How To Protect Yourself From Becoming A Scapegoat

In my last blog post, I said we need to understand cognitive dissonance, logical fallacies, and biased news sources, because people employing them can resort to more logical fallacies, triggering, gaslighting and other toxic behaviors to cement people to their toxic beliefs. I want to emphasize that I’m not a counselor. I am sharing this from personal experience and what I’ve learned in counseling. My hope is it will help others gain enough understanding to begin healing. If you’re experiencing any of these forms of abuse, my hope is that this and the next blog post will be stepping stones to you finding a counselor if you don’t already have one. Healing from these types of abuses will take time and support, and I believe a counselor will be the best type of support for the kind of healing work that will be needed.

I said this and the next blog post in the last paragraph, because I’ve decided to split this into two posts. I believe that when someone uses cognitive dissonance to stay stuck in a dysfunctional mindset, relationship, or situation that they can scapegoat anyone who threatens that. In addition, I believe many of the other topics I mentioned such as triggering and gaslighting may be employed to successfully scapegoat other people. Therefore, I will begin with the topic of scapegoating, and I think this subject is so vast that it will require its own blog post. After reading this post, I think it will become clear why I was able to successfully describe Eamon's role as the scapegoat in my book, "The Blood Moon Sealed My Fate." Many people told me to write what I know, so I did.

Following are three articles my counselor made me aware of that describe what it looks like to be the family scapegoat, although there are many articles on the internet. I recommend you do a google search and read more articles if the information in these articles seems to apply to you. If continued reading convinces you that you may be the scapegoat in your family or any other environment, I recommend you find a counselor to support you through your recovery.

· 12 Steps To Breaking Free From Being The Family Scapegoat: https://glynissherwood.com/12-steps-to-breaking-free-from-being-the-family-scapegoat/

· The Blameless Burden: Scapegoating In Dysfunctional Families: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/blameless-burden-scapegoating-in-dysfunctional-families-0130174

· The Strength Of The Scapegoat In the Narcissist Family: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-strength-of-the-scapegoat-in-the-narcissist-family_us_58b27448e4b0658fc20f9678

You need to understand that it is usually the strongest and healthiest person in the family who is singled out to be the scapegoat, because the health of that person threatens the dysfunction the rest of the family doesn’t feel strong enough to let go of. Therefore, you have the strength to overcome what is happening to you. Don’t give up the fight. It takes strength to be the scapegoat and that strength can help you recover.

I emphasize not giving up the fight, because many family scapegoats try to or succeed at committing suicide. Having been a scapegoat, I can understand why. If you’re facing justice for things you’re doing wrong, you can make a choice to change what you’re doing when you get tired of living that way. If you’re facing justice for things other people do wrong or for false accusations, it can feel like there is nothing you can do to protect yourself. You can’t change other people, so you’re a prisoner of accepting the consequences for other people’s actions. When you get tired of it, you think there isn’t a lot you can do to change it since we can’t make others do what we want them to do. The good news is that there are things you can do to change it. There is information in the articles I shared that can teach you how to protect yourself. Counseling will also help you learn to protect yourself. I have learned that one option is to separate yourself from the environments where you are the scapegoat, and I have chosen to do that with several people.

If you want an example of what family scapegoating can look like, watch the movie Angel Eyes (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0225071/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1). The character Sharon Pogue was raised in a family with an alcoholic father. Everyone else in the family became codependent to the father. Sharon called the police one night when he was abusing her mother. That was the right thing to do, but it put the family in a situation where they were forced to face uncomfortable truths. In order to hide from those truths, they made Sharon the family scapegoat.

It has been my experience that whenever there is addiction present that someone in the environment is likely to become the scapegoat. An addict will say anything to keep from looking at their own addiction, including blaming the person who is closest to them or who is most committed to helping them for every bad thing the addiction brings on them. That is why organizations such as Alanon and Narc-Anon exist, so the loved ones of people with addiction can get some support that can help to keep them sane in the midst of insanity.

