I'm so sorry.

This is scapegoating.

It has nothing to do with who you are, with anything you've 'done' or didn't do.

It has to do with a messed-up family or couple who needed somebody to abuse, & you're the one who drew the short straw.

Calling on you when they need something, far from being a possible thaw, an acknowledgement that you have value, is just another way to use you & make a fool of you.

& your siblings grew up in this household, being taught every day that you don't belong, that you're deserving of ridicule & abuse, & they'll never change;
it's too much fun to keep treating you badly (they get to be superior + they get to be mean).

Give up on these people & go have a happy life.

Thank you Sylvia, the truth hurts but hopefully it will also help me move on. This makes more sense to me now and all I can do is pray for all of them.

For your own satisfaction have you ever had a discussion with your parents as to why they treat you this way? Do you get along with your other siblings? Or do they treat you badly also? Were it me, I would just ask them outright and then be done with your parents. NancyLouise

I am so sorry you are being treated this way. They all should be ashamed of themselves. Sounds to me there is some jealously with some of your siblings. Just stand tall and enjoy your family. My parents didn't attend any of my kids weddings either. My dad got mad for some reason and didn't speak to 3 of the 5 of his children. My brother could see his house from his, my sister just lived a short distance from my parents and I lived a little over an hour away. Never did know why he wouldn't speak to us. My dad made money over the years but didn't handle it well. Some of us did. He couldn't handle that. We purchased a vacation home in the southern part of out state and my dad told my oldest sister we were stupid for doing it. Believe me it has been a very good investment. When I heard that I asked my mom if she thought I had married a stupid man. My husband and I have lived a very different life then the rest of my family. Our goal was to get our 3 kids educated and on their own. Ours are the only kids in my family to go to college. I was talking to an ex sister-in- law the other day and she told me they always thought we were the rich ones. I about choked on that one. No, we just managed things differently. Parents and siblings get mad for different reasons. I learned many years ago to let all of that go. My parents and two sisters are now gone. Stand tall and be proud of you job you have done with your life and children. Believe me sometimes I was darn glad I lived away..

nancylouise - Yes I tried on a few occasions to talk to them via email or in person. It didn't work, they are very defensive, they love conflict and drama and in the end I just can't take it. Nothing is ever their fault. Thanks susie53, sounds like your situation is somewhat similar to mine. I never ever bragged about it, but I had the same goal, to get all 4 of my children college educations since I did not have one. They all did very well, got scholarships and today have advanced degrees and one has a law degree. I'm very proud, why can't the rest of the family feel that way. I'm proud of my nieces and nephews, no matter where they're at in life. Well, I feel better getting this out there and knowing it could be jealousy or whatever. I don't get it because if anything I want my children to do better than I ever did, I'm pretty sure that's how it's supposed to be. thank you

Well, there is not much else you can do then Karen. They aren't going to change this late in life. As you stated, they will be meeting their maker soon enough and will have to answer to him. Just enjoy your family and all that you and they have accomplished. It is their loss not yours. Take care, NancyLouise

thank you NancyLouise

Yes, this is scapegoating.

You asked why and answered the question in one of your posts. You said, they are defensive and nothing is ever their fault.

People who are never at fault notice that things in life don't go they way they want and they can't blame themselves (because they are never at fault), so they blame someone outside themselves. Most other adults won't accept the blame, so they blame one of their own kids.

Usually it's not overt and open: they'll rarely say, you ruined my life or I'd be happy except for you. They know that sounds foolish. But they feel that way, and by blaming you for not being perfect, they don't have to deal with the fact that they themselves are not perfect. Because if mom and dad are never at fault for anything, they have to have an explanation about why they are unhappy or dissatisfied with life.

And that explanation is you.

It's not conscious. They don't know they are doing it. And they won't ever acknowledge it, because if they give up their scapegoat, they lose their answer for why life isn't as happy as they wanted.

It's a highly dysfunctional and neurotic response to low self esteem. And rather than look at their own imperfection, they will fight tooth and nail and use any defense mechanism possible to keep you in your scapegoat status. They NEED you to be 'inferior' and 'wrong' so they can feel good about themselves.

If they are ever forced to acknowledge that you are equal, as good as, or even better than they are, their whole identity shatters and they are flooded with debilitating self hatred.

Why did they choose you out of 16 kids for this burden?

It has nothing to do with you. Yes, you are flawed, everyone is, but you are not more flawed than the other 17 members of your family. You were chosen very early in life or possibly before you were born.

Maybe your conception came at the wrong time, or your parents couldn't handle another child, or you didn't sleep enough as a baby, or had colic, or were outgoing w/an introverted mother, or introverted in an extroverted family, or looked like someone your mother disliked, or who knows what.

