Why No Contact is the Best Option for a Scapegoat of a Narcissistic Family System
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I am the unloved daughter of a narcissistic mother, raised in a dysfunctional family environment where my mother’s erratic, abusive, and disconnected behavior was accepted as the norm, as is typical in narcissistic family systems.
Learn more about narcissistic family systems here
Throughout my life, I’ve made several attempts to break free from the toxic familial dynamics I found myself in, only to find myself drawn back, again and again. Initially, I berated myself for this pattern, feeling foolish, stupid, and weak for succumbing to it repeatedly. However, it eventually dawned on me that my inability to escape this cycle was not uncommon or unexpected.
Scapegoats, like myself, are subjected to psychological manipulation from a young age, causing us to internalize feelings of guilt, shame, self-doubt, and worthlessness. This manipulation makes it challenging to recognize the abuse we endure deep within our senses, to believe, with our body, mind, and soul, that we deserve better treatment, and most importantly that we can trust ourselves, that we are no one’s burden and that what we experienced is not normal in any way shape or form.
The truth is that the instinctual pull for a child to return home is incredibly powerful, often overshadowing logical reasoning, especially during moments of vulnerability and despair. From my own experience, this pull occurred far too frequently, particularly during times of trouble when seeking refuge at home felt like the only viable option. I’ve made many mistakes as an adult, and it took a long time for me to figure myself out and break the self sabotaging patterns I found myself in.
The recurring pull that repeatedly drew me back into the grasp of my abuser was always triggered by enablers. At times, my affection and empathy for what seemed like “the good parent” played a role—though this is an illusion, as they are just as complicit in the scapegoat’s suffering as the main antagonist. Additionally, the influence of others, such as the favored sibling or well-meaning acquaintances or friends unfamiliar with narcissistic abuse, often downplayed the severity of my experiences, causing me to question the reality of my experiences and trauma.
To add to the confusion, there were also those fleeting moments of grace, brief times of calm that gave me temporary respite. Such memories which create euphoric recall, do not help breaking the cycles either. Narcissistic abuse can be impossible to explain to those who have never lived it.
My father and my sibling, who was the designated golden child, were the only family I ever knew. I did not know my extended family, and so my attachment to them had a great influence over my decisions.
My sibling was older than me and left the house when I was in my teen years, a time when my mother’s abuses and erratic behavior began to escalate uncontrollably. While my father would consistently tell me, “what happens at home stays at home, and we will deal with it ourselves,” my sibling, the only person I thought could help me at the time, would often dismiss the severity of the situation by laughing it off or saying things like, “They are crazy with me too, just ignore everything…” without recognizing the stark contrast in treatment between us, nor acknowledging that there was a person in the house with serious mental health issues that was not only deeply affecting, harming, and traumatizing a young girl but also harming and self-destructing herself.
“Ignore her,” they would all tell me when I was still just a child in so many ways, and while my mother was clearly suffering from severe mental health issues and in need of professional intervention. My inability to prevent her outbursts and delusional conflicts she consistently created was used against me, as if an adult’s severe mental health issues are within a child’s control to manage. How can a child ignore their own parent?
Ignoring a parent is impossible when you’re a child living under their roof, as they intrude upon your space and believe it’s acceptable to abuse because they are triggered and influenced by their own delusions.
There’s no ignoring the character destruction and isolation caused by their endless smear campaigns. There’s no ignoring how they create fictional fights and then twist things around to make themselves look like victims. This then justifies the verbal and emotional abuses, and cruel punishments they feel they have the right to inflict because of their “feelings”.
All of this is coupled with endless “he said vs. she said” discussions when suddenly other people enter the house and find a chaotic scene that the child did not initiate or create in the first place.
In my family, it was deemed irrational for a young girl to cry the lack of normality and motherly love and guidance that she simply could not get as she was “too flawed” to deserve it.
All was explained neatly by labelling me as “the bad character”, and everyone happily moved on with their lives, leaving me alone with her day after day after day.
It’s heart-wrenching to realize that those closest to us could turn a blind eye to the suffering we endured behind closed doors. The pain of knowing they were aware of the abuse but chose to deny it, pretending ignorance, is a heavy burden to bear. Denial may offer them temporary solace, but it’s a cowardly act that perpetuates the cycle of harm. It’s a betrayal of trust and a profound injustice to those who suffered in silence.
The enablers tactics to silence me by changing the subject, laughing it off, or blatantly telling me that they didn’t want to hear about it anymore, from my young teen years all the way through my adulthood would only further trigger deep feelings of shame within me.
