August 28, 2023 • 25 mins
Have you ever had a consequence thrown at you for refusing to turn a blind eye? Or have you ever been punished for telling a secret that you never should have been asked to keep? If you answered yes to either of these questions you may have experienced being "scapegoated". This can happen when someone tries to bring order to a dysfunctional system. Doing so can throw off the sense of "order" within that system (even thought it's disordered). Having a scapegoat is a form of protection for that system. It allows them to push blame onto someone else so they can create the delusion that the system is healthier than it is. In this episode, we explore what that can look and feel like and what to do if you find yourself getting the shaft for telling the truth.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
I started to realize that not being an expert isn't
a liability, it's a real gift.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If we don't know something about ourselves at this point
in our life, it's probably because it's uncomfortable to know.
If you can die before you die, then you can
really live. There's a wisdom at death's door. I thought
I was insane. Yeah, and I didn't know what to
do because there was no internet. I don't know, man,
I'm like, I feel like everything is hard.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, y'all, my name is Kat. I'm a human first
and a licensed therapist second. And right now I'm inviting
you into conversations that I hope encourage you to become
more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others, and the
world around you.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Welcome to You Need Therapy. Hi guys, and welcome to
a new episode of that You Need Therapy Podcast. My
name is Kat. I am the host and so glad
you are here today. Quick reminder before we get into
the episode that although this podcast is hosted by a therapist,
it does not serve as a replacement or substitute for
(01:17):
any actual mental health services. However, we always hope that
it can help you in some way wherever you are
the day that you were listening to it, or maybe later. Now,
today's episode is inspired by something that happened recently and
something that I talked about with my current therapist, and
it actually sparked something that a previous therapist has had
(01:39):
said to me. So I want to start this episode
by asking two questions. Have you ever had a consequence
thrown at you for not turning a blind eye? Or
have you ever been punished for telling a secret that
you never should have been asked to keep? Now, the
thing that I was reminded that a therapist told me
(01:59):
years ago was that I am the kind of person
who holds up a mirror to the people around me.
And she said, this is a really special quality and
one that's very beneficial, especially to you as a therapist. However,
not everybody wants to look in that mirror you're holding up.
And I sat on this for a really long time,
and I remember I took notes on it after the session,
(02:23):
which I went to go find, but I cannot find
because I probably deleted them because I am constantly having
issues with having no storage in my phone, so I
deleted a bunch of stuff recently I think I must
have deleted that note. I now have Google Photos, so
hopefully that will help clear some storage and it won't
happen again. But what I'm really trying to say is
(02:43):
I don't know what we were talking about. I really
don't know what it was that I was bringing up
that day, but I imagine it was something about being frustrated
with someone, or because someone got mad at me for
being honest, or becoming the bad guy for saying something
that other people are probably thinking and just afraid to say.
(03:04):
These scenarios can make you feel crazy. How can you
be bad for telling the truth? I thought that line
was bad. Line is something we are taught not to
do as children. And I imagine there are some of
you listening that are like, wait, I've felt this before.
I have felt that feeling, the fire shooting out of
my ears, feeling when you get blamed for refusing not
to turn a blind eye or for not sweeping something
(03:25):
under the rug, when you didn't do the thing, but
you are exposing it. Chances are, in these instances, what
you didn't do is follow the implicit family rules. Those
family rules. That family can be your family of origin,
it can be a friend group, it can be a
work team, it can be any kind of system like that.
(03:45):
And what implicit rules are is they are the unspoken rules,
so rules that kind of most of the time keep
boundaries how the system wants to keep them. A lot
of times when it's dysfunctional, they're pretty rigid, or often
they can be the opposite of that really really really use.
But these rules are things that nobody is writing down
on a list or telling you. It's things like we
(04:09):
just know that we don't stand up to dad, we
don't talk about our feelings, we don't tell outsiders what's
going on inside the house, and we show up for
family no matter what. We show it for people, no
matter what they did. We will give whatever we have.
You can't say no. And when the systems that are
involved are dysfunctional, when you throw a wrench in their
(04:29):
sense of order, when you go against these rules, it
usually does not go well, even if their sense of
order is disordered itself, because it's easier to push the
one going against the grain out than for the majority
of humans to change. After all, most people don't really
like change. And if you're identifying with this experience, then
(04:50):
chances are you've experienced being a scapegoat. What is a scapegoat, Well,
it's one of the family roles that come up in
dysfunctional families. And we've talked about this on an episode
before in more depth, but I'm going to go over
what those other roles are. So the other family roles
include one the hero. This is the golden child. They
(05:12):
can do no wrong. Usually they are very high achieving
and they because of that, get a lot of praise
and positive attention and affirmation from their family and those
around the family. And that can look really awesome. It
can look like a really great place to be in. However,
it can also come with a lot of anxiety. It
can come with a lot of fear and pressure. They
(05:33):
end up making a lot of decisions that will make
the family or system happy instead of what feels authentic
and true to them. Next, we have the mascot. So
the mascot is the sibling at the dinner table that
cracks the tension with a sarcastic comment or a joke.