It's not anything you did or are. It's hard to believe that if you are the scapegoat, but that's the reality. Your 'rep' in the family is a product of your parents' flaws and inadequacies not yours.

The sad thing is, you probably will never be able to fix this. Often scapegoats grow up and by their 40's of 50's get so sick of the lousy role they've been assigned that they try to fix it by confronting the problem head on. A lot of scapegoats turn into 'truth tellers'. They tell the truth about all the sick dysfunctional family secrets, and almost always--this is sad to say--the family completely rejects them, including the parents, even mom. Almost always the family closes ranks and will out and out lie and run the scapegoat turned truth teller out of the family. They cannot bear to hear the truth about themselves or what is going on. You hear this alot with people who were sexually molested, and then they grow up and tell the truth, and are run out of the family.

Unhappily, the truth is, if you are a scapegoat, if you don't play that role, the family doesn't want you--they will not allow you to play another role. There is a website devoted to scapegoats (I'm not associated with it in any way) called emerging from broken. It can give a lot of insight on the scapegoating family and what's wrong with the mothers who do this to their children.

The truth is not all mothers love their children. We don't want to believe that, but it is true. All mothers however will proclaim loudly that they love their children (altho some say I love my daughter but I don't like her), but not all do, an many actively dislike or hate their children.

If you are over the age of 25 and you think your mother hates you or dislikes you intensely, she probably does--and you'll get very little support because the culture will not acknowledge some mothers don't love their children. Society says, "She did the best she could with what she had/knew at the time, and when she knew better, she did better." (Maya Angelou).

But this is not true. Not all mothers do their best, and even if they did their best was not good enough. And you'll find that once you try to get them to learn to do better, they will resist you like the devil. They don't want to know or do better, because they don't want to face who they really are and work on themselves. It's so much easier just to continue to blame you.

Mothers who talk badly about their children and diagnose them with all sorts of mental and emotional problems are very likely to fall into this category. Normal mothers don't do that. Normal loving mothers blame themselves, even when they shouldn't when there's a problem -- but not scapegoating mothers. Another clue is when parents cut a child out of the will. Loving parents will never do that; toxic parents have to get one last knife turn in.

Sometimes people are willing to walk away and completely have nothing to do ever again with scapegoating parents. Particularly if they've built a happy life outside their family of origin. If they have a husband, children, inlaws, career, friends, its much easier--but still painful--to break off all ties with dysfunctional toxic parents. They turn first into truthtellers, trying talking, and intervention and family therapy (scapegoating parents will seldom go to therapy or stick with it) because they want to believe that somewhere, some how, down deep the their parent, especially their mother has some love for them somewhere.

The confrontations, therapy, truth telling, bearing of the soul, however doesn't excavate a small deeply hidden cache of love. Just the opposite happens, the more the scapegoat seeks to bring the truth to light, the nastier and meaner and more hateful the parent gets. What gets excavated is all the hatred the parent has for herself which the parent is sure belongs not to her but to her child--and she flings the caca. It is almost certain that a scapegoat forcing the issue will be slandered and punished (often by being left homeless or having your most cherished possessions taken from you if the parent can manage it) and then ejected by the family. The parent will then play victim for the rest of her life, wailing she doesn't understand what happened.

They know what happened, they know the truth, but they will never admit it. Ever. They are frantic to keep the truth hidden. They would rather die estranged than learn how to have a mutually healthy relationship with the scapegoat. Getting from dysfunctional to healthy means they first have to go through a painful valley of the shadow of death, and they won't do it.

On occasion if you are an only child and your parent doesn't have a good social support from nieces and nephews, or grandchildren or spouse or siblings, when they get old, dependent, fragile and frightened, and you've had many years of estrangement so they know you mean business about them changing--sometimes, they will soften and change hoping to lure you back. They'll backslide if you permit it, and it doesn't happen very often.

If the scapegoat leaves the family, another scapegoat will be chosen. Scapegoating parents MUST have a scapegoat to be able to live with themselves. They will find one. It's a very grim reality.

Many scapegoats have struggled in life because of the damage their parent has inflicted on them and some will have trust issues, eating and addiction issues, and relationship issues. (Scapegoating parents will always say they aren't to blame for how their children turn out--remember, they can't handle blame). Scapegoats sometimes have a lot of trouble establishing a healthy lives independent from their families of origin, and being completely rejected, slandered and punished is too risky and devastating to them, so they have to learn healthier ways of interacting with their dysfunctional families. They don't want to cut off all contact with their parents. A good therapist can help establish silent boundaries for scapegoats who elect this option.

Scapegoating is one of the worst forms of child abuse, second probably only to parental sexual abuse. Lots of adults say, "My parents beat the crap out of us, but we always knew they loved us." Scapegoated adults say, "My parents never laid a finger on us, but I always knew they didn't love me." And then there are the scapegoated children who are both beaten and unloved.