The scapegoat’s internal turmoil stems from the battle between the conditioning they are pushed to believe, that their dysfunctional environment is normal, and their own instincts which tell them that this is all wrong.
Why am I telling you all this? It’s so that you understand that going no contact is not merely about escaping one abuser; it’s about breaking free from an entire system that shields them, trivializes our experiences, and normalizes dysfunction.
We are essentially fighting against our environment, the environment that we were born into—a system that we were raised in and that acts as a bubble, preventing us from seeing what is healthy, what is not, what is real, what is not, what is abuse, and what is love, what is the truth, and what is a lie, what is authentic, and what is not.
For me, the decision to go no contact with my mother wasn’t one I could make lightly as it is for any survivor who decides to go no contact. The choice for a scapegoat often boils down to persisting in trying to maintain ties, despite the toll it takes on their mental health, emotional well-being and physical safety, or taking the daunting step of leaving and confronting the reality of isolation, exclusion, and smear campaigns that will inevitably be directed at them in the aftermath. The narrative that will then be painted by the family, portraying them as heartless individuals who abandoned their loved ones, is a stark irony considering the rejection and isolation that the scapegoat faced their entire life.
When your experiences are consistently invalidated, and you find yourself repeatedly defending your trauma, pain, and truth, it creates a profound sense of shock that can feel nearly insurmountable to process and overcome. I came to realize that this feeling was rooted in betrayal, which becomes exceptionally challenging to reconcile and heal from when compounded by years of narcissistic abuse.
The abuser initiates endless debates, creating a “victimhood competition” where they overshadow their targets’ suffering, silencing the victim’s voice. Engaging in such debates becomes futile for the scapegoat, who is already positioned at the bottom of the family hierarchy—especially when the abuser consistently claims victimhood themselves. As they do, the entire family becomes completely desensitized to the abuses inflicted upon the scapegoat, openly disregarding their pain and further isolating them.
It’s a harsh reality to face—that there’s no family, no clan protection, and no friends or allies—especially if ties to the central family figure who scapegoated them still exist.
The presence of a scapegoat is a glaring symptom of a family that refuses to heal.
While no family is without its problems, there remains a clear distinction between a healthy family and a dysfunctional one.
A healthy family will prioritize open communication, shared responsibility, and a willingness to confront negativity. In a family dominated by a narcissist, family members will be either treated as angels or devils, condemned or put on pedestals, punished for non compliance and praised for walking on egg shells.
At the center of it all, an emotionally dysregulated, manipulative, and narcissistic figure pulls all the strings to turn the family members’ heads in whichever direction they want. The focus warps to protecting the narcissist’s fragile ego, leaving a trail of emotional wreckage in its wake.
In an ideal scenario, breaking the cycle of dysfunctional patterns and projecting family issues onto the most vulnerable and targeted family member would require a transformation where the entire family acknowledges the root cause of their dysfunction and works towards healing. Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that in dysfunctional families, this rarely happens, which is precisely why they are dysfunctional in the first place.
The scapegoat, despite any efforts they may make, has little power to change the entrenched family dynamic. Regardless of the effort, communication, or self-suppression they employ, they cannot alter the narcissist’s need for a target, nor can they alter the enablers shutting them out so that they themselves can continue on with their lives undisturbed and unbothered.
No contact paves the way to emotional freedom
Your trauma recovery becomes an uphill battle when you’re continually bombarded with phone calls, letters, or relatives showing up, making you feel guilty for setting boundaries and prioritizing your well-being. Even if you present evidence to them, such as an official diagnosis of panic disorder, PTSD, dissociation, and multiple physical ailments caused by chronic stress, the narcissistic family system, in my personal experience, will never acknowledge the reality of the trauma. Denial only continues on and on and on.
In my case, they dismissed the symptoms of my trauma as a myth, offering me reductive, invalidating, and dismissive suggestions such as believing that a good diet and exercise could fix everything. This dismissal was accompanied by my sibling’s eye-rolling, as if to say, “This again?” Meanwhile, my father, instead of acknowledging the toll that my mother’s abuses took on my health, mind, and soul, opted to argue with me, expressing anger at what he deemed as my “ridiculousness” when I presented my diagnosis to him. Instead of validating my experiences, he countered with arguments suggesting that my need for self-protection stemmed from resentment or anger. He would bring up stories about how “my character also wasn’t perfect” and how “I also played a role in the family dysfunction.” His final words to me were: “Go take your pills and come back when you feel better.”
In the years following no contact, I would occasionally receive a letter from him stating “your mother and I love you.” “We,” “we,” and “we” always, but never “I.” They were a team, and I had come to realize that my father simply did not exist as his own person anymore.