They keep things from exploding by diverting attention, and they
(05:53):
use humor and entertainment to deflect or sue a lot
of the discomfort of the chaos in that system. Then
we have the lost child. This is the kid that
just kind of gets left in the dust, and they
tend to go with the flow and just go along
with the order that everything else is in to not
create any more chaos. They stay small, they stay unseen,
(06:16):
they stay unheard. It's better to be out of the way,
and parents can often see them as the easy child,
but often they just lose sight of their needs because
the need to keep the peace becomes more important. Okay,
then we have the play cater. This kid is kind
of like the fixer. They get brought into a lot
of stuff that isn't theirs because they can be a
(06:38):
voice of reason and it can feel really good to
be a play cater because you feel needed. But in
this role there's also a lot of pressure to manage
other people's chaos, and they can be brought into parent
issues and sometimes can serve as the surrogate spouse, which
is a child that then takes on a lot of
(06:59):
them emotional responsibilities of one of the parents for the
other parent, which is not ideal for somebody who is
supposed to be a kid and is supposed to look
to their parents to help them get their needs met
versus helping their parents get their needs met. And then lastly,
we have the scapegoat. So the scapegoat is often seen
as the rebel. They can get labeled as the bad kid,
(07:20):
the troublemaker. And when I think of a scapegoat, I
think of someone with like purple spiked hair and a
studded leather jacket. And while that can be true, what's
more true about a scapegoat is the simple fact that
they are just different. How are they different? Well, at
some point, the scapegoat refuses to play the game that
everyone else is playing. A scapegoat is what we like
(07:44):
to call a truth teller. They say the thing that
no one else is willing to say and that no
one else wants them to say. They bring the family
secrets out. And while the family usually doesn't like this
now because they offer and feel different from the rest
of the family, this gape goo often feels like there's
(08:04):
something wrong with them, and to confirm that, they are
usually the kid that gets dropped off in treatment or
is forced to go to see a therapist, while the
rest of the family just sits back and waits for
them to get their act together. They are what is
also called the identified patient in the family a lot
of times, which sounds bad, but honestly can be the
(08:24):
best thing that ever happens to them because it is
here when they end up going to therapy, or they
go to treatment, or they go somewhere where they're expressing
the experience that they're having, that they can start to
see that maybe they are the outlier in their family.
But it doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with them.
(08:44):
It means that there might be something very, very very
right with them. However, this is no bueno for the family,
and the family does not send them to treatment or
send them to get in quotes fixed because they want
them to see what I just said. They don't want
to see that. They want them to be again the
identified patient. They are the focus. So if we can
(09:06):
focus on that issue that being the problem, we don't
have to look at our own and we can hide
our own. The family system thrives off of the ability
to push chaos onto the scapegoat. The scapegoat is a
form of protection for the family. As long as we
can blame them and push blame on them or use
them as a distraction, we don't have to look at
(09:27):
our own issues. Therefore, the responsibility of taking ownership and
changing and making things right and doing what is right
and healthy does not belong to us. It can serve
as a way to believe the delusion that the family
is healthier than they really are. It's the whole. It's
not us, it's them. If they would just X, we
wouldn't have all these problems. A general example of this,
(09:47):
it would be like if my teenage son didn't have
a substance abuse problem, then our marriage issues never would
have happened. We were so in love, me and my husband,
such a perfect pair, but the stress of the problems
that arose with our son war on us until we
just couldn't take it anymore. Now, in reality, maybe the
substance abuse was a way to give a big fu
to the lie that he was living with the perfect,
(10:09):
ideal parents. Maybe his dad was never home and always working,
and maybe his mom leaned on him a lot for
emotional support and because his father was always away. And
will never know if this is true or not, because
it's made up scenario and because the family does not
want you to know this, but maybe the kid was
tired of being and stressed out from being possibly the
serious spouse to the mom. So what do you do?
(10:31):
What do you do if you feel like you're in
this position, or if you feel like you constantly get
put in this position and you keep finding yourself as
the bad guy or the outlier? What do you do
if you feel like you're in this position, or if
you feel like you constantly get put in this position
and you keep finding yourself as the bad guy or
(10:53):
the outlier. So one, it's super helpful to recognize it.
Always awareness is the first step and a lot of
these processes. But then I want to bring you back
to what I was saying about my therapist, what she
said to me years ago. I'm the kind of person
who holds a mirror up to the people around me.
And while that can be really great in some instances,
(11:15):
not everybody is willing and wants to look in that mirror.
Not everybody wants to know the truth, and not everybody
is willing to listen to it. And one thing I
know for certain is we cannot control other people. And
as much as I would love to control them, and
as much as I would like to ignore the fact
that I can't, just trying to continue to do that
is going to only impact my dysfunction. It's only going
(11:38):
to create more dysfunction in my relationships to others and myself.
So we very well might not be able to stop
our family, friends, coworkers, etc. From avoiding the truth as
much as it drives you crazy. You might not be
able to ever do that, and you might not be
able to create healthier systems and the systems that you've
been caught in. But what you can do as an
(12:00):
adult is you can choose the systems you engage in.
