"But we took you to Statley Homes" Dysfunctional Families Thread

[Snowdropfairy]

Forerunning threads:
December 2007
March 2008
August 2008
February 2009
May 2009
January 2010
April 2010
August 2010
November 2010

Please check later posts in this thread for links & quotes. The main thing is: "they did do it to you" - and you can recover.

I was looking for some on-line sources of information on scapegoating for a poster in a current thread who is letting her abusive partner scapegoat her DD (and joining in).

I find this article interesting, in that it didn't just discuss the 2 child roles, "Golden Child" and "Scapegoat", which are so often brought up in MN threads. Instead, it describes 4 roles for the children of a dysfunctional couple:

• Hero
• Scapegoat
• Lost Child
• Mascot

I liked this, because I have never felt that my sister was a golden child -- far from it! Her role is that of "the good child", but in a very coercive way, ie. my Mom will say, "You're supposed to be my good daughter! [...so do as I say]". My sister is not at all arrogant or entitled, as a result, but a very anxious and self-sabotaging person.

I think my sister is definitely the Hero, and I am very much the Lost Child, though there is a bit of Scapegoat and Mascot thrown in there as well.

Dear All.
Day four of a cold that has run rampant through us all. A friends daughter is cming to stay from australia tomorrow. I feel like shit. My eldest daughter has just walked across the kitchen kicking bits of detritus out of her way rather than pick it up. Youngest is going stir crazy as has been on lock down for several days with me. Husband out with work tonight.

Frankly I have lost the will to live. I want to go to bed and cry and really not want to give a shit about anything or anyone. There is this huge boulder of consequences that is dangling over my head, and I feel powerless to do anything about it. Drowning not waving, not even got the energy to wave. This is me at my lowest possible ebb. I want the house clean and tidy, so I will be favourably reported on. want daughter to help, but am met with sullen indifference. Want little one better but can't even look after myself. Please can a heavenly host of angles with dusters come and help me.

Go to bed.

It matters not whether you are "favourably reported on". Your health certainly comes before that.

Even IF friend's daughter reports that you are a slattern (...unlikely), it doesn't mean you ARE one. You are just ill this week.

If daughter doesn't help, that is her lookout, but make sure that there are some consequences for her. If you do all the cleaning yourself, you will just be showing her that she can keep on refusing to help because you'll do it anyway.

Just let the house be a tip. Stop caring about it, and start caring for yourself instead! In this case, by nursing your own health.

Sending cups of hot broth your way, but NO feather dusters!

lola I am definitely there in spirit. I am so sorry you are low today, you are so kind and insightful and helped me a great deal yesterday.

Don't worry about the house for say, a good hour(as if you are anything like me there's no way you could forget it all day!), have another lemsip and get in bed with the little one. You have a whole day to think about all the crap you have to do, you need rest by the sounds of it.

I am mentally bringing you hot tea, straightening the covers and plumping up the pillows for you x

I agree...go to bed with a lemsip.

You are more important than a tidy house! Even if you just have an hours sleep, and drugs, you may feel significantly better. Are these people coming to see YOU or are they coming to judge your housekeeping?

Now go and snuggle in something cosy, and love yourself.

xx

I am a scapegoat and h is a mascot.

One of the most hurtful things I said to him was when I called him a performing monkey. Shame.....he only thinks that is what he is worth.

Just as well I am "insane" as otherwise, I wouldn't have gone and got all that amazing therapy!

pep reading through, I had a thought that you were my little sister! But then I see you have a brother. Phew!

I have a idea that she may well turn up on here one day.

Yeah, it's interesting isn't it, to find your abusers in that list too.

I think BOTH my parents were Lost Children. But one externalised the shame and pain and became an abusive narc wife and mother, and the other internalised it and became a suffering enabler.

Oh, thisis, I wish my sister were on here too!

But I don't want to push her to anything she's not ready for. (Well, I do because she would love it here, but I am resisting the urge because I know it's best in her own time, on her own terms).

Hello, Just found this thread and though I don't to share anything (maybe one day) I just wanted to say that I find the fact that it exists exremely comforting.
Good luck to everyone on here, and thanks. :)

It is strange isn't it, this movement of roles in the family. My sister was most definitely the scapegoat as she grew into her teens, reacting I suppose to my brother being the GC/hero. I so so agree about the burden of the golden child. I think it's a terrible burden for my brother, he lives a mile away from mother (I live 250 miles PHEW!) and she is on his mind almost all the time. She maintains this faux air of independence but is always at him to pander to her really. That sounds harsh, I think he really loves and cares for her.

While my sis was the scapegoat I was busy being the good girl, and a bit Lost child too. Then somehow(Isuspect when I went to uni and didn't come back after graduating), that shifted and I was the scapegoat evermore.

