How Scapegoats Unmute by Breaking the Narcissist’s Rules

How scapegoats unmute by breaking the narcissist's rules.

The scapegoat child to a narcissistic parent had to be psychologically invisible to survive. They quickly learned that honestly expressing themselves can lead to catastrophic danger. Namely, the danger of their parents' retaliatory attack, emotional abandonment, and/or disavowal. They'd get reacted to as if they are outside of that parent's reality. And that's like being nobody to no one and must be avoided. So what the scapegoat child learns is safe is to be the person who their narcissistic parent regards them as. And this means muting their own admiration of who they are and what they can do. Instead, they become the inferior person whom their parent recognizes them to be.

As I've stated before, it's not that the scapegoat child is actually inferior. Rather, a narcissistic parent feels a core sense of worthlessness that they must then relocate into someone else. And the parent does this by seeing such worthlessness in the supposedly careless actions, selfish desires, and/or offensive words of the scapegoat child. These maneuvers influence the child to think of themselves in the worthless way that their parent needs them to. Now that it's the child who again supposedly is worthless, the narcissistic parent doesn't have to be.

The most pressing danger though faced by the scapegoat child isn't their parents' devaluation, deprivation, and domineering. Instead, for the child, it's the prospect of living as though they deserve to be treated any better. And that's so dangerous because it would render the child, in a psychological sense, parentless. And a child without a parent in this sense has no world to share with another person and therefore no world to inhabit. Again, all in a psychological sense. So their existence depends on complying with their parents' abusive claims about who they are.

The scapegoat child keeps themselves safe from non-existence in childhood by muting themselves. And they do this by believing two things about themselves: one, that they don't deserve to have a voice in close relationships; and two, if they did speak up, they would just be wrong. In other words, that they are undeserving and defective. Painful as they are, these beliefs serve two crucial functions for the child. First, they prevent a worse danger of being outside of their parents' reality. Second, they organize the child's reality. Yeah, it's bad to think that others look down upon you and that rejection is around every corner, but it's way worse to have no way of knowing what to expect in life and no way to make sense of what's happening. That's just too disorganizing to tolerate.

Well, in today's video, I explain how the scapegoat child turns their narcissistic parents' rules into beliefs in their undeservedness and defectiveness. The child must mute themselves to identify with or go along with these beliefs. The third pillar of recovery involves identifying and defining these beliefs in new relationships where it's safe to do so. You can't do this on your own because these beliefs interfere with taking in new information about who you are. The only way to learn that you are now safer to unmute than you were then is to find that out with somebody else. We have inborn wisdom that's constantly trying to assess and find people who will stay connected to us when we are being who we are meant to be. And we do this by finding people who might qualify. Then seeing what happens when we defy the rules of being defective or undeserving. And when the other person reacts well, then we know it's a little bit safer to do what used to be dangerous. And when we have more secure relational footing with such a person, then our nervous systems can calm enough to take in this new information. This is how a new normal develops where you are deserving and adequate. I'll use an in-depth case example throughout to illustrate.

Well, my name is Jay Reid, and I'm a practicing licensed psychotherapist in California and a scapegoat survivor myself. I've worked to understand what helps scapegoat survivors know that they are now safe to unmute. Unmute what they really want, what they really need, and what they really think about what's going on around them. And this has led me to the three pillars of recovery. Pillar number one is making sense of what happened so that you eventually get to know it was not your fault. Pillar number two is to gain distance from narcissistic abusers today and closeness to safe people. And pillar number three, which today's video focuses on, is to defy the narcissist's rules. Taken together, these pillars can empower you to live with the volume on your voice turned all the way up.

Well, I'm also excited to announce that I just released a new book on Amazon, which is a treatment manual for therapists who treat adult scapegoat survivors of narcissistic parents, and it's called *Therapy with Scapegoat Survivors of Narcissistic Parents: Use Control Mastery Theory to Know and Do What Works*. So too many times I've heard from scapegoat survivors who've encountered therapists who either don't believe that they could have been treated this way in their own family or can find it hard or don't empathize with how emotionally dangerous the good things in life can seem for scapegoat survivors. So I wrote this book to explain exactly how the role of the scapegoat child develops in the narcissistic family; how the only way to cope is to believe that you are defective and undeserving; and how to effectively treat such individuals so that they can gradually find it safe in the treatment relationships to entertain and eventually believe that they are deserving and adequate people. But it's not just a book for therapists. I—it's written in plain English with a multitude of examples of—of scapegoat—both um, in being the scapegoat in childhood and in therapy—uh, working to recover from such experiences that I think can very much resonate with uh, scapegoat survivors—and you can find the link to the book in the description box below or by clicking here.

