When the Scapegoated Becomes the Scapegoater

Eight week ago, I lay on my basement floor sobbing and crying out to God, “I can’t do this anymore!  Why is this happening?  Where are you?”

I have had a devilish year with my family.  I can’t believe how many brewhahas there have been and how many of those brewhahas have left me bloody.  I have wondered if I could possibly pick myself up and keep going.   Here I was again, in the middle of another mess, and I was filled with the shame—deep, paralyzing shame.

                                                                                

I have never felt driven to look for a purpose for why bad things that happen to us.  I’ve been okay with the idea that bad things happen at times and there is no reason and not a blessed good thing comes from it.  But I do tend to look back to see if something miserable has borne a blessing.  It was about a month following this last family mess that I found an incredible blessing, maybe even an actual purpose, in the past two years of misery. 
I have had a series of small revelations over the last two years—revelations that have come through struggling with my family of origin and through reading and conversations with my husband and a friend.  These small revelations have culminated in something profoundly important.

Here is the state of my current family—not my family of origin, but my beloved husband and children:

Addiction

It is insane how you can live with addiction and enabling and have no idea you are in the midst of it.

First, my husband is a perfectionist (we have always known this), and that perfectionism has produced a workaholism that has consumed our lives for the past fourteen years.  In the beginning we called it, “getting through the Master’s degree,” then we it was “getting through the Ph.D.,” then it became “getting book one written”, then book two, then book three, then it was “the necessary part of making ends meet while going through schooling for ordination and keeping a full-time job,” then it was “making ends meet while going through a curacy with a full-time job.”  

And what was I doing through all of this?  I was saying, “Do what you have to do!  If you have to stay late, stay!”  And inside myself, although I wasn’t conscious of it, I was saying, “Please do whatever you have to do to do this well because I don’t feel so good inside and your success makes me feel so much better.”  

Meanwhile, I was at home alone for fourteen hour days, sometimes longer days, often whole weekends, and at times, for weeks . . . and this, eventually, with four children, while homeschooling and getting almost no help—mostly not even thinking to ask for help.  I went years, literally years, without any alone time before ten o’clock at night.   I was a perfect enabler and martyr, always “sacrificing” so he could do what he needed to do (which was really what I needed him to do).  I lived sleep deprived and emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted . . . but we just had to get through this next thing, which was followed by the next thing, and by the next and so on.

Was I a well-balanced, stable parent?  No.  I was an extremely loving, kind, warm, affectionate mother to three children (yes, I have four) who could fly off the handle become a crazy, angry, soul-thrashing maniac at a random provocation (swallowing hard). 

I continued to read about dysfunctional patterns and co-dependency, and then family roles.

Scapegoat

A gained new term in my dysfunctional family vocabulary:  scapegoat—Wow!—an explanation of my life and my interactions within my family of origin!  I finally understood!  I was absolutely the scapegoat in my family of origins.  Growing up, I didn’t follow the rules of a codependent system as set out by Robert Subby in his book Lost in the Shuffle: The Codependent Reality:

1. It’s not okay to talk about problems.
2. It’s not okay to talk about or express our feelings openly.
3. Communication is best if indirect, with something or someone acting as messenger between two other people.  This is called triangulation.  It’s you and me and the kids; you and me and the job; you and me and the checkbook; never just you and me.
4. Unrealistic expectations – Always be strong, always be good, always be perfect, always be happy.
5. Don’t be selfish.                 
6. Do as I say, not as I do.
7. It’s not okay to play or be playful.
8. Don’t rock the boat.
9. Don’t talk about sex.

Not following these rules kept me in a heap of trouble.  I was desperate to talk about problems.  Feelings! . . . I couldn’t help but express them.  And I wanted to talk directly to the person whom my feelings involved, although I was constantly being triangulated against a parent.  I was many times accused of being selfish.  And sure I rocked the boat.  After all, from where I stood, this was ALL wrong!  No, I didn’t follow the codependent system rules at all. I was a truth teller who had a lot of big feelings, and that had put me in the perfect position to be the scapegoat.  But I knew it was more than that that had made me the scapegoat, I was the outsider even before I could write my name.  It had to do with being an accident that entered the world when my mother was already overwhelmed with caring for two stepsons and her first very own beloved child.  I am still playing this role in my family of origin, thus this past two years of misery.  What a revelation!  . . . but not the ultimate revelation in this journey. 

Tears and tears, and more reading and more reading . . .

Then . . . On outofthefog.net,  I read that scapegoating parent is one who does the following: 

• A parent who systematically singles out one child for blame when things go wrong in the family.
• A parent who punishes one child more severely than their siblings.
• A parent who assigns undesirable responsibilities and chores etc. to just one child in the family.
• A parent who routinely speaks more negatively to or about one child in the family.
• A parent who refuses to intervene or take notice when other siblings bully, hurt or abuse one child in the family.

http://outofthefog.net/CommonBehaviors/Scapegoating.html

             

Oh dear . . . This wasn’t about truth telling and sensitivity and strength or rebelling or pointing to the elephant in the room and being shamed for it.  It wasn’t about one child existing as the outsider within the family.  This list . . . this list, some of it was about my childhood, but it had a different familiarity to it.  Gasp! . . . it was describing my daughter and me.  Dear God, have mercy!

