Scapegoating in dysfunctional families

When they paint you as the “black sheep”

Family scapegoating is a damaging psychological mechanism that can occur in dysfunctional family systems. One family member (often a child) is unfairly blamed for the family’s problems, serving as a repository for the family’s unresolved tensions, negative emotions, and unhealthy patterns. This “black sheep” becomes the target of consistent criticism, emotional abuse and marginalisation.

This form of abuse, whether overt or subtle, can have profound and long-lasting impacts on a person’s emotional health, sense of self and personal development.

Typical characteristics

The scapegoated child may be excluded or singled out for worse treatment than other siblings
They may be blamed for family conflicts, financial struggles, or emotional difficulties
The child is made to feel responsible for the family’s problems, despite having no actual control
Other family members may collude in this dynamic, either actively participating or passively allowing it to continue

Psychological impact

Family scapegoating is harmful and can have both immediate and cumulative emotional consequences:

Chronic feelings of shame and inadequacy
Development of complex trauma
Depression and anxiety
Anger or rage
Internalised negative self-perception
Struggle with self-worth and identity
Difficulty forming or keeping relationships later in life
Vulnerability to future abusive relationships
Higher risk of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD)

Reasons for scapegoating

Scapegoating is not always an overtly planned manipulation strategy, but may grow unconsciously from a desire to avoid addressing deeper systemic family issues. Having an “identified patient” – a symptom-bearer onto which the collective dysfunction can be projected – conveniently avoids the family having to look inside itself and address unresolved conflicts and traumas. So the reason is projection, to hide shame and deflect blame. For example, an abusive parent may encourage the creation of a scapegoat to draw attention and accountability away from them.

How the scapegoat is chosen

Very often, in a family system that’s all about containment, it’s the person most prone to “leak”. In other words, they show outward evidence of the dysfunction, either by getting sick from it in some way or by speaking up in opposition to it.

The person least willing or able to keep a pretence of peace to preserve a false image of family harmony will be identified as the “problem child”. This will very often equate to the one whose IQ and/or emotional intelligence are sufficiently developed to see beyond the Potemkin Village the family system has constructed. That is to say, the scapegoat is often more gifted than their abusers.

Scapegoating can start early: if the child speaks out – deliberately through opposition or uncontrollably through anxiety, depression, addiction, self-harm or other diagnosable behaviours, they may be sent to see a doctor or a psychologist or otherwise made the subject of a “mental illness” narrative that can endure for a lifetime.

Alternatively, the bullying and othering can be more subtle: the room freezes when you walk in, relatives purse their lips when your name is mentioned, you’re excluded from family events, but nothing is overtly said. The scapegoat is just made to feel like the problem wherever they go.

Lots of the work I do in therapy is helping people to see that they are not, in fact, broken or freakish or mentally ill.

Risk factors for scapegoating

Children who are perceived as “different” from family norms
Children with developmental or neurological differences
Children who inadvertently expose family dysfunction
Children who challenge family narratives or expectations

Birth order, of itself, doesn’t appear to make scapegoating more or less likely. However there is some evidence to suggest that in families that are already in a state of dysfunction, a new child can be a convenient receptacle for unresolved tension. For example, if the parents were not coping emotionally before, they may cope much less well now and blame the youngest child. Existing siblings, whose emotional needs were barely being met before, may now blame the new child for diluting their share of the thin gruel. In either case: “Everything was better before you showed up”.

Presentations

It’s unusual for a person to present for therapy citing family scapegoating as the issue to work through. More typically, the scapegoated adult child will seek therapy for the results of scapegoating, such as relationship difficulties, or because they want to make sense of an abusive adult relationship.

The scapegoated person may seek therapy for coping mechanisms that have started to go wrong, such as eating, drugs or alcohol. They may want help with other artefacts of post-traumatic stress, such as identity problems, including identity disorders, panic, sleep problems, or depression and anxiety.

As psychological and emotional connection is built in therapy, more is learned of childhood experiences and family relationships. In this context, the evidence of scapegoating can appear, often carefully hidden below layers of shame, self-blame and betrayal-blindness.

Neurodiversity and family scapegoating

The correlation between those who have a diagnosis of autism or ADHD (or suspect they might be “neurodivergent”) and family scapegoating is too close to be wholly coincidental and has led to speculation that either the individuals were scapegoated because they were seen as different in some way, or developed differences as a result of what happened to them in their family, especially if being scapegoated meant they were left alone with their fears, pains and difficult experiences and could not co-regulate. There is correlative evidence to link neurological differences with exposure to complex trauma during key developmental phases, although the causal relationship is not settled.

Healing and recovery

I’ve come to believe there is little in life more painful than being outcast by the people you love the most and on whose care and protection you most depended. Happily, once identified, the scapegoat role doesn’t have to be a life sentence. There are multiple paths out of the pain:

Recognising the pattern
Acknowledging what happened
Seeking therapy, particularly trauma-informed counselling
Establishing healthy boundaries
Building a secure base outside the family
Inner child work
Building self-compassion
Limiting or ending contact with abusive family members

Ultimately, the work involves the scapegoated person discovering who they really are, outside the family narrative, and stepping into themselves. This can be a very beautiful thing to observe. Because scapegoats are usually targeted for their opposition or their unwillingness to buckle down and obey the family rules, they tend to be humans with great inner strength and emotional maturity. And watching someone like that finally take up space in the world and give us the benefit of their gifts without apology is genuinely inspiring.

One of the most gratifying – and magical – aspects of this kind of work is the extent to which the healed scapegoat can finally break the family cycle of unhealthy behaviours or abuse, ensuring that further generations do not have to endure it. Watching former scapegoats become the kind of safe, loving and emotionally present parents they themselves needed has been fulfilling for me, as a therapist and as a human. Former scapegoats can sometime go further and become great healers themselves.

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