And we also get to choose and decide who we
want to tell our truth to. Who are the people
you can share truth with, people who are safe, who
can hold responsibility, who are capable of pulling the skeletons
out of the closet. It's a lesson that I'm actually
still learning. And like I said, this all came about
(12:23):
because of a recent conversation I was having with my
current therapist that brought up the memories from my last one.
And it came up recently because I was on a
girl's trip to the beach. We went to Seaside and
we had a horrible, horrendous experience at one of my
now old favorite restaurants, which is very sad for me
(12:45):
because I really love this restaurant and I will never
be going back there. And I'm not going to tell
the whole story because it's kind of long and it's
not important to know all the details. But basically what
happened was one of my friends had an issue with
her meal. Not a big deal. Restaurants make mistakes all
of the time. Restaurants are run by humans, so it
(13:05):
only makes sense that they're going to make mistakes. However,
when the issue was brought to management, we were treated
and our waitress, who was an angel, was treated in
a way that I will never understand and I don't
want to understand because it's doesn't make sense. I can't
understand it because you can't make it make sense. It
(13:25):
was horrendous, and I was ranting about this experience to
my therapist and I was saying things like why can't
I get over this? Like I am so frustrated and
it is bothering so much. The manager was such a jerk,
and I just want to yell about it, and I
want everybody to get on this train with me and
get as mad as I am and I was especially
(13:46):
angry with how our waitress was treated. Yes, it was
very frustrating for us to be treated that way, but
what was more maddening was how this person would blatantly
treat their own staff in front of us, and like,
let it be known and seen. And again the waitress
was an angel. And my therapist said, when I'm saying
(14:08):
they were like, why does this bother me so much?
She's like, well, what does this remind you of? And
it reminded me of a lot of things. And I'm
not going to get into all of those things. I'm
not gonna name all those things, but basically it brought
up of a lot of experiences where I was feeling
like I wasn't being heard, or no one wanted to
hear me, or I became the problem because I brought
(14:31):
up an issue that I was seeing, or I spoke
up about something that didn't feel good, and then I'm
in trouble for acknowledging that. And it felt like, in
that moment for a second that it was like anytime
this would happen, anytime I spoke up for the truth,
or anybody time I said the truth, I would get
in trouble. But that's not entirely true. That's where we
(14:52):
do this all or nothing think thing. And it's not
true that every time I told the truth I got
in trouble. But it is true that I became the
problem if I talked about the problem to certain people.
Now what this means is I have to reconcile the
fact that justice will not always be served in this world,
which is one thing that I will struggle with for
(15:13):
the rest of my life. But if people do not
have ears open to hear the truth, there is nothing
I can do to force that, no matter how just
or right I am. Which in acknowledging that there's so
much grief, there is so much sadness, There's so much
pain that I have to feel because it's there and
(15:33):
I can process it. Some of that experience of processing
it is just sitting and acknowledging it, and there's nothing
I can do to change it, and that's hard. I
don't want to acknowledge this thing because that means I
have to also sit in these feelings and they might
not ever go away when I acknowledge this thing. But
the reason I'm bringing this experience up is because hearing
my therapist remind me that the manager of that restaurant
(15:56):
was not open to being wrong. Was so helped and
disengaging with him his narrative and his responses to our
truth was so helpful for me. I don't have to
explain my way into being right by him. I get
to let him live in his warped delusion of self righteousness,
and he will probably end up having consequences for that
(16:18):
that are not my problem to fix or avoid. I
also can't save everybody that runs through his path, which
is also a really hard thing for me to sit
with because I don't want him to be able to
manage anybody, because I don't want him hurt other people.
But I cannot control that. I can have faith that
other people have the ability to learn how to take
care of themselves, and that's really helpful. But again, the
(16:41):
reason I'm bringing this up is it made such a
difference for me when I heard somebody say, Hey, you're
continuing to feel more crazy because you're setting yourself up
to argue with somebody who's going to talk to you
in circles, which actually happened because us one when we
(17:01):
were there. But also we did reach out to the
owners to tell them about our experience. In y'all, I
wish I was somebody that was like totally open to
just like blasting people on the internet freely. But I'm
not going to do that because I don't know what
kind of trouble that could get me in. But the
responses that the owners sent back to my friend who
(17:22):
wrote a beautiful kind email were almost more crazy making
than the actual experience. Actually they're probably pretty equal. And
every time we got a response one of those emails
back from the owners, we started to feel again more
riled up and more crazy because this person is refusing
to acknowledge the truth that we're putting right in front
of them and hearing my therapists say, hey, you got
(17:46):
to remember, some people aren't willing to look at that.
