11 Clear Signs You're The Family Scapegoat, Likely Because You Refused To Ignore Other People's Bad Behavior
BearFotos | ShutterstockChildren who are raised in a dysfunctional family often do anything they can to survive. Some kids align themselves with their parents as a self-protective measure, while others are put in the position of being an outcast. Then, there are family scapegoats who are forced to endure shame, anger, and injustice from their parents and even siblings.
Scapegoating is a form of mistreatment wielded as a tool that allows parents to maintain control over their kids' behavior and the overarching family narrative. As a child it may not have been obvious, but once you became an adult, you recognize the clear signs you're the family scapegoat, likely because you refused to ignore other people's bad behavior. And now, you're feeling the effects of growing up in such a tumultuous environment.
Here are 11 clear signs you're the family scapegoat, likely because you refused to ignore other people's bad behavior
1. You're blamed for other people's behavior
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When you're blamed for how other people act or are held responsible for the family's public image, it means your family doesn't view you as an equal. And your parents probably maintain the idea that everything would be perfect if it weren't for you.
Dysfunctional families resort to scapegoating because blaming one person for everyone's issues makes it so they don't have to actually examine their dysfunction. Scapegoats allow their families to have homeostasis, which is "the tendency to keep things in the family system just the way that they are."
The family scapegoat plays a very specific role: they relieve the tension caused by all the underlying, unspoken conflicts at play. They might get called out for noticing what the rest of the family refuses to admit, which is usually the presence of unhealthy and damaging dynamics.
2. You're constantly criticized
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Being judged more harshly than the rest of your family and being criticized on a constant basis means your family has made you the scapegoat. Your parents hold you unrealistically high expectations, while your siblings aren't held to any. They expect perfection from you, in part because they know you can't reach it, which lets them pick on your perceived flaws.
As trauma therapist Patrick Teahan pointed out, this kind of unrelenting criticism is often an indication that you're being raised in an "anti-love family" with "a deficit of affection, appreciation, and warmth." Teahan explained that the way kids are treated in an anti-love family stems from parental "contempt and disgust for some, if not all of the family members, so children are just recipients of such contempt for their parents."
No child deserves to be held to a higher standard or cruelly judged for being who they are, which is why many adults who come from anti-love families have to work on two specific things in therapy. As Teahan revealed, "The betrayal of love and responsibility by holding parents accountable for not doing anything about their own highly toxic stuff, and buying into the idea that they're lovable."
3. You're given inconsistent treatment
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The rules and expectations that your parents set for you might change on a whim, without any explanation. This inconsistency serves to destabilize you, and lets your parents blame you for their own mistakes. One minute, you're being chastised for small mistakes, and the next your parents are including you in the family plans. It's like whiplash.
When parents choose a child to act as a scapegoat, they're deflecting attention away from the real problem, refusing to resolve issues and instead cover them up for their comfort. Even if scapegoating relieves that tension, it's only temporary and exacerbates the dysfunction that's already there.
4. You're expected to apologize all the time
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Being the family scapegoat means you're expected to apologize, even when you've done nothing wrong. You're responsible for your family's well-being and their public reputation, so if anything goes wrong, it's all your fault.
When a child is told they're wrong no matter what they do, they internalize that messaging. This can result in feelings of shame, trust issues, problems in their relationships, low self-esteem, and gravitating towards narcissistic partners.
5. You're intentionally isolated by your family
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If your family actively isolates you, it's a clear sign you're the family scapegoat. Because you refused to ignore other people's bad behavior and stood up for yourself when you could, your family tried to pit you against your siblings and see you as an outsider who doesn't fit into the rest of the family schema.
In some ways, you don't really fit in. Your ability and willingness to face the dysfunction within your family while everyone else buries their heads in the sand shows that you are different. You're trying to break the cycle of by calling it out for exactly what it is, yet this very behavior threatens your family's way of functioning, which is why they try to keep you isolated.
6. Your emotions are weaponized against you
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Having your emotions weaponized against you means you might have what's actually an entirely normal emotional response to your family's mistreatment; however, your reaction gets framed by your parents as totally uncalled for or out of control. They call you "unstable" or "crazy" or "too sensitive" as a way to invalidate what you're feeling and keep going with business as usual.
For a family scapegoat, it's normal for their parents not to accept or value their emotional reactions. They often grow up not knowing how to be comfortable around people who do actually hold space for them, and might have to spend their adult life recalibrating to allow themselves to feel things deeply.
7. You sacrifice your own needs
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You sacrifice your own needs to maintain the "harmony" in your family system, feeling forced to meet everyone else's needs first. As a result, you never learned how to take care of yourself without feeling guilty for it. And it's likely affected you well into adulthood, as you've developed people-pleasing tendencies and never putting yourself first.
When you're the family scapegoat, your needs are never considered. But rather than fight back or argue, you accepted it in order to keep the peace. Unfortunately, being unable to say no and having people-pleasing behaviors lead to poorer health long-term.
8. Your feelings are consistently dismissed
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Your feelings are consistently dismissed as trivial and unimportant. Anytime you speak up or try to advocate for yourself, your parents tease you or outright ignore you. If you're feeling sad, you're made to feel like you're overreacting. If you're happy, your parents or siblings put you down and find reasons why you're undeserving of joy.
Paying attention to your feelings would mean your parents would have to take a deep, long look at their own behavior, which they're incapable of doing. It's much easier to keep dismissing you as the one who's wrong, instead of being self-reflective and questioning their own damaging ways of existing.
9. You're unfavorably compared to others
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When parents play the comparison game, they set their kids up to have a low sense of self-worth. They prime their kids to seek external validation, while always putting themselves down for not being good enough.
Family scapegoats get negatively compared to their siblings, or even other kids, because they're the ones making waves and standing up to the mistreatment. Their siblings are complicit in it, often due to no fault of their own, as they're just trying to survive, too.
10. You're the target of collective gaslighting
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If you're the target of collective gaslighting among your family members, your parents and siblings gang up against you to deny your lived experience. They pretend things happened differently, which leads you to doubt your perception and your own sanity.
As psychoanalyst Robin Stern and Yale professor Marc Brackett questioned, "Many people flourish because of supportive family relationships, and many do not, especially when gaslighting is at play. When gaslighting is a core dynamic in a relationship, there can be no psychological safety. In families, gaslighting is confusing and hard to accept. Why would people who love you want to drive you crazy or undermine your reality?"
Being the target of collective gaslighting can make you feel like you're the one who's remembering the past incorrectly. Your family's efforts to rewrite history and invalidate what you feel are just one more power play of trying to shift the blame, while you're trying to get them to own it.
11. You feel relieved when you're away from your family
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Even though cutting off toxic family does tend to come with feelings of guilt, grief, and anxiety, it also leads to a profound sense of relief. According to clinical psychologist Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, "Emotional distance from toxic parents can give adult children the space to form a secure sense of self that was never nurtured in childhood."
It's obvious an incredibly difficult decision to make, but because you're finally putting yourself and your needs first, you know it's the right choice. After years of putting up with being the family scapegoat, you feel free that you can live your life free of judgment, blame, shame, and manipulation.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a writer based in Boston, Massachusetts who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