Healing from being the scapegoat can pose risks and present obstacles, but it’s better to face those and heal than live your entire life as a scapegoat. As one example, you risk being blamed for even more when you first start to set boundaries and/or separate from people, because your actions will make them even more aware of their dysfunction. I will say once again that it’s better to face that for a brief time than to spend the rest of your life being a scapegoat.

One of the greatest obstacles is that you are so used to being the scapegoat that you will repeat the familiar in new environments until you have enough practice implementing strategies that will protect you from that. This is a good time to warn you that scapegoating does not just happen in families. As you repeat the familiar, you may find yourself being the scapegoat on your job, in your church, among your friends – basically any environment where dysfunction exists. Do not beat yourself up if you repeat the familiar. The familiar is comfortable and the unknown is scary, so most people have trips back to the familiar while they are in the process of healing. The good news is that if you don’t give up, those trips back to the familiar will become shorter and less often until you break the pattern and find yourself living in a new familiar. I will say once again that it’s better to struggle through that than to spend the rest of your life being a scapegoat.

It isn’t only you being drawn back to the familiar that can become a risk and/or obstacle. The kinds of people who scapegoat can see your vulnerability, which is especially true if you are in the early stages of recovery or if you have experienced a recent trauma that makes you vulnerable. I remember one situation I was in where someone scapegoated me to cover up horrible things they had done. They admitted they were afraid I would reveal them, so they had to undermine my character to make me appear untrustworthy. When I got them alone and asked them why they did what they did, they said, “When we first saw you, you reminded us of a baby gazelle separated from it’s Mama on the Serengetti, and the temptation was just too much to resist.” Because of people like this, you will have to continually practice the techniques you learn so you don’t repeat the familiar.

If and when you do repeat the familiar, use what you’ve learned to get away from it faster. Congratulate yourself for getting away faster and then forgive yourself. It is very common for people who are healing to repeat the familiar. As long as we are continually doing better than we were before, we are succeeding even if we make mistakes.

I did what a business environment would call a lateral transfer before I began to truly recover. As one example, I was in a very dysfunctional Christian denomination. When I became tired of being the scapegoat because an illness and my political beliefs wouldn’t allow me to acclimate as women in that denomination were required to (let me take this opportunity to refer you to the articles I shared earlier in this post and remind you of what they said about scapegoats being the people who are willing to live their own values instead of acclimate to dysfunctional cultures), I did a lateral transfer to another religion. I quickly learned that I had been taught to embrace a spirit of religion, and that can exist in any faith. I found myself surrounded by the same type of people and the same dysfunction in the new religion. That doesn’t mean there weren’t good people in that religion. It means that I hadn’t yet learned how to surround myself with the good people. I only knew what my life up to that time had taught me, so I repeated the familiar.

One thing I’ve learned is that when you do a lateral transfer, so much is familiar even though the two environments might think they are very different. As one example, the Christian denomination I came from had many people who would give other people a “word” from God. In too many cases, people used those “words” to control other people, triggering and getting very nasty with anyone who didn’t accept the “word” they gave no matter how wrong or even ridiculous it was. In my new religion, I saw exactly the same thing, but they called it a “message” instead of a “word.” The same kind of ego-driving triggering would happen when people didn’t accept it hook, line, and sinker. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe there are people who give true messages. I have received accurate messages that were proven by the test of time. The people who gave them to me were humble and unassuming. They never tried to be the center of attention or triggered when their “word” or “message” wasn’t accepted. Their messages were delivered as if they were a humble servant giving you what God had to say, and how you accepted or didn’t accept them didn’t matter, because they understood it was not about them. I’m just saying to be careful when someone gives you a message and make sure you know what their motive is. Their humility can be a key factor in determining that. To this day, I’ve been given so many messages that didn’t stand the test of time and proved to be incorrect by ego-driven people in both religions that I’m scared to receive a message for fear I will once again lose my power to a charismatic person.