So they are going to do whatever they need to
do to confuse or avoid or project to make sure
that mirror doesn't get in their way. And what I'm
not saying here is that truth tellers need to stop
telling the truth. I'm not advocating to shut people down
or keep people quiet and small. I'm not victim blaming
(18:09):
or shaming. I'm advocating for us to one acknowledged reality,
and also to stop hurting our own feelings by telling
people truths and hope to help or change, only to
be shut down and disappointed. I am really advocating for
us to be more careful with our expectations, and a
(18:31):
lot of times we have to lower them because again,
not everybody wants to look in that mirror. What can
I do about that restaurant? Not a lot. I can
definitely not go again, and I can definitely write a
really bad YELP review for them. And like I said,
(18:52):
my friend emailed the owner to express concern, hoping that
it would bring upon some awareness of what's happening there.
It was the most defensive and dismissive customer service response
in history. I'm pretty sure they basically said that one,
we're in the wrong, and if we have an issue
with their establishment, then it's in our best interest not
(19:12):
to go back, which isn't our best interest not to
go back. But I was wild to hear that from
the owners of our restaurant, very wild. But this is
such a perfect, wonderful example of us being able to
take ownership and take control of who we show up
with and who we go to in our need of
(19:35):
exposing what is real. They don't want to acknowledge that
there's a problem with their system because that would require movement,
it would require change. It would also require them to
take responsibility and drop an ego. But if somebody does
not want to do that, I cannot continue to engage
in it because I'm going to end up feeling like
(19:56):
there's something wrong with me. That's how that's going to end. So,
as adults, we have way more power in picking the
systems we integrate into. Right, we don't get to pick
our family. As adults, we get to pick the systems
and the relationships that we welcome into our lives and
that we continue to engage in. And as adults, we
have more power in picking the systems that we integrate into.
(20:19):
We don't get to pick our families, but we get
to choose the systems as adults and the relationships that
we welcome into our lives. And we get to choose
the people that we have those hard conversations too. We
get to choose the people that we tell the truth to,
as hard as those conversations are. Now, if you feel
like you've played the scapegoat role as a kid, chances
(20:40):
are you still find yourself playing that role. You aren't
willing to sit around and pretend that things are okay
because you seek to care for others the way that
you wish to be cared for, probably as a child.
Here's my encouragement to you. One, honor your truth. Like
I said, I'm not saying to suck your truth up
and ignore it and hide from it.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
No.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Honor your truth by sticking to your truths versus trying
to tell other people their truths. If other people don't
want to see it, it's not your responsibility or job
to force that on them, as frustrating as that can
be when you can't see it. Two, differentiate between the
truths that we need to tell and the truths that
(21:22):
we want to tell. Are we looking at a real
concern of safety and something that really really needs to
be brought about, or are we looking at a flaw
in a human much like the flaws that we all have,
those character defects that we really think somebody would benefit
if they'd work on this or work on that. If
(21:42):
something's not unsafe, then sometimes it's best to just let
people have their flaws. And Three, the most important one,
tell your truths to save people, and that means you
may not be able to tell the truth to someone
you want to be able to tell the tr truth too.
You may not be able to tell the truth to
(22:03):
somebody that you are close to but is not safe
in that way. And again, like I said, this is
one of the hardest I think this is the hardest
part that sometimes we don't get to tell the people
that we think are the most important people to tell. Now,
like I say, in almost every episode in conversation I
have on here, all of the information I'm sharing with
(22:24):
you is very nuanced. So there's not a black and
white way for you to fit this into your head
and fit this into your life. And that's why some
of the conversations we have on here are kind of
hard to just take and immediately put into your own life.
Like a hat that you can just put on that
I'm wearing that now you're wearing. It doesn't really work
like that. So I want you to take the information
(22:45):
that I'm sharing with you and apply it, but don't
apply it blindly. Really sit with it, process it, think
about it. Maybe if you have a therapist and you've
had experiences like this, you can talk to them about it.
And the most I think free and satisfying part of
this for me was understanding that there is nothing wrong
(23:06):
with me. I wasn't overreacting. I didn't see something wrong.
I wasn't being dramatic. I wasn't being mean, I wasn't
being unkind. I wasn't the bad guy in this story.
I became the bad guy because somebody else didn't want to.
Well doesn't mean that even those people are the bad guy,
but nobody wanted to play that role themselves, and it's
easier to push it onto somebody else. So I get
(23:29):
this bad guy role not because there's something wrong with
me and I am, but because it's hard for other
people to take responsibility for what is actually going on now.
Not always, sometimes we do say things that aren't true,
but you know what I mean. So that was the
most important part for me because it allows us to
give ourselves more compassion and look at ourselves as a
(23:51):
look at ourselves, see ourselves with a true lens, the
truth lens versus the lens that makes other people feel
more comfortable about them about themselves. So I hope this
was helpful, and if you have any questions or feedback
on any of this, I would love to hear it.
You can email me Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast
dot com. You can follow us at Kat dot Defada
(24:13):
at you Need Therapy podcast and my therapy practice at
three Courts Therapy on Instagram, and if you live in Tennessee,
you can also reach out to us at three Courts
Therapy dot com if you are looking for a new therapist.