My heart hurts for you Karen, because you try so hard and it's impossible to please them. If your gut tells you they hate you, you are probably right. But not because you are unloveable, but because they are incapable of loving all their children.

Thank you BananaBread for taking the time to explain all this. i never knew anything about "scapegoating" and haven't sought professional help because I felt like my situation was just too hard to even explain, that it would take hours and hours. What you've written above is at least 99% true for my parents. What I've also wondered is why several of my siblings go along with it. What is their problem? When I've seen siblings or their spouses mistreated in the past, I've confronted my parents about it, even though I too was mistreated and knew the response would not be positive. But you're right, when I've tried to be the "fixer", I was treated even worse. I was even accused in a derogatory way of "always trying to be the fixer", as if it was a bad thing. One thing I didn't mention before is that my first marriage was interracial and I had 2 bi-racial children. My parents didn't talk to me for several years because of that but now will act like they don't hold it against my children. Sometimes they do, sometimes not, however they do hold it against them more than not. My children are amazing people so I really don't care what anyone thinks about that, but perhaps that was the start of the "scapegoating". I don't know though, I felt singled out when I was young too and definitely as a teenager. As one of my aunts said, all you do is pray for them now, so I do.

Scapegoating starts very early, maybe at birth.

My mother told everybody in earshot, over & over, my whole life, how disappointed she was that I was
(1) a girl &
(2) born on the wrong day!

I was the eldest, & she loudly proclaimed, over & over, that *her* little girl was to have had a big brother, & that her first child was to have been born on her brother-in-law's birthday (she had a crush on him & didn't seem to care if my father & all his siblings knew it)...& I was 2 days "early".

I was even supposed to have been named for this uncle...

She was so disgusted with my appearance on this planet that she told my father that she didn't have a girl's name picked out & that he could name me.

so he did, & I'm very glad!

It doesn't matter what choices you make, they're going to be *wrong* to scapegoaters.

If you make tea, they wanted coffee.
If you make coffee, it's too strong/weak.
or you served it in a mug, or you served it in a teacup, or you served it with a paper napkin, or you served it before they wanted it, or you didn't serve it until they'd decided they'd rather have an orange juice.

The rules of their game are that you cannot win.

No matter who you married, he'd have been 'wrong'.

Thank goodness your children escaped the brunt of this garbage.

I know that people often talk about forgiveness healing the sinned-against person, but that always seemed a weird, around-the-world way to go about it.

I do believe in forgiveness, *when the offending party shows remorse, apologizes, makes restitution, & humbly & believably asks for it*.

Otherwise, I think it's a free pass.

The way I've helped myself is to say to myself:
"That's in the past. It belongs in the past. You are the only one who has the power to do anything with it other than leave it in the past. so leave it in the past."

When an old boyfriend, who had done me out of some money that I could ill afford to lose, died (he was a heavy smoker & drinker), a friend asked, "How do you feel about that?"

& I was surprised to hear myself say, "I don't feel anything."

I had left it all in the past.

Sylvia, I really think your main word isn't forgiveness, but it is
__________
past
__________

That you have put it behind you, is very important. To tolerate the abuse and/or stay in the situation is probably the wrong thing to do. It's certainly an unhealthy thought to want to try to change the person.

A good boundary is to say things as matter of factly as possible and cut off any negative discussions. It does not have to be forever. I learned this with my grandmother. I would talk to her and be as kind as I could, but if she was being cruel, I'd wrap it up and leave. The next time, clean slate and it might go better or not. My visits/phone calls were as long as I wanted and abuse kept to a minimum. I still wanted her love and to love her. She's not the only one with whom I do this.

I just am not sure how healthy it is to say forever. It's too hard on a soul to do that. Might be necessary. One could try shorter time periods, and if it wasn't enough, sever ties. Just keep the boundaries healthy. Stay strong and encourage yourself you're doing the right thing one event at a time.

sylviatexas, I'm glad you mentioned forgiveness because that always confuses me too. I've had people tell me I should forgive people who are still being malicious, they don't even want forgiveness or show any remorse. How the heck do you forgive that??? And that's what they preach at church too. I'm only human, I can't forgive someone who is spitting in my face. Thanks for your post though, it's helpful. I'm sorry for what's been done to you and glad that you've been able to overcome it, although we both know the pain is never really gone.

Forgiveness is a goal, and it is never easy. Here's an excellent article on Forgiving. It's worth reading and taking each point as a step.

If you can't forgive, you are doomed to slowly poisoning yourself.

Here is a link that might be useful: 8 ways to forgive and forget

Edited to add:

When I clicked on the link, I got an ad that *would not go away*!!
Be careful.

nah.

I'm not poisoning myself by a long shot.