When things got bad enough that I and several others who were on a healing path decided to leave the group I did the lateral transfer to, we all became scapegoats. Like the biblical scapegoat, we were sent out into the world with the sins of the people in that group upon us even though we were innocent. They didn’t want to face the dysfunction that caused so many of us to leave, so they needed someone to carry that dysfunction for them.

A little over a year later, this group was all over our local news for the many nefarious practices they were involved in – the same practices that had caused several of us to leave. Many of the good people in that religion (who were not in that group) wrote to the news begging them to believe that not everyone in their faith was that way. The good people who wrote those letters were my first experience with people in any religion who were living by spirit instead of the spirit of religion. That expanded what was familiar to me and thus my options.

In addition, having that group revealed for who they were was the first step in me breaking out of being the scapegoat and learning a new pattern. It was painful as heck for me and the others when we were turned into their scapegoat. The healing that happened for me was beyond measure when, for the first time in my life, I watched law enforcement and the media force people who had scapegoated me to face their own sins. That began to open my eyes to my reality even if I hadn’t yet learned that the term scapegoat was what defined it.

Those people being forced to face their own sins was the first step in breaking down my own cognitive dissonance by allowing me to see that the world was not only the way I had always experienced it. I learned that the world is way bigger than I thought and there were many ways to be in that world. Releasing cognitive dissonance is freeing, but it can also be very painful at first. I was sitting in a coffee house sulking in that pain when I overheard a pastor speaking about his congregation in loving and affirming ways that I had never head a pastor speak before. I felt a spiritual push to go talk to that pastor, a push that in my faith we would say was the Holy Spirit. That feeling kept getting stronger until I couldn’t avoid walking over to his table even though I was terrified to do so. I asked him if he was a pastor and if I could attend his church.

I attended his church until I became an around-the-clock caregiver. Even then I stayed in contact with him and his wife and attended church as often as I could. When he moved to Iowa to lead a church there, I began to attend the church of his best friend who was a pastor of the same quality. Unfortunately, that pastor also moved to a church in another city.

In addition to everything these people did for me, they introduced me to the best friend I have yet had in my life, other than maybe my Mom. Her name was Linde Grace White, and I remained her friend until she passed away in 2017. She stood by me with only love. She never had an agenda, and she never judged how I experienced my reality.

I healed so much during that time. Some of that healing was due to the scriptural and psychological wisdom that was shared with me since those involved had degrees in theology and one had a degree in psychology. Something happened recently that helped me realize the main reason I healed was I was in a safe place. I was not being re-traumatized, so healing happened naturally. I’ve recently realized that the key to healing is implementing all we learn in counseling in a safe environment. When people want to heal, it will happen quite naturally when they are in a place free of agendas where they are safe from being traumatized again.

As caregiving became more difficult due to it requiring that I return to dysfunctional environments where I’d been a scapegoat, I did begin to digress. I will give one example of how I became the scapegoat again. My mother’s most prized possession was family pictures. I was her caregiver. After she passed away, everyone agreed that it was important to make copies of all of her pictures and distribute them to the family. This plan was so well known that people from my mother’s church were donating money to cover the cost of portrait paper and ink for our printer. On a day before I was supposed to go into the hospital, I picked up the pictures with the plan of copying them while I was incapacitated. An hour later, family members were beating on my door. They accused me of stealing the pictures, forced their way into my house, and stole the pictures from me even though that is what they had accused me of doing. Each person involved in that had agreed that I would be the one to copy the pictures and had given me any money that was donated through them for that cause. In spite of that, they broke my door down and stole those things back while throwing false accusations at me. Can you imagine how confused I felt to have followed everyone’s instructions for that project only to be attacked for following those instructions?

I remember while all of that was going on, I reminded one of them that I was getting ready to go into the hospital and they should be careful of what they said and did so they didn’t have to live with any regrets or guilt if things didn’t turn out well for me. That person didn’t care.