I am currently not taking new clients. However, I have
three wonderful therapists Stacy, Julia, and Josie who work with
(24:35):
me at Three Chords that are and I would love
to be able to recommend them to you and set
you up with somebody who I believe has a really
good gift in helping others see their truth and figure
out who to tell their truth to as well. So
that is going to do it for me today. I
hope you guys have the day you need to have
and I will be back with you on Wednesday for
(24:56):
Couch Talks books put on bo
I started to realize that not being an expert isn't
a liability, it's a real gift.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If we don't know something about ourselves at this point
in our life, it's probably because it's uncomfortable to know.
If you can die before you die, then you can
really live. There's a wisdom at death's door. I thought
I was insane. Yeah, and I didn't know what to
do because there was no internet. I don't know, man,
I'm like, I feel like everything is hard.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, y'all, my name is Kat. I'm a human first
and a licensed therapist second. And right now I'm inviting
you into conversations that I hope encourage you to become
more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others, and the
world around you.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Welcome to You Need Therapy. Hi guys, and welcome to
a new episode of that You Need Therapy Podcast. My
name is Kat. I am the host and so glad
you are here today. Quick reminder before we get into
the episode that although this podcast is hosted by a therapist,
it does not serve as a replacement or substitute for
(01:17):
any actual mental health services. However, we always hope that
it can help you in some way wherever you are
the day that you were listening to it, or maybe later. Now,
today's episode is inspired by something that happened recently and
something that I talked about with my current therapist, and
it actually sparked something that a previous therapist has had
(01:39):
said to me. So I want to start this episode
by asking two questions. Have you ever had a consequence
thrown at you for not turning a blind eye? Or
have you ever been punished for telling a secret that
you never should have been asked to keep? Now, the
thing that I was reminded that a therapist told me
(01:59):
years ago was that I am the kind of person
who holds up a mirror to the people around me.
And she said, this is a really special quality and
one that's very beneficial, especially to you as a therapist. However,
not everybody wants to look in that mirror you're holding up.
And I sat on this for a really long time,
and I remember I took notes on it after the session,
(02:23):
which I went to go find, but I cannot find
because I probably deleted them because I am constantly having
issues with having no storage in my phone, so I
deleted a bunch of stuff recently I think I must
have deleted that note. I now have Google Photos, so
hopefully that will help clear some storage and it won't
happen again. But what I'm really trying to say is
(02:43):
I don't know what we were talking about. I really
don't know what it was that I was bringing up
that day, but I imagine it was something about being frustrated
with someone, or because someone got mad at me for
being honest, or becoming the bad guy for saying something
that other people are probably thinking and just afraid to say.
(03:04):
These scenarios can make you feel crazy. How can you
be bad for telling the truth? I thought that line
was bad. Line is something we are taught not to
do as children. And I imagine there are some of
you listening that are like, wait, I've felt this before.
I have felt that feeling, the fire shooting out of
my ears, feeling when you get blamed for refusing not
to turn a blind eye or for not sweeping something
(03:25):
under the rug, when you didn't do the thing, but
you are exposing it. Chances are, in these instances, what
you didn't do is follow the implicit family rules. Those
family rules. That family can be your family of origin,
it can be a friend group, it can be a
work team, it can be any kind of system like that.
(03:45):
And what implicit rules are is they are the unspoken rules,
so rules that kind of most of the time keep
boundaries how the system wants to keep them. A lot
of times when it's dysfunctional, they're pretty rigid, or often
they can be the opposite of that really really really use.
But these rules are things that nobody is writing down
on a list or telling you. It's things like we
(04:09):
just know that we don't stand up to dad, we
don't talk about our feelings, we don't tell outsiders what's
going on inside the house, and we show up for
family no matter what. We show it for people, no
matter what they did. We will give whatever we have.
You can't say no. And when the systems that are
involved are dysfunctional, when you throw a wrench in their
(04:29):
sense of order, when you go against these rules, it
usually does not go well, even if their sense of
order is disordered itself, because it's easier to push the
one going against the grain out than for the majority
of humans to change. After all, most people don't really
like change. And if you're identifying with this experience, then
(04:50):
chances are you've experienced being a scapegoat. What is a scapegoat, Well,
it's one of the family roles that come up in
dysfunctional families. And we've talked about this on an episode
before in more depth, but I'm going to go over
what those other roles are. So the other family roles
include one the hero. This is the golden child. They
(05:12):
can do no wrong. Usually they are very high achieving
and they because of that, get a lot of praise
and positive attention and affirmation from their family and those
around the family. And that can look really awesome. It
can look like a really great place to be in. However,
it can also come with a lot of anxiety. It
can come with a lot of fear and pressure. They
(05:33):
end up making a lot of decisions that will make
the family or system happy instead of what feels authentic
and true to them. Next, we have the mascot. So
the mascot is the sibling at the dinner table that
cracks the tension with a sarcastic comment or a joke.
