Your Origin Story: How You Were Wired For Abuse
When you’ve been a target of narcissistic spectrum abuse like family scapegoating – especially since early childhood – you are vulnerable to being revictimized. Not because you are a glutton for punishment. But because your relational attachment system has been harmed, and possibly ‘hijacked’ due to mind control tactics. Family scapegoating runs on the erroneous premise that the targeted child is the cause of familial or parental problems. These systemic problems are not being addressed or repaired, but projected onto the child, so the perpetrator or family dynamics are never held accountable. The scapegoat child’s attachment system may be rewired to associate love with the pain of abuse, known as trauma, betrayal or capture bonding. When a person’s attachment system is programmed to associate love with abuse, they tend to gravitate towards familiar, abusive relationships. A secondary driver may be the false shame that is instilled by habitual family abuse, leading people to believe they don’t deserve better.
Tactics such as intermittent reinforcement, a deliberate and unpredictable ‘warm/receptive then cold/rejecting’ behavioral cycle employed by abusive people, conditions victims to become addicted to the ‘warm’ times, followed by states of confusion, demoralization and longing when things inevitably turn cold, hostile and rejecting. It’s the two pronged emotional longing for secure connection, plus the dopamine hit of affirming behavior that can drive addictive cravings, as the withholding of affection causes withdrawal symptoms. Intermittent reinforcement is a conscious tactic, employed by abusers to control their targets to make them compliant, in the hopes that security and warmth will return or continue on a consistent basis. Disrespect, emotional betrayal and a lack of psychological safety and support become normative. At other times, principal care givers may behave lovingly, and be attentive towards the child’s needs. The problem is the lack of consistency, which can be extreme, and inspires feelings of fear, insecurity and shame in a developing child.
Furthermore, when abuse starts in very early childhood, the capacity of the target to understand that they are innocent or deserve better is likely to be compromised or absent. In this sense, targets are conditioned from birth to normalize relationship abuse.
Family scapegoat abuse, bolstered by manipulation, exploitation and internalized projection of false blame may lead to the development of Complex Trauma, a shame based identity characterized by low self worth, feelings of defectiveness and post traumatic stress symptoms.
Early Attachment Wounds and Why Survivors Get Revictimized: Attachment Bonds. Trauma Re-enactment. Intermittent Reinforcement. Love does not equal pain
If your relational attachment system was harmed by abuse, neglect or inconsistent parenting in childhood, this can result in the development of a ‘false shame’ based identity. Mistreatment, especially by parental figures can lead to future vulnerability to subsequent abuse, which has become normalized. When intermittent reinforcement is employed regularly, trauma bonding always occurs, and love and abuse become fused and energized.
Preverbal entraining, aka negative programming, is the most damaging form of psychological conditioning, because the abused child is prone to developing a false shame based identity which is inaccessible to their conscious mind. In other words, the abused child believes they are fundamentally flawed, and abusive relationships become the template they are drawn to as either familiar or affirming of their low self worth. In either scenario, the child grows into an adult who hopes for more loving relationships, but is doomed to fail by choosing emotionally destructive but ‘resonant’ people who will reinjure them in the same way that their principle caregivers did, unless and until they learn to recognize the pattern and actively choose safer people.
If your attachment system was hijacked by scapegoat abuse in childhood, this often results in a
‘false shame’ based identity, setting in motion vulnerability to subsequent abuse
In trauma bonded relationships like this, believing one is ‘defective’ is viewed as a fact. Trauma bonds further control the child through ‘false hope’. In such an insecure environment, a child may cope by either engaging in fruitless bids for connection, or retreating to avoid further hurt, or a combination of the two. Here you can see the early genesis of insecure attachment adaptations: Dependent (aka Anxious), Avoidant and Disorganized (a chaotic oscillation between dependent and avoidant attachment orientations). It’s a vicious circle for a child who is operating from the false assumption that s/he is defective / inadequate due to parental mind control.