All of this perpetuates trauma, and the destruction of one’s soul continues, albeit from a distance, unless the scapegoat decides to disengage entirely from everything and everyone they have ever known. This includes those who form protective circles around their abusers, in an effort to suppress the truth and continue living in a world of pretense.
The absence of a safe healing space, free from the abuser’s influence, hinders recovery.
This realization became clear to me as I reflected on my decision, feeling grateful that I chose to prioritize my mental health, even if it meant being abandoned by both my father and brother. It was a harsh realization to come to terms with: I had no blood relatives in my life.
However, letting them go was the healthiest and most self-loving decision I could have ever made for myself.
No contact, though challenging and filled with deep grief, paves the way to genuine freedom. This freedom is profound and emotional, granting you the peace to live authentically without the constant need to apologize for your existence. It’s the relief of no longer being triggered over and over again by those who dismiss the pain of growing up unloved and rejected by a narcissistic parent—those who ignore your boundaries, invalidate your experiences, and belittle your need for emotional safety.
Achieving this sense of liberation doesn’t happen overnight; it can take years to fully realize that we’re no longer confined to the scapegoated role.
The Scapegoat Is Not The Problem
I once found myself at the bottom of the ‘food chain’—battling limiting beliefs about my worth, questioning my capabilities, and carrying a false sense of responsibility where the goalpost of ‘peace, acceptance, respect, being heard, being seen, and being loved’ continually shifted, no matter how hard I tried. Extensive introspection and education helped me realize that the stagnation, desperation, and struggles I experienced were rooted in the false narratives and deep-seated beliefs I held about myself and the world. My journey led me to a profound realization: I wasn’t the problem, and my personality didn’t require perpetual fixing or changing for there to be healthy love, genuine peace, emotional safety, acceptance, and loving relationships in my life.
Instead of persisting in a cycle where I was consistently told that I needed to perpetually fix and change who I was, like a broken record fitting into unrealistic expectations, I redirected my focus to listen to my needs for the first time. Creating a safe space within me, I allowed my voice to exist and be validated—by me. Choosing to prioritize my own well-being, I embarked on the ongoing restoration of my authentic self.
See the cycles of the narcissistic family system here
The truth is, as the family scapegoat, you are not and never were the problem. The accusations thrown at you, which they made you believe justified the abuse, were simply tactics to shift blame onto an easy target. Your reactions, whether intense reactivity or withdrawing completely, were merely responses to the unsafe environment you grew up in—a place where you were never shielded from harm.
Your responses to trauma do not encompass who you are, as the narcissistic family system will have you conveniently believe.
A narcissistic parent fails to see their children as individuals with their own identities and experiences. Instead, they view them as mere reflections of themselves. In this dynamic, one child embodies everything the parent despises about themselves, while the other is idealized. Thus, the roles of scapegoat and golden child are formed. However, neither child is truly seen for who they are; they are merely projections of a parent’s inner turmoil, one that is unlikely to ever admit to its own flaws due to the nature of narcissism.
True healing begins with separating yourself from the false narratives imposed upon you and rediscovering your authentic self. This journey is best undertaken from a place of safety, where emotional disconnection from the toxic family dynamic allows for personal growth and renewal.
This journey may require immense strength, but the scapegoat should never forget this essential truth: they are a whole person deserving to exist authentically. They are not damaged goods, but a survivor with the potential to build a future filled with love, respect, genuine connections and most importantly peace.
Healing from narcissistic abuse is a journey, and you don’t have to walk it alone.
- Seek professional help: A therapist or coach experienced in narcissistic abuse can provide invaluable guidance and support as you move forward.
- Build a healthy support system: Surround yourself with positive and understanding people who validate your experiences and uplift you.
- Practice self-care: Prioritize activities that nourish your mind, body, and spirit.
- Educate yourself: Learning more about narcissistic abuse can empower you and equip you with tools for navigating future relationships.
- Remember, it takes time: Healing is a process, and there will be setbacks along the way. Be patient with yourself and celebrate your progress, no matter how small.
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THE CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE NOT MEANT TO SUBSTITUTE FOR PROFESSIONAL HELP AND COUNSELING. THE READERS ARE DISCOURAGED FROM USING IT FOR DIAGNOSTIC OR THERAPEUTIC ENDS. THE DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER CAN ONLY BE DONE BY PROFESSIONALS SPECIFICALLY TRAINED AND QUALIFIED TO DO SO. THE AUTHOR IS NOT A MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL. PLEASE CONSULT A HEALTH CARE PROVIDER FOR GUIDANCE SPECIFIC TO YOUR CASE.