It is difficult enough to bear the burden of traumatic childhood experiences and its long-term physical, emotional, and mental effects. For adult survivors of family scapegoating abuse (FSA), this difficulty is magnified by the fact that their reports of abuse or trauma are typically denied, dismissed, and invalidated by their family due to their being in the ‘identified patient’ role…
In the narcissistic family system, the needs of the disordered parent take precedence over the needs of the dependent child, resulting in narcissistic abuse. Family members are not cherished individuals to be loved; they are instead ‘narcissistic supply’ whose only purpose is to serve the infantile, primitive psycho-emotional needs of the narcissistic parent.
[Note: This article originally written for The C-PTSD Foundation in November 2020] Complex PTSD ( which is sometimes interchanged with terms such as complex relational trauma, developmental trauma, and interpersonal…
Because family scapegoating processes can be insidious and subtle, many adult survivors do not realize that they are suffering from a most egregious (and often chronic) form of systemically-driven psycho-emotional bullying and abuse, with all of the painful consequences to body, mind, and spirit…
EditBy Rebecca C. Mandeville, MFTLast updated: 1 Jun 2020~ 5 MIN READ As a licensed Psychotherapist specializing in Family Systems, I have worked with many clients who struggled with being in the family…