They keep things from exploding by diverting attention, and they
(05:53):
use humor and entertainment to deflect or sue a lot
of the discomfort of the chaos in that system. Then
we have the lost child. This is the kid that
just kind of gets left in the dust, and they
tend to go with the flow and just go along
with the order that everything else is in to not
create any more chaos. They stay small, they stay unseen,
(06:16):
they stay unheard. It's better to be out of the way,
and parents can often see them as the easy child,
but often they just lose sight of their needs because
the need to keep the peace becomes more important. Okay,
then we have the play cater. This kid is kind
of like the fixer. They get brought into a lot
of stuff that isn't theirs because they can be a
(06:38):
voice of reason and it can feel really good to
be a play cater because you feel needed. But in
this role there's also a lot of pressure to manage
other people's chaos, and they can be brought into parent
issues and sometimes can serve as the surrogate spouse, which
is a child that then takes on a lot of
(06:59):
them emotional responsibilities of one of the parents for the
other parent, which is not ideal for somebody who is
supposed to be a kid and is supposed to look
to their parents to help them get their needs met
versus helping their parents get their needs met. And then lastly,
we have the scapegoat. So the scapegoat is often seen
as the rebel. They can get labeled as the bad kid,
(07:20):
the troublemaker. And when I think of a scapegoat, I
think of someone with like purple spiked hair and a
studded leather jacket. And while that can be true, what's
more true about a scapegoat is the simple fact that
they are just different. How are they different? Well, at
some point, the scapegoat refuses to play the game that
everyone else is playing. A scapegoat is what we like
(07:44):
to call a truth teller. They say the thing that
no one else is willing to say and that no
one else wants them to say. They bring the family
secrets out. And while the family usually doesn't like this
now because they offer and feel different from the rest
of the family, this gape goo often feels like there's
(08:04):
something wrong with them, and to confirm that, they are
usually the kid that gets dropped off in treatment or
is forced to go to see a therapist, while the
rest of the family just sits back and waits for
them to get their act together. They are what is
also called the identified patient in the family a lot
of times, which sounds bad, but honestly can be the
(08:24):
best thing that ever happens to them because it is
here when they end up going to therapy, or they
go to treatment, or they go somewhere where they're expressing
the experience that they're having, that they can start to
see that maybe they are the outlier in their family.
But it doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with them.
(08:44):
It means that there might be something very, very very
right with them. However, this is no bueno for the family,
and the family does not send them to treatment or
send them to get in quotes fixed because they want
them to see what I just said. They don't want
to see that. They want them to be again the
identified patient. They are the focus. So if we can
(09:06):
focus on that issue that being the problem, we don't
have to look at our own and we can hide
our own. The family system thrives off of the ability
to push chaos onto the scapegoat. The scapegoat is a
form of protection for the family. As long as we
can blame them and push blame on them or use
them as a distraction, we don't have to look at
(09:27):
our own issues. Therefore, the responsibility of taking ownership and
changing and making things right and doing what is right
and healthy does not belong to us. It can serve
as a way to believe the delusion that the family
is healthier than they really are. It's the whole. It's
not us, it's them. If they would just X, we
wouldn't have all these problems. A general example of this,
(09:47):
it would be like if my teenage son didn't have
a substance abuse problem, then our marriage issues never would
have happened. We were so in love, me and my husband,
such a perfect pair, but the stress of the problems
that arose with our son war on us until we
just couldn't take it anymore. Now, in reality, maybe the
substance abuse was a way to give a big fu
to the lie that he was living with the perfect,
(10:09):
ideal parents. Maybe his dad was never home and always working,
and maybe his mom leaned on him a lot for
emotional support and because his father was always away. And
will never know if this is true or not, because
it's made up scenario and because the family does not
want you to know this, but maybe the kid was
tired of being and stressed out from being possibly the
serious spouse to the mom. So what do you do?
(10:31):
What do you do if you feel like you're in
this position, or if you feel like you constantly get
put in this position and you keep finding yourself as
the bad guy or the outlier? What do you do
if you feel like you're in this position, or if
you feel like you constantly get put in this position
and you keep finding yourself as the bad guy or
(10:53):
the outlier. So one, it's super helpful to recognize it.
Always awareness is the first step and a lot of
these processes. But then I want to bring you back
to what I was saying about my therapist, what she
said to me years ago. I'm the kind of person
who holds a mirror up to the people around me.
And while that can be really great in some instances,
(11:15):
not everybody is willing and wants to look in that mirror.
Not everybody wants to know the truth, and not everybody
is willing to listen to it. And one thing I
know for certain is we cannot control other people. And
as much as I would love to control them, and
as much as I would like to ignore the fact
that I can't, just trying to continue to do that
is going to only impact my dysfunction. It's only going
(11:38):
to create more dysfunction in my relationships to others and myself.
So we very well might not be able to stop
our family, friends, coworkers, etc. From avoiding the truth as
much as it drives you crazy. You might not be
able to ever do that, and you might not be
able to create healthier systems and the systems that you've
been caught in. But what you can do as an
(12:00):
adult is you can choose the systems you engage in.
And we also get to choose and decide who we
want to tell our truth to. Who are the people
you can share truth with, people who are safe, who
can hold responsibility, who are capable of pulling the skeletons
out of the closet. It's a lesson that I'm actually
still learning. And like I said, this all came about
(12:23):
because of a recent conversation I was having with my
current therapist that brought up the memories from my last one.