The comment made here about the Narc projecting are really helpful too-of course. My mother wasn't interested in me having independent thought, all I was was a projection of her, and she didn't like it when I did move away out of her control. I wonder if that's also why she seems to have been most hard on me? -because I moved away from her control physically, and the other two didn't?

One very telling thing that my mother has said since I had children is how she hated us all going to school. As my little boy got nearer and nearer too it, she would constantly be the prophet of doom. When I said how we were all excited for him etc, she would just say "school is awful, that's when your children start growing away from you, coming under outside influences. You will hate it, I hated it" !!

Very telling I think!

god my grammar has gone to pot!

Hello. Have been lurking around these threadsfor a long time. My mother is everything I dont' want to be to my children. My sister who has given them endless years of distress and worry is the golden girl. As is my cousin, who is treated like the second daughter.

I can't cut off contact because my dad is a skivvy apart from when he comes to stay with me. And the children would want to know why.

She has an amazing ability to turn a great day into a shit day just with one phone call!

Dear avenging angels. lay on the couch and watched tom and jerry with DD2. And it is going to be frozen din dins for all. Husband can eat a kebab.

On the topic of my husband. He is a mascot. what makes me smile is how damaged people can find each other. We have helped each other through out mutual blasted internal landscapes. His dad is an unutterable swine. I have had to learn how to deal with him, also deal with watching my darling husband jig around this cinematic ogre in attempt to pleaase him. And watch that fucker move the goal posts. The biggest idea I have come up with is to spend a very limited amount of time with him. Even darling daddy can't deal with it, I can see his blood pressure go off the grief after about 5 hoiurs of nicey nicey. Husbands mum was alcoholic, which I can understand meeting father. They seperated and mother drank herself into oblivion and eventually an early grave.

My mother always had fantasies about being an alcoholic in an attempt to damage us as much as she felt damaged. Then we would know all about it. How can you say that to your children? Children who only had her to depend on? Except she hated being drunk, so that didn't really work out for her so her plans went underground as it were.

Ooh, I like the sound of being an avenging angel!

Your day of lolling sounds perfect. Your mother was irresponsible and chose to hurt her children the way she was hurting inside instead of ending the pattern of abuse and protecting you from harm.

The damaged DO find each other, don't they? In my family, it's 1 abused and 1 abuser in each couple, except for my favourite aunt and uncle who each are ex-victims from their first marriages, and then found each other. They are both very sorted and have a fantastic marriage and confident kinds.

With them as my model, I'm on the lookout for a damaged man who has, like me, been hit by the fallout of a dysfuncitonal upbringing, and has had the strength and responsibility to work through his issues and come out the other side.

*kids
(although my cousins are indeed kind too)

lola....good for you and the frozen food!

It's interesting that your mascot H had an alcoholic mother. So did mine...she drank herself to death too.

He hasn't told me much about his dad, or any of his family really, He only came clean about how dysfunctional they were when we separated last year. I had always wondered why I wasn't allowed to go to his family home. Now I know.

I strongly suspect that his father was abusive to his mother. H must have learnt it at home, they do. There must have been a reason for his mother to literally drink herslef to death.

One bother killed himself with heroin and the other sexually abused him. This kind of dysfunction doesn't come out of the blue does ut? It probably goes back generations, and I simply cannot believe that his father had no part in it. He just hasn't told me yet.

H is still in some very thick fog.

I have had my fill of abusive partners also. But, I never had any problems kicking them into touch once things got a real energy behind them. I am a no shit kinda girl in that respect. Not afraid to be alone as I am very self reliant, had to be. Though my mother would argue otherwise. And likewise with my H. He can be very emotionally distant and I have had to learn that he is not always able to meet my needs as I would wish, but in other ways I would be lost without him. He is my defender where others have let me be run rough shode over. He has had MASSIVE showdowns with the rest of them and laid out the ground rules. My knight in shining armour and a briefcase full of whup ass.

He and I go to great lenghts to be sure that our kids do not get the toxic backwash from either of us. But, I don't think it is possible to be sterile all the time.

H's brother though, a very poor lost soul. Successful and that, but mmmmm. just something that worries me.

Thank you all for your kindness and letting me moan and blub about my cold and my lowness. It really helped,

Just wanted to say hello to you all and to 3monkeys-I know what you mean about their ability to turn a day upside down with just a call-it's an art form, a real talent ho ho. How often do you see your parents? Do they live near you?

Puppy great article! I am the mascot. It gives me some insight into my siblings too, thanks for posting it.

Hello 3monkeys

They live about3 hours away. So when we see them,it's a whole weekend :(.
They live near my sister and she treats them like shit and they do anything she wants. Then she moans about them although she's very good at being the saint on public occasions!
Will try and read this whole thread at some point!

Dhs birthday this week. He got just what he wanted from the manipulative madam that is my mother, she'd really thought about it. I'll get something that he wants for my birthday in December, again.