My father had become ill immediately after my mother’s death, so I was already his caregiver. I was pushed out of his life by the stories they told about those pictures. Just like with the religious group I’d been in who scapegoated people and then ended up all over the newspaper, the truth eventually rose to the top in this situation as well. Here is a link where you can download one of the articles my father and I were in when a couple of years later the State discovered he was being abused by the people who had taken him from me. As this article states, my father was returned to me: https://ecitydoc.com/download/people-working-cooperatively-inc_pdf

What is ironic about this article, is that it disproves many lies that were told about me. The entire two years I was away from my father, I fought every way I could imagine to get him back. I also repeatedly mailed him gifts to let him know that I loved him, but he told me when I got him back that the family never gave him those gifts. One thing I did to try to get him back was work with the pastor of a church I was attending then to set up a mediation meeting between myself and the members of my family who were causing these problems. Instead of attending the meeting, one of them called the pastor a few days before it was scheduled and told him I was abusing my father. The pastor should have told them to come to the meeting and discuss it in my presence since I’d expressed a willingness to do that, but he didn’t. He called me up and let me know he believed their accusations. That was so unfair to believe the words of people he’d never met over someone he saw fighting with everything I had to improve the situation that I never returned to that church. When it was proven that they were the abusers and not me, I mailed this article to him to prove my innocence, and I hope he learned something about appropriate pastoring from that. Once again, the truth rose to the top.

That is one thing I will say if you’re the victim of scapegoating. It hurts like heck, but it is a lie. People can’t wear a false mask forever without getting caught. I can’t say the truth will always rise to the top. Sometimes when it does you may not find out about it due to the barriers these types of people put up between you and those they don’t want to hear the truths you have to tell. My experiences have taught me that the truth does sometimes rise to the top as it has several times for me, so don’t ever give up hope.

The good news is that the first time I was in an environment where I was scapegoated, it was all I knew. This time I knew better, and knowing better allowed me to hear my gut when it was screaming at me to depart these environments. Unfortunately, I was so vulnerable, exhausted, weak and grieving, I ignored my gut. I felt like I was too weak to make another change when so many changes had already been forced on me by the deaths of loved ones I didn’t want to let go of. That feeling continued for a couple of years after my Dad passed away.

Because of that, I found myself in a couple of new environments where I became the scapegoat again. Let me remind you that once you’ve been a scapegoat, it’s not unusual to repeat the familiar, especially in the early stages of healing or when you’re recovering from a trauma that has made you vulnerable. Remember that if you’re ever in the situation of repeating the familiar, so you won’t be so hard on yourself.

I was in a new environment that included an administrative position. From the first moment I entered that position, I spent half of my work day listening to the few people who kept the whole environment in an uproar gossiping about everyone else. I soon learned that was acceptable behavior, but trying to correct it got you scapegoated. As I look back, I remember all the times my gut screamed at me so loud I couldn’t ignore it, yet I chose to stay. That was my mistake. Even in situations where I was invited to share my story, I was too often disrespected for telling it. Even after one of the people who did that praised me for the great amount of healing I’d done since I got there (which was actually the natural result of the passage of time when healing from grief and caregiver exhaustion are what you need) that didn’t replace an apology that some healthy witnesses assured me I deserved. I was again punished for following instructions to the letter just like I had been in my family with the pictures. I remember once being accused of stealing something that was sitting right in the office. The only thing that saved me was one person had the insight to walk down to the office and get those items to prove they were still in the building in an effort to stop the massive group gossip that was already starting. (His actions reminded me that in every dysfunctional environment there are good people fighting, sometimes against all odds, to be as functional as the environment will allow them to be. My Mom was one of those people in my original environment. Unfortunately, those people are the ones who become scapegoats just like the articles I shared earlier in this blog said.) And, that was no surprise since it was the second time it had happened. The previous time I was accused of giving someone a key to allow them to steal. In reality, I had given the key to a person who was entitled to it and made sure the instructions that were given for distribution of the key were followed to the letter even though it happened on the same day another family member had passed away. I made no mistake in distributing the key, but I admit I made mistakes in how I communicated. This was another death on top of several other recent losses, so I was devastated and communicated very badly in my desperation to be left alone to grieve. That was my mistake. This type of treatment escalated until the main trouble maker publicly called me to task for not getting some reading done for a volunteer class at a time when I was a caregiver for three people at the same time and one of them had died only a few days before, and she did that after admitting she hadn’t gotten her reading done. That was the last straw and the day I finally listened to my gut and departed.