As noted, a ‘false shame’ based identity is the hallmark of family scapegoats. The scapegoat identity becomes internalized through the vehicle of the Inner Critic – the internalized attacking messages of the critical parent(s). The scapegoat child’s inner critic makes them believe that they are not only defective, but that they must work to overcome these so-called flaws in order to win the parental love they desperately seek. This is a set up though, as healthy attachment bonding and acceptance is never forthcoming from a mentally disturbed or disordered parent. Although not all emotionally abusive parents are thought to have personality disorders, it is my belief that the majority of these parents possess some degree of narcissistic traits, a subclinical category most notably characterized by empathy deficits, grandiosity, entitlement, manipulation and punitive behavior when their demands are not met.
Perpetrator Accountability Distortion
Narcissistically oriented parents blame others for their emotional neediness, reactivity, abusive behavior and unaccountability via a blame shifting projection known as ‘Perpetrator Accountability Distortion’ (PAD). PAD is a recurring relational pattern whereby the abuser consciously or unconsciously shifts responsibility for their abuse onto others. In this way, the perpetrator’s accountability is minimized, avoided, or explained away, while harm is downplayed or shifted onto the victim or other circumstances. It’s a psychological distortion designed to protect the perpetrator’s inflated sense of grandiose entitlement from the negative consequences of their abusive behavior.
PAD is particularly virulent in people with Narcissistic Personality Organization, as all disordered people are unable to take responsibility for bad behavior due to a combination of grandiosity, being driven by the desire for dominance and an external locus of control. Narcissists view others’ autonomy as a threat. NPO individuals believe others cause them to become frustrated and upset, and they rationalize their retaliatory abuse as ‘self defense’ or ‘teaching someone a lesson’. In tandem, they defend themselves from accountability by engendering self doubt in the target, often through manipulation like gaslighting, making the victim doubt reality. In this way, narcissists can retain control of their false narrative, and insidiously program others to turn to them for self assurance, after they have systematically broken down the target’s healthy reality testing capabilities. In the narcissist’s eyes, the victim’s self doubt levels the playing field, as they see themselves as innately superior to others, reflected by the target being in a one down position. This distortion may start in early parent-child relations and, if unchallenged, can become a core dynamic in adult intimate relationships.
Control Based Attachment Bonds
Unlike neurotypical people who possess healthy empathy, narcissists form ‘control based’ – not emotional, attachment bonds. Control based bonds are neither relational nor reciprocal, but access oriented. As narcissistic people lack an authentic self, they are dependent on and use others to regulate their unstable emotions and to fill their emptiness, via validation and admiration. However, this doesn’t last, as no adult can make another adult feel whole or complete, so they are on a bottomless quest for control based supply, and abuse people who thwart that goal.
Control is about assigning others, including their children, to an emotional supply role, as they cannot emotionally regulate themselves. They learn from studying others that fake empathy and love bombing can elicit this emotional supply, as neurotypicals often don’t realize that the behavior is insincere manipulation. Narcissists aren’t accountable for this one sided parasitism, as they believe they deserve to use others due to their ‘specialness’. They feel no compunction to reciprocate, as relationships are viewed as self-serving and, therefore, uni-directional. When others catch on and resist this exploitation, they become the enemy. Narcissists will perform cognitive empathy to get others to comply, but it’s contingent on their cooperation. They will defend their parasitic emotional dependence above anything else, mainly through blame shifting. The children of narcissistic parents lack the maturity and objectivity to discern their exploitation, and the inability to defend themselves from absorbing the scapegoating narrative that their caregivers inflict on them repeatedly. Tragically, this often leads to the development of a false shame based identity, and self scapegoating.
Recognition and Awakening: Adult Relationship Patterns and Discernment
Building a self protective and safe life requires moving from managing internal and attachment vulnerabilities, to understanding that standards and pattern recognition in romance and other relationships will keep you safe. Recognizing attachment vulnerabilities instilled in childhood is key to increasing this emotional safety.