I'm leaving the wrongs in the past & moving on without the people who did the wrongs.

Forgiveness isn't an obligation on the part of an injured party;
it's something a wrong-doer asks for, humbly, after having acknowledged fault, apologized, & made restitution.

This post was edited by sylviatexas on Wed, Jul 16, 14 at 18:51

From Oprah's website (love my Adblocker!)

A wise woman and her young disciple were walking down the street. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an angry man in a carriage drove haphazardly by the two, insensitively pushing the woman out of his way. She landed in a ditch filled with muddy water. The woman yelled after the man in the carriage, "May you have everything you want!" The disciple, surprised by the wise woman's response, said: "I'm confused. Why did you say that to a man with such horrible behavior?" The woman replied, "Because a happy man wouldn't have thoughtlessly pushed a woman into a ditch."

Do you agree with this woman's response? In my book The Bounce Back Book, I offer empowering strategies for embracing forgiveness and liberating yourself from anger and bitterness�"even in the most challenging situations.

Here are eight strategies to free you from your resentments starting today!

Say a Prayer
Whenever angry feelings about a person who's harmed you enter your mind, tell yourself: "We are all good, loving souls who occasionally get lost." Pray for this person to find their way back to a happier place�"in the same way the woman in this story prayed for her offender.

Focus on Gratitude
Resist seeking happiness from the outside in. Instead, focus on gratitude exercises to bring happiness from the inside out. If you allow your self-image to be at the mercy of unpredictable events and unreliable people, your happiness will be forever on a chaotic roller coaster ride! Happiness must always be an inside joy! When you are tempted to focus on all the ways the world has done you wrong, instead count your blessings by making a list of the five aspects of your life that you appreciate. It is good practice to purposefully end your day this way to keep focused.

Look for the Lesson
Many Buddhists consider huge difficulties to be a sign you're an old soul�"the bigger your misfortunes, the closer you are to enlightenment. Whether you believe this or not, it's certainly cheery to reframe all your life's bad events as tests of your character. If you feel particularly tested right now, ask yourself what the heck you're being tested for! Patience? Compassion? Resilience? Forgiveness? Open-mindedness? What strengths must you develop further? Now consciously go out there and develop them!

Maintain Perspective
If you're going through a challenging time, remind yourself that this specific event is merely a part of your life�"not your "whole" life. Consciously keep this "slice of life" perspective, and don't let the event overwhelm you. As the song goes, "The best is yet to come!"

Learn the Lesson
Develop a "student not victim" mentality. Vow not only to disentangle yourself from emotionally harmful situations, but also to consciously avoid similar situations in the future.

Let Go of Resentment
Keep in mind a fabulous Carrie Fisher quote: "Resentment is the poison you swallow hoping the other person will die." Recognize that when you resent someone, you are not only hurting yourself, you're also giving this person control of your emotions�"and you don't want to give this person bubkes!

Stay Centered
Recognize that when you respond with hate to hate, anger to anger, bitterness to bitterness, you are ironically becoming part of the problem. Choose to resist becoming like them and instead put in the conscious effort to remain a loving, soulful, happy person.

Get Revenge Positively
Contemplating revenge? The best kind of revenge is living a successful, happy life. If you train yourself to consistently be more loving in thoughts and actions, your energy will attract more positive people and positive results. As Albert Einstein said, "You can't solve a problem by staying in the same energy in which it was created." To stay focused on highly positive thoughts, repeat this meditation ritual throughout the day: "Love, forgiveness, letting go, peace."

Karen Salmansohn is a best-selling author known for creating self-help for people who wouldn't be caught dead reading self-help. Get more information on finding a loving happier-ever-after relationship in her book

thanks sushipup

Forgiveness is something that has to be earned. You don't have to give it if it does not warrant such. And you don't end up poisoning yourself or you mind or well being if not given. You can go on with your life very happily and not give the offending person/persons a second thought. I have. NancyLouise

Forgiveness is your own internal process.

Good to know that the deity most followed in the US believed in forgiveness. And leaders like Nelson Mandela. Examples for us all.

Sylviatexas and BananaBreads posts are right on target.

Scapegoating is what your mother has done. It is a known tactic of a narcissist. Just one of the many (ugly) tactics they like to use to maintain control over their victim.

It is a sad fact of life that not all parents love their children.

It is helpful to be able to learn how to tell if a person is a narcissist so you don't become victimized again. Something that tends to happen to people who were raised to dislike themselves. Break free from toxic people who need you to dislike yourself in order for them to be able to feel 'whole'. Check out the link below to see what tactics narcissists like to utilize most. It will probably give you a sense of relief to know you aren't alone. That there are people out there who should never have been allowed to breed.... The truth will set you free. Best wishes and good luck.

A link that might be useful:

http://narcissistschild.blogspot.com/