Turning the narcissistic parents' rules into the scapegoat child's beliefs.

The scapegoat child must abide by the narcissistic parent's rule that they remain muted and inferior to that parent. Of course, this is not what the child would prefer, but they have no say in the matter. And the child can't fake obedience to these rules. They must think, feel, and act as if the rules are true for the parent and child to be convinced that this is how things are supposed to be. Both parties need to feel like there's nothing wrong nor unusual happening in their relationship. Otherwise, the child might question why their parent is treating them this way, and that would undermine the core of their relationship. So, a bad religion develops in the scapegoat child's relationship to their narcissistic parent. Just as a devout Christian or Muslim develops practices in their life that reflect their commitment to their God, so the child adopts beliefs about themselves that reflect their faith in their parents' superiority. Enter the beliefs in being defective and undeserving. Without such beliefs, the child would question whether God—or, you know, translated to their parent—even exists in a psychological sense. And that is too scary a question for a child to ponder. So the scapegoat child's beliefs that they are defective and undeserving yield faith in their narcissistic parent. All children need such faith to feel secure enough in the world to survive. Where the parent doesn't offer real reasons for such faith, the child is forced to make up reasons. That's what happens when the scapegoat child adopts these beliefs about their supposed inferiority. Now, their supposedly superior parent is gracing the child with the parent's presence despite the child being so, again, supposedly undeserving of it. So, the child is now set up to feel in awe of and grateful for a parent who is actually woefully inadequate to them as a parent.

So, let's illustrate with an anonymized case example.

When Shane was two years old, he was the center of his mother's world. She was a domineering woman who insisted that she always knew what was best for Shane. This often meant devaluing and overriding her husband's opinions on parenting. Shane's mother delighted in how her friends and even strangers would coo and ahh at her son whenever she took him out in public. She got pregnant again, and Shane had a baby sister by the time he was 3 years old. Now he was of far less use to his mother. It was his baby sister who mattered the most. Where his mother used to delight in playing toys with him, she now saw his efforts to play with her as burdensome. Shane's world inexplicably went from one of fulfillment and connection to his mother's dominating presence to feeling cast aside and useless. No one could explain to him that his mother's short emotional attention span was bound to leave him in the cold. But through no fault of his own, he could only conclude over and again that he wasn't worth enough for her to keep loving him after she gave birth to his sister. In so doing, he could keep seeing his mother as capable of love and someone to look up to. He just didn't deserve this from her because there was something wrong with him.

What happens when the scapegoat child adopts a belief?

Well, when I say they adopt these beliefs of being defective and undeserving, I really want to emphasize how deeply embedded these beliefs are. It's not like having a preference for a favorite kind of ice cream, where you're the same person whether you choose chocolate or vanilla. Scapegoat children who concluded that they were defective or undeserving prior to adolescence did so at a time when their brains were incredibly plastic. This is by design because young children must adapt to their environment, and their brain's plasticity, or or flexibility, helps them do this. For the young scapegoat child of a narcissistic parent, this means they are completely vulnerable and dependent on someone who is mistreating them; that they're learning in a procedural, bodily way that they deserve very little and have something wrong with them; that the only frame of reference for who they are—that is, their parent—reflects back a devalued image of them; and they're experiencing heightened emotions of shame and abandonment, panic that further reinforce this learning at this stage of life. All of these factors combined to create an ongoing state of mind based on being undeserving and defective. These beliefs and the quality of life they produce can't be known, inspected, nor questioned by the child. Just as we don't question why water is wet, it just has to be the way things are.

I'm emphasizing how deeply imprinted these beliefs are for the scapegoat child, not to spell doom to the scapegoat survivor. Just because they were learned early and often doesn't mean they can't change. It's just that the process of change must be gradual. We have to learn slowly that the old danger of being nobody to no one will not occur now when we live as though we are deserving and fully adequate. We also must learn to slowly reorganize our reality to accommodate a new hopeful and worth-based sense of ourselves.

Let's go back to Shane's case.