Adult Attachment Vulnerabilities
‘Reverse Projection’ by Targets: Reverse projection is a term I coined to describe the tendency of some family scapegoats to undeservedly pedestalize others regardless of character, wisdom, intelligence, etc. The usually unconscious assumption made by the scapegoat is that they are ‘organically’ inferior, rendering others, regardless of evidence, as superior, demonstrating the effectiveness of scapegoat brain washing. Starting in childhood, and often lasting through adulthood, family scapegoats may unwittingly add to their interpersonal difficulties with disordered people by being overly tolerant, empathic and kind. This may be reflective of the scapegoat’s ‘survival fawning’ and being molded into subservience, but also their inherent good character. Unfortunately, if they lack healthy boundaries, good character in trauma survivors will always be vulnerable to exploitation. Also, being ‘neurotypical’, they form attachment bonds with principal caregivers, in spite of the abuse. Humans are born biopsychologically wired for connection. Scapegoats may also be conditioned to give abusers the benefit of the doubt, or ‘turn the other cheek’ – as this is what was required of them in the family home.
Scapegoats are also vulnerable to normalizing or romanticizing abusive relationships due to:
1. Assuming that others mean well, stemming from a need to believe in a just world. This myth is widespread socially, and not unique to the scapegoat. Accordingly, scapegoats adhere to a childhood based ‘survival myth’, where abusive caregivers are reframed as ‘good deep down inside’. This myth is essential to the psychological survival of the child, because if they truly recognized the absence of love, and potential threat to their lives emanating from inside their home, it would feel terrifyingly intolerable.
2. Indoctrination into a false shame based narrative and low self worth. Abused children believe that others, especially abusive parents, are superior to them, based on cumulative internalized feelings of defectiveness projected onto them by their abusers. They are duped into trying to wind the approval of lesser, disordered beings who have projected their character shortcomings onto their offspring. Scapegoats may suffer their whole lives erroneously believing they are deficient, and suffering profoundly from this injustice.
3. Attraction to people who appear confident, kind and invested. Scapegoats may mistake love bombing and emotional intensity for real love due to naivety, desperation and lack of experience with genuine, loving relationships. Due to being mistreated since childhood, scapegoats lack a blueprint for healthy relationship patterns and are missing knowledge and instinct regarding how to recognize or seek out positive connections with others.
4. Being loyal as a principle, and wrongly assuming that the abuser shares these values, but is wounded and needs help to find their true, caring self, leading to letting one’s guard down and further harm. Scapegoats tend to be kind, tolerant and empathic, which attracts insecure and disordered people.
5. Longing for the foundational attachment connections they were denied, and hungry to repair and fulfill these bonds. In of itself, this is a healthy drive, but is doomed to repeat emotional injury if the people they invite into their lives lack character and rewound them, like their principal caregivers.
Red Flags in Friendship or Intimate Relationships – Behavior is the Key:
To protect yourself from abuse in close relationships, be on the look out for the behaviors that signal lack of empathy, respect or control issues. To assess a relationship for quality, pay attention to behavior and consistent, non-conditional actions for alignment with verbal commitments and claims. Be aware of hypocritical or negative behavior patterns such as:
- Absence Of or Conditional Reciprocity and Equality in Relationships
Reciprocity is defined by mutuality in relationships, such as respect, support, emotional investment, care, love and a balanced give and take dynamic. Non reciprocal relationships tend to reflect the opposite. In intimate relationships, one partner may do the lion’s share of emotional or physical labor. One partner may expect to be in the spotlight, while the partner is relegated to a supportive role. Understandably, this can lead to resentment and emotional exhaustion, and is often fueled by selfishness, fear of closeness, poor communication skills or stereotypical expectations of gender roles. In friendships, a lack of reciprocity can look similar, but it’s more common to see a lack of equal initiation in activities together, and a feeling of being used as a supportive ear, rather than a person of equal needs . - Controlling Behavior: Overly intense attraction patterns/chemistry, feelings. Too much expected too soon, regarding sex and commitment. Manipulative behaviors such as controlling someone’s time, interfering with their relationships, job or hobbies, Negging – insulting or undermining someone in the belief that diminishing their self confidence will make them more receptive to sexual advances.