And it came up recently because I was on a
girl's trip to the beach. We went to Seaside and
we had a horrible, horrendous experience at one of my
now old favorite restaurants, which is very sad for me
(12:45):
because I really love this restaurant and I will never
be going back there. And I'm not going to tell
the whole story because it's kind of long and it's
not important to know all the details. But basically what
happened was one of my friends had an issue with
her meal. Not a big deal. Restaurants make mistakes all
of the time. Restaurants are run by humans, so it
(13:05):
only makes sense that they're going to make mistakes. However,
when the issue was brought to management, we were treated
and our waitress, who was an angel, was treated in
a way that I will never understand and I don't
want to understand because it's doesn't make sense. I can't
understand it because you can't make it make sense. It
(13:25):
was horrendous, and I was ranting about this experience to
my therapist and I was saying things like why can't
I get over this? Like I am so frustrated and
it is bothering so much. The manager was such a jerk,
and I just want to yell about it, and I
want everybody to get on this train with me and
get as mad as I am and I was especially
(13:46):
angry with how our waitress was treated. Yes, it was
very frustrating for us to be treated that way, but
what was more maddening was how this person would blatantly
treat their own staff in front of us, and like,
let it be known and seen. And again the waitress
was an angel. And my therapist said, when I'm saying
(14:08):
they were like, why does this bother me so much?
She's like, well, what does this remind you of? And
it reminded me of a lot of things. And I'm
not going to get into all of those things. I'm
not gonna name all those things, but basically it brought
up of a lot of experiences where I was feeling
like I wasn't being heard, or no one wanted to
hear me, or I became the problem because I brought
(14:31):
up an issue that I was seeing, or I spoke
up about something that didn't feel good, and then I'm
in trouble for acknowledging that. And it felt like, in
that moment for a second that it was like anytime
this would happen, anytime I spoke up for the truth,
or anybody time I said the truth, I would get
in trouble. But that's not entirely true. That's where we
(14:52):
do this all or nothing think thing. And it's not
true that every time I told the truth I got
in trouble. But it is true that I became the
problem if I talked about the problem to certain people.
Now what this means is I have to reconcile the
fact that justice will not always be served in this world,
which is one thing that I will struggle with for
(15:13):
the rest of my life. But if people do not
have ears open to hear the truth, there is nothing
I can do to force that, no matter how just
or right I am. Which in acknowledging that there's so
much grief, there is so much sadness, There's so much
pain that I have to feel because it's there and
(15:33):
I can process it. Some of that experience of processing
it is just sitting and acknowledging it, and there's nothing
I can do to change it, and that's hard. I
don't want to acknowledge this thing because that means I
have to also sit in these feelings and they might
not ever go away when I acknowledge this thing. But
the reason I'm bringing this experience up is because hearing
my therapist remind me that the manager of that restaurant
(15:56):
was not open to being wrong. Was so helped and
disengaging with him his narrative and his responses to our
truth was so helpful for me. I don't have to
explain my way into being right by him. I get
to let him live in his warped delusion of self righteousness,
and he will probably end up having consequences for that
(16:18):
that are not my problem to fix or avoid. I
also can't save everybody that runs through his path, which
is also a really hard thing for me to sit
with because I don't want him to be able to
manage anybody, because I don't want him hurt other people.
But I cannot control that. I can have faith that
other people have the ability to learn how to take
care of themselves, and that's really helpful. But again, the
(16:41):
reason I'm bringing this up is it made such a
difference for me when I heard somebody say, Hey, you're
continuing to feel more crazy because you're setting yourself up
to argue with somebody who's going to talk to you
in circles, which actually happened because us one when we
(17:01):
were there. But also we did reach out to the
owners to tell them about our experience. In y'all, I
wish I was somebody that was like totally open to
just like blasting people on the internet freely. But I'm
not going to do that because I don't know what
kind of trouble that could get me in. But the
responses that the owners sent back to my friend who
(17:22):
wrote a beautiful kind email were almost more crazy making
than the actual experience. Actually they're probably pretty equal. And
every time we got a response one of those emails
back from the owners, we started to feel again more
riled up and more crazy because this person is refusing
to acknowledge the truth that we're putting right in front
of them and hearing my therapists say, hey, you got
(17:46):
to remember, some people aren't willing to look at that.
So they are going to do whatever they need to
do to confuse or avoid or project to make sure
that mirror doesn't get in their way. And what I'm
not saying here is that truth tellers need to stop
telling the truth. I'm not advocating to shut people down
or keep people quiet and small. I'm not victim blaming
(18:09):
or shaming. I'm advocating for us to one acknowledged reality,
and also to stop hurting our own feelings by telling
people truths and hope to help or change, only to
be shut down and disappointed. I am really advocating for
us to be more careful with our expectations, and a
(18:31):
lot of times we have to lower them because again,
not everybody wants to look in that mirror. What can
I do about that restaurant? Not a lot. I can
definitely not go again, and I can definitely write a
really bad YELP review for them. And like I said,
(18:52):
my friend emailed the owner to express concern, hoping that
it would bring upon some awareness of what's happening there.