He had forged beliefs in his undeservedness and defectiveness in order to go along with his mother's treatment of him. Life lived under these beliefs was horrific for him. Deep within himself, he had to divest himself of all happiness. I mean, what right did he have to feel happy if his mother was always so unhappy with him? He figured that he had to work to make her happy with him before he had a right to be happy with himself. This became his mission in life that offered some hope amidst constant self-criticism and pleasureless efforts. He'd one day become the son he needed to become to deserve his mother's love. He told himself all the ways she ignored him, reacted to him as if he was a chore, and attacked his character were what he deserved now in his defective state. But that would all change once he could become a better person. Every task Shane took on had to feel difficult. There was no room in his mind to notice and operate upon what came easy to him. And when he did engage in something that he had natural talent in, he had to make it seem like he didn't. This happened when he took up wrestling in fourth grade. He really enjoyed himself at first. The kids who'd been doing it longer clearly had an advantage, but he quickly learned from them. In his first match, he got a takedown and he won two to one. He was on cloud nine afterwards. His father watched the match, and Shane felt a deep unease within, like he had done something forbidden by winning and feeling exhilarated. As they walked to the car after the match, Shane's belief in being defective had to kick in. He offered himself up for his father's correction by saying, "Hey, Dad, did you notice anything wrong in my form today? I felt like I might have had my head down when I shot for that takedown." His father pounced on this opportunity to feel like the one who knew more and could impart knowledge to someone he saw as lesser than. He said, "Yeah, I did notice that you were looking at the floor when you shot and lucked out that your opponent didn't spin and take your back." Shane now felt like there was nothing to celebrate about his victory, that he had just lucked out, as his father had put it.

The third pillar of recovery: breaking your faith in the narcissist's rules.

Well, the third pillar of recovery involves bringing your faith in your narcissistic parents' rules into question. The goal is to replace your faith in them with faith in yourself. And this must be done in conjunction with the other two pillars. The first pillar of making sense of what happened helps you see the faulty foundation upon which your faith in your narcissistic parent has had to lie upon; that your sense of yourself as less than and messed up were means towards the ends of keeping that parent gratified. The second pillar of moving towards safe people and away from narcissistic abusers sets you up with real-time experiences that contradict the beliefs that your faith was based upon. You find that people in these new relationships move towards you in an affirming way when you show more of yourself. Now you can see how you were coerced into having faith in your parent, and you have the current relational conditions necessary to have faith in yourself. In the third pillar of recovery, you take advantage of this new understanding and relationships to test and disconfirm the beliefs that you are defective and undeserving. Since these two beliefs require a muting of your own admiration of and belief in yourself, disconfirming them can unmute you. You can think of the idea that you are defective and undeserving as muzzles you had to put on your real voice growing up. As you prove to yourself that these beliefs are no longer necessary to keep relationships going, you get to loosen that muzzle and get to speak a bit louder.

How the third pillar of recovery lets in new information.

Living under the beliefs that you are undeserving and defective is stifling. Your experience in life can feel like it's stuck on repeat. Every reflection you have of yourself must be filtered through these distorted and painful beliefs. There's no doubt more to your experience than what these beliefs tell you, though. Yet, you have learned from long ago that deviating from them can lead to something far worse. Admiring yourself has meant being nobody to no one. And these beliefs seem like they continue to spare you from this. The result is that you can't know anything new and good about yourself. This is where the third pillar of recovery comes in. Now you can use the safe relationships established in the second pillar to defy these beliefs. The key to breaking the grip of these beliefs is to do so within a relationship that supports your efforts. That post-traumatic fear of becoming nobody to no one for liking who you are doesn't predict what happens. Instead, the other person stays interested, responsive, and may even move closer towards you.

Something happens in our brains and nervous systems when we apply that third pillar of recovery. We're most able to take in new social information about ourselves when our nervous systems are in a calm state. And to do this, we need to be socially engaged with someone who feels safe. Our vagus nerve detects when others seem safe to engage with. Is the other's stance open and warm? Is their tone of voice positive and encouraging? When we experience this from another, then our nervous systems downregulate. We feel relaxed, secure, and eager to interact with this other person. And I should say all of this information comes from Steven Porges's polyvagal theory. When the scapegoat survivor's nervous system detects this kind of presence from another, then the stage is set to test whether these beliefs must be true. For example, let's say you risk telling someone about an accomplishment at work. If they show continued interest and appear happy for you, then your nervous system can stay in that socially engaged state. And in so doing, you can learn that knowing and expressing what's good about you isn't dangerous with this person like it would have been with your parent. Importantly, all of this happens outside of our awareness. We're always seeking to find the conditions of safety needed to disconfirm these beliefs. Trusting yourself to do this is essential. What you can do more deliberately is be around the safe people in your life. Social isolation limits the chances you have to defy these beliefs and learn something different.

Let's go back to Shane.