- Codependency: Partner is focused on ‘Fixing’ you, implying you are broken or defective. Intrudes into your personal problem sphere uninvited, and assumes the lead.
- No or inadequate relationship repair: Disagreements lead to the silent treatment, blame or punishment. Inability to stay focused on protecting the relationship, due to an adversarial pattern of wanting to ‘win’. Not reestablishing emotional safety after an argument. Avoiding collaborative problem solving to prevent recurring conflict.
- Objectification: Sex is used as a transaction or for self regulation, not an emotional investment in an intimate partner.
- Addiction to Attention and Approval: Loss of self in another via love, sex or approval addiction.
- Choosing the ‘devil you know’ due to abuse history: Leads to traumatic re-enactment.
- Projection and Projective Identification by Partner: Blame shifting designed to inject self doubt, making control easier. Manipulative person attempts to weaken your grasp of reality by making themselves a victim. Tactics include gaslighting, taking things out of context, denial, lying, minimizing, rationalizing etc.
Gatekeeping Your Empathy – Ending Unconditional Empathy as a Bridge to Exploitation
Closing the Door to Abuse
Untethered Empathy, that is empathy without conditions, is unearned. Empathy that is tethered to objective reality, means that the recipient of your empathy has earned understanding, sympathy and support through a healthy investment in your relationship, based on good character traits, such as kindness, wisdom and responsibility.
As noted earlier, scapegoats and other victims of individuals on the narcissistic spectrum may be highly empathic themselves, while lacking discernment regarding the worthiness of others to their time and attention. This may be due to a lack of exposure to healthy boundaries, a false shame based identity, a history of only receiving positive attention when of service to others, or a naive belief that others are inherently good ‘deep down inside’.
As the family scapegoat, you may have been programmed or pressured to give too much without expectation of return, forgive too easily, be bottomlessly accommodating, while required to tolerate being ignored, bullied or rendered invisible. Self preservation should be your first line of defense in life, likely interrupting programmed auto pilot empathy towards others who may not deserve or have earned it. Exploiters don’t fall in love with your empathy or generosity, but the fact that it signals your potential for unconditional self sacrifice, compliance, availability and forgiving the unforgiveable.
Exploitative people will attempt to access and monopolize the empathy, attention and time of abuse survivors with impunity. For narcissists and other character disordered individuals, it’s about reaping emotional sustenance without any commitment or reciprocity, as their goal is to obtain emotional access as a supply line. Disordered types are deeply dependent on emotional supply to bolster their non existent sense of self. In this sense, supply is as critical to their ‘survival’ as oxygen or food. Without supply, they crumble into intolerable states of emptiness. These types bank on securing unlimited access to unconditionally empathic people, feeling free to come and go, and fostered by domineering and controlling behavior. To protect yourself, scapegoats and other abuse survivors must guard the locks on their psychological doors.
The goal of exploitative people is to acquire unearned, unlimited access to the hearts, minds and bodies of others without investment. They view empathy as either ‘weak’ or ‘special’. The former generates contempt that fuels grandiosity; the latter generates pathological envy that fuels vindictiveness. They may work to gain access to empathic individuals by creating a false victim narrative, that they hope the empath will fall for.
Empathy without discernment is folly for the abuse survivor
For the family scapegoat survivor, there is folly in offering kindness and caring without discernment to acquaintances, friends, colleagues. Unlimited and unconditional empathy dramatically increases exploitation potential. Indiscriminate empathy can lead to manipulation and abuse by character deficient people who lift themselves up by putting others down. Or they may empower themselves by programming empathic people to rely on their validation, by devaluing other legitimate sources of agency, thereby giving themselves status they haven’t earned, and control over others’ sense of self.
