. When I actually was a child, I was told to ignore it...hide it and shut up. So on some level, part of me thinks its a bit rich of her to want to be all "touchy feely" about it now...I know thats not nice...
3. When I am like that, I "retreat" on my own and isolate from *everyone* - including friends."

So, as I touched on in the first post, my mom did what yours did in a very bad and hurtful way. It happened countless times, but the most traumatic was when I was 9 and my cousin, 10, made me watch the horror movie "IT" in entirety. I...wow I almost don't have words for how much that wrecked me as a kid. I can't believe how jacked she was and how she thought it was funny to send the innocence of a family member into a sharp blender like that and watch it in first person. At bedtime, because we were visiting them, my mom and I slept in the same room. I was shaking and nearly puking out of shock and fear...wanted to run as far away from the closet as I could and when I asked to sleep with my mom in her bed because I was absolutely petrified, she said in this disgustingly annoyed way: God, just shut it off. you're mind is like a curtain just draw down the shade and shut your mind off. Go to sleep. That was the coldest, cruelest, way to tell a kid what horror and mutilation they just saw isn't a real documentary. To add to this, when I finally felt enough courage to tell my mom I had been molested, one of her first questions was what did you do to provoke it.
Because of these things I am sharing with you, I want to hit on #1. So, yes right now may not be the right time to break open a bottle of honesty with your mom, but in reading your posts, you need to. I would put your feelers out when things cool down and you feel like you can be honest with her. I hope people dont think I"m cold saying this because this thread is a sensitive topic-- but I recently had a "let's really get crap on the table" talk with my mom, and while we still need to have the "you didn't protect me when I came to you as a child and told you I was violated" talk (my therapist says that needs to be in front of a therapist for SURE) but I had enough badgering with her making ME the enemy or the screw up, and never taking responsibility. I told her that her way of bringing me up by anything I did wrong in life and sitting me down and the table and saying "what did YOU do. You had to have done something to provoke this" totally screwed my sister and me up. she needs to see it. Its not pretty, and it doesn't sound like your parents take well to kids standing up for themselves and showing them a mirror about their actions. But I have to say, it is pivotal to your healing. It was for me. My mom started sobbing. I think for the first time she finally had someone stand up to her and say what you did was NOT right. She avoids it to all costs even now, but at least we had that moment, and I stood up for that little girl that got shamed for things that were NOT her fault. Like I said, obviously not something to do with your mom tomorrow, but just think about it. Because your #3, I do too. Probably because I was led to feel like I did something wrong. Don't let them feel like this is all your fault.

 

[Sighs]

rust me, you're English

er... that should be "your English" as in the possessive pronoun not "you're" which is a contraction of "you are".

Beautiful way to make your point @Mammo! ;)