Shortly after that someone triggered on me in public in the second environment where I repeated the familiar after my Dad passed away, and that opened the door for a group of people who had been watching and waiting for the right time to intervene and help me get back on the right track. My dear and wonderful friend Linde Grace was one of those people. Since then, I’ve been doing pretty good even though I’ve continued to help with one of my husband’s family caregiver need situations.

Although I attribute my healing in large part to the friends who came to my rescue and got me back on the track the vulnerability of caregiving had allowed me to step off of, I do not think that the things that set these changes in motion were totally by accident. The first time I worked on healing from being the scapegoat of a dysfunctional environment, I didn’t know that I deserved any better. The second time, I believed I deserved better enough to say enough is enough. I began to pray for protection and have all of my friends who were willing to do it pray protections around me no matter what religion they were from. Everything started shifting at that point in ways that led me out of any environment that wasn’t good for me and led the people who witnessed a public display to reach out and help me. Here is that story from a previous blog post: https://ronisharp.wixsite.com/mysite/blog/thank-god-for-answered-prayer. Don’t be afraid to ask God for anything you need, even protection when you find yourself being the scapegoat. I’ve witnessed many religious people who stand up for what is right in the face of churches that have become corporations become the scapegoat, so I think God has some experience in protecting scapegoats – not that the almighty needs experience since he is all powerful and perfect.

One of the environments I’ve currently found myself in is an awesome church with an awesome pastor. Even though caregiving keeps me from going to church as regularly as I’d like to, my gut rings to me that she is good in addition to what I’ve seen her in actions. One thing she said to me is that she’ll never allow the secrets that everyone knows about to fester in her church. She doesn’t just say that – she lives it. Her saying that helped me realize that the problem is most dysfunctional environments are the secrets everyone knows but ignores or doesn’t address. Keeping those secrets safe is what leads to scapegoating. Her not allowing those secrets makes her church safe – a place where re-traumatization is unlikely to recur.

I looked at the environments Linde Grace and those I met her through created and compared them to the pastor of my current church. I realize that in all of the places I’ve excelled it has been places that are safe due to those secrets everyone knows not being kept. There is no victim shaming to keep those secrets everyone is afraid to address. There is no scapegoating to protect those secrets. There is just safety. When a person wants to heal, they will heal naturally if they are in a safe environment where those secrets everyone knows are not kept.

Listen to your gut. Watch for the warning signs that I learned to watch for and shared in this blog post: https://ronisharp.wixsite.com/mysite/blog/it-wasn-t-about-being-nice.

The good news is that even though trauma making me vulnerable again caused me to repeat the familiar, I didn’t go as far down or take as long to recover the second time. I already had some healing under my belt. That healing had given me a healthy and functional support group that I hadn’t had the first time. I had knowledge and experiences the second time that I didn’t have the first time. And, I had learned to listen to my gut instead of my head even though in my weakness I didn’t always act on what I heard. I’m doing good right now, but I can’t promise I’ll never repeat the familiar again. I do have the comfort; however, of knowing that I have the tools to pick myself up faster if it ever happens again just like I had the tools to pick myself up faster the second time I allowed this type of dysfunction into my life. I believe that is the case for anyone who had some healing under their belt but something causes them to repeat the familiar. So, I will say it again – never give up hope!