Scapegoats and other narcissistic abuse survivors often need to learn to protect themselves psychologically, especially after a lifetime of having their emotional safety needs manipulated and dismantled by people like ill-intended caregivers. Developing healthy skepticism is a good starting place to practice vetting the character of others. I recommend that new acquaintances, friends or dating partners be placed ‘on moral probation’. As such empathy is conditional and bracketed until trust is earned, through consistent moral behavior, respect and consideration for others.
Survivors may have to learn to break old habits, such as giving exploiters the ‘benefit of the doubt’ or letting them off the hook – submission that was demanded in abusive homes. This requires unlearning conditioned subservience or self abandonment. Observing and assessing character for healthy relationship potential takes time. If people violate ethical standards repeatedly or do not act in alignment to stated good intentions, then ‘demotion’ may be required, especially after unsuccessful attempts to repair the situation in good faith. ‘Demotion’ is a private internal devaluation of another person based on repeated breaches of character and trust violations. At this point, explanation is not required, and may lead to accelerated abuse by the offending person. Depending on the seriousness of the breach, an offender can either stay in the probation zone, or be cut out of the assessor’s life. Gaining comfort attending to body signals like anger, unease, fear and disgust can be invaluable to abuse survivors who were forced to ignore these warning signals in their homes.
With abusive people, silent retreat is your most important self defense system. The power in silence and no contact lies in the vacuum of safety it creates for the survivor. Abusers have the hardest time trying to weaponize it, as they can’t argue with silence. What people need to understand is that people who are dependent on narcissistic supply, even if they have sub-clinical symptoms, are high conflict personalities. Arguments are as valuable to them as loving dynamics, as they are both proof that their target is emotionally invested in the relationship. When victims go silent, the narcissistic spectrum individual perceives this as a threat to their grandiosity. Silence attacks their inflated self image so effectively that it can lead to narcissistic injury or even collapse, especially in the case of intimate or family of origin relationships. In most cases, going No Contact will eventually lead to the narcissistic person pulling away to seek the emotional supply they depend on elsewhere.
The goal of empathic discernment is healthy individuation and safety, achieved by establishing and maintaining solid boundaries, and eliminating personal access by emotionally unavailable, insecure, exploitative and narcissistic people. Scapegoats and other abuse survivors may have to learn new ‘normal ’relational patterns from scratch. This usually requires practice, increasing emotional regulation skills and tolerating temporary discomfort and push back, while setting unfamiliar healthy limits.
Ultimately the healing power of self protection isn’t measured by beliefs, or when thoughts or feelings appear, but what happens when they do. Making sense of the un-sensible – the violation of trust and safety, where there should have been love and caring is hard. Processing these violations and losses takes time. Moving forward is accepting that some questions can’t and won’t be answered.
by Glynis Sherwood MEd
NOTES
Grey Rock is a communication strategy where you respond as minimally and impersonally as possible to avoid giving someone emotional or conversational “fuel” that can be used against you.
Intermittent Reinforcement is a coercive control strategy of rewarding compliance only unpredictably e.g., affection, relief, access, or improved treatment at irregular times. This unpredictability can make the victim keep trying to “earn” the good moments and increases dependence, since behavior is reinforced only occasionally rather than consistently.
Complex Trauma is the result of prolonged or repeated exposure to traumatic relational events, often beginning in childhood or involving ongoing interpersonal harm, which can disrupt emotion regulation, identity, relationships, and sense of safety and self worth.
Entraining (as a form of “brain washing”) means repeatedly shaping someone’s mental state by consistently guiding their attention, thinking patterns, and emotional rhythms, so their responses become more aligned with the influencer over time.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where someone makes another person doubt their own perceptions, memory, or judgment, often by denying, misrepresenting, or reframing reality.
Need help healing from scapegoating, narcissistic, borderline, histrionic or antisocial personality disorder abuse? Check out my Family Scapegoat Counseling & Coaching page
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Glynis Sherwood – MEd Counseling Psychology, specializes in recovery from Family Scapegoating, Narcissistic and Cluster B Abuse, False Shame and Guilt, Traumatic Stress, Estrangement Grief and Relationship Challenges.