It was the most defensive and dismissive customer service response
in history. I'm pretty sure they basically said that one,
we're in the wrong, and if we have an issue
with their establishment, then it's in our best interest not
(19:12):
to go back, which isn't our best interest not to
go back. But I was wild to hear that from
the owners of our restaurant, very wild. But this is
such a perfect, wonderful example of us being able to
take ownership and take control of who we show up
with and who we go to in our need of
(19:35):
exposing what is real. They don't want to acknowledge that
there's a problem with their system because that would require movement,
it would require change. It would also require them to
take responsibility and drop an ego. But if somebody does
not want to do that, I cannot continue to engage
in it because I'm going to end up feeling like
(19:56):
there's something wrong with me. That's how that's going to end. So,
as adults, we have way more power in picking the
systems we integrate into. Right, we don't get to pick
our family. As adults, we get to pick the systems
and the relationships that we welcome into our lives and
that we continue to engage in. And as adults, we
have more power in picking the systems that we integrate into.
(20:19):
We don't get to pick our families, but we get
to choose the systems as adults and the relationships that
we welcome into our lives. And we get to choose
the people that we have those hard conversations too. We
get to choose the people that we tell the truth to,
as hard as those conversations are. Now, if you feel
like you've played the scapegoat role as a kid, chances
(20:40):
are you still find yourself playing that role. You aren't
willing to sit around and pretend that things are okay
because you seek to care for others the way that
you wish to be cared for, probably as a child.
Here's my encouragement to you. One, honor your truth. Like
I said, I'm not saying to suck your truth up
and ignore it and hide from it.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
No.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Honor your truth by sticking to your truths versus trying
to tell other people their truths. If other people don't
want to see it, it's not your responsibility or job
to force that on them, as frustrating as that can
be when you can't see it. Two, differentiate between the
truths that we need to tell and the truths that
(21:22):
we want to tell. Are we looking at a real
concern of safety and something that really really needs to
be brought about, or are we looking at a flaw
in a human much like the flaws that we all have,
those character defects that we really think somebody would benefit
if they'd work on this or work on that. If
(21:42):
something's not unsafe, then sometimes it's best to just let
people have their flaws. And Three, the most important one,
tell your truths to save people, and that means you
may not be able to tell the truth to someone
you want to be able to tell the tr truth too.
You may not be able to tell the truth to
(22:03):
somebody that you are close to but is not safe
in that way. And again, like I said, this is
one of the hardest I think this is the hardest
part that sometimes we don't get to tell the people
that we think are the most important people to tell. Now,
like I say, in almost every episode in conversation I
have on here, all of the information I'm sharing with
(22:24):
you is very nuanced. So there's not a black and
white way for you to fit this into your head
and fit this into your life. And that's why some
of the conversations we have on here are kind of
hard to just take and immediately put into your own life.
Like a hat that you can just put on that
I'm wearing that now you're wearing. It doesn't really work
like that. So I want you to take the information
(22:45):
that I'm sharing with you and apply it, but don't
apply it blindly. Really sit with it, process it, think
about it. Maybe if you have a therapist and you've
had experiences like this, you can talk to them about it.
And the most I think free and satisfying part of
this for me was understanding that there is nothing wrong
(23:06):
with me. I wasn't overreacting. I didn't see something wrong.
I wasn't being dramatic. I wasn't being mean, I wasn't
being unkind. I wasn't the bad guy in this story.
I became the bad guy because somebody else didn't want to.
Well doesn't mean that even those people are the bad guy,
but nobody wanted to play that role themselves, and it's
easier to push it onto somebody else. So I get
(23:29):
this bad guy role not because there's something wrong with
me and I am, but because it's hard for other
people to take responsibility for what is actually going on now.
Not always, sometimes we do say things that aren't true,
but you know what I mean. So that was the
most important part for me because it allows us to
give ourselves more compassion and look at ourselves as a
(23:51):
look at ourselves, see ourselves with a true lens, the
truth lens versus the lens that makes other people feel
more comfortable about them about themselves. So I hope this
was helpful, and if you have any questions or feedback
on any of this, I would love to hear it.
You can email me Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast
dot com. You can follow us at Kat dot Defada
(24:13):
at you Need Therapy podcast and my therapy practice at
three Courts Therapy on Instagram, and if you live in Tennessee,
you can also reach out to us at three Courts
Therapy dot com if you are looking for a new therapist.
I am currently not taking new clients. However, I have
three wonderful therapists Stacy, Julia, and Josie who work with
(24:35):
me at Three Chords that are and I would love
to be able to recommend them to you and set
you up with somebody who I believe has a really
good gift in helping others see their truth and figure
out who to tell their truth to as well. So
that is going to do it for me today. I
hope you guys have the day you need to have
and I will be back with you on Wednesday for
(24:56):
Couch Talks books put on bo
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