Welcome to the narcissistic abuse recovery Podcast. I’m Caroline Strawson. And I’ll be sharing with you awareness, understanding and education about the devastating effects of narcissistic abuse to help you thrive. I want you to know that I’ve been exactly where you are now. And I believe you. And this show is all about taking you from trauma to transformation. So this is a really, really interesting topic to me about the family dynamics of narcissistic abuse and the different roles that occur within a family. So again, you’re finding yourself listening to this right now, there’s a reason for that, where you think you’ve had some level of narcissistic abuse in your life, whether that comes from a parent, whether it comes from a partner, a friend, or a co-worker. And again, one of the big, big things that I like to teach and educate all of you guys on is really how does this all happen? Because you didn’t just wake up one day and suddenly think, Hey, I’ve gotten I’ve been suffering with narcissistic abuse, there are always patterns and reasons. And the starting point for all of this is back in our childhood. And again, for someone like me, when I realised all of that I almost felt a little bit, I don’t know, like I was being mean, or horrible and disrespectful to my parents, because I’d always thought I’d have a great childhood. And again, I did have a great childhood. But there were still dynamics of my parents’ behaviours that led me to become who I was. Because they programmed me, they were the ones as I was growing up, like the back of my head opening, and they were programming me, giving me the blueprint for who I was to become as an adult woman. So when I look at my parents, I mean, my mom’s sadly no longer here anymore. And I love them both. But I can see where their fours are, I could, but I can now see why their flaws were there. And to their capabilities, because I can look back at their childhoods, and I can have that level of understanding. But of course having that child in all of this, it can be really, really difficult. So today, what I want to talk about is really the scapegoat within the family when you have a narcissistic parent. So I get lots and lots of messages, in particular about narcissistic mothers, I have to say, but this can be both counts. But it can be particularly dangerous from a narcissistic mother perspective, because they’re normally in a household, the mother the maternal figure, but then when you factor in a narcissistic mother, okay, this can be devastating to the children in that household. So I want to talk to you about really what a scapegoat is. So scapegoating is really about a narcissistic parent using this child. And this is where it really gets so sad because the narcissistic parent needs that scapegoat to fill a need in themselves. So we know the drug of choice for a narcissist is what we call narcissistic supply. So that Narcissus needs to get that from wherever. And remember narcissists aren’t born a narcissist as yet we know there is no genetic link with the research at the moment. So narcissists are formed in childhood. So if you’re listening to this, and you know you’ve got a narcissistic parent, they weren’t born like that. And I’d hazard a guess that if you start to look back at their own childhood, you will start to see patterns of neglect or abuse or lack of emotion. Maybe they were the golden child, maybe they were escaped goats within a family dynamic. Maybe they’ve got sibling rivalry and played off against each other. Now, if you’re within a family, and you become the scapegoat, because maybe you have a narcissistic parent or a narcissistic mother, you almost become solely responsible really for giving the supply to that narcissistic parent. And that can mean a lot of pressure on you that you need to perform and behave in a certain way. So for instance, if you get up one morning and you go to school, and you’re running late for whatever reason, your narcissistic mother, it’s like the end of the world and you know you’ve caused then all of this pain and backlog, you’re going to be late, your mom’s going to be late for this and that because of you and they are projecting all of that on to you. That narcissistic parent basically needs somebody else to blame for everything, somebody else to project their pain therefore on to and as a child taking that on board will have devastating effects on you as that adult and very often what we find with this is again, we can go in one of two die directions one, that scapegoat can become a narcissist themselves, or they can become a codependent. Because you imagine is that scapegoat, if you’re trying to do everything that you can to appease your narcissistic parent, and nothing seems to be working, then that child isn’t going to think, well, you know what, they’re behaving like this not because I’m not good enough, but because they had this really, really bad childhood, and they’re a narcissist, you know, no child knows that they’re not going to say that, well, that child will start to think is, my mother or father is behaving like this towards me, it must be me, it must be because of me, it must be something that I am doing. Now, of course, we know that it’s absolutely not because of you. It’s because of reflection. But you don’t know that as a child. So again, you will start to take on board all of this and all of those beliefs will start to be wired in about who you think you are. Because, again, it’s in our childhood between those ages of two and seven, when we’re in that theta, brainwave state, that we are really, really looking around at our environment, creating beliefs about who we are in this world, which we then carry on into teenage years and into adulthood as well. So Ben escaping within a narcissistic family is such deep, deep pain for that child. So they will either try and be this golden child, and they will then get all of this praise from the narcissistic parents, let me give you two examples of this. So as a child, you might and again, you might relate to this as a scapegoat. If you maybe think of your ex partner or a friend now knowing what their childhood was like. So you might have an I’m gonna use sports as an example. So you might have somebody that is amazing at sport. So that child almost becomes the scapegoat for that narcissistic parent because that narcissistic parent will then relive, or live out that level of success through that child, and they will become this golden child the scapegoat then, because telling all their friends telling all their other family members about their amazing child whose greatest sport and does all of this stuff, or academics, or whatever it is, feeds that narcissistic supply for that narcissistic parent. So that narcissistic parents, piling all of the tension onto that child and scapegoating them in this scenario, can go on and create another narcissist, because their level of expectation then of everybody else’s adoration, it’s, you know, somebody’s showering all of this attention. And they become used to that condition. And that’s why they go out. And that’s what they want. And that can form narcissistic personality disorder from being scapegoated by that narcissistic parent, at the other end of the spectrum, for that could be that narcissistic parent then almost bullies abuses, that child, or whatever that child