Toxic Families: Better Than the Scapegoat?

One of the ways that a toxic family justifies their abusive treatment of the scapegoat, or identified patient, is to characterize themselves as more moral, wiser, stronger, smarter, more mature, more giving, etc.,…you get the idea…than their chosen victim. Accordingly, they imagine that all their taunts, insults, scolding, condescension, verbal abuse, manipulation, and even physical threats are meant ‘to correct’ the family scapegoat, ‘to help‘ the victim to see the error of his or her ways.

Personally, I’d love to know how bullies, liars, and gaslighting narcissists can actually be in any position of moral authority, let alone be better than the scapegoat, however flawed he or she may be. Still, the victimizers manage to continue deluding themselves that they’re superior.

What’s worse, the victim has been so thoroughly manipulated into buying into the toxic family’s narrative that he or she constantly engages in second-guessing; for no matter how clear that narrative’s falsity is to see, the family’s constant lack of validation of the victim’s experiences of their mendacity is a blinding fog that causes endless pangs of self-doubt.

One thing to remember about the toxic family’s pretensions to moral superiority is they are just that–pretensions, an outward show meant to impress others. This is part of the agenda of collective narcissists. Such theatre is especially obvious in the family golden child, whose False Self of outward goodness is often a carbon copy of the False Self of the narcissistic parent.

I experienced emotional abuse from my family in the form of gaslighting: my late mother, who I have good reason to believe was a malignant narcissist, lied about me having an autism spectrum disorder in order to project her own faults onto me, to control me, and to undermine my ability to develop self-confidence–the link at the beginning of this paragraph gives the full story. Another form of the abuse I endured was bullying, a few examples of which are given in this link, as well as some from my elder siblings, Mom’s flying monkeys, <<<given in this link .

Then there was the family’s explosive rage and verbal abuse in response to usually rather minor offences of mine; and there were smear campaigns Mom made against me and my cousins, as well as her use of triangulation to replace direct communication between my siblings and me–that is, efforts made by my mother to divide the family against each other. Some loving family.

Because of all these awful things that she and my older brothers, R. and F., and my older sister, J., did to me, they who felt no empathy for me and rarely if ever respected my boundaries (and my siblings’ abusive actions were almost always defended by our mother, as hers were by them), I grew so fed up with them that I, like so many other family scapegoats, reduced all contact with them to a minimum by the 2010s, and since Mom’s death in 2016, I’ve had no contact with my siblings at all.

To them, my refusal to be involved in any way in their lives is further ‘proof’ that I’m selfish and uncaring, that I’m ‘crazy’ for imagining that our mother could ever have had any malignant intent or have lied to her family, and that, in going no contact, I’ve refused to respect the notion of preserving the ‘sanctity’ of the family unit.

Now, here’s a question for them: if we were to look beneath their surface goodness, would we see them as really being any better than I am (presuming I’m as bad as they say I am)? How is gaslighting and bullying a family member not selfish or uncaring? How are explosive anger and yelling verbal abuse, over usually little more than trifling offences, not at least temporary insanity (ira furor brevis est)? If accusing one’s mother of lying and abuse (charges far from being implausible) is crazy, surely blowing up at someone over minor provocations is much crazier.

And finally, and most significantly, NO CONTACT as a refusal to respect the need for family oneness is a two-way street, as far as my relationship with my family is concerned (i.e., they’ve been almost as no contact with me as I am with them…not that I’m complaining about that, of course!). Almost fifteen years ago, my mother claimed that I hadn’t “earned” the family’s respect because I virtually never emailed my siblings–R. and F. in particular–since my having moved from Canada to Taiwan.

What my mother conveniently omitted to mention is that R. and F. hardly ever emailed me, either: does this mean they haven’t earned my respect? I feel no affection at all for my “brothers” because their (and Mom’s and J.’s) constant, almost daily bullying of me as a child, teen, and young adult back in Canada, including countless examples of verbal abuse, insults, physical threats, and other demeaning acts on me alienated me from them. F., the physical abuser, could be particularly sadistic. Given this train wreck of a relationship, why would I want to communicate with them?

More importantly, the division between my older brothers and me (as well as that between me and J.) wasn’t so much to do with my faults as it was the fault of my triangulating mother, whose half-truths and verbal manipulations stirred up all the resentment needed to keep us all apart. Hence, she was being a hypocrite to blame the problem all on me.