I went through the list. 

I have singled my daughter out for more chores.  Why?  Because she was capable, the oldest, and I needed her help!  So why is that scapegoating?  Because it looked like this:

“I’m exhausted!  I need your help!  You’re wasting time and doing nothing and I’m working my butt off and you should be, too!” (a nice version of one of my rants).  And at a deeper level, it was, “I am overwhelmed ;  therefore, I am stressed, stressed, stressed!  And I have to let this anger out on someone and I choose you!  Because after all, I want someone to make my life easier, and you’re it!”  

Furthermore, I have rarely intervened on her behalf in sibling squabbles.  Why?  Because I’m overworked, for goodness sake, and “They are younger than you!  You can handle this!  Get over it, they are just little!”  And she dare not actually be the instigator of a sibling fight!  She should know better.  (Really, at age thirteen or younger?  Am I crazy?)

My daughter has been scapegoated in these ways: 

• singled out for more chores
• held to unrealistically high expectations (in her treatment of siblings, the quality of her work— from housework to ballet to schoolwork to babysitting—and expected to beyond responsible in everything)
• recipient of my explosions when my stress level became too high
• expected to keep peace with siblings and forgive their offenses since they are younger
• received little support in sibling squabbles
• received excessively harsh treatment when she didn’t meet the above expectations

                                                                                     

There it was.  The puzzle pieces were fitting together.  I was codependent; therefore, I was enabling my husband’s perfectionism and workaholism, while playing the martyr and functioning in a perpetually run-down state.  As a result, I was demanding my daughter pick up the slack and blaming her for my failure.  My beautiful eldest daughter.

The rants that had gone through my head so many times, now sounded different:

“She is capable of helping!  Why isn't she doing more?  Can’t she see the messy living room?  Can’t she see I am in over my head?”  I had issues; rather we had issues, and I was holding her up against the wall demanding that she make it all work better.

This beautiful child who has worked her tail off for me over the years, all the while earning my disdain.  I called her lazy and sloppy.  I threw the expense and time that her ballet lessons required in her face—all that time and money . . . she owed me!  When she began lying, I was furious.  Did she really think I was that stupid?  And when she began to sport a super nasty attitude, that was it!  I have slapped her.  I have hurled water at her. I have said things that I would do anything to take back.  

It hurts to type these words.  The unraveling of this revelation has been amazing and complex and absolutely orchestrated by God.  For years, I have prayed for God to help me treat my eldest daughter better.  I have begged God.  The sensitive part of me knew I was failing and felt the sting of the words I used with her, but I kept doing it and I didn’t understand why.  Over the years, I have read parenting books, reflected endlessly on my parenting, and prayed and prayed for strength to do things differently. 

In the end, I just knew she pushed my buttons.  I could give you a million unhelpful reasons why, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to deactivate those dumb buttons.  Never have I related so much to Paul’s, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” 

                                                                                               

I felt love and deep affection for her, but I couldn’t stand her.  What did I need?  Maybe I really needed two years of misery with my family of origin pushing me to read, and read more, so that all of this could open in front of me.

My daughter and I have had several heart to heart talks since I have come to understand what I have been doing.  She has been very gracious.  And she is very much enjoying the freedom of not being scapegoated.  She has commented on how thankful she is that we don’t argue anymore.  Me, too.  She said, “Deep down, I knew it couldn’t all be my fault.”  I’m so glad.  I finally feel the freedom to love her fully.  She has much healing to do—more than she knows.  I trust she is in God’s good loving hands and that he will bless her journey to wholeness.

My husband and I have changed the way we are living—he is home from work by 6:00pm and I am getting one to two hours of alone time to recharge each day.  He is seeing a spiritual director who has extensive experience with addiction, and they are addressing his perfectionism.  Meanwhile, I am continuing my reading and am working toward healing from being a scapegoat myself.  I am also trying to shed my codependency and am planning to begin working with a therapist soon.

Every day, I consciously make the decision not to scapegoat my daughter.  I am overwhelmed on the inside with all of the recent pain in my family of origin.  I am very tired and inwardly consumed.  The temptation to snap at someone is strong, but now I see my snapping for what it is—simply, it is wrong.  It is me displacing my feelings on someone else and making them responsible for my issues.  That isn’t going to be my way anymore. 

I have heard many, many stories from my grandmother’s childhood and my mother’s childhood.  I am certain that my grandmother was the scapegoat in her family and that my grandmother then scapegoated my mother.  Then my mother scapegoated me.  Now I have scapegoated my own beloved daughter, but that is over . . . And maybe, just maybe, by God’s grace, the madness can stop here.