does, isn’t right, because that parent needs the supply. And it needs to have that feeling of grandiosity, and that can even come from feeling like that with their child, that child could be trying to do the best that they can. But the deep wounds of that narcissistic parent is so deep, that the projection continually comes out onto that child, nothing that child does, ever seems good enough. So of course, if that child is doing whatever it feels it needs to do, just to receive love, and it’s not receiving love. It’s just receiving criticism all of the time, or telling off or abuse or neglect, then that child will start to think must be me, the child will never think it’s my parent, because they’re just a child, they must then start to be scapegoated into these feelings of lack of self worth and not feeling good enough. And that will very often then lead to codependency. Again, in one of my other episodes, I talk a lot about codependency and the narcissist, this lack of self, this not feeling good enough, because the narcissistic parent, of course, nothing is ever going to be good enough for them, because they’re hiding deep, deep wounds. So regardless of how good or amazing that child is, it’s never ever going to reach the expectations of that narcissistic parent. And they’ll feel very scapegoated with that. So just think about where you are right now. So does this relate to maybe a friend you have heard of, if you’ve got a friend, maybe that’s really, really living or living out their own childhood or sport or academia through their children, that’s a bit of a red flag. Again, with a friend. There’s not much you can do about that. But just again, start to have that awareness. Maybe when you think about your partner or ex partner, you can start to see if you think that They are a narcissist. Think about their childhood, were they the golden child were they neglected because remember, the core of a narcissist is also a codependent. But they have such strong senses of false self standing in front protecting that inner wound, you’ll never get past it, that’s who they are. And they’re projecting out all the time, because they are protecting that wound. And to protect the wound, they need to project out that hurt on to you, that lack of self that they also have on to other people. So again, at the core of analysis is do you have this codependency too, but they obviously have these strong protector parts that you’re never ever going to get past. So when you think maybe of your partner or ex partner, think about what their childhood was like, within the golden child, were they neglected, was there a lack of emotion, was there abuse present there? Did they get beaten, all of these things can go towards obviously creating the narcissists, because having parents like that will really bring about those feelings of lack of worth, or is there a golden child, they expect other people to treat them a certain way and their condition that that’s the only way to receive love. If you have a narcissistic mother, who is showering love on a child because they’re good at sports or academia and they’re reliving that through the child, that child is conditioned, that that must be what love is. So that’s why they then go out and seek that off other people. So if somebody isn’t showing them and showering them in love, like their narcissistic mother, then that must mean they don’t love them. And that brings up the pain of their wound. And that’s why they then react the way that they do. This is why I will get messages from people saying, Will my ex seem so happy now they’re in another relationship?” And they might well be happy. And that might be one year, five years, 10 years, however long it is, but they’re only happy as long as their partner is giving them the supply. So they might give them the supply for the rest of their life, but they’ll lose who they are. They won’t be the person that they should be because everything is about giving them supply. And you will know if you’ve come out of a relationship, what that feels like and it’s draining and exhausting. And you’re questioning yourself. Now they may want to stay in that relationship forever more. It might take a year or two years or five years because the narcissist doesn’t change. We know at the moment there is no research whatever anyone may tell you, there is actually no research to suggest that we can cure narcissistic personality disorder. There are people out there who have been diagnosed with medication but the relationships that they will have, they just can’t have these long lasting relationships. The wounds are too deep. It is a personality disorder. And whatever anybody says to you whether they say they know someone who you know, partner with a narcissist and they seem okay, now they’re only okay now because they’re getting the supply, or they’re acting like they’re going into therapy because they want to get supply. There is no scientific data out there to say that we can cure narcissistic personality disorder, sadly. And it is sad because I would love to be able to do that. But by nature of it with their strong protective parts, that’s not going to happen. So it’s really looking at the dynamics within a family. Now you might be thinking here, well hold on a second. If I know I’m codependent because that’s why I ended up in that relationship. And I know my ex is a narcissist, what hope have our children got, there is so much you can do. I’m such a big believer that when you feel yourself you feel the next generation. So just because your children have a parent that is a narcissist does not mean that your children will be codependent or analysis, you can break the cycle you can heal. And the reason I know that is because that’s exactly what I did. I healed my codependency and my deep inner wounds, and my two children are the most happy, well balanced, people you will know. And the great thing about them is they both know, they don’t just know their sense of self worth, they feel it. They know they’re good enough. You know, they know more at their ages now than I knew in my mid 30s. And you can do that as you heal yourself. You heal your children. And regardless of whether they have a parent who is a narcissist, there is so much that you can do a huge amount that you can do to ensure that they grow up to be happy, healthy, wonderful individuals as well. So I hope you found that interesting just thinking about those dynamics. So from that scapegoat perspective, it can go one of two ways: they can be a narcissist or they could be codependent again, we don’t know why they go that certain direction as well. But just think about the relationships of dynamics in childhood. You know, these things are formed in childhood and they are these patterns of behaviour as we grow up and become this adult. Which ones can you relate to? Can you see that maybe in a friend or maybe in a partner or an ex partner? Can you see that maybe in your family dynamics now? Maybe with your partner, you can make that change and you can make the difference here. Remember, when you heal yourself you break that cycle and you heal the next generation. Thank you for listening to the narcissistic abuse recovery podcast. Come and find my warm, welcoming free and private Facebook group called narcissistic abuse recovery for women only to help you heal the trauma and thrive