He pressed on in his life under the opaqueness of the painful ideas that he didn't deserve much from others and that whatever he did was wrong. In spite of this inner resistance to building momentum, he applied himself in school and got an advanced degree in marketing. He found a job at an advertising firm as an entry-level analyst. His junior status allowed him to achieve without risk of defying these beliefs. He was just a beginner in his mind. So whatever he accomplished, he could attribute to beginner's luck. It wasn't until he was promoted that he began to feel endangered. Now people were seeing his admirable contributions to the company as a real reflection of who he was. Shane was perplexed because this was exactly what he thought he wanted. Yet he couldn't accept such praise. Somehow or another, it felt more secure to him to feel empty inside and like he was playing from behind than to have his strengths noticed and feel like others expected him to continue such feats. He'd never reached out to someone else for help with how he was feeling. But he knew he couldn't figure this out alone. He decided to see if therapy might offer some clarity. His therapist, named Bob, greeted him in a warm yet self-possessed way at their first session. He said, "Hello, Shane. It's nice to meet you in person. Tell me how you think this could be helpful to you." Shane went on to explain his dilemma at work. Bob's suspicions that this dilemma came from an adaptation he had to make growing up were soon realized. Bob asked Shane to tell him about what it was like in his home growing up. Shane said, "Oh, not really much to tell there. My parents weren't that interested in me, but rightly so because I was always messing up and not giving them a reason to pay much attention. I did though appreciate how they'd show me the error in my ways. That always got me on the straight and narrow, and I could move forward in my life. Otherwise, I would have been a complete mess." Bob thought about how the dynamic Shane was describing would have made it impossible to know he was capable of generating his own momentum in life and to move with confidence in the directions that he set for himself. The more Bob listened to Shane's story, the more he understood that Shane's early world had been dominated by his mother; that this woman seemed to need to devalue, deprive, and domineer Shane to keep herself intact. Shane coped by believing there was something wrong with him. It was probably the only way to stay in relationship to her. He wondered if Shane's characterization of himself as wayward and in need of correction as a kid was a test of this belief. Bob decided to respond as though it was. He said, "I see what you mean about needing your parents to correct you, Shane, but from what I can tell, from what you've told me, you seem to have made a lot of good decisions for yourself in your life. I wonder how it got to seem like you needed your parents' intervention in order to make good decisions." Shane initially thought to himself, "What? I make good decisions? This guy must not really know me well at all." But I guess I did always feel like there was something off about Mom's criticisms of me for being irresponsible and immature. Maybe that's what he's getting at here. Shane then felt a release of tension, like an argument he'd always wanted to make on his own behalf was being made for him. He told Bob, "Then why was she yelling at me all the time?" It looked to Bob like Shane was seeing something about his mother for the first time. He wanted to know why this woman would be so contemptuous towards him if he didn't deserve it. That showed a loosening of his belief that he did not deserve to be treated well by others. Bob responded, "You know, that's a really good and important question, Shane. I think the more you

Question how you were treated growing up; the easier it will be to know you are and always have been an upstanding and decent guy. Your mother's claims that there was something wrong with you reflected her own psychological troubles, not yours.

Bob noted Shane's shift in thinking about his mother, from the needed corrector to someone who mistreated him for reasons that he didn't understand. This was a sign that Shane was testing his belief that he was defective, and that Bob had responded in a way that provided the information Shane was seeking to help him disconfirm and defy this belief. And so began a 7-year course of therapy.

This episode characterized much of the ways Shane would use the therapy to free himself of the beliefs that he was undeserving and defective. The results of his and Bob's work echoed throughout Shane's life. A new normal developed for Shane in his therapy sessions. He now had someone on his side who thought well of Shane and wanted him to be able to do the same for himself. Shane began to understand his inner experience from the question of: why can't I think as highly of myself as Bob does? This led him to identify more and talk in therapy about the thoughts and meanings he created in his inner world that led him to conclude he was defective and undeserving. Bob's attitude towards Shane was that these thoughts were not accurate reflections of him and that he was allied with Shane on the mission of refuting them. Shane felt like he was no longer alone in his hope that he could enjoy living his life.

Well, I hope you found today's video helpful in terms of understanding how the process of defying the narcissist rules can play out in recovery. And with that, I want to thank everyone for your continued support and engagement with this channel and the resources around it. And uh, to refer you also to my Substack, which you will find in the link in the description box below, um, or by clicking here. And in it, you can find a written summary of each week's videos, um, as well as an opportunity to comment and um, join a group of fellow scapegoat survivors um, who are also kind of uh, reading these articles and um, you know, having their own thoughts about them. And with that, I look forward to posting again next Friday. Take care.