R.’s, F.’s, and J.’s preservation of family unity is hardly any better than mine. They fancy themselves to be so much more loving to their respective families than I am to them. (Bear in mind here that I’m being charitable to them by assuming this goodness; for, since I know just how low they’re capable of being, who knows what ugly things they may have done, behind closed doors, to their kids over the years?) In fact, they’re only loving to those within their inner circle, not to those in the wider family.

Theirs is a conditional love–love for them is just obligation to care for others. They’d much rather love those family members who are easy to love, like F.’s daughter, who I suspect has been groomed to be the golden child of her generation. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an easy person to live with, let alone to love…but isn’t family love supposed to be unconditional? Safety from abusive treatment shouldn’t be dependent on being ‘easy to love.’

There are ways of expressing frustration with family members, being frankly angry with them, without being cruel or contemptuous; in fact, showing contempt towards those who frustrate you tends to increase, not decrease, the undesirable behaviour, because constantly harming people’s self-esteem puts them on a downward spiral of self-sabotage, not an upward one to self-improvement.

As they are with me, my siblings feel nothing but contempt for our cousins; for as I’ve discussed in so many previous posts (many of whose links are given above), our mother bashed her nephews constantly, and R., F., and J. uncritically accepted all of her bad-mouthing of our cousins. Our middle cousin, S., is suffering from paranoid delusions and hallucinations (probably brought on by an excessive marijuana-smoking habit, among other drug use, which he started in his teens), but the family won’t lift a finger to help him.

Helping the mentally ill is a daunting task, to be sure, but the family won’t even try; they certainly didn’t after I tried to help S. by confronting him with the problem directly, and after I begged Mom and J., in all futility, back in the mid-2010s to help him…yet I am the “self-centred” one.

If it upsets R., F., and J. so much that I have “given up on” them, if I’m such a low form of life for holding on to grudges, and if they’re so much better than I am about ‘doing what’s right,’ then why can’t they actually be the better people, and make efforts to patch things up with me? That is, not just try to suck me back into the family and treat me the same as before, but actually open their minds to my side of the story, and take responsibility for the role they played in our mutual alienation? Sometimes being better means admitting when one has been worse.

This doesn’t mean that I want them to contact me, of course; for though it’s only natural that I, like anyone, would want to heal family wounds and have a normal, healthy relationship with my own flesh and blood, I know that their trying to contact me would only be another attempt at hoovering me. It would be a formidable task for any of them–my three elder siblings, my nephews and niece, or anyone else in the family–to convince me that their wish to be reconciled with me is on the level.

Regardless of whether or not I’d want them to try to contact me, though, an effort far more vigorous than the two times J. tried to do so (after Mom’s death) would be needed for them to prove that they really care about me. It’s always only J., the golden child, who tries to fix things with me, and that’s only because Mom obligated her to be the ‘perfect daughter/sister/mother/aunt/etc.’ Neither R. nor F. will give the slightest thought to contacting their younger brother. Honouring the memory of our late Mom and Dad–and unlike me, R., F., and J. consider her memory more than worthy of being honoured–would demand a reconciliation of them with me, but they won’t do it.

As I said in my post on the coronavirus and its impact on them, they showed no interest in finding out if I’m OK. Granted, I didn’t contact them either, of course, but they’re supposed to be so much better than I am when it comes to caring for family. They’re supposed to have the maturity that I lack to rise above the long-held grudges, to be willing to do whatever it takes, and ‘to do what’s right.’

Don’t misinterpret my meaning. I didn’t want them to contact me then, and I still don’t want them to contact me now–I never will: I bring this all up merely to prove my point. They never loved me. And if I’m such a bad person for not loving them, they’re no better than I am. They’ve no right to judge me.

So if you, Dear Reader, find yourself traumatized by a toxic family that claims to love you, yet blames you for all (or most of) your family’s dysfunction, don’t let them shame you or guilt-trip you for choosing to distance yourself from them. You aren’t being selfish: you are protecting yourself.

Bullies and gaslighting, lying narcissists have no moral authority over you, no matter how much they posture as if they do. If all they ever do to you is make you feel bad about yourself, they aren’t loving. And if they aren’t loving, they aren’t better than you.

In fact, for all your faults, you’re probably better than they are.