I’ve noticed within the Mental Health field that the scapegoating of a child or adult child is frequently referred to as a form of ‘verbal abuse’, which I find concerning and somewhat misleading, given that FSA is driven by psycho-emotional, systemic processes in dysfunctional or narcissistic family systems, hence it can be covert, insidious and subtle…
Reactive abuse is when someone who is a victim of abuse (family scapegoating abuse, in this case) reacts to the abuse in such a manner that if an outside person were to be a fly on the wall observing, it would make it look like they, and not the perpetrator, are the abuser.
For many scapegoated adults, the difficult reality is that repair and reunion with their family simply isn’t possible. For some, it is a conscious choice to stay away from their toxic family system as attempting to re-integrate would result in further psycho-emotional injury. Others were unceremoniously ‘ejected’ from their family-of-origin when they began to assert boundaries or call out the abuse, making any type of reconciliation both undesirable and impossible.
In this week’s article I share one of the biggest myths about going no contact with family and how I handle issues related to ending contact with scapegoating family members in a trauma-informed manner.
In this article, I discuss the Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) model and why I choose to use this particular trauma treatment modality in my private psychotherapy practice when working with clients who are suffering from Family Scapegoating Abuse (FSA) and Complex Trauma symptoms.
In this article, I share several signs of Structural Dissociation that Family Scapegoating Abuse Adult Survivors and Mental Health providers need to be aware of to ensure successful treatment of this most egregious form of ‘invisible (psycho-emotional) abuse.
I’m pleased to be able to offer you free access to a series of interviews from an online conference I participated in hosted by Fork in the Road with Sheree Clark. Although this virtual conference has a Women’s Midlife theme, many of the speakers and topics may be of interest to subscribers of my FSA Education blog.
